Ashland statue pays tribute to mothers everywhere
Written by Paula Cochran
Forced to leave the area to find employment, young men from Ashland, a small town in Schuylkill County in southeast Pennsylvania, created a tradition of reuniting each year over Labor Day weekend. They would spend the weekend with family and revisiting their youth by dropping in at their old school. Around 1900, the tradition evolved into a formal group, "The Ashland Boys Association," or ABA. In the early 1900s the group numbered in the thousands. Each Labor Day eve, the men would take the train from Philadelphia and return home. The tradition of the men returning and parading down Main Street toward home evolved into a real parade that continues to this day. Locally, the day is known as "ABA Day" and the parade is known as the Ashland Mummers Parade.
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