1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pittston
PITTSTON, a city of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Susquehanna river just below the mouth of the Lackawanna, about 11 m. S.W. of Scranton and about 9 m. N.E. of Wilkes-Barré. Pop. (1890), 10,302; (1900), 12,556, of whom 3394 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 16,267. It is served by the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Central of New Jersey, the Delaware & Hudson, and the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley railways; there is an electric railway from Pittston to Scranton, and a belt-line electric railway connects Pittston with Avoca, Nanticoke, Plymouth and Wilkes-Barre. Two bridges connect the. city with the borough of West Pittston (pop., 1910, 6848). Pittston is in the midst of the richest anthracite coal region of the state, and fire-clay also abounds in the vicinity. In 1905 the value of the factory products was $1,474,928 (47.8% more than in 1900). Pittston, named in honour of William Pitt, earl of Chatham, was one of the five original towns founded in the Wyoming Valley by the Susquehanna Company of Connecticut; it was first settled about 1770 and was incorporated as a borough in 1803. It was chartered as a city in 1894.