BLOODY RECORD OF THE MOLLIE MAGUIRES.
For the purpose of properly carrying out the _rôle_ of a truthful
historian of actual occurrences, we will change the scene, for a short
season, and, leaving McKenna to seek adventure with Pat Dormer and his
associates, in Pottsville, take a view of acts performed in the same
portion of the country, several years anterior to the time heretofore
alluded to.
The Mollie Maguires were more than usually active and bloodthirsty in
1865. On the 25th of August of that year, David Muhr, superintendent of
a colliery, was killed in Foster township. He was shot on the public
highway, in the broad light of day, within two hundred yards of the
house he was employed in, and where a large number of men were
congregated, all of whom heard the report of firearms, and many being
involuntary witnesses of the transaction. While this was the fact, no
reliable testimony could be elicited by the Commonwealth, when the
matter was under investigation, fixing the commission of the butchery
upon any suspected party. Nobody knew the men, where they had come from,
or where they had flown to. It was reported that signals had been seen
burning that night on the hills, soon after the occurrence, and it was
surmised they were built by confederates, to aid the principals in the
murder to make their way to safety.
Again, on the tenth of January, 1866, Mr. Henry H. Dunne, a well-known
citizen of Pottsville, and superintendent of one of the largest
coal-mining corporations in all that circuit of country, was murdered on
the turnpike, within two miles of the city, while riding home in his
carriage, from a visit to a colliery over which he had control. Even up
to the present date, no arrests have been made, nor has any information
presented itself which promises to lead to the apprehension of the
assassins. That they killed Mr. Dunne through complicity in some labor
troubles was always the prevailing belief.
[Illustration: _“The fatal shots were discharged by the assassins, from
their ambush, near the road.”_]
To continue the barbarous record, on Saturday, the seventeenth of
October, 1868, Alexander Rae, another mining superintendent, was killed
on the wagon road, near Centralia, in the township of Conyngham,
Columbia County. Several persons were distrusted, and a number arrested,
charged with the crime, and a strong chain of circumstantial evidence
made out by the Commonwealth against them. The highway on which the
event occurred was that passing from Centralia to Mt. Carmel, in
Northumberland County, and the exact location of the tragedy at a point
distant about a mile and a half from the latter place, in the
neighborhood of a spring where, for the convenience of travelers, there
had been erected a rude watering-trough, so that men, as well as
animals, might quench their thirst. Mr. Rae was riding in his buggy, at
half-past nine o’clock in the morning, coming from his home, and going
in the direction of the Coal Ridge Improvement Company’s colliery. He
was a peaceable, inoffensive, but naturally fearless man, entirely
unarmed, and only intent, at the time, on performing his duty to his
employers in the pursuit of his regular calling. The fatal shots once
discharged by the assassins, from their ambush near the road, the actors
in the drama, without waiting to learn the result of their bloody work,
fled precipitately to their refuge in the mountains, and for a long time
entirely avoided capture, or even the shadow of suspicion. The lifeless
remains of Mr. Rae were discovered, Sunday morning, pierced by six
bullets, and resting near the spot where the attack had been made. As a
natural consequence of such an outrage, the utmost indignation pervaded
the community in which the victim had for years been a widely-known and
much-respected resident. The particulars, as far as they were learned,
were repeated from person to person, and the news spread like wildfire
to the most distant parts of the coal country. Mr. Rae left an estimable
widow and six children to mourn his death. John Duffy, of Mahanoy City,
Schuylkill County, Michael Prior, of Branchdale, Thomas Donahue, of
Ashland, both in the same county, and Pat Hester, of Mt. Carmel
township, Northumberland County, _as was then believed_, were the
assassins. Some change in this regard was made by subsequent events. Pat
Hester was a married man, forty-five years of age, and had several young
children. Prior was also married, said to be forty years of age. Donahue
had a wife and one child, and was apparently forty-three. Duffy was a
bachelor, of about twenty-five years. Thomas Dooley, of Palo Alto,
Schuylkill County, standing, by his own confession, in the position of
an accomplice in the wicked assassination, about a month after the
commission of the deed gave out facts which caused the apprehension of
the others just named. The cause came up, was heard on an application
for a writ of _habeas corpus_, before Judge Kline, one of the Associates
of Schuylkill County; and all the defendants were held for and sent to
Columbia County jail to await trial, which begun at Bloomsburg, Tuesday
afternoon, the second of February, 1869. Donahue, Prior, Hester, and
Duffy were brought into court, arraigned by the Prothonotary, and a plea
of “not guilty” entered on the part of each. Upon application of Mr.
Freeze, for the defense, separate trials were granted, and the
Commonwealth elected to proceed against Donahue. Wednesday morning the
prisoner entered court, accompanied by the sheriff, and took a seat by
his counsel, Messrs. John W. Ryon, John G. Freeze, Meyer Strouse, S. P.
Wolverton, and Wm. A. Marr, an array of talent which was well met by
that included in the list of counsel for the Commonwealth, Messrs. Linn
Bartholomew, Robert F. Clark, Edward H. Badly, M. M. L’Veile, and E. R.
Ikler, the last-named the District Attorney. After a patient hearing the
defendant was acquitted by the jury, and the prosecution, thereafter,
thought it advisable to abandon the rest of the indictments. If Donahue
could not be convicted—and that had been demonstrated by the defeat in
his case—it was considered by the District Attorney and his corps of
assistants it would be impossible, at that time, to fasten the murder
upon any of the remaining defendants.
[Illustration: _He fired a pistol shot into the left breast of the
victim._]
So commanding and pervading in the community was the subtle power of the
Mollie Maguires, it was with the utmost difficulty that a jury could be
secured to try the cause, and so abject had become the condition of
terror under which the people submissively bowed their necks, seeing no
possible avenue of escape, that witnesses accredited with knowledge of
important points bearing against the prisoners, dare not, in fear of
their lives, mount the witness stand.
So united were the Mollie Maguires, or whatever at that time they were
called, they swore to _alibis_ without number, and barred all further
immediate proceedings.
The next important outrage of this character, charged to the sanguinary
clique under consideration, was that upon the person of Wm. H.
Littlehales, Superintendent of the Glen Carbon Coal Company, which
occurred March 15, 1869. Mr. Littlehales was also killed on the road, in
Cass township, Schuylkill County, while _en route_ for his home in
Pottsville. The act was witnessed by several persons, but the
perpetrators escaped, and, up to the hour that I sent James McParlan,
otherwise James McKenna, into the coal region, no information had been
obtained concerning the identity of the guilty persons.
Frequent violent outcroppings of the organization also occurred in
Carbon County, which adjoins Schuylkill, extending over a period of
fifteen years, and including the killing of F. W. S. Langdon, Geo. K.
Smith, and Graham Powell, all of whom were either superintendents of
collieries, or in some manner connected with mining operations. Mr.
Smith was assailed by a body of murderers in his own dwelling and
quickly dispatched, almost in the presence of his panic-stricken family.
Although several persons were under the ban of suspicion, and supposed
to have participated in the affair, it was impossible, until after the
lapse of many years, to obtain any information as to the absolute guilt
of the mistrusted parties. Some of these were then arrested, put in jail
at Mauch Chunk, and in a short time thereafter forcibly rescued, at
night, by their associates in the order.
It appeared that superintendents and bosses might continue to be shot
down, and there remained no power in the law for reparation. The
assassins were sure to escape.
The object of many of these dark deeds was doubtless revenge. But the
track of the avenger—or supposed avenger—was covered, as with the
obliterating leaves of autumn, and not to be followed. The
assassinations were all skilfully planned, relentlessly carried out, and
the bleeding bodies and evidences on the ground of a deadly struggle
were all remaining to tell the tale of cruelty. The country was
disgraced, but seemingly there was no help for it.
In 1870 occurred the murder of a man named Burns, near Pottsville, and
nothing was learned regarding his assassins.
But the crowning act of the Mollie Maguires, up to the time of my
engagement in the matter of their investigation, and the one reaching
the culmination of many previous and similar events, which exasperated
the good people of the anthracite region to the pitch where endurance
ceases to be a virtue, was the unprovoked killing, during the early
evening of December 2, 1871, of Morgan Powell, Assistant Superintendent
of the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal and Iron Company, at Summit Hill,
Carbon County. The murder was done at about seven o’clock, on the
street, not more than twenty feet from the store of Henry Williamson,
which place Powell had but a few moments earlier left to go to the
office of Mr. Zehner, the General Superintendent of the Company. It
seems that one of three men, who had been seen by different parties
waiting near the store, approached Mr. Powell from the rear, close
beside a gate leading into the stables, and fired a pistol shot into the
left breast of the victim, leaning toward and reaching over the shoulder
of Powell to accomplish his deadly purpose. The bullet passed nearly
through Powell’s body, lodging in the back near the spinal column,
producing immediate paralysis of the lower limbs, and resulting in death
two days afterward. The wounded man was carried back to the store by
some of his friends and his son, Charles Powell, the latter then but
fourteen years of age, and there remained all night. The next day he was
removed to the residence of Morgan Price, where his death occurred as
stated.
Hardly had the smoke from the murderous pistol melted into and mingled
with the air of that star-lit winter evening, when the assassins were
discovered rapidly making their way from the scene of their savage deed
toward the top of Plane No. 1. They were met by Rev. Allan John Morton
and Lewis Richards, who were hurrying to the spot to learn what had
caused the firing. Mr. Morton asked, as they stopped on the
rigging-stand, what was the trouble, when one of the three strangers
answered: “I guess a man has been shot!” One of this trio was described
as a short person, wearing a soldier’s overcoat, and the second also as
being low in stature, but the third seemed taller, and had on a long,
black coat. Mr. Morton and his friend passed on, and the murderers
started forward, taking the direction in which Mr. Powell had pointed
when asked by Morrison which way the attacking party had gone. They
paused but a moment, when confronted by Morton and Richards, and
appeared to be surprised to see any one in the vicinity. Mr. Morton
thought that he might identify the smaller individual, should he see him
again, as he was only four or five yards from him when he spoke in
response to his inquiry.
“I’m shot to death! My lower limbs have no feeling in them!” was the
exclamation of Mr. Powell when Williamson raised his head. Yet who it
was that had killed him no one could tell. They were strangers, it was
evident, but where they had come from was a dark, impenetrable mystery.
Patrick Kildea, however, who was thought to resemble one of the shorter
men, was arrested and tried, but finally acquitted, from lack of
evidence to convict. This, for the time, was the end of that matter.
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