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 families’ 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.”
“But there was a group they called the Molly Maguires,” he went on. “And Molly Maguires, if they found out the foreman was taking advantage of an individual, they would literally kill him. Not a joke. And they would bring his body up and put him on the doorstep of his family.”
“Kind of crude, but I gotta admit they accused my great-grandfather of being a Molly Maguire — he wasn’t, but we were so damn disappointed.”
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler’s head snapped back after Biden’s quip. Harris, also on stage with the president, laughed.
“That was a joke. That was a joke,” Biden assured the crowd.
A 2020 story in Irish American Magazine appears to corroborate Biden’s claim that his great-grandfather was alleged to have been a part of the secretive group.
The publication also notes that Biden told a similar anecdote about Blewitt on the 2008 campaign trail with former President Barack Obama, with a different punchline.
“He went out of his way to prove that he wasn’t [a Molly Maguire], and we were all praying that he was,” Biden told a crowd of Virginia coal miners.
