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The poverty stricken Black and Irish
neighborhood of Five Points in New York City in 1827 by painter George Catlin,
later famous for his authentic American Indian paintings.
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In 1835 the New York neighborhood known as Five
Points was centered
on an intersection created by Orange
Street, now Baxter Street; Cross Street, now Mosco Street, and Anthony
Street, now Worth Street which
ran northwest direction, dividing one of the four corners into two triangular
blocks. After London’s East End, the most densely populated, disease ridden, and squalid slum in the Western World. Built around 1811on reclaimed land where the Lenape
Indians once had a fishing village, it had begun to sink back into the mire
and was plagued by disease carrying yellow
fever mosquitoes and cholera breeding drinking water polluted by human waste. Middle
class residents fled the area within a few years leaving it to the most
despised inhabitants of the city including a remnant of the Lenape, known
locally as the Canarcies, Blacks including
many who had been freed in the
culmination of New York State’s gradual
emancipation in 1827, and beginning about the same time the first wave of
immigration by impoverished displaced Irish
Catholic tenant farmers.
A few years later Charles Dickens described Five Points
in his book American Notes:
What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us?
A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy
wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us
go on again, and plunge into the Five Points....
This
is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking
everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit
as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at
home and all the world over....
Debauchery
has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are
tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in
drunken forays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their
masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead
of grunting?
It was an uneasily integrated community with the Blacks
and Irish often brawling in the streets while consorting in the taverns and beer halls and sometimes even cohabitating. The two groups were united mainly in the
need to defend themselves from the depredations
of Native Protestant gangs. In 1835 the Nativists had rampaged through the neighborhood during the Anti-abolitionist riots burning Black
homes and churches and murdering any they found on the streets. Organized politically as the Know Nothings the same goons rose to local political power on
an anti-Catholic and anti-Immigrant platform and its gang
member supporters attacked Catholic churches, schools, and businesses.
On May 4, 1835 a number of
disgruntled Irishmen met at nearby St. James Church to devise a plan to
defend their community. They had a model—the Hibernians, a super-secret
society many had belonged to in the Ould
Sod which defended Catholics from the persecutions of the English and the local Protestant elites by violence if need be. They named their new organization in the
States The Ancient Order of Hibernians
(AOH) subservient to the secret
societies in Ireland. They even got the
organization a New York State charter,
making it official, something that the outlawed
organization in Ireland could never be.
Despite this overt step, they took pains to make the proceeding and
activities of their new organization
secret from prying eyes.
The origins of the Hibernians in
Ireland are shrouded in mystery and myth.
The AOH itself traces the linage to Rory O’Moore, a Catholic nobleman
who organized secret Defenders against
the Earl of Essex Thomas Radcliffe,
famed as the lover of Queen Elizabeth I,
who was made Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland in 1562. Essex prohibited
all monks and priests
from either eating or sleeping
in Dublin, ordered the head of each family to attend Protestant services every Sunday under the penalty of a fine, and
perhaps worst confiscated the property of Catholic nobles.
First off, the Hibernians get it
wrong, it was not Rory O’Moore a/k/a Sir
Roger Moore who was born about 1600 but his uncle, the clan chief Ruairí Óg Ó Mórdha, King of Laois that waged war on
Essex.
Rory came along two generations later and was one of the four
organizer of the Rebellions of 1641, a failed coup d’état by the
ancient Catholic nobility against authorities at Dublin Castle then fought a prolonged Irish Confederate Wars which took back much of the country outside
of Dublin. Then he resisted the invasion
by Oliver Cromwell but ultimately
was crushed and died in hiding or exile.
It is doubtful that there was any
direct organizational connection between the followers of either Ruairí Óg Ó
Mórdha or Rory O’Moore and the later Hibernians except by way of inspiration
for Catholic resistance.
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18th
Century Whiteboys, a secret society of Irish tenant farmers, attack a
landlord's agent in this British illustration. The Whiteboys were among
the inspirations for the establishment of the Hibernians.
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In the 18th Century for instance rural Catholic tenant farmers organized secret Whiteboy societies to protest
rack-rents, tithe collection, evictions and other oppressive acts by night
raids on landlords, burning barns and
estates, assaults, and assassinations. The name derived from the white peasant smocks many of the night
raiders wore. At the time the
authorities called them Levelers and
they called themselves by different names including Queen Sive Oultagh’s Children, Fairies,
or followers of Sheila Meskill. There were three outbreaks of Whiteboy
violence—1761–64; 1770–76; and 1784–86 with
low level activity in between. Each
outbreak was ruthlessly and violently suppressed leaving parts of some counties
wastelands. Some of the surviving Whiteboys rallied to the United Irishmen uprising and the small French invasion force dispatched by Napoleon in 1798. But
others were deeply distrustful of the United Irishmen which was largely led by
liberal Dissenters.
The spirit of the Whiteboys, if not
their organization, was revived around 1813 by the Ribbonmen, an agrarian
Catholic secret society formed to prevent landlords from changing or evicting
their tenants. The also attacked tithe and process servers. Strongest
in Ulster, they became deadly
enemies of the Protestant Orange Order
and the two groups often fought pitched battles. The Ribbonmen were named for the bits of
green ribbon they wore in the button holes but they called their organization
the Fraternal Society, the Patriotic
Association, or the Sons of the Shamrock. It was to the secret leadership of these
societies that the new American AOH pledged
their allegiance in 1835.
The AOH grew rapidly despite the
secrecy with which it surrounded itself.
In New York City they organized patrols
armed with clubs and blackthorn sticks to defend Catholics,
particularly their Churches and Priests from assaults by Nativist gangs. More importantly, they began organizing politically and within a few years
wrestled control of the 6th Ward whose heart was Five Points from the Nativist Tammany Wigwam and elected Irish Catholics to local office—the
first time this kind of political success was had by the Irish in this country
and a model in embryo for the political machines they would come to
command in many cities.
A second locus of growth in the
early years was at Pottsville, Pennsylvania in the heart of the state’s anthracite coal region where Irish
miners had been recruited to work the pits. It was extremely dangerous hard work. Fourteen hour days, six days a week were
standard. Pit operators often failed to
meet payrolls and levied fines for
minor offensives and made employees pay rent on tools and equipment.
Trade unions were in their infancy and manual laborers like coal
miners, especially Irishmen, were
not considered intelligent enough manage their own affairs. A secret society, like those of tenant
farmers in the old country, seemed like the natural way for the miners to
organize to protect themselves. So the Hibernians spread over the coal fields.
After the Civil War the Hibernians were deeply established over the
anthracite district. By then they were
operating semi-openly as an ethnic
benevolent society, a type of organization that spread widely in the second
half of the 19th Century which, among other things, raised money for the many widows and orphans caused by frequent mine accidents, fires, and shaft collapses. The men could assemble for
meetings—invariably on Sundays after
Mass, the only time of the week they were not working—without attracting
too much attention. But what went on in
those meetings was an oath sealed
secret.
Conditions in the mines had grown
worse under the insatiable demand for fuel for the emerging steel industry, other heavy industry, and the ever expanding
network of railroads knitting the
country together. New mines opened up
regularly. Ownership in many cases
passed form individual entrepreneurs
to corporations and consortiums tied to the steel industry
meaning that the real bosses were
far away and seldom seen. Demand for
increased production meant corners were cut to already scant safety procedures including
inadequately timbering the shafts
and careless handling of black powder explosives led to ever
more dangerous working conditions. To
work the mines the bosses turned increasingly to children for jobs away from the mine face, especially as breaker
boys. By 1870 nearly a third of all
workers in the district were boys 16 years of age and under, numbering more
than 10,000.
Worst of all from the perspective of
the Irish miners, who were relatively established in the district, was the
importation of non-English speaking
immigrants, especially Italians and
Slavs to work the mines. Not only were these newcomers considered
dangerous to work alongside because they could not speak English and were
un-instructed in even rudimentary safety practices, but they were paid even
less, driving down wages across the district.
Suddenly the Irish were in the same boat as their old Know Nothing and nativist enemies and they behaved in much the same way to the new
comers.
Some early attempts at unionizing
the field began in 1869 with the Workingmen’s
Benevolent Association (WBA) after a particularly gruesome Avondale mine disaster took the lives
of 110 miners—just some of 566 miners had been killed and 1,655 maimed in Schuylkill County alone in a seven year
period. The attempt to unionize was met
by violent repression by the bosses, including almost daily beating of
suspected members as well as a number of ambush
shootings. All of this intensified
after the Panic of 1873 brought
rounds of wage cuts across the
district.
The time was ripe for the Molly McGuires. Historians are divided three ways
concerning the Mollies—that they and the Hibernians were virtually one and the
same, that the Mollies simply took advantage of the Hibernian meetings to
infiltrate the organization and use its secrecy to plan their operations, or
finally that there never was a real organization of Mollies at all except for
possibly individual or small groups of men inspired the legend to act on their
own against their immediate exploiters.
Only those who are apologists for the employers’ version of history, including some modern Libertarians maintain that the Mollies
and Hibernians were the same organization.
The second viewpoint is the most widely held and the third, that the
Mollies did not really exist at all, is held by a number of labor historians.
Back in Ireland secret groups
identifying themselves as Molly McGuires began to emerge during the Potato Famine. They were even more rural, local, and Gaelic than the previous Ribbonmen.
Local Molly leaders were reported to have sometimes dressed as women as
cover for their attacks. Membership
and/or activity in the Mollies against the landlords and abusive merchants
may—or may not—have coincided with the shadowy Irish Hibernians to whom the AHO
owed fealty.
At any rate a rash of
counter-violence including the murders of pit
bosses, foremen, and suspected spies, as well as sabotage of the mine shafts and heads with the placement of black powder bombs was soon being blamed on the Molly McGuires
and the AOH lodges were suspected to be the center of a vast conspiracy.
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Molly Maguire members met in secret under the guise of the Ancient
Order of Hibernians according to the secret reports of Pinkerton spy James
McParland.
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In 1873 Franklin B. Gowen, the President
of the Philadelphia and Reading
Railroad, and of the Philadelphia
and Reading Coal and Iron Company and the wealthiest anthracite coal mine
owner in the world, hired Allan
Pinkerton’s detective service to
deal with the supposed Mollies. But his
real target was the WBA, which had grown to claim a membership of thirty
thousand—85% percent of Pennsylvania’s
anthracite miners and a real threat to mine owners profits. The leadership of the WBA was not Irish, but
English Lancastershire miners who
were adamantly opposed to violence and
known to be trying to crack down on the acts credited to the Mollies. Pinkerton was instructed to gather evidence
that would tie the WBA and its leadership, as well as the AOH. Out of 450 Hibernians in Schuylkill County,
400 were found to be union members.
In 1874 Pinkerton assigned one of
his top agents, 30 year old James
McParland who was born in County
Armagh to infiltrate the AOH.
Working as a miner under the name of James McKenna McParland seemed to have no trouble infiltrating the
Hibernians and gaining the trust of leading members. He sent detailed daily reports to his
employer. McParland showed a basic
ignorance of the history of the AOH when he wrote that the lodge was created by
the Mollies as a cover for their activities, despite the fact that it had been
active for decades before the violence attributed to the Mollies ever
began. He also complained in his reports
that he was making little progress in tying the Hibernians to the Mollies. He was, however, readily able to identify a
number of union members.
In response to a general 20% wage
cut announced by Gowen’s Schuylkill Coal
Exchange combination of mine operators, the WBA went out on strike on
January 1, 1875. It would be a long strike,
punctuated by violence by the notorious Pennsylvania
Coal and Iron Police, the Pennsylvania Militia,
and vigilantes on one hand and
retaliation attributed to the Mollies on the other.
Pinkerton either turned over or
allowed employees of Gowen to have
access to the identity of the union members uncovered by McParland. He also recommended to Gowen that vigilantes
be formed to attack known unionists, supposedly in revenge for Molly attacks. A union leader and AOH member Edward Coyle, was murdered in March.
Another member of the AOH was shot and killed by the Modocs, a Welsh gang operating led by a mine
superintendent. Another mine boss, Patrick Vary, fired into a group of
miners and, according to the later boast by Gowen, as the miners “fled they
left a long trail of blood behind them”. At Tuscarora, a meeting of miners was attacked and one miner was
killed and several others wounded.
Then on December 10, 1875, three men
and two women were attacked in their home by masked men. One of the men
and one of the women, the wife of a miner, were killed. The other two men were able to escape with
wounds, although McParland would later charge that they were hunted down and
killed by the Coal and Iron Police. The
vigilante raid outraged McParland who had no objection to the assassination of
union men but was furious that his reports had been used to murder a woman who
he considered innocent. He angrily
submitted his resignation, but was enticed to stay with promises that his notes
would no longer be turned over to vigilantes.
His scruples salved,
McParland withdrew his resignation—and Gowen continued to turn over the names
of union members he identified to the vigilantes.
First
Lt. Frank Wenrich, of the
Militia , was eventually arrested as the leader of the vigilante
attackers, but released on bail and
never tried.
Violence and retaliation continued
on both sides while Union leaders appealed for calm and tried to arrange arbitration. In May of 1875 28 national and local union leaders were arrested. They were all convicted at trial for conspiring to raise wages depressing
the price of a vendible commodity and sentenced to a year in jail. With the WBA leadership in jail, the strike
struggled on loosing strength day by day, but violence on all sides escalated,
especially since the strongest voices for peace on labor’s side had been
effectively silenced.
After six months with their families
starving the strike and union was broken.
The men returned to work accepting the 20% pay cut and many were black balled from ever working in the
mines again. The end of the strike,
however, did not end the violence with both vigilantes and alleged Mollies
committing revenge murders well into 1876.
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Six
alleged Molly McGuires are led to the scaffold in 1877, convicted on evidence
of the Pinkerton spy James McParland.
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McParland now announced he had at
last been able to identify suspects in several planned or executed murders and
bombings. In the end several men went to
trial on murder or attempted murder charges based on McParland’s reports and
testimony beginning in January 1876.
Mine boss Gowen got himself named as special prosecutor in the case.
In all ten men were convicted and sentenced to hang. One man, Jimmy
Kerrigan, the brother-in-law of McParland’s fiancé, was acquitted in a
second trial after an initial mistrial.
On June 22, 1877 the ten men were hanged in two batches, six at the prison at Pottsville, and four at Mauch
Chunk, Carbon County.
Another ten men were convicted and
hanged on evidence not from McParland and a last accused Mollie was tried and
hung in 1878. All of the dead were
identified as Hibernians and most as union members.
The Hibernians, union, and the
Mollies, if they existed were all shattered.
The nation’s leadership of the AOH far from supporting their accused
brothers, denounced them and officially dissolved the “guilty” lodges and
expelled all of the members in an attempt to mollify public anger.
The Hibernians remained active in
both the United States and Ireland, however. Increasingly tied to the Church, they became
the extremely conservative wing of
the Irish Nationalist Movement. In
Ireland it still did not have an official form
or identity. Many of its leaders were supporters of Charles Stewart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary
Party. They were the bitter enemies
of the more secular Irish Republican
Brotherhood (IRB) just as the
AOH in America opposed the IRB’s allies here, the Fenian Brotherhood.
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An Ancient Order of
Hibernian gathering at Hinkle Town, Iowa circa 1880.
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In the U.S. the Hibernians split in
1884 between a minority that supported a continued allegiance to the Board of Erin consisting exclusively of
Hibernians in Ireland and Britain and a much larger group that wanted American
elected officers. The majority became
the Ancient Order of Hibernians of
America and the smaller group called itself Ancient Order of Hibernians, Board of Erin. By 1897 the Board of Erin group had only
40,000 members in pockets around New York city and in Illinois while the AOHA
boasted 120,000 in every state. In
addition the AOHA chartered a ladies
auxiliary, The Daughters of Erin in 1894 that had more than 20,000
members. The two groups re-united in
1898 under the American leadership but expressing a special relationship with
Hibernians in Ireland.
The Irish Hibernians finally got
legal status in the 1890’s under the leadership by Joseph Devlin of Belfast. Heavily concentrated in Ulster, now also officially the Ancient Order of Hibernians spent much of its time challenging the Orange Order and contesting its annual Twelfth of June Marches commemorating the
Protestant victory at the Battle of the
Boyne. That single mindedness proved
very popular in Ulster where membership blossomed from 9,000 members at the turn of the century to 64,000 in
1909. They also began to make inroads
elsewhere in Ireland, but their extreme sectarianism
was viewed by many in the South as an impediment to retaining the support
Protestant dissenters and even making inroads among the Anglo-Irish of the Church of
Ireland.
The Hibernians were among the first
to openly recruit and train an armed militia of their own. They generally opposed the raising of Irish
regiments and troops for World War I and entered a somewhat shaky alliance with
the emerging Irish Volunteers. They bitterly opposed the James Connolly’s socialist and labor
Irish Citizen Army. None the less
one company of Hibernian Rifles joined
the Volunteers and Citizen Army in the 1916 Easter Rebellion.
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A Hibernian Rifles uniform (left) from the Easter Rebellion next of a Irish Citizen Army uniform of James Connolly's labor and socialist militia.
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During the War of Independence many Hibernians joined the Irish Republican Army but in the Civil War that followed they supported the government and Treaty Forces. Its influence waned outside of Ulster, and
even on its home ground. By the 1930’s
they were drifting to fascism and
supplied troops to the Irish Brigade fighting
for Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
In Ulster the Hibernians had long
sponsored their own proactive parades to taunt the Orangemen. At the beginning of the Troubles in 1968 they voluntarily called off their annual marches
in the interest of peace, but resumed them in 1975 as the organization became
increasing identified and allied with the nationalist Provisional IRA.
Today only a few thousand strong its
mostly elderly members continued to confront their ancient enemies yearly.
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The coat of arms off the Ancient Order of Hibernians of America.
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In the United States the AOHA
remained active, although organizations more directly connected to arming and
supplying the IRA gained popular support.
In 1965 they reported 181,000
nationwide. Like all fraternal
organizations in this country, membership dropped precipitously over the next few years as elderly members
died with no youthful replacements in sight.
Less than 10,000 remained when a
revival of sorts began in Montana with
the establishment of the vigorous Thomas Francis Meagher Division No. 1, named
for the Civil War General, Irish
Brigade, and Montana Territorial
Govern in Helena, in 1982, Within a couple of years six more Montana
towns formed units. Other new divisions were founded in California
and in 2018 a new division was founded in Tennessee. Several Divisions
have lately been successful in recruiting young members.
The order organized the New York City St Patrick's Day Parade
for 150 years until 1993, when control was transferred to an independent
committee amid controversy over the exclusion
of Irish-American gay and lesbian groups.
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