00:01 - The widow of a famous

00:03 - athlete makes an extremely unusual pact

00:06 - with a small northeastern Pennsylvania town.

00:11 - Its most prominent resident comes up with a better way

00:15 - to transport the best coal in the world to market,

00:20 - and the town's old jail shows visitors

00:23 - why an infamous group of Irish coal miners

00:27 - went to the gallows.

00:30 - Pennsylvania's neighborhood visits

00:33 - Jim Thorpe.

00:37 - Next time you hear someone talking about Jim Thorpe.

00:41 - Keep in mind there's a chance they're not talking about

00:45 - arguably the greatest athlete in modern history.

00:49 - Jim Thorpe was from the second Fox tribe in Oklahoma.

00:54 - He ended up

00:54 - he went to the Carlisle Indian School out by Harrisburg in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

00:59 - He got involved in sports.

01:02 - There was a coach there on an athletic director, Pop Warner.

01:06 - He got involved in baseball originally,

01:10 - and then he started playing football

01:13 - and he became a fantastic running back kicker.

01:17 - They stole his shoes.

01:19 - No shoes. You can't compete.

01:21 - He found two in a trash.

01:23 - One fit. One was two sizes too big.

01:26 - He wore extra socks.

01:28 - He did the decathlon and he won by over 700 points.

01:33 - And he did the pentathlon.

01:34 - And he had three times as many points as the second place guy.

01:38 - He had to throw the javelin

01:40 - first, second and third were only a matter of a few feet apart.

01:44 - He came in third in that event.

01:46 - After the event was over,

01:47 - the official for that event came over and tapped him on his shoulder.

01:50 - Hey, Jim, you know you were allowed to run up to the line to throw that thing.

01:53 - He did it standing still.

01:56 - Football.

01:57 - He's the only guy to ever punt a football

02:00 - run down and catch it and score a touchdown.

02:02 - And he did it twice.

02:05 - He was fantastic at ice hockey.

02:07 - He had a 200 average in bowling, and he won a lot of awards

02:10 - because he was a fantastic ballroom dancer.

02:15 - Fun fact.

02:17 - Native American gold medalist and football star Jim

02:21 - Thorpe never set foot in the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

02:27 - You see, in 1954, the town of Mark chunk

02:31 - wanted to change its name with the hope of boosting tourism.

02:36 - At the same time, the widow of Jim Thorpe

02:40 - needed a final resting place for her recently deceased famous husband.

02:46 - An arrangement was made to satisfy

02:49 - both parties.

02:52 - When he passed away, he died in California of a heart attack.

02:56 - His widow took him back to Oklahoma, where he was born,

03:00 - because there was a governor there who put money aside for a proper burial

03:03 - for this great athlete.

03:05 - But when she got there,

03:06 - they had a new governor, and they wouldn't give her to the money.

03:10 - So what happened was she put him in a temporary grave

03:14 - in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hoping somebody would come along and help her out.

03:19 - So that was late

03:20 - 1953, early 1954.

03:24 - There was an old newspaper man here, Joe Boyle.

03:27 - He was trying to revitalize this area.

03:29 - Men were coming out of wars.

03:31 - There were no jobs to be had.

03:33 - People were, moving out.

03:35 - Towns were becoming ghost towns.

03:38 - So for some unknown reason, he started a nickel a week program.

03:42 - Donate a nickel a week?

03:44 - Well, he raised $35,000 in nickels in no time.

03:48 - And that made the national news.

03:51 - Jim Thorpe's widow saw this,

03:53 - and she thought, wow, this is a guy that can get stuff done.

03:56 - Maybe I should call him.

03:58 - And she did.

03:59 - But little did she know, Joe Boyle was a huge Jim Thorpe fan

04:04 - and he invited her out here.

04:06 - They had meetings and eventually they voted 3 to 1 to change the name of the town.

04:12 - And the money was used

04:14 - to have his his body shipped out here, boxed up.

04:17 - And of course, now we have all this tourism.

04:20 - It took a long time.

04:21 - It took maybe 30 years before it actually took effect,

04:25 - because you still had wars going on with Vietnam and,

04:28 - you know, the Korean conflict and stuff like that.

04:31 - More than 60 years after his death,

04:34 - Jim Thorpe was still able to make news.

04:38 - A federal appeals judge ruled on a plan

04:41 - that could have moved the Olympians remains.

04:45 - Well, for years, they've been fighting to get his body back to the reservation

04:49 - because they thought he should have been buried on native soil.

04:53 - But when he did get shipped out here, they did get soil from there.

04:57 - So they covered themselves on that.

04:59 - But they still wanted his remains back there.

05:02 - Well, a couple of years ago, somebody found a document that his widow wrote.

05:08 - She said, as long as nobody changes the name of this town from Jim Thorpe

05:12 - to anything else, his body stays here and nobody can take it out.

05:18 - And underneath, she wrote, including me.

05:21 - Another word.

05:22 - She couldn't change your mind and say, hey, I want to take it back

05:25 - to the reservation.

05:27 - The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania got a hold of this document.

05:30 - They said it's over. It's done.

05:32 - This is a binding document.

05:34 - He stay in.

05:38 - This was the home of Jim Thorpe's most prominent citizen.

05:42 - Asset packer.

05:44 - In 1851, he took a major

05:47 - gamble with his financial future at stake.

05:50 - He figured that the primary mode of transportation at the time that used

05:55 - a system of canals had to go.

05:59 - So he bought almost all of the controlling stock

06:02 - in an unfinished railroad.

06:06 - He said Packer came here from Connecticut.

06:09 - He worked.

06:10 - He was a carpenter.

06:11 - Now, that is not on my to do list.

06:13 - But he he walked here from Connecticut, started building

06:17 - canal boats, became an al canal boat captain.

06:20 - Saved money, bought land, brought the railroad through here.

06:25 - Was the founder of Lehigh University.

06:27 - And by the 1870s, he was the third richest man in the United States.

06:33 - Why were canals important?

06:34 - Back in Packer's day?

06:36 - We had to get the

06:37 - coal from the mine here in the War of 1812.

06:41 - The British, they weren't happy.

06:43 - They lost again.

06:45 - So they figured they could cripple this country.

06:47 - They put an embargo on coal.

06:49 - They stopped all the coal from coming in.

06:51 - But that's bituminous coal.

06:54 - That's the soft coal you'll find everywhere

06:55 - throughout the United States west of here.

06:58 - They didn't realize that we had the best coal in the world

07:02 - here in northeast Pennsylvania.

07:03 - It's anthracite.

07:05 - When they first discovered coal in 1791,

07:08 - there really is no way to transport it other than a horse in a carriage.

07:12 - That's a lot.

07:13 - When you're going to major metropolitan areas like Philadelphia from here,

07:17 - this is the seat of the coal.

07:19 - This is where the coal carbon region is in Pennsylvania.

07:23 - It's anthracite coal. It's the hardest coal.

07:26 - It's the best burning coal.

07:28 - What you can put on a railway and ship versus what you can put on 1

07:31 - or 2 canal boats and now shipped down and unload it and then transport it.

07:37 - If you take 5 or 6 railroad cars and put them on a train

07:40 - and transported from here to east,

07:42 - and you're going to get there in half the amount of time versus the canal,

07:46 - plus you're also going to get a bigger shipment

07:47 - when you get to eastern than you would by the canal.

07:51 - You're known as the Switzerland of America.

07:53 - Hundreds of

07:54 - thousands of people came here in 1888 to ride the Switchback Railway

07:58 - and to bask in the beauty of these mountains

08:00 - and the fresh streams and waters that flow through it.

08:03 - It was reminiscent of their homeland.

08:06 - We wanted to come here to get away from the big city

08:09 - with all the dirtiness and dysentery and,

08:12 - you know, the rats and the infestation of things

08:16 - that were going on in city limits at that time.

08:19 - He was a shipbuilder and, canal boat builder on the Lehigh Canal.

08:23 - And then he became a canal boat captain, and he built locks.

08:27 - And through those years, downtown

08:29 - building those things, helping contribute to this community.

08:32 - After he made his millions, he wanted everybody to know it.

08:38 - The Packer house sits

08:39 - high on a hill overlooking Jim Thorpe.

08:43 - It was Packer's daughter, Mary, who will the family house to the borough.

08:48 - So it could be a tribute to her father's accomplishments.

08:52 - Italian villa, Victorian mansion, four stories.

08:56 - There are three Liverpool stories.

08:59 - You have 18 rooms, 11,000ft².

09:02 - Every room has a fireplace, with the exception of the kitchens in the baths.

09:07 - When this home was constructed in 1861,

09:09 - it's constructed for a cost of $14,000.

09:13 - When they construct this home, they put things in it like push button

09:17 - lighting, hot and cold running water, flush toilets, personal communication

09:22 - devices, and the biggest one, air conditioning in 1861.

09:27 - This house has an operating air conditioning system.

09:30 - We don't get in our own homes till after 1950.

09:34 - The light in that room came from the Philadelphia Expos in 1876,

09:39 - and they won the number one home lighting the award that year.

09:43 - It is a hand hammered brass cashmere with blue satin globes.

09:47 - Like I said, it won the number one home lighting design in 1876.

09:51 - The wallpaper in the room is Japanese leather.

09:54 - It's actually ten karat gold stenciled relief paper.

09:59 - The wallpaper in that

10:00 - room has been in there for 164 years.

10:04 - I can't go anywhere today and have a contractor come to my home.

10:07 - I'm guessing that's hard or impossible to replace today.

10:09 - Very impossible.

10:10 - They've tried it in the 50s to match some of the things upstairs.

10:13 - That stuff suffered water damage, and they can't find a pattern

10:17 - in existence that matches what they took off the wall.

10:21 - That is their family entertainment room.

10:24 - When you want to entertain your guests, that's the place where you would do it.

10:27 - In that room is a chandelier

10:29 - that made a Hollywood debut in 1939 and a movie called Gone with the wind.

10:33 - That chandelier is six foot from top to bottom.

10:35 - There's over 850 Waterford crystals on it.

10:38 - It is nickel plated.

10:40 - This is the beautiful dining room.

10:42 - It is all hand-carved mahogany wood accented with ten karat gold wallpaper,

10:46 - which was done in preparation for his 50th wedding anniversary in 1878.

10:51 - January 23rd the stained glass windows

10:55 - and the gas lire in that room were purchased by his daughter, Mary

11:00 - Mary Hannah Packer in 1885, in preparation for her wedding.

11:04 - She gets married in that dining room.

11:06 - This is the lady sitting room after meals, gentlemen would stay in the dining room

11:10 - and discuss business and politics.

11:12 - Ladies would retire to the sitting room.

11:14 - Well, you could do a couple different things.

11:15 - Once you're in there.

11:16 - Maybe you read a book, take a nap, sit down by the fireplace,

11:20 - maybe listen to her phonograph.

11:21 - That is a 1902 Victor Victrola, which came complete with 100

11:26 - original albums which are still there in their original cases.

11:29 - It does still play.

11:31 - This is in the main hallway upstairs, outside of the bedrooms,

11:34 - and that is a George Wilkie Collins orchestral model built in Germany

11:39 - in 1905, sold the Mary through George Baker

11:42 - and coming out of Geneva, Switzerland, for $500.

11:45 - Mary got the orchestral both trunks which contain the original wire scrolls

11:50 - which play on it.

11:51 - There are only six of those left in the world

11:53 - for scattered Around the Globe tour here in the United States.

11:57 - One is in the Smithsonian Institute, and that one doesn't play.

12:00 - Ours does.

12:05 - Old prisons often become tourist attractions

12:08 - thanks to their most infamous residence

12:12 - here at the Old Jail Museum

12:14 - in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania,

12:17 - a secret society called the Molly Maguires

12:20 - inspires or in visitors to this day.

12:25 - Back in 1877, this group of seven

12:28 - Irish coal miners was found guilty of murder.

12:33 - They proclaimed their innocence, but

12:35 - all seven went to the gallows and were hanged.

12:39 - Within these walls.

12:42 - So the mind Maguires, a group of Irish coal miners

12:45 - who were fighting for their rights back in the 1800s.

12:48 - They originally got their name from a woman over in Ireland

12:51 - during the early 1700s.

12:52 - Her name was Molly Maguire.

12:54 - She caused some trouble to the English landowners in Northern Ireland.

12:59 - She started to murder some of them.

13:00 - And therefore, when the Irish came here to America,

13:03 - they were given the name The Sons of Molly.

13:06 - Molly Dwyer.

13:07 - And that's where the name the mind was came from.

13:10 - Well, they were fighting for their rights.

13:11 - They were treated very, very poorly in the coal mines.

13:13 - They were paid very, very little.

13:15 - The conditions were terrible.

13:16 - So they were trying to achieve

13:18 - better wages as well as better working conditions.

13:21 - They tried to go on a few strikes that didn't work.

13:24 - And then once the strikes didn't work, some turned to violence.

13:27 - They were all, accused of and all convicted of murder.

13:32 - Many people believe that wasn't the case.

13:33 - Many people believe they were hanged as an example,

13:36 - as they were trying to start the first union

13:37 - and the coal bosses didn't like that too much.

13:40 - Not much evidence.

13:41 - Besides, he said she said, and I wouldn't even call it a trial.

13:45 - On the jury, there is no Irish, no women, no

13:47 - Catholic, no coal miners, barely anybody who spoke any English.

13:51 - And all 20 of the men

13:52 - who were accused of murder were found guilty of murder and hanged.

13:56 - Or June 21st, 1877, considered the day of the ropes.

14:00 - John Donohue,

14:01 - Michael Doyle, Edward Kelly and Alexander Campbell were hanged those days.

14:05 - All four of them claimed innocence, and a few have been exonerated

14:08 - over the past few years.

14:10 - But they all were hanged with an audience of about 200 or 300 people

14:14 - in our cellblock.

14:15 - They all were

14:16 - all of the hangings were public, and you could buy tickets to go in

14:19 - and watch those, as back then it was considered a form of entertainment.

14:23 - If I had to guess the research that I've done personally, out of the 20

14:27 - men hanged total of the mine Maguires, maybe five were actually murderers.

14:31 - The other ones were the ones fighting for better rights.

14:33 - They were the ones trying to start the first union.

14:36 - They were the ones really, really trying to make change.

14:39 - So it was a tragedy that the coal companies hang them for it.

14:43 - When a prisoner was spared the death penalty here,

14:47 - he could still face a curiously passive

14:50 - form of abuse at the hands of his jailers.

14:54 - We do have a dungeon. It's nothing more than a box.

14:56 - About eight by 13ft.

14:58 - No toilets.

14:59 - You were given a bucket.

15:00 - And in the early days when the jail was built, there was doors

15:04 - locked in, free to roam around your cell in the darkness.

15:06 - But after about World War Two, we believe those doors were taken off for

15:10 - scrap metal. And then you were shackled by our ankles.

15:13 - The shackles would reach just about to the front of the cell.

15:16 - But no farther.

15:17 - So you're down there

15:18 - with just your thoughts and your bucket for two days to two weeks.

15:22 - Was the term down in the dungeon and in the pitch black?

15:25 - I couldn't even imagine.

15:26 - I don't like being down there for more than 20 minutes by myself.

15:29 - But I would imagine the two days probably felt like two years.

15:33 - Sound doesn't travel very well in the jail,

15:35 - so you probably weren't hearing any noise from upstairs at all either.

15:39 - Visitors to the old jail in Jim Thorpe

15:43 - have sort of a morbid fascination with the place.

15:47 - That state of mind makes a good escape story

15:50 - that much more gratifying.

15:54 - Yeah, there's 33 escapes,

15:56 - all which have been captured and brought back.

15:59 - But there is one in particular

16:02 - that, we tell here on the tour.

16:05 - It was about a man who was sentenced for about 180 days

16:08 - for not paying some kind of parking fines.

16:10 - He thought it was too long to stay, and he wanted to go home.

16:13 - So he went on a very severe diet to the point of starvation for about

16:17 - three months.

16:18 - During those few months, he was also shaving soaps,

16:20 - butters, shampoo and one day, when he felt slim enough, he stripped down,

16:25 - lathered himself up and pushed a window of about

16:28 - like 4 to 5in tall,

16:31 - about two feet long, but 4 to 5in tall.

16:34 - And he went feet first, hoping the weight of his body would pull his head out.

16:37 - And he did get out with two of his fellow cellmates, pushing on his head.

16:42 - And, we do think he actually had a small chance to get away

16:45 - if it wasn't for a small detail.

16:47 - And that is, he did it in the middle of the day.

16:49 - 1230 in the afternoon.

16:52 - Jim Thorpe is a very, very residential area.

16:54 - There are many houses that surround the jail that all predate the jail.

16:58 - And there's two women sitting on the outside of their house on the porch,

17:01 - and they saw the naked, soapy man scaling down the side of the building.

17:05 - They called the warden, but he kind of thought it was a prank call.

17:08 - He didn't really believe them.

17:09 - He, eventually hung up, got a phone call, hung up, and eventually, after 3 or

17:14 - 4 phone calls, he did decide to head count and there was one missing.

17:18 - They did find him about 2 to 3 hours later in his own home,

17:21 - under his own bed, and he did get brought back and sentenced

17:24 - to an extra nine months for escaping jail.

17:28 - You walk up the street and, as you make a turn on Broadway,

17:31 - you see this giant, enormous tower standing over the rest of the town.

17:35 - If you don't already know the jails here,

17:36 - you find a kind of intriguing why this jail is in the middle of town.

17:41 - But I think many people like to see old, old buildings in general such as these.

17:45 - A mansion and all that stuff downtown.

17:47 - But when you get to see the jail, it it puts it in perspective

17:50 - how people used to live, how people used to be treated and the differences today.

17:54 - And I think, I think it's important for kids,

17:57 - especially in today's age, to see that it wasn't always like it is today.

18:02 - People had to go through very hard times.

18:04 - Not even the jail aspect.

18:05 - I think it's very important for the kids to know the history of the mine Maguires.

18:10 - As anybody who's five years old, I'll be working down in the coal mines,

18:14 - during that time, they'd be working as breaker boys.

18:17 - Not going to school.

18:18 - They'd be working 12, 13 hours a day, making $0.50 a day.

18:22 - Given the dark nature of what happened here.

18:26 - Executions, solitary confinement in shackles,

18:31 - just misery in general.

18:33 - Some visitors are surprised to learn that

18:36 - this former prison is now a family affair.

18:40 - So in 1995, the county was getting rid of it.

18:44 - They put it up.

18:45 - Forbid, if no one wanted, they were going to tear it down.

18:47 - They weren't going to buy it.

18:48 - And I, my grandfather, who already had a few,

18:51 - older buildings downtown, he liked older buildings, like restoring them.

18:55 - He saw that they were possibly can tear this down.

18:57 - And he figured you place a bid just to try and protect it.

19:00 - Excuse me?

19:01 - That way, at least.

19:02 - At worst, it wouldn't get torn down.

19:04 - He would have a chance to find somewhere else to buy it.

19:06 - He never had any intention on making it a museum.

19:10 - But he placed a bid.

19:11 - It turns out he was the only one that actually placed a bid.

19:14 - And he got the building by default.

19:16 - Most people will ask about the family

19:17 - once I tell them that as a family business, people, I find that

19:21 - many people believe or find it crazy that the family runs a jail.

19:24 - Like this. PostScript.

19:27 - With regard to the fate of the infamous

19:30 - Molly Maguires before climbing the stairs to the gallows

19:34 - here, one of the doomed Irish coal miners

19:38 - made a solemn promise.

19:41 - But Thomas Fisher, before he was hanged, put his hand on the floor of his cell,

19:45 - rubbing on the dirty floor and then slapping it on the wall.

19:48 - He said that the handprint would remain there for eternity.

19:51 - Shame the county who's hanging an innocent man, the guard and the warden

19:55 - who was walking past the cell at the time, kind of laughed and they walked away.

20:00 - Thomas Fisher was hanged with about 500 people in attendance at the jail.

20:05 - After he was hanged,

20:06 - they went in, wash the hamper off, paint it over, plaster it over every time.

20:11 - Somehow the handprint always came back

20:13 - and it's still on our wall to see in cell 17 today.