The placard on the wagon in the photograph displays one of our earliest adverts, “International Correspondence Schools.” Penn Foster, as International Correspondence Schools, began in 1891 by Thomas J. Foster as a question and answer column in a technical journal to educate coal miners on safety and engineering. By early 1895, the school was officially known as the International Correspondence Schools, or ICS for short. The first class enrolled 500 miners, but within eight years over 190,000 students had enrolled in courses. Before long, ICS courses were offered in 40 engineering trades. To date, Penn Foster has enrolled over 13 million students worldwide and has come a long way since its horse-drawn wagon days. For more history, visit our Penn Foster About Us Page and Weinberg Memorial Library ICS Page.

Photograph courtesy of Susan White Pieroth.
Source: For more photographs and a history of the Scranton area, visit Susan White Pieroth’s Early Scranton Pennsylvania Area Photographs page.