It is likely, however, that one of several reasons motivating him to take the assignment was that success might open a door to a brighter future with Pinkerton’s, a common notion to spies, as historically it is evident that many have wanted to prove their skills as a way to promotion.13 McParlan’s characteristic drive for excitement also probably meant he viewed it as a chance to engage in something less monotonous than working on the streetcars. Certainly undertaking an adventurous mission in an undercover role would bring thrills to an otherwise humdrum daily life, and McParlan would not be unique in feeling this way.14
His strong religious beliefs almost certainly caused McParlan to also look upon the assignment as a chance to strike a blow on behalf of the Catholic Church, or he might even have seen it as an opportunity to altruistically help the Irish-Catholic mining community. Some cynics have scoffed at such concepts, but reasons of religious fervor, the perceived betterment of a part of society, or the triumph of one political or social view over another have been major motivations throughout the history of undercover operations.15
Finally, as has been the case with many men through the centuries, McParlan might have found the idea of spying upon others appealing because it gave him some form of psychological gratification. It is clear that, historically, “it was part of human nature to be thrilled by the possession of secret knowledge, and to be involved in secret activities, for it brought with it a form of secret power, and pandered to a form of vanity and a sense of self-importance not available to most men.”16 Indeed, collecting and reporting information about others is found at virtually every level, from governments to corporations to families. As the Irish agent Dudley Bradstreet noted, there is no “plainer proof that this business is the universal and natural propensity of humankind [than] if we consider how neighbours and friends watch each other, the pleasure they take upon the least hint given them in mangling the reputation or interest of those they professed a friendship for before, and all these without the least expectation of fee or reward.”17 That McParlan’s penchant for storytelling indulged the same elements of ego and narcissism only increases the likelihood of this explanation.
Regardless of his exact reasons, McParlan’s acceptance of such a dangerous assignment suggests he had courage and confidence in his skills. He would need them, for he would be living by his wits on a day-to-day basis.
From the start the operation was to be conducted with the greatest secrecy, and McParlan was assured that only Pinkerton and his sons, Bangs in New York, and Franklin in Philadelphia would know any details. Even Gowen would not be privy to the agent’s true identity, as just his initials would be used (although that did not take long to change; on March 25, 1874, Franklin wrote to Gowen, enclosing “our report relative to Jas McParlan’s operations among the Molly Maguires”18). Pinkerton and Gowen also agreed that there could be no mention of the agency until the case was resolved, and that—significantly—neither McParlan nor any other member of Pinkerton’s would have to testify in court. To accommodate these requirements for secrecy, shortly before McParlan went to Philadelphia to meet with Franklin, who would be his supervisor, he mentioned to the company’s Chicago cashier that he was being sent to Europe “for the betterment of my health, an’ to look after the King Bee of all the forgers.”19
For the next two weeks in Philadelphia, McParlan worked with Franklin to develop a new identity: James McKenna. His details and name had to be changed because: “I lived in Chicago and kept a liquor store pretty much opposite the Alton and St Louis depot, and that is a kind of direct communication between the coal fields of Pennsylvania and the coal fields of Indiana and Illinois; and it might very possibly be that some of those parties going back and forth knew me, or had seen my sign out and seen the name.”20
Although McParlan had much less experience than his new superior in such operations, he clearly had an innate understanding of what was required for such work, and he actively joined Franklin in developing key details of the new persona. For example, James McKenna had been the name of McParlan’s older sister Rose’s first sponsor for baptism in 1835.21
McParlan’s new character was not a nice man. He supposedly had come to the coal region to hide from the police after murdering a man in a grain elevator in Buffalo. But this was not to be “disclosed” to just anyone—his initial story was to be that he had worked in the silver mines of Colorado, where jobs had become scarce. His “true” tale—designed specifically to make him seem to be a particularly “tough customer,” and therefore to earn acceptance by the criminal elements—was to be reserved for those likely to be members of the Molly Maguires, or at least rough enough to be hanging around the fringes.
An additional element of his fictional past—created to account for the money he would spend in bars and taverns plying the locals with alcohol to make them drop their guard—was that he had fraudulently gained a U.S. Navy pension by swearing that he had been wounded in action during the destruction of the Confederacy’s Mississippi River fleet and the capture of Memphis by the Union squadron under Charles Davis in 1862.22 More of his financial resources supposedly came from “shoving the queer”23—passing counterfeit money. That pretext could also be used to facilitate clandestine meetings with Franklin—when he needed to travel to Philadelphia or some other rendezvous point, one of his reasons could be that he was going to gather more queer cash.
Before he went into the field, McParlan spent several days loitering around the city docks, particularly those areas where the mule-hauled coal barges from the Schuylkill Canal were unloaded. He didn’t speak much, but he listened and watched, gathering knowledge of local habits, interests, and figures of speech. Most important, he learned to reply when someone called him “McKenna”: Such a response needed to be automatic if he wanted to stay alive.
On October 27, 1873, McParlan left Philadelphia by train, dressed to fit his unwholesome new role, and looking every bit the itinerant tramp. He wore baggy brown pantaloons, a collarless gray wool shirt, and a faded black vest under a coarse, ragged gray coat. He topped the outfit off with a dirt-colored slouch hat with a band for his cutty-pipe—a short pipe popular with smokers at the time—and a pair of heavy, high-topped, hob-nailed boots. His battered valise and carpetbag held a dark suit for church, shirts, underclothes, two Navy revolvers, and enough ink, writing paper, envelopes, and postage stamps to allow him to send regular reports.24
Late that day McParlan reached Port Clinton, near the border of Schuylkill and Berks counties, where a bellicose German innkeeper chased him out of a tavern into an equally inhospitable rainstorm. Fortunately, a friendly Irish family put him up, and then, after a day exploring the environs, he traveled five miles to Auburn. He found nothing of much interest there, so he continued up the rail line to Schuylkill Haven, which was strategically located near the head of the Schuylkill Canal and the junction of a branch line with the main Reading Railroad service. He stayed there for four days, watching the workers on the boats and railroads, visiting the company store, wandering into the surrounding countryside, and making “myself acquainted with the country and the nature of the people; [so] when I would move to another quarter that I could refer them to places I had been and describe the places so they would think I had been an old resident of the county.”25
Over the next two weeks McParlan rode the rail lines into the remote western reaches of the Southern Field, to settlements with names like Swatara, Tremont, Rausch Creek, and Donaldson, before doubling back to Minersville. Everywhere he went he asked for work—knowing full well that collieries were laying off laborers. Consistently receiving the negative reply he expected, he would thereafter sit in the weak lamplight that penetrated the smoky haze of the taverns, downing drinks with the locals, smoking incessantly, playing cards, gossiping, and listening. Day after day he continued, always traveling, making acquaintances, and hearing stories in the inns and “shebeens,” the illicit bars in private houses that sold home-brewed
liquor and gave a chance for a chin-wag, a couple of songs, and the opportunity to take note of rumors.
The Molly Maguires rarely frequented this area, McParlan learned, but their reputation was there, as he first confirmed with a man named Fitzgibbons, a watchman at the train crossing opposite the hotel in Tremont.26 Under normal circumstances, raising their name might have aroused suspicion, but luck was with him, because a short while before, The Pilot—the newspaper of the Catholic diocese of Boston—reprinted a long letter from The Boston Daily Globe about “the reign of terror of the Molly Maguires.” A rejoinder then stated, “If, therefore, you wish to know all about the ‘Molly Maguires’ you must look to the ‘Ancient Order of Hibernians,’ for in that Society you will find everything of ‘Molly Maguireism’ that has made the coal regions so famous for lawlessness.”27
McParlan found the first letter still the subject of talk. And the chatter told him that there were some members of that mysterious order in Pottsville, although the heaviest concentration—“the ground where the boys are true”28—was “over the mountain,” in the wild region running from Girardville to Shenandoah and on to Mahanoy City.
McParlan now had a number of leads, so he returned to Philadelphia to consult Franklin. His supervisor determined that for the time being he should make his headquarters in Pottsville, the county’s seat and largest city, with about thirteen thousand inhabitants. By late November McParlan had moved into Mary O’Reagan’s boardinghouse on East Norwegian Street, where a young lodger named Jennings almost immediately offered to show him the sights of the city.
While on their tour, the pair walked down Center Street, which divided the town between the working-class section that ran gently downhill down to the Schuylkill Canal and the wealthier areas on the higher hillsides, where the homes belonged to the likes of Bannan; David Yuengling, the founder of America’s oldest brewery; Judge Cyrus Pershing, who would be the Democratic nominee for governor in 1875; and, in previous years, Franklin Gowen. Spotting a lively looking tavern named Sheridan House, with a sign announcing that the proprietor was Pat Dormer, McParlan headed for its door, only to be stopped by his companion, who begged him not to go in, saying nervously under his breath: “Dormer is a captain of the Sleepers!” And the Sleepers, he continued in response to McParlan’s questions, “are the Mollie Maguires!”29
• • •
That night, after ditching Jennings, McParlan returned to Sheridan House prepared to give a virtuoso performance.30 Walking in the front door, he immediately recognized the old fiddler’s jig “The Devil’s Dream,” and he moved to the middle of the floor and started an energetic dance that quickly gained the attention of all inside, including Dormer, a giant of a man at six feet four inches. The effort was roundly applauded and earned him a free shot of whiskey, following which he launched into a rendition of a famous Donegal ballad of Molly Maguire.31 By the end of it he had won his audience, but to make certain he ordered a round for everyone.
So impressed was Dormer by the newcomer that he invited him into the back room to play the popular card game euchre. As Dormer and McParlan began to lose regularly to the other pair of players—a fellow introduced as Daniel Kelly, alias “Kelly the Bum,” and a scowling, heavyset man named Frazer, who was nicknamed “the Pottsville Bully”—McParlan noticed that Frazer was dealing himself extra cards. He leaned over suddenly and grabbed the man’s hand, proving to the others that Frazer had been cheating. The Bully responded by challenging him to a fight, and, with the crowd in the bar forming a square, the two went at it. Despite being knocked down early, McParlan battered his opponent through six rounds, until, punch-drunk and with his right eye swollen closed and the left nearly as bad, Frazer refused to continue and slunk away. To celebrate, McParlan bought everyone in the bar another drink.
Dormer, Kelly, and another fellow now joined McParlan at a quiet table. Knowing he was on a winning streak, the detective tried his luck again, raising his glass of gin to “the power that makes English landlords tremble,” a toast he had heard several weeks before in Tremont, and that he had assumed had a special meaning to members of a secret society. From the glances that passed between the others, he knew he had guessed correctly.
During the following weeks, McParlan became a regular at Dormer’s place, which was part hotel, part saloon, part bowling alley, and part family residence. There he told select others a little about his supposed background: “Sometimes, I told them that I was a counterfeiter, and had been found out; and sometimes, I told them I killed a man or two there [Buffalo]; and several other things; according to the company I was in. The more desperate the company, the more desperate the crime I committed, and the more I was thought of.”32
Certainly the men he confided in were impressed by the quality of the “bad money” he showed them—which was not surprising, considering it was actually legitimate government tender. Meanwhile, he subtly indicated that he had been a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians back in Ireland, and occasionally dropped a hint about a lodge in New York or Buffalo. But before anyone could check, he made sure they knew that any request for information might alert the police that he was in Schuylkill County and result in his arrest.
It was a dangerous game McParlan was playing, because despite having mentioned the AOH in his report to Pinkerton, he was not familiar with the branch in the United States and did not understand its organization or function. The American version had been founded in May 1836, as a peaceful fraternal organization to aid new Irish immigrants, help the poor, and protect Irish women and the Catholic faith. According to its original constitution, “[A]ll members must be Roman Catholics, and Irish or of Irish descent, and of good and moral character, and none of your members shall join in any secret societies contrary to the laws of the Catholic Church, and at all times and at all places your motto shall be: ‘Friendship, Unity, and True Christian Charity.’”33 It was therefore not dissimilar to other fraternal organizations such as the Masons, Knights of Pythias, and Odd Fellows, which used initiation rites, secret passwords, toasts, and signals of recognition (and had likewise been pronounced forbidden societies by the Catholic Church34).
However, the locus of power in the AOH—at least in Schuylkill County—did not reside in a central body but rather in the local lodge or its leader, the bodymaster. This meant that some Schuylkill County lodges served as virtual adjuncts to the Democratic Party, which, outsiders said, paid handsomely in cash or favors for political support. In other lodges some members used the organization as a front to plan violence and acts of sabotage against the mining and railroad companies. So although the AOH and the Molly Maguires were not the same, the overlap in the anthracite fields could, depending on the lodge, make the differences hard to distinguish.
One evening in December, McParlan’s cover was almost blown. Michael Cooney, an old miner from Wadesville, became highly skeptical about McParlan having been an AOH member in the old country—as had Cooney himself. He stalked over to the detective and instead of testing him with current recognition signals—McParlan had quickly learned to say he didn’t know the modern secret signs—gave him some very old ones. Recognizing he was out of his depth, McParlan, who had already been acting very drunk, knocked back a large glass of gin and pretended to pass out. Unable to rouse him, Cooney told Dormer that he had a mind to kick McParlan all the way out onto the street, but the innkeeper insisted that McParlan’s claims were legitimate, and Cooney was persuaded to leave the prostrate detective alone.35
Dormer had taken quite a shine to McParlan, but unfortunately for both of them, the innkeeper found himself in trouble with the AOH after someone accused him of joining the Odd Fellows. While that problem simmered, Dormer could not push his new friend for membership in the society. Instead, seeing that McParlan had been unable to find a job, Dormer suggested he go over the mountain to Shenandoah, where Michael Lawler, the bodymaster, would look after him. This suited McParlan perfectly, and he set out e
agerly. But first he made a quick stop at the St. Clair post office, where instructions from Franklin ordered him to Girardville instead.
Even the scenery on the other side of Broad Mountain—the region of the Western Middle Field—must have brought home to McParlan how dangerous his business truly was. He had portrayed himself as a wild Irish lad accustomed to danger and now entered a territory even wilder than he could have imagined. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described it in The Valley of Fear as the “gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the center.”36 In fact, McParlan was about to visit what would prove to be the most dangerous place in Schuylkill County: John Kehoe’s Hibernian House.
• • •
Born in July 1837 in County Wicklow in the east of Ireland, Kehoe had come to America with his parents, brothers, and sisters at the age of thirteen, at a point late in the Great Famine.37 The family lived in several parts of Schuylkill County, including Tuscarora and Middleport, where Kehoe early on followed his father into the mines, first as a common laborer and later rising to a position as a miner. In the late 1850s Kehoe took a job at a colliery run by J. B. McCreary & Company near Audenreid, and he had a stable position at a point when new immigrants began to take the jobs that had been left open by the departure of miners for the Union army. An antiwar Democrat, Kehoe’s politics kept him from serving in the army, and, according to later testimony, were potentially part of the reason that he was supposedly involved in the fatal beating of mine boss Frank Langdon in Audenreid in 1862.
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