Roman Catholic clergy figured prominently in Pennsylvania’s
The clerics published their views in diocesan newspapers from Boston
to New York to Philadelphia to Erie. Press coverage in the eastern cities
echoed the clerics’ views and prepared the ground for the trials to come.
John Kehoe, AOH delegate for Schuylkill County executed in 1878 and
posthumously pardoned in 1979, tried to cut through the resulting clamor. In
fall 1875, from his seat as Girardville's high constable, Kehoe wrote to a
local editor to protest the press’s conflation of the AOH with the “Molly
Maguire” label.
Kehoe said: “… the Ancient Order of Hibernians … is a chartered
organization, recognized by the commonwealth, and composed of men who are
law-abiding and seek the elevation of their members. … Now, nothing can be more
unjust than to charge the order with any acts of lawlessness, and nothing can
be more inconsistent with the wishes of the people than the agitation of this
matter by the leading papers of this country. The articles which have appeared on
this matter have done an incalculable amount of harm, and, as a friend to law
and order, I would advise their cessation.”
A few hardy clerics supported the AOH and the mineworkers’ cause. Just
months before Kehoe wrote his letter from Girardville, Father James Brehony of
St. Joseph’s Church in Summit Hill joined forces on behalf of the mineworkers
with Thomas Fisher, AOH Carbon County delegate subsequently hanged as a
“Molly.” The priest and the AOH delegate sat down together with Charles
Parrish, director of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, to negotiate the
wage issue.
Their meeting proved
unsuccessful. The following year, Fisher sat in Mauch Chunk Jail, charged with
an alleged “Molly Maguire” crime.
By January 1877 numerous AOH leaders, including Fisher and Kehoe, had been imprisoned, tried, and convicted. Within months, they would be sentenced to death.
By February 1877, mineworkers’ wages had fallen to such a point fathers were unable to feed their families. Father Brehony organized a “Catholic colony” movement, in his words, “to enable Catholics who wish to leave the coal regions, to form a colony and thus avoid the disadvantages of separate removal to a distant part of the county.”
By January 1877 numerous AOH leaders, including Fisher and Kehoe, had been imprisoned, tried, and convicted. Within months, they would be sentenced to death.
By February 1877, mineworkers’ wages had fallen to such a point fathers were unable to feed their families. Father Brehony organized a “Catholic colony” movement, in his words, “to enable Catholics who wish to leave the coal regions, to form a colony and thus avoid the disadvantages of separate removal to a distant part of the county.”
A reporter for Archbishop Wood’s diocesan
newspaper described the mineworkers’ plight: “Removal or starvation are the alternatives that now stare thousands of
the coal region broadly in the face. The expectation of bettering their
condition there, of even obtaining a decent livelihood for themselves and their
families is plainly hopeless.” The wages now being paid the men “simply place
them in a condition of slow starvation …”
At the height of the “Molly” trials, an unnamed priest from Ohio
addressed a group of Hibernians in Philadelphia. This priest shared Father
Brehony’s passion and his willingness to confront those in authority. The
unnamed priest gave a scathing assessment of Archbishop Wood’s actions against
the AOH. Newspapers in
Philadelphia and Shenandoah refused to give this priest’s name, his parish, or
the name of his bishop. They identified him only as “connected with a prominent
church in Ohio.”
The unidentified priest “denounced the action of Archbishop Wood in
anathematizing the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and held that the members are
the most fervent supporters of the Catholic faith.” Of Archbishop Wood's order
of excommunication against AOH men in the Philadelphia diocese, the Ohio priest
told Hibernians assembled in Philadelphia: “My bishop, through the official organ of
his diocese, pronounced the action of the Philadelphia hierarchy as an
injustice that was only worthy of the despot of Russia.”
Of
the wholesale identification of the AOH with alleged “Molly Maguire” violence,
the unnamed priest from Ohio concluded: “The movement against you is a Know Nothing
strike at every Irish organization, and every man concerned in it deserves to
be loaded with execration.”
To further explore this history, visit www.kehoefoundation.org.
To further explore this history, visit www.kehoefoundation.org.
