Jack: The Almost True Story of the Molly Maguires

By Jaclyn Maria Fowler

Jaclyn Fowler was destined to write a novel about John (“Black Jack”) Kehoe. Kehoe’s unflinching courage stands in sharp contrast to the perfidious, relentless opposition of Franklin B. Gowen, the anti-union railroad lawyer. Her research is impeccable; her characters jump off the page and her story will turn over the heart of any reader who has one. I must add that this is a novel ensconced in a brilliant frame—Jaclyn’s own story of growing up in an Irish-American family. Fowler’s stunning rendering of Kehoe’s heroic tale is dramatic, Dreiserian and delicious.

J. Michael Lennon, author most recently of Mailer’s Last Days: Remembrances of a Life in Literature.

Jaclyn Fowler has created an unforgettable historical novel. Her powerful writing is enhanced by extensive research as she debunks Pennsylvania lore concerning Jack Kehoe, the falsely accused Molly Maguire, charged with practicing vigilante justice in the northeastern coalfields. Fowler seasons the story with an autobiographical slant. Having grown up in the area listening to her father, also named Jack, render tales of the mining atrocities, Fowler aims to right the wrongs of that difficult time. Jackie Fowler’s novel deserves to be set alongside Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

A storyteller at heart, Jaclyn Maria Fowler comes from a long line of raconteurs and wanderers who all trace their lineage back to Ireland. She, too, travels to write and writes to travel, and following in the footsteps of her ancestors, tells the stories of Ireland and the Irish diaspora. To pay for her obsession, she works as Chair of the English Department at American Public University System (APUS). She is the author of It is Myself that I Remake and No One Radiates Love Alone. Fowler has also published many short stories, including The Other Day I Found a Penny in the Street in the 2020 Colorado Book Award winning anthology, Women of the Desert in the Wanderlust Best of ‘20 anthology, and In the Summer Before Third Grade in the 2022 Fish Anthology.

Fowler received her Doctorate from The Pennsylvania State University and her MFA from Wilkes University. She is the proud mother of two grown children—Katlyn and Collin—who tell their own stories in writing, and lives with Doodles, a pampered shitzu mix.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Edizioni
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9791220144636

Book preview

Dedication

Jack: The Almost True Story of the Molly Maguires is dedicated, in part, to my favorite Jack. Jack Fowler. It was my father who shared his passion for the Molly story with me. With his admonition to remember, I, too, learned the story of the struggling miners who lived and loved and died in the area where I grew up. Where he grew up. While my dad exposed me to life through their stories, he taught me how to live through his own. Maybe

Jack Kehoe’s story made him aware of time’s uncertainty, so he showed his love in actions and words, never postponing an opportunity for a time that might never come. I love you and God bless you were staples of his conversation, so I never questioned whether he loved me. He did. And while he could be a bit of a wise guy, he had a soft tender heart that made the world a better place. My dad tempered the tears he shed at Hallmark’s Christmas commercials with an acerbic wit and wicked sense of timing. His seeming contradictions made me love him all the more, and they connected us to many of the men of the Molly story. Through it, I found my place in the context of those who had come before me. Including Jack Fowler. And I miss him dearly. Every. Single. Day.

Yet, this book might not have been without another great man, J. Michael Lennon, who inspired me to write about my father’s passion which, without me really knowing it, had become my passion as well. With J.

Michael’s strong insistence, I listened to generations of broken and battered miners and allowed them to speak through me and my words. With J. Michael’s help, I shaped a story that was huge and overwhelming into one that could speak to the future. J. Michael Lennon helped me bring peace to the men—especially Jack Kehoe— whose stories were ended too soon. 

And so it is with great love and respect that I dedicate this book to my two favorite J’s: Jack Fowler and J.

Michael Lennon. Thank you from my deep heart’s core. 

Thank you to family and friends, professors and classmates, work mates, librarians, and researchers. You that have helped me on this journey, I appreciate you all and am honored by your trust.

John Jack Kehoe

Prologue

May 1974

The fates of individuals are shaped, in some significant measure, by the silent shrouded stories long concealed in the deepest parts of their hearts. They are the stories of collective trauma and great unresolved passions, of near escapes and no escapes, of pain and suffering and punishment unwarranted. They are the stories of shared injustice, the perpetuation of class warfare, and the effects of racial and religious animus on a population.

And when internalized, they stew in a brew of defeatism and self-deceit and flavor the lives of those who harbor them. Over time, the stories lose all connection to the physical world. Through willful disregard, people simply disremember what made the stories real. Names and faces are relegated to the dustheaps of the dangerous, and the detritus of the lives forgotten are swept not-so-neatly to sit with fear and indifference in neglected corners of the mind. While individuals may not recall the stories’ blueprints, their heightened emotions remain imprinted on them.

From generation to generation, they sit sealed in DNA; from there, they send out silent signals that mold beliefs and impact actions. Folks are driven by the unknown, compelled by what they do not see, and only a lucky few ever truly discover what makes them tick. I was one of the lucky ones. When I was a child, my father helped me transcend the story of my present to discover the trauma of a shared past. It all began in a little cemetery where semi-toppled tombs held evidence of great communal injustice. It was there where I first met Jack Kehoe, the one they called the king of the Molly Maguires.

Jaclyn, my father called from two floors below,

wanna’ go for a ride?

Discovering the story that shaped my life, the story that shaped my father’s life and his father’s before him, began when I slid into the front seat of a beat-up ’54 Plymouth in the spring of ‘74. Not yet constrained by child-restraint laws, I had already lost the authorization to sit in the back. And for good reason. A bit of the floor behind the driver’s seat was missing; enough, anyway, to represent a very real threat to a dreamy, awkward almost eight year old.

Before losing the right to the backseat, I would lean out over my legs and hang limp over the hole in the floor.

When the road moved underneath—it backwards, the car forward—a blur of grays and blacks and the occasional yellow converged to obscure direction. And the present. Sharpened by the road whooshing past underneath, I was freed from time and space. When I could no longer tell which way I was going—forward or back, I felt a powerful, infinite timelessness rise up.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Jaclyn. You coming or what?

Patience was never my father’s best virtue.

In the months when winter grudgingly gave way to the budding of trees, I had leaned too far forward over the hole in the backseat, reaching for the infinite and losing my balance, almost joining the blur, adding my red to its muted colors. Afterwards, my father banned me from the back unless one of my three older siblings sat with me, and I was never again permitted, even with them, to sit suspended above the hole. Later, when my father and I journeyed into the stories of the past, that feeling of timelessness would be restored as our own stories merged with the stories of our ancestors. Often, the line between then and now blurred just as it had in the back seat of the Plymouth.

Here I am! I shouted from the top of the steps.

Get your shoes on, he replied. Make it quick.

At the bottom of the steps, my father stood tapping on the newel post in front of the great gilded mirror where the very edges of his comb-over were evident. A subterfuge that limited our interactions with him, water would loosen the hairspray that glued the strands in place, and an extra-long length of hair would hang limp down the right side of his face. By the time I was almost eight, he didn’t swim much. Or walk in the rain.

Later, when I was in college, I called home to press him to watch Oprah. She fielded letters of children who needed help starting difficult conversations with their parents. Some needed to discuss drug habits; others wanted to talk about Uncle Joey’s roaming hands. One girl’s problem struck a chord. She was a kindred spirit. Maybe she missed swimming with her dad, too.

As pictures of her father and his lopsided hair were flashed on the screen, the crowd cringed—No! My God . . . help the poor child. When I came home a few weeks later, the comb-over was gone, and my dad’s high balding forehead, hidden for years, was finally in its natural state. But that wouldn’t happen for years, long after my introduction to Jack Kehoe in the spring of ’74.

Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, my mom called from the kitchen, and my dad began to walk in her direction. I sat on the bottom step and laced up my new white Converses. The day was filled with promise. Until I heard my mother’s negative reaction to my father’s proposal. Not today, mom. She had a way of saying no, even before considering the request. While my dad was pretty savvy at getting her to change her mind, if she dug in, her no would stand, and the day would be lost.

It’s not right, Jack. Not to a cemetery. 

Ahh, Joanne, she’s old enough.

A cemetery? It didn’t matter. With five siblings—three older and two younger—it was rare to spend time alone with either parent. On this day, my father had chosen me. To add muscle to my silent pleas, I shuffled through the formal prayers of my Catholic background—the Our Father, the Hail Mary.

She’s just a little girl.

She loves this stuff, my father replied, and it’s time she knows.

Time she knows what? My family had lots of secrets.

For one, my father didn’t speak to my grandfather; later, I would find out that Benny was an abusive father who beat his wife and children when he drank. And he drank a lot. Once when my father was just home from school, Benny was in the midst of one of his drunken tirades. As he raised his hand to my nana, my dad reacted. It was the first time my dad stepped between his mother’s safety and his father’s blows, the first time his mother had a defender, and the first time his father’s fists were foiled. A Holy Trinity of firsts, you might say.

My grandfather didn’t take kindly to his youngest son’s insolence, and he punished him with the object closest to his shaking hands—a butcher’s knife. As it sliced through the air, it made contact. Thwack! And for the rest of his life, my father bore an odd crescent-shaped scar at the top of his thumb. Now that’s a secret.

She’s just a little girl, my mom said again.

Jesus, Joanne, she soaks it up. 

But to a cemetery? 

To Kehoe’s.

When my mother hesitated, my father took it as a softening of her position. He grabbed my hand and rushed me out the door, escaping before my mom could stand another argument. Who’s Kehoe? I thought.

Once inside the car, the black vinyl stung the backs of my legs, so I slid my palms under my thighs while my father opened the car windows. As he drove, my dad held an unlit Marlboro clenched between his teeth; it swayed to the rhythm of his words. 

Jackie, I’m gonna tell you a story, he began our journey.

He talked about the Irish who had escaped famine in their home country only to end up as laborers in the coalmining industry. In their new hardscrabble world, there was little to live for, less to eat. Their lives were tenuous, at best. In the mines six days a week, they rarely saw the sun, and they knew if they were hurt, their women and children would have one day to vacate the company homes. Then an Irishman named Siney organized the laborers, and things began to change.

Would you believe it? my dad asked. "A union in

St. Clair. Started by Irish."

When the Irish began to run for and hold political office, ethnic groups that had already established themselves in the county—the English and Welsh and Germans—formed a vanguard against the new arrivals. They turned to a railroad man— "an Irishman himself.

By half, my father said. A Mr. Franklin. B. Gowen." As I grew up listening to the storytelling and ballad singing of my dad and his friends at the Mahanoy City Elks, no under-the-bed or hidden-in-the-closet bogeyman could compete with Gowen.

We drove through little coal patches on the way to our destination, my father and me. He stopped the telling of his story only to point out landmarks that had figured in the lives of Irish laborers. When we came to the Five Points intersection in Tamaqua, he pointed out the old railway station; then, he hard-turned the Plymouth and pushed it up the steep main street. Ahead of us— seemingly in the middle of Broad Street—lay an old cemetery.

Even at seven, I was struck by the queerness of the name displayed in an arc over the wrought-iron gates: Odd Fellows Cemetery. Of course, a place that held corpses should have such a name. But why gates, I wondered. Who were they trying to keep out? Or in? The monuments to the dead stood at varying levels at the top of the hill. Poking out from the hillside in a funhousetype of display, there were macabre angels and obelisks, large marble plaques and one-roomed stone houses with windows. Why windows? JONES and EVERETT were etched prominently on two of the four mausoleums that fronted the hillside cemetery. The centerpiece, the Soldier’s Monument, jutted heavenward, marking the cemetery’s incorporation at the time of the Civil War when the boys being shipped home needed a place to stay.

Not that one, my dad said, noting my interest.

A few blocks later, we made a left onto a street called Jerome; it looked more like an alley.

My dad swung the Plymouth onto the tiny gravel driveway, passed under the arch, and parked. The cemetery seemed older and much less cared for. Odd Fellows, I learned, held the remains of the powerful and influential; St. Jerome’s held the poor.

For Irish, he explained. And some Italians, too, he added as an afterthought.

As we made the long trek up through the middle of the cemetery, SWEENEY and CONKLIN, GALLAGER and

MURPHY clicked their tongues at us. I shivered with the strangeness of it all, not with fear. But I moved closer to my dad all the same.

We’re going to see the great man himself, he whispered reverently.

As we passed the end stops of other families—the

KENNEDYs       and       the       MULDOWNEYs,       the

FITZPATRICKs and the O’DONNELLs—my father breathed life into the long-extinguished story of Jack Kehoe, the high constable of Girardville. 

These are the O’Donnell’s, he said, pointing to a lichen-encrusted stone obelisk.

In the carefully laid-out O plot, the O’Donnell monument stood close to the small marble indicator that held a carved O. Interspersed among the O families were rebels whose names began with other letters. With a K or a C or a Mc. Why are they in the O lot? I wondered. My dad wasn’t in the mood for such a question; we were on a mission. 

Kehoe married the daughter. Mary Anne. His family didn’t like the match.

Why?

"Because his family was educated. From County

Wicklow. Near Dublin." I didn’t understand.

"Mary Anne O’Donnell was from the West, and

Kehoe’s people didn’t approve."

I nodded my head in semi-understanding.

They were a wild bunch, the O’Donnell’s. Still are, my father laughed, thinking of the remnants of the clan still living in the little towns scattered throughout the county. But Kehoe was in love, he said.

As he retold the O’Donnell story, I remembered that my father had also come from a home where normal was the odd treat.

Kehoe’s family couldn’t accept her, he explained. Then he laughed, Thank God, your grandpap took me for the man I was and not the man my father was.

When we exited the cemetery through the back gate, I looked for an explanation.

He was excommunicated, my dad answered. He couldn’t be buried in the cemetery because he was thrown out of the church. Then he mumbled that the church was,

wouldn’t you know, in on it too.

In on what? I thought, but didn’t ask. Another secret. 

Many of the Irish laborers belonged to a fraternal organization called the AOH—the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Gowen’s rhetorical masterpiece was to link the AOH to the Molly Maguires, a fabled group of Irish ruffians and vigilantes with a long history in the old country.

His friend, Archbishop Wood from Philadelphia, excommunicated them all. So, while Gowen took care to seal the Irish laborers’ fates on earth, the Archbishop took care to seal their fates in the afterlife. A pretty little partnership, you might say.

Kehoe, my dad explained, was a member of the AOH. The County Delegate. He was in charge of all the bodymasters of Schuylkill County.

Bodymasters?

Like presidents of each chapter. Understand?

Outside the back gates, trees stood in straight lines over rows of cracked and discarded tombstones and a little man-made hillock that held remains of flowers and the garishly colored containers that had once decorated the graves. We moved reverentially towards the spent display at the foot of the little hill and, there, next to it, obscured by it really, lay the gravestone of Jack Kehoe. My dad’s demeanor reflected the reverence he was feeling, and I, too, not that I understood why, felt the moment’s significance.

"He was a good man, Jackie. Kehoe stood up for what was wrong and was punished. Nobody spoke up after that; if you did, you’d find yourself blacklisted or jailed. The better of the two was jail, I guess. At least you ate there. Even if your family didn’t. The mine bosses and

Gowen could do whatever they wanted. And they did."

While my dad spoke, I painted the pictures in my mind. People learned not to speak up, I thought. They were afraid. After a while of living with such anxiety, the stories went unspoken, unseen, shrouded in fear.

Dad, I pulled him closer, what does he look like? "Kehoe? Like us. Dark curly hair, blue eyes, fair skin.

They say he was tall. You never met him?"

No, my dad laughed. "He was long gone before me.

And my parents." I was confused.

We need to remember the way it was, the way our grandparents and their grandparents remembered it, he said. If we forget, we lose a piece of ourselves, our history. That’s why I’m telling you, so you can remember, so you can fight.

Dad, I asked, moving closer, do you think he can hear us?

I wouldn’t be surprised. What do you wanna say? You can talk to me, I whispered.

My dad looked amused,      He might, my      dad

shrugged. He just might.

We stood a few minutes longer, waiting. When there was no response, my dad turned to me. "Let’s go, huh?

Mom’ll be missing us."

We walked back past the O’DONNELLs and the QUINNs and the O’MALLEYs and exited through the front gate in the beat up ’54 Plymouth with a hole in the floor. I laid my head back on the warmed leather seat. In my mind, Jack Kehoe’s once silent, shrouded story was alive, living in my present—rushing beneath me, carrying me forward. As the daughter and granddaughter of Irish-American laborers, as the product of a history that continued to live through me, as a conduit of the story in the present, I would remember. And I would use it to fight against injustice. On that spring morning in 1974, I began to forge an understanding of what it meant to live and breathe and survive in the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, in towns and people imprinted with the tragic story of the Molly Maguires.

Map of Anthracite Fields

Part I

The Fire in Mahanoy City

October 31, 1874

The Irish from the Humane Fire Company were the first on the scene; the Welsh from the Citizens showed up later. Embers from the burning stable swirled in the late October air, threatening the other wooden structures that lined Railroad Street. Smoke choked the men at the crown of the blaze, so the line shifted regularly with fresh recruits to replace the coughing and sputtering among them. In the burning stable, horses snorted and whinnied and bucked their panic, shaking the wooden frame of the building from the inside out. The sounds of the animals within unsettled the men without.

Chief Burgess Major showed up late, brandishing his pistol, barking out orders. When he recognized a reporter from the Miners Journal, Major determined the men of the Citizens would be the heroic characters of the next day’s news. He was Welsh.

Boys, Chief Burgess Major yelled out to the Irishmen of the Humane, we won’t need you now. The best fire station boys are here. Go on. Get out.

Major waved his revolver to punctuate his words.

The men of the Humane ignored him. Most agreed— Humane and Citizen alike—there was danger enough for all. More to the point, the boys of the Humane were unwilling to concede their place as first on the scene.

Their lack of respect moved the chief burgess to further action.

Listen to me now, lads, Major yelled into the night, his pistol plain.

With men yelling back and forth to each other and the fire crackling and buckets clanging as the water moved along the brigade, few heard Major. For those who had, they failed to register the level of his threat. 

So when Major aimed his pistol at the feet of the Irishmen, the men of the Humane finally took notice. They understood the chief burgess would, in fact, shoot them. Without too much thought. Without any regret.

They were Irish.

Major cocked the hammer of his .38 Colt. 

Always the same with you Irish, Major laughed. A good fight is the only thing you understand.

The boys saw the chief burgess move toward the trigger, and panic moved in among them. As pressure on the trigger grew, Major turned toward the Humane’s Dalmatian, raised his eyebrows in contempt, spit, and then shot the dog dead.

I suppose I’ve your attention now, boys, he called out to them.

One in the crowd, John McCann, stunned with shock and too much whiskey, opened fire. At the moment of McCann’s pistol report, young Danny Dougherty, who had come to watch the men work the fire, ran for cover.

Major noticed the movement and assumed Dougherty was the culprit who shot at him, so the chief burgess returned fire. At precisely the same moment, the dull thud of McCann’s bullet hitting meat knocked Major off his feet, affecting his aim. The bullet grazed Dougherty just above the eye, but he would survive. The chief burgess would not. 

So the Mollys are in on it, too? one of Major’s brothers yelled, noting Danny Dougherty’s Irish heritage.

The crowd took the brother’s lead and passed the rumor through the night.

The Molly Maguires, they said, set the fire to get the chief burgess."

26

The reporter from the Journal wrote it down as if it were fact. Molly Maguires!

We’ll get you, you dirty, fucking Irish, one of the Major brothers bellowed just as the chief burgess breathed his last. 

Kehoe Attends a Wake in Girardville

November 1st, 1874

In the half-light of the waning day, Jack Kehoe made his way through the gray streets of a graying day. A suffocating dullness began in the early wintry sky and reached out and wrapped itself around all things, including his thoughts. The line-up of stick and glued company-owned homes, the wood bleached silvery by the rain and the wind and the coal dust, added little distinction to a landscape scarred by mine shafts and slag heaps and the tall breakers off in the distance. It stood in stark contrast to the little Irish towns—Woodenbridge and Meeting of the Waters—that Kehoe had known before immigrating with his family to Pennsylvania.

While he was expected at a friend’s wake, his thoughts were elsewhere. The night before, a murder was committed in Mahanoy City, a town no more than a few coalmines and less than ten miles away. A Welshman of some standing in the community—the chief burgess— _was murdered; an Irishman was implicated. The significance of the act and the insinuation of Irish involvement crowded out most other thoughts in Kehoe’s head. Even Paddy Martin’s too-early death.

Hey, Jack, a neighbor yelled, going to Paddy’s?

The whole of Girardville is likely to be there tonight.

"Right about that, Jack. He was a good man, God rest