Hi Mauve and others: Thomas Border was more than likely a coal miner while he was in Pennsylvania, otherwise he wouldn't have been tried in what you call the The Molly Maguire Riots. Thomas Border worked in what's known as the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. Anthracite is hard coal. It burns longer than and has fewer impurities than soft coal. Most anthracite coal in the U.S. is found in central and northeastern Pennsylvania. Many of the anthracite mining companies were owned by railroads, which used the coal for their steam locomotives and sold it for heating businesses and homes. There wasn't really a coal rush in Pennsylvania. It was simply industrial development creating demand for coal and coal miners.
The Molly Maguires were a secret labor organization in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal area. You can read about them at Wikipedia, here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_MaguiresSean Connery played a Molly Maguire in the movie The Molly Maguires, which is based on a true incident--a murder and trial in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania in the 1870s.
Here's a link to a book on the Molly Maguires that was published in 1877. Thomas Border is mentioned once.
http://www.archive.org/stream/mollymaguiresori00deweuoft/mollymaguiresori00deweuoft_djvu.txtThomas Border might have been a marked man after he was acquitted of murder, and that probably prompted him to return to England. As Shakespeare's Falstaff is fleeing the battlefield, he says, "Discretion is the better of valor."
Which prompts the question: Do you know the cause of death for Thomas Border? His death so soon after being acquitted of murder makes me suspicious, though he might have died of natural causes or perhaps in a mine accident, if he worked again as a miner in England. But those also make me suspicious.
Regards,
John
