(1) The name is something of an enigma. Multiple sources say it stems from the isle of Eire. When absentee English landlords put an Irish Protestant, Scot, English, or Welshman in their place, cutthroats which rebelled against them took this name. Molly Maguire is said to have been an actual woman, a widow, who would not leave her cottage when Protestant Irish, English, Welsh, or Scottish attempted to remove her for her Catholicism. These were dark times of persecution for Irish Catholics and were not to get better by crossing the Atlantic. Eventually, the English made a motion that would not allow Catholics to hold land. The Irish were hopelessly shut out. A cross-dressing trend among angered Irish land tenants was born. "Take that from a son of Molly Maguire!" was often heard before an offensive person of authority was bashed accordingly. With the potato famines of the 1840s, it mattered little whether they were persecuted; no violent retaliation would stop the suffering of starvation. The influx of Irish Catholics in America rose in a J curve. (From THE MOLLY MAGUIRES (1970))

(2) Original "Mollie" a Woman. - Authorities claim that a rather ferocious woman by the name of "Mollie Maguire" had killed several of the hated agents of the landlords. Subsequently a body of men formed a society ostensibly for the purpose of "eliminating" the agents by murder. The "ideals" of the organized murderers coinciding with those of Mollie Maguire's, they dubbed themselves, or were thus named by others "Mollie Maguires." (From The Molly Maguires)

(3) This organization of Irish miners was dubbed the "Molly Maguires," after a group of Irish peasants who dressed up as women to antagonize their landlords. This group was infamously known as murderers and assassins and the press and police in America applied the name to the Irish miners. The label was used by both the press and the owner-operators of the mining companies to their distinct advantage. They called anyone who was pro-union a "Molly," inferring that they were criminals at best. This helped to subdue, even if only slightly, uprisings in the work place. (From The Molly Maguires

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