There is disagreement as to exactly where Mary Harris was born; some sources say that she was born in County Cork, others say Limerick. And there is disagreement over the year. Some references on her life say that she came into the world in 1837; other say that she was born in 1830 and that her father took the family to America in 1835 to escape prosecution as an Irish Freedom Fighter.
She is supposed to have come of age in Toronto, Canada. Taught school in Michigan and then moved to Chicago to work as a dressmaker.
Some sense of certainty about her life begins in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1861. It was then that Mary met and married an Iron worker and union member named George E. Jones. If Mary was born in 1830, she waited until she was 31 to marry and then had four children...
In 1867 Yellow Fever took the lives of her husband and children. She moved back to Chicago and to dress making. But tragedy follow tragedy and Mary Jones lost everything again in 1871 in the Great Chicago Fire. At some point in the few years after that time, Mary Harris Jones ( or "Mother" Jones, as she came to be known) entered public life in the U.S. labor movement.
While Mother Jones never really lived in Appalachia and spent most of her career outside the regions, her work as a union organizer had perhaps its strongest effects on the coalfields of West Virginia (where she was sentenced to 20 year in jail for her work) and the steel mills of Pittsburgh.
"Pray for the dead, but fight like Hell for the living."
That slogan drew a picture of Mother Jones's life. The country was changing dramatically, with the farm economy being replaced by industry and big business replacing little ones.
Mother's Jones was present atthe Pittsburgh Railway Strike in 1877. And life in Appalachia's biggest city felt the power of her personality. It would be another 35 years, though, before Mother jones fought her biggest battles in the mountains.
In 1911, Jones return to the payroll of the United Mine Workers, as an organizer. She had left the UMWA in 1904 to help start the Social Dempcratic Party. But the new UMWA president, John P. White.
