For the purpose of properly carrying out the rle 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.
67The 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 brlight 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.
"The fatal shots were discharged by the assassins, from their ambush, near the r"
To continue the barbarous record, on Saturday, the seventeenth of October, 1868, Alexander Rae, another mining superintendent, was killed on the wagon r 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 68on 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 r 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 69had 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.
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 70people 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 r 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 71the 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 72friends 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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