• Login
    View Item 
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Anthracite and the Irish : extricating the Irish immigrant mining community from the Molly Maguire myth, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1850-1879

    Files
    24754.pdf (6.178Mb)
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/11603/1451
    Collections
    • UMBC Graduate School
    • UMBC History Department
    • UMBC Student Collection
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Author/Creator
    Byron, William Francis, 1959-
    Date
    1996
    Type of Work
    application/pdf
    Text
    theses
    Department
    History
    Program
    Historical Studies;
    Rights
    This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu.
    Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
    Subjects
    Irish
    immigrants
    mine workers
    Molly Maguires
    Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
    Abstract
    The Molly Maguires were a reputed secret society of Irish immigrant mine workers who allegedly terrorized the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania from the Civil War until twenty men convicted as Molly Maguires were hanged in the late 1870s. The sensational nature of the Molly trials and executions has spawned a myth concerning the Molly Maguires which has clouded historical understanding of the episode. One of the unfortunate results of the Molly Maguire myth is that the legacy of the nineteenth-century anthracite Irish mining community has been inextricably and wrongly tied to the legacy of the alleged criminal activities of the Molly Maguires. The thesis seeks to draw a portrait of the Irish mining community of one anthracite county, Schuylkill, with as much depth as possible. The thesis first details Irish demographics and culture within Schuylkill County and proceeds to follow the Irish community through the years of the first regional mine workers' union to the destruction of the union as a consequence of the bitter ''Long Strike" of 1875 . The thesis demonstrates that negative expectations of the Irish conditioned negative perceptions by Schuylkill County's native population. The mass executions of the alleged Molly Maguires were only possible because of the deep anti-Irish sentiment that existed in Schuylkill among the non Irish, from Anglo-Protestant mine bosses to the large Welsh immigrant mining community.


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3021


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.

     

     

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Browse

    This CollectionBy Issue DateTitlesAuthorsSubjectsType

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3021


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.