"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."--Mother Jones
Born in Cork, Ireland, Mary Harris Jones claimed to be a bit older than she was. In her autobiography she said she was born in 1830, however later researchers think she was most likely born in 1837. She died on November 30, 1930, in Maryland, and is buried at the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Macoupin County, Illinois.
Just in case you didn't know, the "Mother Jones" magazine was named for Mary Harris Jones, who, among her many claims to fame as a Progressive, was a labor organizer, especially of miners, and a co-founder of the International Workers of the World, AKA the Wobblies.
I really don't know when I first learned about Mother Jones, but I suspect I know how I happened to learn of her--it has to do with Les Claypool's old radio show on KRHM in the late fifties and early sixties in Los Angeles. I was about 13 or 14 and was idly twirling the dial of my cheap little radio one day when I came across this strange sound. My father had been fond of classical music, opera, and some odd things like Irish tenors (I still have a number of songs by John McCormack on 78RPM records), and my mother liked what are now called Standards, I remember she had Al Hibbler singing "Unchained Melody" and things by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. And my peers listened to Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers and such like. What was coming out of the radio was nothing like any of those things. It sounded something like this version of Bowling Green, by Erik Darling and the Kossoy sisters, only more authentic--I now suspect it was a field recording from Appalachia. I was entranced, and began listening regularly to Les Claypool's folk music show. I quickly discovered Pete Seeger, which led to the Almanac Singers and Woody Guthrie, and then to the history of the labor movement, and so on. For me learning one thing always leads to learning something else and then on to some strange hiways and byways, it's always been that way. The existence of the Internet makes that sort of thing easier than ever, but with access to a library it's always been possible.
So I learned all kinds of labor songs: Solidarity Forever, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, We Will Not Be Moved, Poor Miner's Farewell, Union Maid, and many more. Years later my husband was a member of the American Federation of Teachers, and we would have a post-meeting gathering at our house, where everyone would drink beer and sing union songs. I'm a terrible singer, but they had to let me sing anyway, because I was the only one who knew all the words to all the songs.
James Izatt, Springfield, Ill, ca. 1910
But I have many less trivial personal connections to Mother Jones that I learned about here and there over the years. Among those who were present at the meeting in 1905 when the IWW was founded was Eugene V. Debs, the perennial Socialist Party candidate for President in the first two decades of the 20th century. When I was 16 or 17 I found out that my mother's maternal grandfather had voted for Debs whenever possible. This was undoubtedly because Grandfather Izatt had worked for the
Pullman Palace Car Company in 1890s, and when the workers went on strike in 1894 Debs and his American Railway Union strongly supported the strikers. Things still got very nasty and Grandfather Izatt returned to Scotland for several years, where my great-uncle was born, and finally returned to Illinois around 1900, moving to Springfield, where my grandmother was born.
My mother spent a lot of time with her maternal grandparents, partly because her parents divorced when she was young, and partly because my grandmother was not an easy person to get along with. So my mother was very close to her Grandmother Izatt, who was born in County Cork, Ireland, just like Mother Jones. Because of my mother's rearing, and my rearing by her, I've always considered my principle cultural heritage to be Irish Catholic. When I found out that Grandfather Izatt was a freethinker and a Socialist from Scotland, I was a bit taken aback, and wondered how a nice Irish Catholic girl ended up married to such a heathen!
Many years later I saw a documentary on PBS about the history of Irish immigration to North America, and learned that there was such a dearth of eligible Irish bachelors in Ireland by the end of the 19th century that many nice Irish girls took off for the New World all on their own. It was the only hope they had of finding a husband. Obviously this was the case for Grandma Izatt, and evidently love conquered all, even the fact of James Izatt's Scottishness. Well, Scots are celts too, and he didn't interfere with the way the kids were raised.
There is one other connection between Mother Jones and my mother's side of the family: her mother married a second time, and my Grandpa Paul was a miner. Actually, he was the only grandfather I remember, so even though he was my mom's step-father, to me he was always Grandpa, and I always liked him very much, even though we didn't see him very often, since we lived in California and my grandparents all stayed in Illinois. He died of black lung, and my grandmother got a special pension because of that. As you can see from the flyer reproduced above, Mother Jones was especially revered by union miners, and is buried alongside many Illinois miners like my Grandpa Paul. Indeed, she had made a request, kept on file by the miners of Mt. Olive, to be buried in the same cemetery as the miners "who gave up their lives in the hills of Virden, Illinois.... I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys."
Frank Chism, Grandmother, 1940
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My father was born in Palmyra, Illinois, and he had many relatives still there, from both sides of his family, when I was growing up. Several times when we were in Illinois for a visit we all went down to Palmyra, and when my father died he was buried in the main cemetery there.
I had always kept a little family tree in my family photo album, based on things my mother had written in my baby book, and things I remembered being told, plus a little evidence from old family photos. I'm not sure when I first got interested in finding family history information "on-line" but by 1999 I had made contact with some cousins and one genealogy researcher thru the wonders of internet searches and email, and had also constructed a section of my first web site that included some pictures and a little bit of information I knew that others would find useful.
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Every few years I would do some more on-line searching and uncover a bit more information. A couple of years ago, while researching my father's family connections in Macoupin County, Illinois, I discovered there was a
Macoupin County Genealogy web site, with a whole list of cemeteries in the area, and that many of these cemeteries had lists of the graves, and even photos of the cemetery and/or some of the grave stones. I was able to use this information to help me fill in a good deal of the "missing" lines in my paternal ancestry. One of the cemeteries listed was the aforementioned Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, and in checking it out I discovered that Mother Jones was buried there, and there was a rather nice monument to her. Although it appears none of my relatives are buried in that cemetery, it was still a pretty interesting discovery. And while I knew a little of the labor history in Illinois, I had not heard of the armed battle at Virden before. Palmyra and its environs, as I remembered it, always seemed so very rural and so very peaceful that such a history was rather startling.
Earlier this week one of the local PBS stations re-ran the 2005 series on Appalachia, so I DVRed it to watch it on different nights, when I had time. I discovered that while the series covered a great deal of the history of the region, the principle focus was on the development of the culture, especially the music. This was splendid as far as I was concerned, since I still love folk music in general, and Appalachian folk music in particular. Wednesday night I watched the episode about coal mining and the early battles over unionizing the coal fields, which mentioned a bit about the role of Mother Jones. As always I wondered how in the world the people of states like West Virginia could forget their own history and vote for those who were representatives for modern day incarnations of those who had caused their state so much grief in the past. I feel quite melancholy when I contemplate this topic.
Thursday morning I happened to read twigg's diary 200, wherein he recommends writing about what you know, and it occurred to me I knew something about Mother Jones and my own personal history. To refresh my memory I went to Google and found that her Autobiography was available on-line, so started quickly reading thru it. I found this interesting passage:
And so the union was organized in Kelly Creek. I do not know whether the men have held the gains they wrested from the company. Taking men into the union is just the kindergarten of their education and every force is against their further education. Men who live up those lonely creeks have only the mine owners' Y.M.C.As, the mine owners' preachers and teachers, the mine owners' doctors and newspapers to look to for their ideas. So they don't get many.--Mother Jones
It seems to me that Mother Jones is explaining the cause of the melancholy state affairs where people vote against their own self-interest, and give power to those who most oppress them. I think she understood what goes on, but she was not put off by the way the world works. No, she just went right on doing her work: trying to make things better for those who are most in need of help.