Molly Maguires
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40 free Molly Maguires trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Molly Maguires sit where immigration, labor and big business meet in the Gilded Age. In the 1870s, twenty Irish coal miners went to their deaths after trials that historians still argue over: were they a murderous secret society, or working men framed by the same company that employed, investigated and tried them? This quiz covers the ground an APUSH course expects: the society's roots in rural Ireland, the mine owners and the detective sent among the miners, the strike and the depression behind the violence, the trials and executions, and the lasting afterlife in film, fiction and labor history. It is written for students revising the Gilded Age labor movement, and for anyone curious about one of the most disputed episodes in American working-class history. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which mark, said to be left by condemned Molly Maguire Alexander Campbell, still draws visitors to a jail cell wall?
A handprint
A handprint in cell 17 of the old Carbon County jail is said to be the mark Campbell left to proclaim his innocence before he was hanged in 1877. The jail is now a museum.
Q 02Which fictional detective's final novel, The Valley of Fear, borrowed its backstory from the Molly Maguires?
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes meets a man whose past recalls the real undercover detective's years among the miners. Arthur Conan Doyle's novel first ran as a magazine serial in 1914 and 1915.
Q 03Mauch Chunk, where four Molly Maguires were hanged in 1877, was later renamed in honour of which Olympic athlete?
Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe never set foot in the town while he was alive. Two neighbouring boroughs merged and took his name after the athlete's death in 1953, and built his tomb there.
Q 04Which grim object gave its name to the warning notices Molly Maguires were accused of sending to mine bosses?
A coffin
A coffin, roughly drawn on the page, warned a mine boss to leave the area or die. Irish miners had brought the practice of sending such notices from home.
Q 05Which private detective firm did railroad president Franklin B. Gowen hire to plant a spy among the Molly Maguires?
Pinkerton agency
The Pinkerton agency sent an operative into the coal fields under a false name, and his testimony later helped convict ten of the men who were hanged.
Q 06In rural Ireland, leaders of the Molly Maguires were reported to carry out some raids wearing which disguise?
Women's clothing
Women's clothing let a leader pose as a mother begging food for her children. A shopkeeper who refused the demand could expect to have his store emptied.
Q 07Which courtroom role did railroad president Franklin B. Gowen take at the murder trials of the Molly Maguires?
Special prosecutor
Special prosecutor was a post the mine owner arranged for himself, so he argued murder cases built by detectives his own company had hired.
Q 08Which James Bond actor played the Molly Maguires' leader in the 1970 film co-starring Richard Harris as a detective?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery and Richard Harris headline a film whose opening runs almost fifteen minutes before anyone speaks a word of dialogue.
Q 09How did Philadelphia's Catholic archbishop respond to the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish Catholic miners?
Excommunicated its members
Archbishop James Wood excommunicated its members and refused them burial in Catholic cemeteries, yet the secret society carried on regardless.
Q 10In collieries of the Molly Maguires era, what name was given to the children who picked slate from crushed coal?
Breaker boys
Breaker boys, some as young as seven, earned one to three dollars a week. About 5,500 children worked at the mines of Schuylkill County alone.
Q 11In which state's coal fields were twenty alleged Molly Maguires hanged for murder and other crimes during the 1870s?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania hanged ten of the men on a single June morning in 1877, six at one county prison and four at another, with state militia ringing both scaffolds.
Q 12Which grade of coal did the Irish miners of the Molly Maguires' home region dig?
Anthracite
Anthracite, or hard coal, has the highest carbon content and the fewest impurities of any coal, so it gives more heat and less smoke than soft coal.
Q 13Besides Ireland and the United States, in which English port city were the Molly Maguires active during the 1850s?
Liverpool
Q 21Which financier's bank failed in September 1873, starting the depression that framed the Molly Maguires' wage battles?
Jay Cooke
Jay Cooke, who had helped finance the Union war effort, sank his bank into Northern Pacific Railway bonds that it found it could not sell.
Q 22Which future Knights of Labor leader ran for mayor of Scranton on what opponents called the 'Molly Maguire Ticket'?
Terence Powderly
Terence Powderly won anyway, served three two-year terms as mayor from 1878, and led the Knights for fourteen years.
Q 23In which county seat, home of America's oldest brewery, were six Molly Maguires hanged on one morning in 1877?
Pottsville
Liverpool had Molly Maguire clubs whose members paid into a mutual defence fund, though the branch was known for gangsterism rather than for helping Irish immigrants.
Q 14Which nationwide labor upheaval broke out in July 1877, only weeks after ten Molly Maguires were hanged in one day?
The Great Railroad Strike
The Great Railroad Strike began at Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio cut its workers' wages by ten percent, and it spread until federal troops were sent in.
Q 15Franklin B. Gowen, chief accuser of the Molly Maguires, was president of which railroad that also owned vast coal lands?
Philadelphia and Reading
Philadelphia and Reading is the line remembered on the Monopoly board as the Reading Railroad. Its sister coal and iron company gave Gowen control of most of the area's mines.
Q 16Which union, founded in 1890, later organised the Molly Maguires' old coal fields and led the great strike of 1902?
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers won a 10 percent raise after Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to step into a labor dispute as a neutral arbitrator.
Q 17Early Civil War violence blamed on the Molly Maguires was tied up with resistance to which federal measure?
The military draft
The military draft met such resistance among Irish miners in Schuylkill County that the Secretary of War sent troops to enforce it.
Q 18Which Irish-born detective lived among the Molly Maguires undercover and later testified as a surprise trial witness?
James McParland
James McParland offered his resignation in 1875 after vigilantes, apparently armed with his secret reports, raided a suspect's home and killed members of the household.
Q 19Which alleged leader of the Molly Maguires, nicknamed 'Black Jack', received a posthumous state pardon in 1979?
John Kehoe
John Kehoe, high constable of his mining town, protested his innocence until he was hanged. A descendant's request led the state pardons board to reopen his case a century later.
Q 20Which Irish Catholic fraternal body, founded in New York in 1836, was accused of being the Molly Maguires' front?
Ancient Order of Hibernians
The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemned the Molly Maguires at its 1876 national convention and reorganised its lodges in the coal counties.
Pottsville's prison was ringed by militia with fixed bayonets while miners' families, who had walked through the night, stood outside in silence.
Q 24Which elected Schuylkill County office had Franklin B. Gowen held over a decade before the Molly Maguires trials?
District attorney
District attorney from 1862 to 1864, Gowen was, by his biographer's account, doing too well in private practice to bother much with pursuing criminals.
Q 25The Modocs, a gang that fought the Molly Maguires in the coal fields, were drawn from miners of which nationality?
Welsh
Welsh and English miners held most of the skilled jobs and boss positions, leaving Irish labourers the hard, low-paid work and feeding the feud.
Q 26Which name do historians give the 1875 coal walkout whose collapse came just before the Molly Maguires arrests?
The Long Strike
The Long Strike ran from January to June 1875 and ended with hungry miners accepting a 20 percent pay cut and their union in ruins.
Q 27Which grim nickname, alongside 'Black Thursday', was given to 21 June 1877, when ten Molly Maguires were hanged?
Day of the Rope
Day of the Rope is the name that stuck in the coal region, where ten more convicted men followed the first group to their deaths over the next two years.
Q 28In Ireland, the Molly Maguires reportedly blackened their faces for night raids using which everyday substance?
Burnt cork
Burnt cork hid the raiders' faces, a disguise that echoed the mummers who went from door to door on Irish festive days.
Q 29Which older Irish agrarian secret society, a predecessor of the Molly Maguires, took its name from smocks worn on raids?
Whiteboys
The Whiteboys levelled fences at night to defend tenant farmers' land rights, so the authorities usually called them Levellers.
Q 30By an 1894 account, the Molly Maguires' local lodge chiefs nearly always kept which kind of business near the mines?
A saloon
A saloon gave a lodge chief a ready meeting place, and the same account claims no autocrat ever held freer power than he did over his territory.