1. Anyone over the age of 40 or who attended school in a pre 1970’s building remembers
using a blackboard, not the green synthetic ones, I mean a genuine slate blackboard.
People still older may recall using a personal slateboard, which was commonly used in
the early days of the 20th
century. Surely the students then took them for granted and
never wondered where they came from. Did you ever wonder where they came from? A
large portion of the slates came from a small town in eastern Pennsylvania called
Slatington. Owen Jones discovered slate here in 1845.
Two years later, Owen Jones and William Roberts opened the first school slate factory in
the United States in Slatington. School slates were personal slates bordered in wood trim
on which students did their lessons, and measured 4-6 inches x 9 1/2 –14 inches. Five
years later blackboard making began in Slatington. The best type and color of slate for
the production of blackboards was found in abundance in the Slatington area.
The demand for personal slates and blackboards increased, as the population of the
country increased, and communities began building centralized schools in lieu of one-
room schoolhouses. Several school slate factories opened in Slatington to meet the
demand for these products. It would only seem fitting that one of Slatington’s native
sons Edward Kraus, who worked for the National School Slate Factory would hold
several patents, which improved upon the design of school slates, and free standing
blackboards found in classrooms.
At its peak the region produced over 1,500,000 slates a year. Slatington became known as
“the blackboard center of America”. World War I, sanitary concerns over personal slates,
and the emergence of the paper industry greatly hurt the slate industry. Slate was deemed
an unessential product and many slate quarries went out of business. By 1941, the
Slatington region was the only place producing school slates in the U.S; however, most
were exported. In the following years the number of operating quarries and factories
shrank until today where there is only one operating quarry in the area, in nearby
Slatedale. Today, blackboards are still locally produced, but on a much smaller scale,
and often purchased as a novelty.
Slatington’s blackboard story is important as a piece of American history. For it is the
story of one product, which predominately came from one location, which was so
pervasive that one can argue that all over the country nearly every classroom and at one
time nearly every child used one. For many years the use of personal school slates and
blackboards was the primary way of educating children in the U.S. There are few
instances in American culture where the use of a single product was so far reaching, but
yet at the same time only came from a single location.
So the next time you come across a blackboard in an old school room, or find a school
slate at a flea market, chances are it came from right here in Slatington.

2. The local slate industry and the First School Slate Factory have been recognized by the
erection of state historic markers. However, the importance of Edward Kraus’s patents
and the fact that Slatington was the “blackboard center of America” and how slate helped
educate many children have not been recognized.
By reading local history books, and doing research for various community historical
projects I learned of Slatington’s distinction of one time being the blackboard capital of
America, the patents filed by a Slatington native to improve school slates and backboards
and the shear number of slates produced in the region and shipped throughout the country
and the world.
Supporting documents:
The Lehigh Valley: A natural and environmental History, Halma, Robert Pennsylvania
State University Press 2001.
Lehigh County Pennsylvania Geology and Geography, Miller, Leroy Benjamin.
Department of Internal Affairs, Harrisburg, PA 1941.
Lehigh Valley The Unsuspected, Myers, Dr. Richard E. Northampton County Historical
and Genealogical Society, Easton, PA 1972.
Slate in Pennsylvania, Behre, Charles H. Department of Internal Affairs, Harrisburg,
PA. 1933.
Slatington and Surrounding Communities, History Committee of the Slatington 125
Celebration. 1989.