Morgan Powell Cruelly Murdered by Mollie Maguires, December 2, 1871

The bloody record of the Mollie Maguires began about the time the Civil War was brought to a close and continued until James McParlan, the able detective in the employ of the Pinkerton agency, ferreted out these criminals and brought the guilty to trials which resulted in their execution or long terms of imprisonment.

The anthracite coal regions were not free of this scourge until 1877.

The Mollies were unusually active and bloodthirsty in 1865. August 25 of that year, David Muir, colliery superintendent, was killed in Foster Township, shot to death on the public highway, in broad daylight, within two hundred yards of the office in which he was employed.

January 10, 1866, Henry H. Dunne, of Pottsville, superintendent of a colliery, was murdered on the turnpike, while riding to his home in his carriage.

846October 17, 1868, occurred the tragic death of Alexander Rae, near Centralia, Columbia County.

The next important outrage of this character was the murder of William H. Littlehales, superintendent of the Glen Carbon Coal Mining Company, March 15, 1869. He was killed on the highway in Cass Township, Schuylkill County, while enroute to his home in Pottsville.

Then occurred the murders of F. W. S. Langdon, George K. Smith and Graham Powell, each of whom was a mining official.

But the crowning act of the Mollie Maguires, up to the time James McParlan was engaged by Mr. Allen Pinkerton to investigate the workings of this nefarious organization, and the one reaching the culmination of many previous and similar events, was the murder of Morgan Powell.

This event exasperated the good people of the anthracite region to the pitch where endurance ceases to be a virtue, and where only desperate methods to put a stop to these crimes can be put in operation.

This unprovoked murder occurred December 2, 1871. Morgan Powell was assistant superintendent of the Lehigh and Wilkes Barre Coal and Iron Company, at Summit Hill, Carbon County.

The murder was committed about seven o’clock in the evening, on the main street of the little town, not more than twenty feet from the store of Henry Williamson, which place Powell had but a few minutes earlier left to go to the office of Mr. Zehner, the general superintendent of the company.

It seems that one of three men, who had been seen by different parties waiting near the store, approached Mr. Powell from the rear, close beside a gate leading into the stables, and fired a pistol shot into the left breast of the victim. The assassin reached over the shoulder of Powell to accomplish his deadly purpose.

The bullet passed through Powell’s body, lodged in the back near the spinal column, producing immediate paralysis of the lower limbs, and resulting in death two days afterward.

The wounded man was carried back to the store by some of his friends and his son, Charles Powell, the latter then but fourteen years of age, and there remained all night. The next day he was removed to the residence of Morgan Price, where he died the following day.

Hardly had the smoke from the murderer’s pistol mingled with the clear air of that star-lit winter evening, when the assassins were discovered rapidly making their way from the scene of their savage deed toward the top of Plant No. 1.

They were met by the Reverend Allan John Morton and Lewis Richards, who were hurrying to the spot to learn what had caused the firing.

Mr. Morton asked, as they halted on the rigging-stand, what was the 847trouble, when one of the three strangers answered: “I guess a man has been shot!”

Descriptions of the three men were remembered by the Reverend Morgan and Mr. Richards, and the trio started forward in the direction in which Mr. Powell had pointed when asked which way the attacking party had gone.

“I'm shot to death! My lower limbs have no feeling in them!” exclaimed Mr. Powell, when Williamson first raised his head.

No one could tell who shot him. The three suspects were strangers.

Patrick Kildea, who was thought to resemble one of them, was arrested and tried, but finally acquitted, from lack of evidence to convict. This, for the time, was the end of the matter.

When McParlan, disguised as James McKenna, was working on the case of the murder of B. F. Yost, of Tamaqua, in 1875, he learned first-handed from John Donahue, alias “Yellow Jack,” that he was the murderer of Morgan Powell.

Donahue related the circumstances to his “friend” and named his two confederates. He bragged of the affair as being a clean job.

He said the escape was easy, as they did not go ten yards from the spot where Powell dropped, until the excitement cooled down, when, in the darkness, they quietly departed from the bushes, and reached their homes in safety.

The detective made mental notes of this disclosure, and his report subsequently transmitted to his superiors was the first light upon this crime, which had, for four years baffled the best efforts of the officers of justice.

The time was not ripe to press Donahue for more details, but as the detective was supposed to have recently assisted in a murder, Donahue talked freely with him about others who were soon to be victims of the Mollies.

In the fall of 1876, when the arrests of the Mollies were made, John Donahue, Thomas P. Fisher, Patrick McKenna, Alexander Campbell, Patrick O'Donnell, and John Malloy were taken in Carbon County, charged with the murder of Morgan Powell, at Summit Hill, December 2, 1871.

The defendants were tried at different terms of the Carbon County Court, at Mauch Chunk. James McParlan, the detective, now in his true character, frequently appeared as a witness and testified to the confessions of the Mollies.

They were found guilty as follows: Donahue of murder in the first degree, Fisher of murder in the first degree, McKenna of murder in the first degree, and O'Donnell as an accessory. McKenna served nine years and O'Donnell five years’ imprisonment.

Thus was the death of Morgan Powell avenged.

848