Charter Day

On December 18, 1878, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hanged John Kehoe, Schuylkill County delegate for the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), as the king of Pennsylvania’s alleged “Molly Maguires.” From June 1877 to October 1879, the commonwealth hanged twenty additional AOH men in five counties in its anthracite coal region.

Author Anne Flaherty, Kehoe’s great-great-granddaughter, has spent more than twenty years researching and documenting this conflict. The Passion of John Kehoe and the Myth of the “Molly Maguires” reveals the hard facts of this history: the political agendas of the coal and railroad men who prosecuted the caseload, and their weaponization of ethnic hatred against Irish Catholics to seize both the courts and the press. Flaherty also discloses the aspirations of the AOH defendants, including their advocacy of pro-union and Labor Reform Party tenets. Their AOH charter, based on the belief “Love guides the whole design,” guided their aims and motivations. The haunting eloquence of these Irishmen carries their tragic story. Their words underscore how false chronicling has silenced them for almost a century and a half.

The “how” of these prosecutions makes for chilling reading. The Passion of John Kehoe and the Myth of the “Molly Maguires” documents both the profound faith of the condemned Irishmen and the eventual unmasking of the Pinkerton operative whose testimony condemned them to death.