A plea for miner executed in 1877

A descendant seeks a pardon for John Donahoe, hanged in the Molly Maguire era, on grounds his trial was tainted.

Now, nearly 130 years after the gallows floor dropped in the prison, Donahoe's great-great-granddaughter is leading a fight to persuade Pennsylvania to officially pardon the member of the infamous Molly Maguires known as "Yellow Jack."

He was not the cold-blooded killer of a mine boss in the 1870s, insists Margaret Mary Traynor. And at the very least, local and national scholars say, Donahoe never got a fair trial in the anthracite mining region, which considered him and other Irish immigrants thugs and miscreants.

The Molly Maguires were a group of Irish mine workers who tried to jump-start a labor movement. It was a violent time, when working the mines meant long, dangerous days for little pay.

In the process, people turned up dead. And the Molly Maguires were fingered for the crimes.
Donahoe was one of 20 men hanged for a series of headline-grabbing murders of mining officials in Schuylkill and Carbon Counties.

In October, the state Board of Pardons agreed to hold a hearing on the request - the first hurdle in the pardons process for Donahoe. A hearing is scheduled for March, and efforts to set the record straight about the Molly Maguires has drawn the attention of the state's political leaders. If successful, the pardon will be only the second awarded posthumously in Pennsylvania, officials believe.