A Mother Jones Timeline
1837 Mary Harris is born in Cork, Ireland (Mother Jones used May 1, 1830 as her birthdate, but records reveal the later date)
1857 She attends teachers college in Canada
1859 Mary Harris moves to Chicago to become a dressmaker
1860 Mary Harris leaves Chicago, moves to Memphis, Tennessee
1861 Mary Harris marries George Jones, skilled laborer and activist
1867 In Memphis, George and all four of Mary’s children die in the Yellow Fever epidemic
1871 The Great Chicago fire destroys Mary Harris Jones dressmaking business
1880s Mary Harris Jones joins the Knights of Labor
1890’s Mary Harris Jones transforms herself into Mother Jones, joins UMWA, begins to organize coal miners
1894 Mary Jones witnesses the brutal working conditions for children working in clothing mills and she solicited help for Coxey’s Army of unemployed as they traveled from Kansas City to Washington, D.C.
1897 Mary Jones works in Pittsburgh to support workers during the nationwide coal strike
1899 Mary Jones organizes miners’ wives into “mop and broom” brigades to halt strikebreakers
1900 The United Mine Workers of America president John Mitchell hires Mary Harris Jones. She organizes miners in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
1901 Mary Jones calls herself Mother Jones for the first time in a series of articles written in the International Socialist Review.
1902 Mother Jones organizes for UMW in West Virginia and is sent to jail.
1903 Mother Jones leads the March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to President Roosevelt’s home on Long Island. She travels to the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois, and attends the Miners Day memorial service for the miners killed at the battle of Virden, Illinois in 1898.
1905 Mother Jones travels to Michigan Upper Peninsula to organize copper miners.
1907 Mother Jones supports Mexicans fighting against the Diaz regime. Organizes for Western Federation of Miners in Arizona
1908 Mother Jones campaigns for Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Party.
1909 Mother Jones supports striking shirtwaist workers in Philadelphia and New York.
1910 Mother Jones joins organizers to aid bottle washers in the Milwaukee breweries.
1912 Mother Jones supports striking railroad workers and copper miners in Butte, Montana and returns to West Virginia to aid miners in the Paint and Cabin Creek strikes.
1913 Mother Jones spends 85 days in jail in West Virginia for her organizing in the coal strike. She goes on to organize and speak in Michigan and Colorado. Thousands attend her speeches and rallies. She lobbies Congress to intervene in the Colorado strike and travels the country raising funds for striking families.
1914 Mother Jones is jailed during the coal mining strike in Colorado
1915 Mother Jones supports garment workers in New York and Chicago
1917 Mother Jones goes to Bloomington, Illinois to support workers in the streetcar strike and to New York for the streetcar strike there.
1919 Mother Jones speaks to striking steelworkers, cigar makers ,and shoemakers across the country.
1920 Mother Jones health begins to fail, yet she speaks to coal miners.
1923 Mother Jones lives in Chicago and begins writing her Autobiography. She attends the Virden remembrance celebration at Mt. Olive and requests burial at the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois.
1930 Mother Jones dies at age 93 at the home of friends in the Maryland countryside on November 30th. Mother Jones is buried at the Union Miners Cemetery, after a funeral at Ascension Church attended by thousands. The service was broadcast on radio and covered widely in the press.
1936 Fifty thousand people attend the dedication of the Mother Jones monument at the Union Miners Cemetery.
References:
The Story of Mother Jones, Rachel A. Koestler-Grack, Chelsey House Publishers, Philadelphia, 2004 and
Mother Jones and the Union Miners Cemetery, Mt. Olive, Illinois, edited by Leslie F. Orear, Illinois Labor History Society, Chicago, 2002