Harry William Jackson, a male English immigrant, was the central figure behind Jackson China in Falls Creek, Pennsylvania, a pottery and restaurantware company that grew out of the former Bohemian Art Pottery operation. He had come into the Falls Creek-DuBois area from the Warwick China world of Wheeling, West Virginia, and helped establish Jackson China with Emanuel A. Fischel after Bohemian Art Pottery ran into financial trouble.
By 1916, the company had become Jackson Vitrified China Company, known for producing durable restaurant tableware and for adopting natural-gas kilns instead of older wood and coal methods.
On November 26, 1924, Jackson's life ended violently in a workplace-related dispute. The accounts available online describe him walking to lunch along the railroad tracks with William Darden, a salesman connected to the company. The day appears to have begun like any ordinary workday in the industrial life of Falls Creek, but it turned deadly when the two men were approached by John Souccob, identified in the sources as a pottery designer. The dispute was reportedly over payment for dish-pattern drawings, suggesting the confrontation grew out of a business disagreement tied directly to the company's designs and production work.
The confrontation escalated quickly. Souccob reportedly confronted Jackson and Darden, the discussion became heated, and he produced a gun. He shot both men, killing Harry Jackson and William Darden. After the two killings, Souccob turned the weapon on himself and died by suicide. Because the suspected killer died immediately after the shootings, the case did not move into the usual path of arrest, formal charges, trial, or conviction.
There are no available online details showing that any other suspects were pursued, and the sources identify John Souccob as the person responsible. The motive given is narrow but telling: a dispute over payment for dish-pattern drawings. That detail places the killings inside the pressure and conflict of a growing pottery business, where artistic work, manufacturing, and money came together in a small Pennsylvania company town. Jackson was not described as a random victim; he was the company leader whose decisions and business dealings appear to have brought him into fatal conflict with a designer who believed he was owed money.
After Jackson's death, the company did not collapse immediately. Emanuel A. Fischel continued on, becoming president and general manager after losing his partner. Local support and financial backing from the DuBois banking community reportedly helped keep the pottery operating. Jackson China went on to survive for decades, later producing restaurantware and fine china lines, but its history always carried the shadow of the 1924 murder-suicide that took the life of Harry William Jackson and William Darden beside the railroad tracks in Falls Creek.
