Lewis Robert "Hack" Wilson (1900-1948)
Ellwood City, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Born and raised in Ellwood City, played Major League Baseball for four teams over 12 seasons, beginning in 1923. An outfielder, he set batting records during his 1930 season with the Chicago Cubs with 56 home runs, which stood for 68 years, and 191 RBIs. He finished his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1934 with a lifetime .307 batting average, 244 home runs, and 1,063 RBIs. Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Lewis "Hack" Wilson grew up in the industrial town of Ellwood City before carrying its working-class grit into the major leagues, where he starred as a slugging outfielder across twelve seasons beginning in 1923. His 1930 campaign with the Chicago Cubs became the stuff of legend: 56 home runs, a National League mark that endured for 68 years, and 191 RBIs, a single-season record that still stands. He retired in 1934 and, decades later, took his place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Why it matters
Wilson's rise from a small Pennsylvania mill town to baseball immortality reflects the sport's role as a ladder of fame for hometown heroes across industrial America.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lewis "Hack" Wilson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Seamless Tube Industry
Ellwood City, PA · est. 1994
In 1895, Swiss-born engineer Ralph C. Stiefel worked out the rotary piercing process at a plant in Ellwood City — a way to punch and roll a solid steel billet into seamless tubing without a welded seam. The breakthrough helped launch the Ellwood Weldless Tube Company, which grew into a core piece of U.S. Steel's National Tube Division.
Ingram-Richardson Manufacturing Co.
Beaver Falls, PA · est. 2001
Founded in Beaver Falls in 1901 by Louis Ingram and Ernest Richardson, 'Ing-Rich' grew over 64 years into one of the country's leading makers of porcelain enamel products. Prized for durability, its output ranged from outdoor advertising signs and 'porcel panels' for building fronts to tabletops, refrigerator and stove parts, and other household goods. At its height the company employed more than a thousand workers and ran plants in three other states.
Chinese Workers in Beaver Falls
Beaver Falls, PA · est. 2021
In 1872, after disputes with its local workforce, the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company — owned by the utopian Harmonist community — recruited Chinese laborers from San Francisco and New Orleans to staff its factory. These men were among the first Chinese immigrants in Pennsylvania, arriving during a decade of rising hostility toward Chinese newcomers. That backlash culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred nearly all immigration from China until its repeal in 1943.
Lawrence County
New Castle, PA · est. 1982
Created in 1849 from parts of Beaver and Mercer counties, Lawrence County honors Capt. James Lawrence, the naval hero of the War of 1812 remembered for the dying cry "Don't give up the ship." Its county seat, New Castle, had been laid out decades earlier, but the town's real boom came around the turn of the twentieth century, when it exploded as a center of the American tin-plate industry. For a generation it ranked among the fastest-growing cities in the nation.