As spring turned to summer in 1862, violence erupted in the mine patch town of Audenried, located at the crossroads of Carbon, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region.

On June 14, 1862, a crowd of men descended upon Frank Langdon, the weigh boss at the nearby Honey Brook Colliery. By the time they were finished, Langdon lay in the dirt – bloody, battered, and dying.

Langdon died from his injuries several days later.

The circumstances surrounding Langdon’s death have stirred controversy for more than 160 years. The attack on Langdon came at a time of political turmoil as the Civil War raged. In the heart of the Coal Region, many Irish mineworkers opposed the war effort while mine management often supported the conflict and the economic boom it brought to rural patch towns like Audenried.

Years later, a book alleging to expose the crimes of the Molly Maguires was published by F.P. Dewees in 1877.

Here was his description of the murder of Frank Langdon:

On the 14th of June, 1862, at a meeting held at Audenried, Carbon County, to make arrangements for a meeting to be held the following Fourth of July, a party of men became infuriated at a man named F. W. S. Langdon, the breaker-boss at one of the neighboring coal-breakers.

It appears that one of the party present, whether purposely or by accident is uncertain, spit upon the American flag.
In any event, in the then excited condition of the public mind such an act would be an opportunity for angry discussion. Langdon, who was standing on the hotel porch where the meeting was held, denounced in strong terms the person offending. This was the occasion of angry retort and threats.

It is supposed that, independent of the offense given by Langdon that day, he had rendered himself obnoxious to some of the workmen in his capacity as boss. The threats used against him, in connection with the angry looks with which he was regarded, caused some of his friends to urge him to remain on the porch and not to mingle with the crowd.

Langdon did not himself believe that he was in any danger. He left the meeting, and, the occasion presenting itself, walked some little distance away from the hotel. He was found alone, severely beaten with stones, insensible, and in a dying condition.

One mortal blow received seemed to have been given with a hammer. He died in a short time. A mob had evidently followed him. Some persons were suspected of having committed the murder, but the requisite evidence to justify their arrest and hold them for trial was not obtained.

The full details of the murder are probably known to many persons…

Langdon served as the weigh boss at the Honey Brook Colliery. For his support of the war and the Lincoln administration, a local mineworker named John Kehoe was alleged to have shouted threats to kill Langdon in response to the speech and following with the incident with the American flag.

Langdon’s remarks and the resulting events happened at the Audenried Hotel, an establishment that opened by Augustus Williams in August 1861. The tavern and hotel was the first and only establishment of its time in the town during the Civil War years. It stood just north of the main part of the village on the road to Hazleton.

Not long afterwards, the crowd of men attacked Langdon on the streets of Audenried.

Kehoe was an Irish immigrant who had come to Pennsylvania as a boy in the 1840s and worked in the mines of eastern Schuylkill County and western Carbon County.

Were there other motivations behind Langdon’s killing? Langdon’s role as weigh boss put him in arguably the most hated figure by the men at the lowest rungs in the coal mining class system. He ultimately tabulated how much coal was produced by the workers and, thus, how much they were paid.

Kehoe, then working at Honey Brook Colliery, and Langdon allegedly had come to a disagreement about how much Kehoe had produced and this seeded the bad blood that later led to Langdon’s murder.

Kehoe later moved to Mahanoy City and left the mines to open a tavern and hotel. He later moved to Girardville and did the same; his descendants still own the “Hibernian House” there today.

However, all of this only came out during trials more than 15 years later with no physical evidence of Kehoe’s involvement in the death of Frank Langdon. Kehoe, who had by the 1870s become a prominent Democratic politician and leader within the Irish immigrant community, was convicted in the murder and Langdon’s death became credited as the first of the so-called “Molly Maguires” murders in the Coal Region between 1862 and the 1870s.

Controversy remains about Kehoe’s conviction and, later, his execution on December 18, 1878 in Pottsville, PA. He was posthumously pardoned by Governor Milton Shapp in 1979.

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Read more about the Molly Maguires and the Coal Region

Alexander Campbell | From the shores of Ireland to a gallows in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region

“Revolutionary Disloyalty” – A coal miners’ rebellion in Schuylkill County during the Civil War

“The hour of doom” – The Molly Maguire executions in Pottsville on June 21, 1877

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