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Myer Strouse (1825–1878)

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Pottsville’s Civil War–era congressman — a Bavarian-born lawyer, newspaper editor, and defense counsel in the Molly Maguire trials at Bloomsburg. Markers: verified · confirmed · corrects a common error · open/caution.

Myer Strouse was a Pottsville lawyer and two-term Democratic U.S. Representative (1863–1867) who, in the era of the Molly Maguire prosecutions, served on the defenses of accused Molly Maguires in the Bloomsburg Rea-murder trials and was among the Schuylkill-bar attorneys the court called on to defend prisoners who could no longer pay. The congressional Biographical Directory remembers him as “attorney and solicitor for the Molly Maguires, in 1876 and 1877”; the documented shape of that service is set out below.

From Oberstreu to Pottsville

Strouse was born on December 16, 1825, into a Jewish family in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and was brought to Pottsville by his father in 1832, at about six. The birth date is unanimous across the sources; the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia records his original name as Meyer Strauss.

The village of his birth is best identified as Oberstreu, in Lower Franconia. The congressional Biographical Directory and the reference works downstream of it print the birthplace as “Oberstrau, Bavaria,” but no Bavarian town of that name exists. Oberstreu does — and three independent threads point to it: it held a Jewish community that peaked at about 80 residents in 1832, the very year the Strouse family emigrated, with a synagogue and a Hebrew teacher; the Strauß surname appears on the town’s 1817 Bavarian matriculation roll (one head of household is listed as “Alexander Seeligmann Strauß”); and the more careful genealogical records give Oberstreu rather than “Oberstrau.” A primary birth or emigration record would settle it for good, and none has yet surfaced.

Newspaperman, then lawyer

Before the law, Strouse was a newspaperman. In 1848 he founded and edited the North American Farmer, an agricultural weekly published in Philadelphia, and ran it until about 1852, when he gave up the editorship to study law. He was admitted to the Schuylkill County bar on March 6, 1855 — the date fixed by the 1893 Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Schuylkill County (p. 42) — and practiced in Pottsville from then until his death.

Two terms in Congress

Strouse was elected as a Democrat to the 38th and 39th Congresses, representing Pennsylvania’s 10th district, and served March 4, 1863 – March 3, 1867. He sat with the Democratic minority through the second half of the Civil War and the opening of Reconstruction. His committee assignments, recorded by the American Jewish Year Book, were Roads and Canals in the 38th Congress and, in the 39th, the Territories, Expenditures in the Interior Department, and Mines and Mining — the last a fitting post for a member from the anthracite country. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1866, leaving Congress after two terms and resuming his law practice. No floor speeches or recorded votes have been run down for this page, so his precise stance on the war and Reconstruction is left open rather than guessed.

The Pottsville bar

Strouse practiced law in Pottsville for twenty-three years, from his 1855 admission to his death, and the public record marks him as a senior member of the Schuylkill bar: the county twice sent him to Congress, and the court called on him in the capital cases of the Molly Maguire prosecutions.

Counsel for the Molly Maguires

Strouse’s service in the Molly Maguire cases ran through Bloomsburg, where the 1868 murder of mine superintendent Alexander Rea was tried twice, nine years apart — and Strouse stood on the defense both times. In February 1869 he served on the Bloomsburg defense of Patrick Donahue, alongside John Ryon, John G. Freeze, and S. P. Wolverton (Pinkerton, 1877, p. 79). In January 1877, when Patrick Hester — an Ancient Order of Hibernians “county delegate,” prosecuted as a Molly Maguire — came to trial for the same murder, the Carbon Advocate named the same circle for the defense, Strouse again among them: “Hon. John Ryon, of Pottsville; Hon. J. G. Freeze, of Bloomsburg; Hon. S. P. Wolverton, of Sunbury; Hon. Myer Strouse, of Pottsville, and Captain C. B. Brockway.”

At home in Schuylkill County the court turned to him as well: with Samuel A. Garrett and W. J. Whitehouse, he was one of the three Schuylkill-bar attorneys “called upon in important cases by the court” to defend accused men who could no longer pay for counsel (F. P. Dewees, 1877, p. 326).

The shape of his service is fixed by the appellate record. In Hester v. Commonwealth, 85 Pa. 139 (1878), the counsel who carried the appeal were Freeze, Brockway & Elwell, Wolverton, and Ryon — Strouse’s part was that of the retained counselor behind the courtroom team, which is precisely the congressional Biographical Directory’s phrase for him: “attorney and solicitor for the Molly Maguires, in 1876 and 1877,” a solicitor being a retained representative who need not appear in court. He did not live to see the matter close: Strouse died about six weeks before Hester was hanged on March 25, 1878, while the case was still on appeal.

Death and burial

Strouse died at his Pottsville home on Monday, February 11, 1878, of liver disease, aged 52. The cause is stated in the contemporary Lebanon Daily News of February 13, 1878 — “the Hon. Myer Strouse, who died on Monday at his home in Pottsville, of liver complaint” — and the Pottsville wire dispatch in the Washington Post of February 12 fixes the hour, “at 4 o’clock this afternoon.” His home was 224 North Second Street, remembered in print eight years later as “formerly the Strouse residence”; the house itself is documented separately. He was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, Pottsville. The contemporary obituaries recount the full arc his own generation knew: the 1832 immigration, the North American Farmer, the law, and both congressional terms.

Family

The firm points in Strouse’s family record are the census-backed ones. His wife was Catharine Strouse, listed with him in the 1860 Pottsville census (genealogies give her maiden name as Schneider). Two of their children are corroborated by that census — a son, Myer Strouse Jr., and a daughter, Sarah (“Sally”). User-contributed family trees list further children and other detail, but only the census-backed names are treated as firm here.

Sources

Frequently asked

Was Myer Strouse the Molly Maguires' lawyer?
Yes — in the Bloomsburg Rea-murder cases. He served on the defense of Patrick Donahue in 1869 and again on the defense of Patrick Hester, an accused Molly Maguire 'county delegate,' whose counsel the Carbon Advocate named in January 1877: Ryon, Freeze, Wolverton, Strouse, and Brockway. At home, the Schuylkill County court also called on him — with Samuel A. Garrett and W. J. Whitehouse — to defend accused men who could no longer pay for counsel. The courtroom argument at Hester's trial and appeal was carried by Ryon, Wolverton, Freeze, Brockway, and Elwell; Strouse's part was that of retained counsel behind the trial team — the sense of the congressional Biographical Directory's phrase, 'attorney and solicitor for the Molly Maguires, in 1876 and 1877.'
Where was Myer Strouse born — Oberstrau or Oberstreu?
The congressional Biographical Directory and the works that follow it print 'Oberstrau, Bavaria', but no Bavarian town of that name exists. The birthplace is best identified as Oberstreu, a village in Lower Franconia that held a Jewish community peaking at about 80 residents in 1832 — the year the family emigrated — and where the Strauß surname (Anglicized to Strouse) is recorded as early as 1817. A primary birth or emigration record has not yet been found to make it certain.
What Pennsylvania district did Myer Strouse represent in Congress?
The 10th. He was elected as a Democrat to the 38th and 39th Congresses and served from March 4, 1863, to March 3, 1867. The '38th and 39th' refer to those Congresses, not to a district number — a point sometimes mistaken for a nonexistent '38th district.'
Where is Myer Strouse buried?
In the Odd Fellows Cemetery, Pottsville. He died at his home at 224 North Second Street on February 11, 1878.