Join the celebration…plan
your Labor Day Weekend with US. Our festivities are centered around
Ashland’s historic ABA Homecoming Parade with events scheduled
throughout the entire weekend in each of our Six
Great Towns.
Check out our schedule
of events and enjoy our brief ABA story below. For the full history
of the Ashland Boys Association click here
(1 MB 
).
…And
they came home on a special train, hundreds and hundreds of them!
With lighted torches they marched up the long main street while their
mothers and families anxiously waited to welcome them home.
The story began before the turn of the century in the
small coal mining town of Ashland, when young men were forced to leave
home for work in places like Philadelphia because of busted local
mines. Sadly missed by their mothers, families and friends, until
one day a group of them said “let’s go back to Ashland for
Labor Day.” These men longed to see their families, renew friendships
ruthlessly severed years before, and again visit the scenes of their
youth and once again have a good time together. They reached the age
when they realized that youth was the happiest period of life and
as time wore on old memories became priceless treasures. They spread
the word to all Ashland boys and hundreds of them arrived on a special
train into Ashland at 7 p.m. on the Saturday before Labor Day, 1903.
Each was handed a torch to find his way home, and a torch-lit procession
marched up the long main street of town. Mothers and daughters, dressed
in their finest, stood on row-house porches welcoming their sons and
brothers. One by one torches went dark as each boy found his way home.
In 1937 the boys, now known as the Ashland Boys Association,
decided to honor Ashland’s mothers by dedicating the world’s
only 3-D bronze statue of “Whistler’s Mother” with
the saying “A mother is the holiest thing alive”.
To this day, 106 years later on the Saturday before
Labor Day, a parade to celebrate this unique homecoming steps off
at 7:00 p.m., the arrival time of the original boy’s train.
So, come to Upper Schuylkill and make yourself
at home. Old friends and new are always welcome. Join us and witness
a re-enactment as the boys come home again at the historic Ashland
parade on Saturday, September 2nd. Enjoy a holiday weekend full of
culture, heritage, sights and sounds planned just for you. Experience
six hometown communities working together as one big happy family.
