The Extraordinary Career of District Attorney Siewers

Part 2 of 4: The Canary Sings

It would take a book to document the various legal manipulations, chicaneries and outright nullifications of existing law undertaken to procure the scores of "guilty" verdicts issued during Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” prosecutions.

Carbon County’s District Attorney Edward R. Siewers added to that list of offenses. In October 1875, in a region inflamed with prejudice and lust for convictions at any price, Siewers characterized Irish Catholic defendants’ requests for a change of trial venue into a county less tainted with bias as “false and unfounded.”

In this cynical legal climate, it came as no surprise that the “confession” of prosecution witness James Kerrigan eliminated all hope for fair trials for Ancient Order of Hibernian (AOH) defendants prosecuted as “Molly Maguires” in Pennsylvania.

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“The Mollies Exposed!!!” a Shenandoah newspaper crowed in February 1876. “One of the Prisoners at Mauch Chunk Makes a Confession. Closing in on The Game!”

The Irish American “game” swept into the legal net through Kerrigan’s statement included Carbon County’s AOH delegate Thomas Fisher, its treasurer Alex Campbell and three other prominent AOH men.

An avid public waited two months for Kerrigan’s “confession” to hit local newspapers. When published, it did not disappoint.

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Kerrigan’s statement was sensational. And it was lurid. It told a credulous public long susceptible to “Molly Maguire” tales that Irish Catholic men who had spent years—sometimes decades—working their way out of the mines and into ownership of hotels and taverns, who had married and were raising families, who had successfully entered the political arena, and who were the elected officers of an international, state-sanctioned, Irish Catholic benevolent order, had also orchestrated widespread schemes of conspiracy to murder various mine officials.

To many who knew the Irishmen charged, Kerrigan’s “confession” was flatly unbelievable.

Kerrigan was charged as a defendant in Carbon County. District Attorney Siewers, in compliance with a writ of habeas corpus issued by Schuylkill County’s Judge Cyrus Pershing, allowed the former AOH bodymaster to be transported over the county line to Pottsville, where Pershing took Kerrigan’s statement in closed-door proceedings. Reporters attended, but not as guardians of civil liberties. Pershing instructed the newsmen to publish only when told to do so by prosecutors.

In April, with numerous trials pending, prosecutors lifted the gag. Local papers gave front page coverage to “KERRIGAN’S CONFESSION.”

“There ought to be more hangings than there is,” one juror said after reading the infamous document.

Buried deep in Kerrigan’s “confession” came the intelligence that would send a score of men to the gallows, imprison at least a score more, and cripple the entire AOH order statewide. Kerrigan told Judge Pershing: “The purposes of the ‘Mollie Maguires’ or A. O. H. is to kill people, beat them and burn down buildings. The notion is that it is to protect workingmen, but really they are all of the most hardened villains in the places where they reside.”

Kerrigan’s statement would be repeated, in various forms and with varying degrees of erudition, by numerous prosecution witnesses.

Editors published Kerrigan’s statement gleefully. They labeled Irish Catholic defendants “MURDERERS” before those defendants ever set foot in a courtroom.

Prosecutors’ reliance on Kerrigan’s statement—and judges’ wide support of that document—set aside all hope of equal protection for scores of AOH defendants. These Irishmen would not be tried individually, but as alleged members of a notorious criminal organization known as the "Molly Maguires." For membership in the AOH order, per James Kerrigan, equaled membership in that murderous society. Kerrigan’s charge started the legal juggernaut rolling.

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Coming February 1 – The Extraordinary Career of District Attorney Siewers – Part 3 of 4: The Canary Sings No More

The photo at the top of this post is of Hotel Wahnetah, opened in 1886 at Glen Onoko in Carbon County.

The material of Judge John P. Lavelle quoted in this four-part post is taken from "The Hard Coal Docket," published in 1994.

The Extraordinary Career of District Attorney Siewers

Part 1 of 4: A Little Bacchanalian Episode

During the late 1870s the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania prosecuted Irish Catholic defendants for so-called “Molly Maguire” crimes in five counties in its anthracite coal region: Carbon, Columbia, Luzerne, Northumberland and Schuylkill.

Elected district attorneys in all of these counties performed their duties with varying degrees of ineptitude. Most, if not all, of them happily ceded their authority to special prosecutors in the pay of railroad and coal and iron companies. These elected agents of the state allowed paid agents of the coal interests to control their “Molly Maguire” prosecutions.

It is not known what influence encouraged the legal guardians of so many Pennsylvania counties to so readily give up their elected authority. Bribery leaps to mind. So does coercion. Or perhaps simply an adherence to the pernicious “Know-Nothing” beliefs of the era. Those beliefs maintained that Irish Catholics should never hold elected office.

A deficiency of character no doubt contributed to the specific case of Carbon County’s District Attorney Edward R. Siewers.

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Siewers was admitted to Carbon County’s bar in 1873. He served from 1874 to 1880 as that county’s district attorney. His tenure spanned the entirety of the “Molly Maguire” prosecutions.

“No member of the Carbon Bar rose to prominence so early or so easily; no member fell from the pinnacle so quickly,” Judge John P. Lavelle wrote of Siewers in 1994.

Drama marked Siewers’ career from the start. One year before his admittance to Carbon County’s legal fraternity, a local editor reported “a little episode in his [Siewers’] bacchanalian career.” In fall 1872, three years before Pennsylvania charged its first “Molly Maguire,” newspaperman E. M. Boyle said of "Ed. R. Siewers," the man who would be district attorney:

“Edward was on a serious drunk a few weeks ago, and early in the morning he left his noisy companions, and attempted to go home. It was a fortunate thing that the night was warm, because if it had not been, Edward would have caught a very bad cold on somebody else’s door step, where he lay in a drunken snooze until awakened by the early watchman.”

At the time of this “little episode in his bacchanalian career,” Siewers was almost thirty years old.
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It seems unlikely that Siewers was brought up to bacchanalian ways. His father, Joseph, was born in the West Indies to Moravian missionaries. Joseph Siewers graduated from Nazareth Hall, a Moravian theological seminary. He served as principal of Mauch Chunk’s high school, as superintendent of Carbon County’s schools, and as prothonotary, an elected position.

Joseph Siewers dabbled in newspaper work. Then he turned to the study of law. After passing the bar, he opened a law office opposite the Mauch Chunk courthouse. When his hearing failed, making trial work no longer possible, Joseph opened an insurance business.

Joseph Siewers' career contributed to an auspicious lineage for his son, Edward, Carbon County district attorney for that county’s so-called “Molly Maguire” trials.

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“The son of … a prominent, well-regarded lawyer, politician and former superintendent of schools … Siewers rode the fame bestowed by his last name when he made his first run for public office,” Lavelle wrote of Edward 120 years later. “His father’s political clout and money did not hurt either …”

Edward’s first run for the office of district attorney came less than a year after his reported “bacchanalian” episode left him drunk and asleep in an unnamed resident’s doorway.

That episode would become less jarring to those who followed Edward’s career over the years.

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Coming January 15 – The Extraordinary Career of District Attorney Siewers – Part 2 of 4: The Canary Sings

The photo at the top of this post is of Hotel Wahnetah, opened in 1886 at Glen Onoko in Carbon County.

The material of Judge John P. Lavelle quoted in this four-part post is taken from "The Hard Coal Docket," published in 1994.

A Message for December

Love Guides the Whole Design

In March 1871, Pennsylvania officers for the Irish Catholic benevolent order known as the “Ancient Order of Hibernians” (AOH) filed their order's corporate charter—complete with constitution and by-laws—with the state legislature in Harrisburg.

Like so much of this tantalizing history, the origins of the 1871 Pennsylvania AOH charter—including the question of who authored its beautiful language—remain unknown. No information regarding the drafting of this document has yet been published.

But all of the dozens of AOH men arrested for alleged “Molly Maguire” crimes—and all 21 men executed on gallows in five counties over a period of two and a half years—belonged to the AOH benevolent order. All of these Irish Catholic men received copies of the AOH constitution and by-laws on their initiation into the order.

John Kehoe, AOH delegate for Schuylkill County during the mid-1870s, oversaw the printing of these documents at the Herald newspaper office in Shenandoah. Kehoe also likely oversaw the distribution of these documents to AOH divisions throughout Pennsylvania’s hard coal region.

Most, if not all, of the men prosecuted as Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguires” had in their possession at some time a booklet that included the language given here.

Below is the preamble from the AOH constitution, chartered on March 10, 1871, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Constitution and By-Laws of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Instituted, March 10, 1871.
Chartered, March 10, 1871.
Adopted, March 11, 1871.

Preamble. The members of this Order do declare that the intent and purpose of the Order is to promote Friendship, Unity, and True Christian Charity among its members, by raising or supporting a stock or fund of money for maintaining the aged, sick, blind, and infirm members, and for no other purpose whatever.

These laws though human,
Spring from Love Divine,
Love laid the scheme—
Love guides the whole design.

Vile is the man
Who will evade these laws,
Or taste the sweets
Without sufficient cause.

Introduction. The Motto of this Order is “Friendship, Unity, and True Christian Charity.”

Unity, in unity together for mutual support in sickness and distress.
Friendship, in assisting each other to the best of our power.
True Christian Charity, by doing to each other, and all the world, as we would wish they should do unto us.

Brethren: It is beyond all doubt that the Supreme Being has placed man in a state of dependence and need of mutual support from his fellow man. Neither can the greatest monarch on earth exist without friendship and society. Therefore, the Supreme Being has implanted in our natures tender sympathies and most humane feeling towards our fellow creatures in distress, and all the happiness that human nature is capable of enjoying must flow and terminate in the love of God and our fellow creatures. So we, the members of this Order, do agree to assist each other, and conform to the following rules …

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Thanks to all readers of the John Kehoe blog over the past year, and warm wishes for the coming year.

Anne Flaherty

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Coming January 2 – The Extraordinary Career of District Attorney Siewers—Part 1 of 4: A Little Bacchanalian Episode

Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 4 of 4: All the Machinery of the Pinkerton Agency

Attorney William Foyle of Towanda used all his persuasive power in December 1878 to convince Pennsylvania Governor John Hartranft to re-open the case of John Kehoe. Against all odds—including false rumors of his death—Kehoe’s wife Mary Ann had located a witness who could testify on her husband’s behalf.

“The witness is worthy of credit,” Foyle told Hartanft of witness Patrick McHugh’s deposition.

Foyle related that McHugh identified himself as collector of taxes for Carbon County's Banks Township at the time of the Langdon killing. McHugh "went over to Audenried the night of the affair, saw Jack Kehoe at William’s Tavern at the time the killing occurred or within five minutes of the time the alarm was given, and afterwards saw him running to the scene of the murder.”

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The Philadelphia Times picked up the case and questioned McHugh’s testimony. Foyle again wrote to Hartranft. The attorney’s frustration streamed through his second letter to Pennsylvania’s governor.

“I shall not doubt the integrity of witness McHugh until some reasonable proof is given that he has sworn falsely produced in some other form than newspaper ‘squibs’ for which no one claims responsibility,” Foyle told Hartranft.

“[A]s I understand it from pamphlets sent me some time since with the compliments of Franklin B Gowen containing the trial of Munly [sic] … it took the Commonwealth aided by that astute lawyer and with all the machinery of Pinkertons Detective agency about fourteen years to obtain the evidence to establish the guilt of Kehoe meager as it was … is it too much to ask that Kehoe should have at least two years to look up evidence to prove his innocence?”

The attorney concluded with a plea: “Asking your pardon for having trespassed so much upon you and with no other apology than a desire to advance the cause of justice and truth in behalf of a condemned man whose life is now trembling in the balance.”

The New York Times reported the subsequent hearing called to discuss McHugh’s testimony. Kehoe’s attorney, Samuel Garrett, made a strenuous effort. Garrett sought to convince the board, through use of a map of the murder scene, of Kehoe’s movements on the night of Langdon’s killing.

“He had expected to bring the map and accompanying documents with him from Pottsville this morning, but they were found to be missing from the court records when he went to get them,” The Times reported. But nothing prevented Garrett from telling the pardon board that from 1876 to 1877 "there was not a fair trial in Schuylkill County; that the jury wheel did not contain the names of four Irishmen.”

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Internal Affairs and pardon board member General William McCandless, a powerful Democratic state operative, summarily dismissed Garrett’s efforts. “‘If this man Kehoe is not guilty of murder in the first degree, he is guilty of nothing, and I have not changed my opinion as to his guilt,’” McCandless told Garrett. The general told a reporter: “‘We have refused to reopen the case. That’s how the matter stands. Kehoe will swing.’”

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A carefully rigged Board of Pardons. A false statement regarding the death of a defense witness. Important documents placed in evidence during Kehoe’s trial for murder, gone missing from the file.

When it came to procuring a signed death warrant for John Kehoe, it seems nothing was left to chance.

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Coming December 15 - A Message for December: Love Guides the Whole Design

Justice Trembling in the Balance

Part 3 of 4: The Witness is Worthy of Credit

While John Kehoe “languished in durance vile” in Pottsville Prison for two and a half years, the witness who could prove his innocence lived 90 miles away from Kehoe’s hometown. For General Charles Albright, the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company attorney who served as a special prosecutor during the “Molly Maguire” trials—dressed in full Civil War regalia—had circulated the false rumor that Patrick McHugh was dead.

“His brother died in 1874 & Gen’l Albright supposing it to be the witness conveyed a strong impression to the friends of Kehoe,” Towanda attorney William Foyle told Pennsylvania’s Governor John Hartranft ten days before Kehoe’s scheduled execution. “The General was acquainted with the witness and his impressions were incorrect in regard to his death.”

Albright’s incorrect “strong impression” allowed valuable time to slip by, while editors, attorneys and politicians wrangled over the signing of Kehoe’s death warrant.

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“McHugh is shure [sic] Jack Kehoe was not present at the murder of Langdon. McHugh is a man of good character and I believe truthful in every respect,” Foyle told Hartranft urgently. “His affidavit is not trumped up to meet the emergency but in my judgment is entitled to great weight in the final disposition of the case. The witness can produce certificates of character without any trouble.”

Foyle stated Kehoe's case to Hartranft plainly: “I drew the affidavit at the request of Mrs. Kehoe who came into my office yesterday and have no further connection with the case and no interest in it except to see that justice is done. I know this new evidence will withstand the utmost scrutiny and will vindicate your action ... and must satisfy even the Philadelphia Times which is craving for Jack Kehoe’s blood innocent or guilty. It makes no difference to me pecuniarily or otherwise whether Jack Kehoe is hung or not, but it does make a difference to all of us and especially to you Governor as chief executive of the State whether an innocent man shall be hanged in the face of the discovered evidence establishing his innocence.”

“Kehoe’s wife left for Pottsville last night to place the affidavit in the hands of his counsel,” Foyle advised Hartranft, “and I suppose you will be furnished with a certified copy very soon of the affidavit. My object in addressing you is to assure you and the other members of the Court that this affidavit is reliable, and McHugh the witness is worthy of credit. As to myself I am well known to all the people of my county and would not attempt to misrepresent the case in any respect.”

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Coming December 8 - Part 4 of 4: All the Machinery of the Pinkerton Agency