There it is, the weathered and small tombstone sitting in the back of the cemetery. Or was it the front of the graveyard in 1899 when he was murdered.
The day was warm and sunny as the fateful weekend in a small town in Western Pennsylvania sitting on the Ohio border began. Breakfast was sizzling on the stove and 3 sleeping kids were beginning to awaken as coffee and bacon aromas were tickling their noses. Little did the 11 year old boy know this day would be the end of his youth and his formal education.
The day must have been a weekend, holiday or a Tuesday when the Steelmill would close to re-tool. At age 29 life was good with a beautiful English/Irish wife, living on Russell Street, working a steady job at Sharon Steel and fathering a son and 2 daughters. This irishman’s accomplishments were pretty significant by the end of the 1800s on the brink of a new century.
Russell street was a hill road in town that started at Stateline road and traveled downhill to the river. The street housed many Irish families that were immigrants who followed each other across the ocean from the Emerald Isle. Being Irish/Catholic, children were abundant in the small wooden houses. Each small plot of land that lined the street held the house, an outhouse, a well with pump, a garden, chickens, goats and cows here and there shared by all for milk, traded by the wives for other necessities that each provided. Whether these were shanty towns of Irish or the more affluent lace curtain Irish, they lived here together trying to make a life in this new country they now called home.
This day there was a summer carnival a few miles up the river road East of the city in the farmland that was more often referred to as the sticks. Later in the day after all chores were done the horse and buggy would be hitched and readied with a picnic lunch, carrying the family out to the carnival for a day of fun and games with family and friends. But the morning was for the men. Racing horses and betting was the big deal today. How many horses and how much money transferred hands no one knows but it must have been a sum large enough to make many a man dream of changing their lot in life. For some reason my great-grandfather was selected to collect and hold the purse for the big race. As to whether all the betters and racers knew each other is only a guess. The men were from farms and small towns surrounding the open fields. Steelmill workers, farmers, constables and shopkeepers came from far and wide. Some with money to bet, some with family money and still others using rent and food money that might leave their families homeless and hungry for the month. Others came with no money in their pockets. Someone snuck up behind James as everyone was watching the horses line up. The man with a gun in hand demanded that James hand over the purse. James refused. Bang. The purse stolen and my great-grandfather laid on the ground, dead. Many heard the shot. Many saw the man running away after the purse holder fell. Everyone that saw, knew the man running away but didn’t actually see the altercation or the actual murder but knew who did it. As the day went on and men gave eye witness reports of the shooting and theft, no one saw the gun, or actually saw the man shoot my great-grandfather.
Family members carried the dead man home and the carnival went on for the rest of the community. My great-grandfather was carried home and layed on the couch in the front room. The parrish priest was called and last rights given. After the shock and tears subsided the women gathered to prepare the body for burial. The funeral procession took the same road back to the farmland that he took the fateful day, that the end came for one and adulthood came to his son. He was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery at the edge of the grave yard that all of his family would reside in over the next two centuries. His cemetary marker sits in the center of modern tombstones that mark a time, a place and an age.
Today I wonder where the man is buried who held the gun that shaped my future. He lived in my town and everyone knew his name but because no one witnessed the shooting, when he was brought to trial the judge told him to leave town and never return or he would be jailed on sight. Since I was older when my mother told me this story I didn’t realize I probably attended school with this man’s decendants. Was justice ever done here? No!
On the day after the shooting and burial, a young 11 year old boy became the head of his family. School was a thing of tbe past as was baseball and tossing pennies. At 4 am with lunch in hand my grandfather ran about 3 or 4 miles to Sharon Steel Company on the Ohio border and picked up his father’s job that he was no longer here to do. This young boy picked up his family yoke and worked at Sharon Steel until the age of 67. During those 56 years he married, raised 2 children had 10 grandchilren and was the most wonderful man and grandfather to those of us who knew and lived with him. He too is buried in St. Mary’s along with my grandmother, my other grandparents, parents, twin sisters and many family and friends. It’s almost like the streets of town are all here in rows. St. Mary’s has become home and at some time in the future I too will come home, not far from my great-grandfather who has been holding our place since 1899.
What I find so ironic is that the Irish came to the USA to escape the burtality and genocide of the Potato Famine by the English. But on that fateful day in 1899 my Irish great-grandfather was shot by an English, in this new homeland.
My Retired Groom 