By Ed Lewis [email protected]

Wilkes-Barre Record headline Feb. 7, 1896

A boarding house on Center Street, Kingston, catered to Lithuanians needing a place to stay.

And those Lithuanians enjoyed a good time.

Joseph Pokoytski, the owner of the boarding house, had a keg of beer and invited some of his tenants to a gathering on February 4, 1896. A resident played a violin at the spontaneous party on the front porch as they savored the beer.

Once the keg was empty, Pokoytski assigned Joseph Polock and John Harsey to buy another keg from John Luiantchi’s saloon at 1 in the morning on February 5, 1896, according to the records of Wilkes-Barre.

When Polock and Harsey took the new keg and began their journey back to the boarding house on Center Street, they were pursued by “20 to 25 English-speaking rouges,” the records indicated.

Panicked, Polock and Harsey rushed back to the boarding house and hustled in, alerting Pokoytski and the rest that there was trouble brewing just outside the front door.

Those “toughs” were after the keg of beer, starting to rip apart the wooden fence and hurling wood planks and stones at the boarding house to get their hands on the keg, as stated by the Record.

Despite leaving after a few minutes, the English-speaking toughs soon made their return.

“The Lithuanians continued their merriment. Just past 1 in the morning, a knock was heard at the door. The leader of the boarding house went to answer it, but upon not seeing anyone on the porch, he made his way out into the yard,” reported the Record.

In the aftermath of this, a full-scale riot ensued.

Rocks and wood were hurled, and bullets were fired from revolvers towards the boarding house, incited by demands for a keg of beer according to the newspaper.

Polock ended up with a fence picket lodged in his head while Adam Kobinski had a stone lodged in his head too.

The thin wooden walls and windows did little to stop the bullets, which ended up striking two Lithuanians in their legs.

Isaac Eckert, a detective from Luzerne County, stepped in to investigate the riot and subsequently arrested three individuals, David Davis, William Davis, and Charles Wolfe, on charges of felonious wounding and intent to kill with assault and battery.

Trial for the three English-speaking “toughs” was held May 2, 1896, when Assistant District Attorney Ralph H. Wadhams called them “a bad gang,” reported the Record.

A jury convicted David Davis and Charles Wolfe with felonious wounding and were sentenced May 5, 1896, by Judge John Lynch to three years each in the Eastern Penitentiary.

William Davis was acquitted by the jury.