George Major, Chief Burgess of Mahanoy City, Murdered by Mollie Maguires, November 3, 1874

George Major, the popular chief burgess of Mahanoy City, died Tuesday, November 3, 1874, from the effects of pistol shot wounds received the Saturday previous, the assassins being members of the notorious Mollie Maguires.

A great strike was in progress in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania, and during such periods of intense excitement the Mollies were as active as a community of hornets whose nest some schoolboys had invaded with paddles.

George Major had long since gained the enmity of this nefarious organization, and was a doomed man.

James McParlan, a young Irishman from Chicago, was the Pinkerton detective who lived among the Mollies, became one of them, and who successfully rid the State of the whole organization.

On the day of this murder James McKenna (as McParlan was known to the Mollies), was in Shenandoah, but soon received intelligence of the affair. He was an officer of the Mollie organization and, in his official capacity, was detailed with Charles Hayes to go to the scene of the shooting and gather such particulars as it was possible to obtain.

This information, of course, was for the use of the Mollies in event any of their members should be arrested for the crime, that an alibi could be prepared for them.

McKenna and Hayes arrived on the scene early Monday morning, while the victim was yet alive, but not expected to survive that day.

McKenna appeared particularly sad and dejected, declaring to his fellow Mollies that his income from his (supposed) crooked peculations had run several months behind, so that he had no funds to expend in too many treats. This was an excuse to provide him with a safe cover from which to carry on his observations, and he at once commenced hunting up the facts connected with the shooting of Burgess Major.

Major had been shot through the left breast, two inches above the 769heart. This fact was learned by McKenna as soon as he arrived at Clark’s house, the rendezvous of the Mollies.

The proprietor, Clark, was not a member of the order, but his two sons were Mollies. He was alone when McKenna arrived, and soon started to talk about the shooting.

After the usual greetings, McKenna asked Clark if he knew who fired the shot.

“That I can’t, for the life of me, tell! There’s two stories about it. One of them puts it on Dan Dougherty, but I believe him just as innocent as the babe unborn—and the other charges it on Major’s own brother, William, hitting him be mischance, when firing after the Hibernian company’s boys—for ye must know that the whole trouble came about through a quarrel between the Hibernian an' the Citizen Fire Companies. One is wholly made up of our countrymen, an' the other of Modocs—English, German, Welsh an' what not! I suppose ye know that?

“Yes! But who started the row?” queried McKenna.

Clark replied that he was sure it was not Dougherty. He told McKenna of the fire which had called out the companies, and the fact that many firemen were drunk. That on the way home some firemen got to fighting, when Chief Burgess George Major came out of his house, flourished his revolver, and during the confusion shot a dog that was barking nearby. This led to more shooting, when someone in the crowd took off the Chief Burgess, and his brother shot Dougherty in the neck.

McKenna then met Clark’s brother, who was a Mollie, and they went to Dougherty’s home, and soon gained permission to see the wounded man.

Dougherty was almost delirious, and barely recognized his friends. He was terribly wounded, the surgeons even thinking it unsafe to probe for the bullet.

McKenna and Clark then went to McCann’s and soon gained the landlady’s confidence and she invited them upstairs, where McCann was found in bed, also wounded. He claimed Major had fired three shots at him.

Here the scheme was hatched to swear out a warrant for the Chief Burgess before he should die, charging him with an assault with a deadly weapon. That, they contended, would place McCann on the witness-stand and prevent him from being brought to the bar as a defendant. Others present desired McCann to make his escape.

The Chief Burgess succumbed to his wounds Tuesday, November 3, and received burial, with suitable honors, the ensuing day.

McKenna returned to Shenandoah and reported to the Mollies the issue of his trip. He had previously sent to Mr. Allan Pinkerton daily bulletins of his inquiries and their results.

770Dougherty recovered, had his trial, early in May, and was acquitted.

McKenna was not ready to call his work at an end. Sufficient evidence had not yet been obtained to bring the band of criminals to justice.

But it was only a few months later when the murderers of Alexander Rae, Gomer James, William and Jesse Major, F. W. S. Langdon, Morgan Powell, Thomas Sanger, William Uren, and others were brought to trial and such evidence obtained that the usual Mollie alibi was broken down and those guilty were made to suffer the penalty which they deserved.