The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of our Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. It's authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.
Adam J. Bernodin III, Ashland Area Historic Preservation Society Member, Historical Marker Nominator; and Raymond Jones Ashland Borough Manager were officially contacted by April Frantz, National Register Reviewer of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission about the Mothers’ Memorial, Hoffman Memorial, and Veteran’s Memorial, making the list on the week for September 18, 2020.
The Mothers’ Memorial, the Hoffman Memorial, and the Veterans’ Memorial are three small, landscaped memorial parks connected by the associated Hoffman Boulevard (Pennsylvania State Route 61) and a stretch of Market Street in the Borough of Ashland that will be listed by the National Park Service.
The National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form was prepared in joined efforts with Bernodin and Margret Newman. Margret Newman was a selected consultant hired on a grant by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
The Ashland Boys’ Association Pennsylvania State Historical was dedicated on August 31, 2013.
According to Bernodin, “The Ashland Boys’ Association historical marker honors all current and former residents that faithfully came home to a proud coal mining town. The sentimental impact of this homecoming was felt throughout Pennsylvania and the Industrial United States when they erected the Mothers’ Memorial.”
Bernodin also said, “the National Register of Historic Places honors the Mothers’ Memorial in Social History in the United States. Whistler’s Mother’s was the quintessential imagine of motherhood of the United States during that time when the WPA Mothers’ Memorial was erected during the Great Depression and still today the only one of its kind statue in the world honoring all mothers.”
“The Ashland Boys’ Association made history choosing the subject on canvass of the bronze replica of the American iconic painting of Arrangement and Grey and Black No. 1, commonly known as Whistler’s Mother.”
The Ashland Boys’ Association, Dr. John L. Hoffman, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression with the stone masonry stonework around the Mothers’ Memorial, Hoffman Boulevard Islands, Hoffman Memorial site, and around stonework around the field piece of the Veterans’ Memorial are all sentimentally connected.
This was all based on the region's coal mining anthracite heritage with the current and former residents of the Borough of Ashland.
The Mothers’ Memorial is the symbol of the very foundation of the Ashland Boys’ Association. The meaning of the Ashland Boys’ Association was to come on home and the work home evoked thoughts of their mothers.
The Ashland Boys’ Association and the Mothers’ Memorial will now be sentimentally shining forever as a model community as the symbol of United States Social History honoring all mothers, family, and friends!
