March is Women's History Month! Many amazing women have made Louisville their home, but this year for Women’s History Month, the museum is focusing on women who made a big impact on Louisville, while living somewhere else. Check out this news item to learn about a female labor organizer who visited Louisville organizing strikes and working for better conditions, a female industrialist and humanitarian who owned mines in Louisville, and a Catholic saint who visited Louisville during her lifetime.

Mother Jones, whose birth name was Mary Harris, was born in Ireland in 1837. Driven out by the Irish Potato Famine, her family immigrated to North America in 1847. Her early life was marred by tragedy—she lost her husband and four children to yellow fever, and later her independent business in the Great Chicago Fire. Suffering these great losses, she turned her difficulties into activism, organizing for labor reform, and arguing that working men should be paid well enough for women to stay home and care for their children.

Her first appearance in Colorado was in Trinidad in late 1903 at 73 years old. She was investigating rumors of a strike, but since she was already a well-known figure, she disguised herself as a peddler to gain access to the homes of miners to hear their first-hand accounts of their conditions. She determined that the miners: “were in practical slavery to the company” with the conditions being worse than those she had previously witnessed in Pennsylvania. A strike was set to begin for coal miners across the State on November 9, 1903.

Within a week, the northern coal workers, including Louisville, had a deal on the table. They were offered a 15% wage increase and an 8-hour working day—on the condition of a similar deal made for the southern coal workers. However, a week later, the deal of a matching offer for the southern coal workers was removed. Mother Jones gathered coal miners from across the state to Louisville to consider the offer. 

Mother Jones feared that if the northern miners accepted, it would weaken the southern strike, so she recommended against the offer. Nonetheless, the president of the United Mine Workers (UMW), John Mitchell, attempted to endorse the settlement via telegram. Mother Jones delivered a speech that rallied the miners against his decision noting that a “general cannot give orders unless he is in the field; unless he is at the battle ground.” The miners voted to defy Mitchell and the UMW and stay on strike. Through oral histories conducted at the Museum, miners remember Mother Jones saying: ‘don’t run boys, they won’t shoot’ in reference to the strike breakers that had been brought in.

However, some of the northern miners were angered by the rejection and defiance of the UMW’s decision. On November 28^th, a motion was passed to reconsider their decision and the miners voted to accept the operators’ terms and returned to work on November 30^th. Mother Jones was reportedly furious – not at the miners for taking their deal but at the UMW for ending it prematurely as the strike in the south would continue for another year.

Mother Jones continued to support the plight of miners in the south, addressing striking UMW miners in Trinidad in March of 1904. Two days later, she was banished from Colorado and told never to return.

Although her work for the plight of the Colorado metal and coal miners continued, the Museum has seen no evidence she returned to Louisville. She continued her work for labor unions until she passed away in 1930 at which time she claimed to be 100 years of age.

Poem published by the Pueblo Labor Advocate in 1904 about Mother Jones being banished. 

Josephine Roche was a tireless advocate for the rights of workers and children. Born in Nebraska in 1886, her family relocated to Denver in 1908. At that time, Josephine had just graduated from Vassar and was enrolled in Columbia University where she earned a Masters in Social Work in 1910. 

It was likely this schooling which led her to reject the conservative, vehemently anti-union politics of her Industrialist father, John Roche, who was the President and largest stock-holder in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company. The Rocky Mountain Fuel Company owned many mines in the Northern Coal Fields of Colorado, including several in Louisville, like the Acme, the Hecla, Rex No. 1 and No. 2, and many more in the nearby towns of Lafayette, Superior, and Marshall.

As a child, she once asked her father to take her into one of the coal mines. When he told her it would be too dangerous, she reportedly replied, “Then how is it safe for the miners?” As a young woman, she became the first female police officer in Denver. As “Inspector of Amusements” her job was to inspect dance halls, pool halls, and the red-light district. Her tenure didn’t last long as the administration was openly hostile to her zealous enforcement efforts. Throughout this time, she continued to follow the activity in the coal fields, expressing compassion for the workers at the same time her father suppressed unions, kept wages low, and working conditions poor.

When John Roche passed away in 1927, Josephine saw an opportunity to make the changes she had often wanted to see in the Northern Coal Fields. After inheriting her father’s shares, she raised funds to become a majority stakeholder by March of 1928. She recognized the United Mine Workers union at the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, rehired strikers, raised pay, eliminated company scrip, instituted workmen’s compensation insurance and recruited workers to help sell union coal. Under Josephine Roche’s leadership, conditions for coalminers in Louisville certainly improved.

Roche would go on a failed run for governor of Colorado in 1934, but she did become the second woman ever appointed to a president’s cabinet when Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to run the National Public Health Service. The Rocky Mountain Fuel Company closed in 1944, but she continued to work for miners by helping run the United Mine Workers’ welfare and retirement fund. By the time of her death in 1976, her work had improved the lives of countless working families not just in Louisville, but across the state and even the country.

Mother Cabrini, born Frances Xavier Cabrini, was an Italian immigrant like many Louisville residents. After starting her religious order: The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she immigrated to the U.S. in 1887. She cared deeply about the plight of miners, and took a special interest in the Italian miners here in Colorado. In Denver, she founded a school and orphanage in 1903 that took in children of miners who had been killed in mining accidents.

She often came to Louisville seeking donations for her mission and to spend time with the Italian mining community. In Louisville, she stayed with Zia Porta and husband Antonio in their small house on the 900 block of La Farge Ave. During this time, many Louisville families gathered the meager supplies and money they could for Mother Cabrini’s mission. One source recalls Josephine Guenzi (Gwenzi) and her young daughter, Edith, walking door to door in Louisville with Mother Cabrini collecting money for orphans. Another source recalls Mother Cabrini being driven to the Domenico farm on Baseline to get eggs and produce to take back to Denver. Through the Museum’s oral history program, we learned that some of the miners remember her descending into the Monarch Mine to solicit donations directly from the miners! She could also be found, above ground, at the mining offices in service of her mission.

It is clear that Mother Cabrini understood the plight of the miner. She once wrote:

“In these very deep caves far from the light of the sun, so many thousands of miners spent their lives absorbed in intense labor, sometimes standing in boiling water coming from the mineral springs that are plentiful here. While the companies amass millions, most of the workers labor under severe hardships, furiously chipping away with pickaxes, searching for the vein that will mean their fortune and that of their children. Most often, after years and years of hard labor, their only recompense is a slim gain.”

Today, there is a shrine to Mother Cabrini located in nearby Golden, Colorado. Built in 1954, a 22 foot statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was erected on the site. A Stairway of Prayer was built leading up to the statue at the top of the Mount of the Sacred Heart. Louisville played a role in the construction of the shrine as well! Paschal (Pascal) DiPilla had a trucking business and took construction equipment to the site. The Knights of Columbus were also very involved in the building of the shrine, providing terra cotta benches along the stairway allowing pilgrims to rest, pray, and meditate.

Although Mother Cabrini passed on in 1917, her legacy remained important to Louisville residents. The St. Louis Church here in Louisville had a guild named for her, and in 1956, The Louisville Times recorded no less than ten social outings to the Mother Cabrini Shrine! In 1966, an article about the Garden Club in The Louisville Times highlights a lily brought in by Mrs. Sirokman which was purportedly planted by Mother Cabrini herself.

In 2020, Governor Jared Polis established Cabrini Day, October 9, which created the first paid state holiday in the nation recognizing a woman.

A painting of Mother Cabrini hangs in the Tomeo House at the Louisville Historical Museum, a recognition of her importance to the many Catholic Italian mining families in Louisville and the surrounding areas.