NEW CASTLE 



4150 



NEWCOMB 



NEW CASTLE, PA., the county seat of Law- 

 rence County and an important manufacturing 

 city in the west -central part of the state, about 

 twelve miles from the Ohio state line and fifty 

 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. It is situated at 

 the junction of the Shenango and Neshannock 

 rivers and is on the Erie, the Pennsylvania, 

 the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, the Baltimore 

 A Ohio, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh 

 and other railroads. There are interurban lines 

 to neighboring towns and cities. The popula- 

 tion, which includes a large number of Welsh, 

 Italian and Polish, was 36,280 in 1910 and 41,133 

 (Federal estimate) in 1916. The area of the 

 city exceeds nine square miles. 



New Castle ranks sixth among the manu- 

 facturing cities of the state. Large deposits of 

 bituminous coal, limestone, sandstone, fire clay 

 and iron ore furnish materials for the chief 

 industrial establishments. These include metal- 

 working plants, such as steel and rolling mills, 

 blast furnaces, tin-plate and terneplate mills 

 and car-construction shops; cement works and 

 manufactories of pottery, nails, fire brick, 

 stoves, plows, boilers, radiators and machinery. 

 The knitting mills produce from eight to ten 

 hundred dozen pairs of hosiery per day. The 

 industries of the city employ nearly 17,000 men 

 and the annual value of products averages 

 about $38,385,000. New Castle is surrounded 

 by a fertile agricultural country and has an im- 

 portant trade in farm products and live stock. 



The noteworthy buildings include the Fed- 

 eral building, city hall, public library, Y. M. 

 C. A. and Y. W. C. A. buildings, high school, 

 opera house, club buildings and churches. The 

 city has the Almira Home for Aged Women, 

 the Shenango Valley Hospital and the New 

 Castle Hospital. There are several small parks, 

 and a short distance from the city is the noted 

 pleasure resort, Cascade Park. 



New Castle was founded in 1812, incor- 

 porated as a borough in 1825 and became a city 

 in 1869. The city charter was revised in 1889. 

 A modified commission form of government 

 was adopted in 1913. R.MC K.W. 



NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, the great cen- 

 ter of the coal regions of Northumberland and 

 Durham, and a county borough of England, 

 situated on the left bank of the River Tyne, 

 272 miles by rail northwest of London and 

 eight miles inland from the sea. The English 

 system of railways had its origin in this city; 

 to-day its locomotive and engineering works 

 are among the largest in the country. An old 

 bridge (1849), connecting Newcastle with 



(Iate>head, on the opposite bank of the river, 

 was designed and constructed by Robert 

 Stephenson, son of the famous inventor, George 

 Stephenson. Three other bridges at this point 

 span the river, whose waters from Newcastle 

 to the sea are crowded with trading vessels and 

 whose banks are lined with docks and factories. 

 The city boasts one of the largest meat and 

 vegetable markets in the United Kingdom. It 

 ships out great quantities of coal, iron, copper, 

 lead, alkali and machinery, and has prosperous 

 manufactories of stained glass, soda, bleaching 

 powder, vitriol, salt, earthenware, fire brick, 

 gas retorts, fire-clay pipes, grindstones and ce- 

 ment. Steel shipbuilding is carried on exten- 

 sively. In the city are famous ordnance works 

 owned by Lord Armstrong. 



Newcastle dates from the Roman period, and 

 on its site was a fort which helped to guard 

 the great wall of Hadrian. After the Romans 

 withdrew, the settlement was for a time the 

 residence of a colony of monks. About 1080, 

 Robert, eldest son of William the Conqueror, 

 began the erection of a castle on the river 

 bank; from this the present name of the city 

 was derived. The walls of the old town and 

 other traces of its past history have been de- 

 stroyed for the most part in the modern de- 

 velopment of the place. A castle on the site 

 of the one built by Duke Robert is now cared 

 for by the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries. 

 The city is the seat of the medical and science 

 colleges of Durham University. Population in 

 1911, 266,603. 



NEWCOMB, nu'kum, SIMON (1835-1909), an 

 American astronomer, was born in Wallace, 

 Nova Scotia. He 

 received his early 

 education in his 

 father's school in 

 Nova Scotia, emi- 

 g r a t ed to the 

 United States at 

 the age of eight- 

 een and began 

 teaching in Mary- 

 land. In 1857 he 

 was appointed 

 computer on the 

 Nautical Alma- 

 nack at Cam- 

 bridge and in 1858 graduated at the Lawrence 

 Scientific School. He was a keen mathemati- 

 cian and a practical and accomplished astron- 

 omer and wrote authoritatively also on finance 

 and political economy. He was appointed pro- 



SIMON NEWCOMB 



