President Biden claimed in a long-winded anecdote on Monday that his great-grandfather was rumored to have been part of a group of coal miners that would kill anti-Catholic mine foremen and lay the dead bodies “on the doorstep” of their family’s homes.
Vice President Kamala Harris nodded along as the 81-year-old president spun the strange yarn during his remarks to union workers in Pittsburgh, Pa., joking that he was “disappointed” to learn that his great-grandfather Edward Francis Blewitt was not a member of the “Molly Maguires.”
“I remember when my great grandfather was only the second Catholic elected statewide in the state Senate here in Pennsylvania,” Biden began. “And I remember they talked about – when they’d run against him in 1906 – they said, ‘Guess what? He’s a Molly Maguire.’”
The president explained that “back in the old days” Irish Catholics working in Pennsylvania coal mines were often mistreated by the foremen, and a group of recently arrived Irishmen, known as the Molly Maguires, violently retaliated against their oppressors.
“A lot of the English owned the coal mines,” Biden said. “And what they did was they really beat the hell out of the mostly Catholic population in the mines. Not a joke.” […]
— Read More: nypost.com