You’ve heard about the coalminer’s daughter. But have you heard about the infamous Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania’s coal region, and that one of their descendants lives in Bethlehem?

Ed Gallagher, 85, professor emeritus of English at Lehigh University, had a vague notion of what the Mollies had been up to, but had never heard of them in detail.

All that changed when he started researching his heritage three years ago through Ancestry.com, which triggered a cavalcade of more research. That research on the Mollies was a springboard to the question, “How should we remember them? As heroes or hellhounds?

That question is especially apt, as the 148th anniversary of the infamous Day of The Rope – also called Black Thursday – is fast approaching. That’s when 10 Mollies were hanged at about the same time on the morning of June 21, 1877: four at the prison in Mauch Chunk and six at the prison in Pottsville. Yellow Jack Donahue, one of Gallagher’s ancestors, was among those hanged in Mauch Chunk.

“My earliest ancestors in America on my mother’s side were Molly Maguires, that controversial Irish band in the coal region in the 1860s and 1870s that literally fought the coal operators,” Gallagher said.

History and family

Gallagher very much likes the quote, “Without a history we’re not a family.” That dovetails well with what he learned because the Mollies are, indeed, family, woven into the tapestry of his family history in the 19th century.

Gallagher was so struck by what he learned, he spent a year writing a book, “Our Mollies: Heroes or Hell-Hounds?” He comes down on the side of heroes because, as he says, “they were fighting for their lives.”

Gallagher was intrigued and fascinated, and started doing research, culminating in a 338-page self-published book written to his extended family as audience, “investigating how we should feel about them.”

The book isn’t for general sale, but he believes it does have a more general interest, and as such gave copies to about 20 historical societies and a half dozen public libraries in the coal region, as well as the Bethlehem Public Library and the library at Lehigh University.

Gallagher recounted his journey to penning the book on a recent Saturday morning at the Bethlehem home he shares with his wife, Betty. The Gallaghers – parents of six children and grandparents of 16 grandchildren – have called Bethlehem home since 1968.

Gallagher said he’s always been interested in probing his family’s history and did some work on it, but never had enough time until he retired from teaching American Literature to the Civil War at Lehigh – where he spent his entire 50-year career – a decade ago. Three years ago he started spending a significant amount of time researching.

The fact that Gallagher’s mother never said anything about the Mollies, but hinted that they had “famous” people in the family, piqued his curiosity.

“My mother’s family broke up when she was young. She lived with the daughter of one of the Mollies as young kid of 5 to 10 years old, and as a teen to adult lived with another daughter of one of the Mollies. She must have known all kinds of things about them.”

“But my mother never said a word about this connection. Obviously, the family in the late 1870s immediately clammed up about the connection, I suppose, just to be able to get on with their lives.”

“Our Mollies” refers to three people: Long John Donahue; Yellow Jack Donahue; and Mary Cassidy Donahue.

Long John and Yellow Jack literally died in action. Long John in a melee, and Yellow Jack as one of those hanged in Mauch Chunk on the Day of the Rope. The pair were believed to be cousins. Long John married Mary Cassidy, with whom he had five children. After he was killed, she married Yellow Jack, with whom she had four children.

Fighting for rights

“The nicknames jump out at me,” Gallagher said.

“The coal miners at the time worked for a coal industry run by ruthless capitalists. The working conditions and pay were horrible, and the Irish were discriminated against,” Gallagher said.

He said both Johns emigrated from Ireland during the Potato Famine of 1845-50, when Ireland was governed by England, divided into states run by aristocrats. “The Irish were thought to be low lives. The life of the Irish even before the famine was lousy. The Molly Maguires started in Ireland fighting for their rights.”

Molly Maguire, the society’s namesake, started the group in Ireland when the English kicked her out of her house. “She started the group to fight back.”

Gallagher said millions died during the famine and millions emigrated, including to America. “In the coal region, the English ran the coal mines and the Irish were discriminated against again, bringing with them the Molly Maguire’s history and culture – a secret society.”

Gallagher said there were no laws regulating safety in the coal mines from the 1850s-1870s. “The capitalists wanted to make money, and not a lot was put into child safety and the health of the workers. The Irish were kept in the lowest jobs in the mines with the lowest pay and worst working conditions. They responded as they did in Ireland.”

Gallagher said the Mollies were a small group, about 200 members with 25 chapters, including those in Tamaqua, Mahanoy City and Pottsville. He noted the Mollies did not represent all the Irish; they were a small subgroup.

“They were secret, quiet, with no manifestos or speeches, letters or documents,” Gallagher said, noting Long John and Yellow Jack were prominent leaders in that resistance.

He said the Day of the Rope was almost the end of the Mollies and their resistance – after that they were kind of nonexistent.

Molly tactics

Though the Mollies were involved in some riots and work stoppages, their main tactic of fighting back was assassinating coal managers.

“A man named Campbell tried to get a promotion in the mine, and the manager wouldn’t do it,” Gallagher recounted. When the union would not help in addressing Campbell’s grievance, he made is case at a meeting of the Molly Maguires. The Mollies followed up, with Yellow Jack shooting the mine manager.

“I call the Mollies terrorists, but they did not do random killings. It was specifically designated people for specific grievances, and they didn’t approve them all,” Gallagher said. “It was almost a quasi-judicial process for the grievance to be proved, and then the decision was made to act on a grievance.”

Gallagher said the Mollies sent out “coffin notices” as a warning to managers to be assassinated to get out of town.

Gallagher said the pre-union era marked the beginning of the labor versus management in American history. When the unions became active 1870-1875, the Mollies were quiet, “believing something good was trying to happen here.”

But when the union was busted by the coal companies in 1875, the Mollies issued their first public statement, a letter to the editor: “Now that the union is busted, the only thing we have to defend ourselves is our revolver.”

“The Mollies went on a bit of a tear,” Gallagher said, noting that’s when Yellow Jack killed the mine manager mentioned in Campbell’s grievance.

Gallagher said the owners of the mines made a significant attempt to root out the Mollies. There were subsequently a series of trials, culminating in the Day of the Rope, “which broke the back of the Mollies.”

“It would be about another decade before the union got going again,” he said.

Men only

The Mollies were comprised only of men. Gallagher described Mary Cassidy Donahue as a “stand-by-her-man” woman who stood sobbing next to Yellow Jack at his sentencing and took the children to the jail the night before his execution. The hanging was inside the jail in Mauch Chunk. Mary stood outside sobbing and took his body home to Tuscarora, a mile or two west of Tamaqua.

“That got to me,” Gallagher said.

He marvels that his mother never mentioned the Mollies. “It can only be that the family must have made a decision to get on with their lives – it was not any good to be associated with the Mollies. My sense is that there must have been an agreement – implicit or explicit – to leave them behind us.”

“Why didn’t my mom say anything? Was she ashamed?” Gallagher mused. “It’s as if we couldn’t claim them as our ancestors, they were kind of rendered invisible.”

Book for family

Gallagher wrote the book to his family, almost treating it like a class he taught, as he investigated their Mollies.

Gallagher said the newspapers of the day coined the term “hellhounds” to describe the Mollies. He comes down on the side of heroes because, “in studying them I’m trying to be in their shoes in a way, they were fighting for their lives.”

He said the first big mining disaster was in 1869 in Avondale, where 170 were killed. Citing Paul Beers, a historian and reporter-at-large for the Harrisburg Patriot, Gallagher notes during the 1870s alone, 2,218 miners were killed and crippled in the Pennsylvania anthracite pits.

Gallagher said the coal companies had one entrance/exit; the owners would not spend money to create an alternative way out. “That’s their kind of mentality – make as much money as you can” while workers lived in “patch towns” around the mines filled with cheap worker housing. Food was bought at inflated prices. After the Avondale disaster, families of those lost had 48 hours to move out.

“The more I learned about this, I thought of the Mollies as heroes. They were in a moral mess living in unjust situations,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher plans to have a gathering of his children and grandchildren to give them each a book. The book has an introduction as well as two chapters at the end written directly to his grandchildren, who range in age from 14 to 28.

“In between, I kind of ‘talk’ to them here and there, and there is the long section where I give them 70 questions and ask them to answer two or three, even giving them blank space to write notes,” Gallagher said. The questions are meant to propel them to form their own opinions of the Mollies.

“Modern scholars approach the Mollies as “in-between” – they understand and sympathize with the Mollies but don’t praise them. I think you have to be one or the other.

“I ultimately could not find fault. The Irish were treated like scum,” Gallagher said. He has newspaper pictures in his book from that era in which the Irish were depicted as apes and savages.

Everyone was against them – the press, the police, even the Catholic Church.

Archbishop James Frederick Wood, the first Archbishop of Philadelphia “came to talk the miners down, to be a pacifier,” Gallagher said. He ultimately excommunicated Mollies, then revoked the excommunication before they were hanged. Each of the Mollies had his own priest confessor the day of the hangings.

“I don’t think they were sorry for what they did,” Gallagher said. “We don’t know what they said to their confessors, but Yellow Jack said, ‘I have nothing to say’ when asked before his hanging.”

“They were fighting injustice on the gallows, not crying or beating their breast.”

Worth the effort

Gallagher is glad he did the research. He believes there is something in their genes “that we should be tapping into as a family.”

“Some things in my life tell me their genes are operating in me in the fight for social justice.”

“I could not murder as they did. But that doesn’t mean some powerful remnant of that gene in us that’s active or can be activated is there and we should be proud of it,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher did much of his research at the Schuylkill County Historical Society in Pottsville, which has the Miners’ Journal. He went there once a week, an hour and a half drive each way, for two years. His son Matt also went on the road with him to some sites, including Yellow Jack’s house in Tuscarora. Long John lived in that area as well.

Gallagher said Long John’s son, Patrick, was 13 years old when he was working in the mines, according to the 1870 census. “He surely worked before that,” Gallagher said, noting the issue of “minor miners.” When boys received their first Holy Communion at age seven or eight, they went to work in the mines.

Gallagher said Patrick, a father of seven, died at age 40 after falling down a 300-foot shaft in the mine.

In popular culture, the Mollies were the focus of the 1970 movie “The Molly Maguires” starring Sean Connery, which Gallagher described as a good movie but not completely historically accurate.

His family’s history being traced to the Mollies has really struck Gallagher, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, earned his undergraduate degree in history at St. Joseph’s University and a Ph.D. in American Literature to the Civil War at the University of Notre Dame.

For a number of years, Gallagher has penned the occasional column, “Senior Moments” – which he describes as “a jolt, a revelation on different topics” – in the Bethlehem Press. He also wrote a blog, The Bethlehem Gadfly, thebethlehemgadfly.com/ for three years. The blog had the tagline, “Good conversation builds community.”

Gallagher’s book should certainly launch good conversation in his family and the community about the controversial Mollies, a part of his family’s history as well as the history of Pennsylvania’s coal region.