“It’s a Long Way from Tipperary: Early Irish Settlers and Leaders in

Hancock.” 

William H. Mulligan, Jr.Department of HistoryMurray State University

Murray, Kentucky

Paper prepared for the City of Hancock Sesquicentennial

May 21, 2013Hancock, MI

“It’s a Long Way from Tipperary: Early Irish Settlers and Leaders in Hancock.” 

It is a real pleasure to be here and an honor to be

part of the Hancock sesquicentennial celebration. I

want to thank the committee for including my essay in

the commemorative book and inviting me to give this

lecture. I'd also like to commend them for the high

1

quality of both the content and presentation of the

book.1

In 1890 citizens of copper country held an Old

Settlers’ Ball to honor their pioneers, those who had

settled the area the 1840s and early 1850s when the

area was still largely wilderness and out of touch with

the outside world for much of the year.2 Irish people

and Irish names figured prominently in the celebration.

Most were, of course, by definition elderly. It is

impossible to know what they thought or felt.

1 Laura Mahon and John S. Haeussler, eds., Hidden Gems and Towering Tales: A Hancock, Michigan Anthology Hancock: City of Hancock, 2013. 2 Portage Lake Mining Gazette, April 17, 1890. There had been a similar event in 1874at the Phoenix Hotel in Eagle River.

2

Certainly, a sense of pride because the copper country

was a modern, generally prosperous region as opposed to

the wilderness they first they first encountered. In

Hancock, especially, they had played a significant role

in the city and its growth as officeholders,

businessmen, attorneys, bankers, mine superintendents,

laborers, nearly every walk of life. They had

established their own church with the a parish school

and Saint Patrick’s Hall had been the site of many

important community events and entertainments. They

rightfully could be proud. Michael Finn, for example,

had served as clerk for Hancock Township, the village

3

and finally the city over many years. Less positive

was the movement of their children and grandchildren

out of the Copper Country in search of greater

opportunity. This exodus had been going on since the

1870s. It was part of the same process that had

brought them to the Copper Country--search for

opportunity, but it also represented a reduction in

opportunity. The Quincy Mining Company was not hiring

Irishmen as it once had nor was it promoting those

already had. Few young Irish were finding the

opportunities the earlier generation had

4

This was a remarkable change from the attitudes

they had faced thirty and forty years earlier.

Shortly after Edward Ryan, then a twenty-two year

old, Irish-born dry goods store clerk, was elected

sheriff of Houghton County in 1862, the Portage Lake Mining

Gazette pointedly expressed relief that its concerns he

would favor his fellow countrymen, rather than do his

job fairly and objectively, had not been realized.

While complimenting Sheriff Ryan in a back handed way

there is a clear undertone of anti-Irish sentiment.

Sheriff Ryan, we are happy to say has thus far

disappointed the many predictions we have heard

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made that when he came into office, the Irish would

be allowed to do as they pleased, -- rule the town

perhaps, -- but the prophets have all proved false

for the Sheriff and all his prominent friends are

laboring hard and earnestly to make their

countrymen keep the peace, -- and they have done

well, considering the provocation they have had to

act otherwise.3

Ryan’s election to the important position of county

sheriff highlights how relatively large the Irish

3 Portage Lake Mining Gazette, January 17, 1863.

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community was in Houghton County barely twenty years

after white European settlement in the Copper Country

had begun.

Large numbers of Irish men and women had found

their way to the far reaches of Lake Superior, a

difficult place to reach at the time. Unlike many other

communities of Irish immigrants at this time the Copper

Country Irish were not overwhelmingly unskilled

laborers, but many, if not most, were miners – highly

skilled workers in the copper mines. A significant

portion of these Irish miners came from the Beara

Peninsula in southwestern County Cork, having worked in

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what were collectively called the Berehaven Mines in

Allihies. Others were from the Knockmahon mines near

Bonmahon in County Waterford, and still others, like

Ryan and his two brothers, from a number of small

mining communities in County Tipperary.

For example, in the old Clifton Catholic cemetery,

now long abandoned and overgrown, near the site of the

pioneer Cliff Mine, there are several tombstones that

help establish this migration from the Beara Peninsula

to the Copper Country. Cornelius Harrington, and his

son, Daniel, are commemorated on a stone that now lies

on the ground, but which records his birthplace as

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Baerhaven [sic], Ireland. Cornelius died on June 30,

1872 at the age of 63. Some distance away lies the

toppled stone of Patrick Hanley who died December 187X

at the age of 53 and whose birthplace is given as

Barehaven [sic], Ireland. A third stone, on which the

name has long since eroded, also lists Barehaven [sic]

as the birthplace of the person whose final resting

place it once marked. Additional tombstones indicating

birth in the Beara Peninsula are found in the Irish

Hollow Cemetery near Rockland, the site of the Minesota

[sic] Mine, and the Hecla Cemetery in Laurium.

Tombstones in the Pine Grove Cemetery at Eagle Harbor,

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Irish Hollow, and Clifton refer to Kill Parish, the

site of the Knockmahon mines, or County Waterford

generally.4 In addition the genealogical research of

Riobard O’Dwyer has a number of references to emigrants

from the Beara going to Michigan.5 Comparisons of the

surviving employment records from the mines at

4 William H. Mulligan, Jr., “Irish Immigrants in the Early Keweenaw Mines: A Research Note.” The Superior Signal 15, no. 2 (May 2000). Mentions of specific places of origin in Ireland are rare in the newspapers, an exception was a brief notice regarding Patrick Dooling, who had come to the Quincy Mine from County Waterford around 1867. (Portage Lake Mining Gazette July 26, 1888). Unfortunately, the two oldest Catholic cemeteries in Hancock are no longer extant. The earliest cemetery was abandoned around 1863, the second in the 1960s when the Church of the Resurrection was erected over it. An interestingMA thesis has been completed on the earliest cemetery, Michael B. LaRonge, “Company Family, Company Coffin: The Role of Quincy Mining Company’s Paternalistic Practices at the Ingot Street Cemetery,” Michigan Technological University, 2000. The transcription of the latter is very hard to use because Irish place names are almost indecipherable as transcribed. The June and Richard Ross Collection (MS-008), Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections. 5 Riobard O’Dwyer, Who Were My Ancestors? Genealogy (Family Trees) of the Allihies (Copper Mines) Parish, County Cork, Ireland (privately printed, 1988), O’Dwyer, Who Were My Ancestors? Genealogy (Family Trees) of the Eyeries Parish, County Cork, Ireland (privately printed, 1976), O’Dwyer, Who Were My Ancestors? Genealogy (Family Trees) of the Castletownbere Parish, County Cork, Ireland (privately printed, 1989), and Who Were My Ancestors? Genealogy (Family Trees) of the Bere Island Parish, County Cork, Ireland (privately printed, 1989).

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Allihies, the Parish Applotment lists, and Griffith’s

valuation with U.S. census schedules from the 1850 and

1860 censuses and early Quincy Mining Company

employment records reveal a strong similarity in family

names. Timothy M. O’Neil has also demonstrated these

connections in an article in Eire-Ireland.6

Ireland’s mining history is not well known; in fact

for many years the standard school text books used in

Ireland asserted categorically that there were no

6 Some records of the Allihies mines survive in possession of the Puxley family at their estate in Wales. A microfilm is available at the Geological Survey of Ireland. Tithe Applotment Books, Barony of Bere; General Valuation of Rateable Property in Ireland, County of Cork, Barony of Bear [Griffith’s Valuation} (1852). U. S. Census of Population, Manuscript Schedules for Houghton County, 1850 and 1860.Contract Employee Records, 1854-1928, Quincy Mining Company Collection, (MS-001), Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country HistoricalCollections. Timothy M. O’Neil, “Miners in Migration: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Irish and Irish-American Copper Miners,’ in Kevin Kenny, ed., New Directions in Irish-American History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp.61-77.

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mineral resources of economic value in Ireland, except

peat. Yet, for much of the nineteenth century

investors, mostly British, pursued numerous mining,

mostly of copper, ventures in Ireland. Although most

failed quickly and dramatically, the tremendous success

of the mines at Allihies was constantly pointed to as

reason to try yet again.7 The other large-scale copper

mining areas in Ireland were the Knockmahon mines,

centered on Bonmahon in County Waterford and the Avoca

7

? The London-based Mining Journal, which began publication in 1837offers a running account of these efforts and the discussion among those in the industry about the prospects for copper mines in Ireland.

12

area in County Wicklow. Cormac O Grada sums up this

activity, succinctly and correctly,

Yet, all in all, Irish mines were at best

marginal propositions, worked only when the

market for the relevant metal was very buoyant,

as with copper in mid-century and iron ore a

few decades later. A great deal of money was

invested -- and lost – in mining activity. …

despite considerable expenditure of capital,

not much mineral wealth was found or

generated.8

8 Cormac O Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 320-1.

13

The person most responsible for initiating this

nineteenth-century boom in Irish mining was Col. Robert

Hall, an English military officer. While stationed in

Ireland, Hall commanded a regiment with a large

contingent of Cornishmen many of whom had worked as

miners in Cornwall. Through them he became aware of

surface signs of significant copper deposits at a

number of places, including Allihies. After he left the

British army Hall returned to Ireland in 1805 and began

developing mining properties and encouraging others to

invest in copper mining. Nearly every nineteenth-

14

century metal mining venture in Ireland has some

connection to Hall’s efforts.9

Among those Hall interested in mining was John

Lavallin Puxley, whose family had received grants of

land in the Beara Peninsula from the crown for its

military services in the very early eighteenth century.

The Puxleys great house, Dunboy, was erected near the

ruins of the abandoned castle of the O’Sullivan Bere

Sept, who had come to the Beara in 1192.10

9 See, Mr. And Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &, 3 vols., (London, 1845) and S. C. Hall, Retrospect of a Long Life from 1815 to 1883, 2 vols. (London, 1883). S.C. Hall was the son of Col. Hall. For a more recent account of Hall’s involvement in Irish mining see R. A. Williams, The Berehaven Copper Mines,(Northern Mine Research Society, 1991.)

10 Williams. Colman O Mahony, “Copper Mining at Allihies, Co. Cork,” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 92 (1987), pp. 71-84.

15

With additional land leased from the Earl of

Bantry, the Puxleys developed a series of mines at

Allihies beginning around 1812. Initially, they brought

a small group of miners from Cornwall. They built a

small village of slate-roofed, stone cottages for their

Cornish workers as well as a Methodist Chapel. Local

men and women also worked in the mines and in

processing the ore for shipment to Swansea, the great

copper smelting center. The Irish workers in the

Puxleys’ mines were paid much less than the Cornish,

even when Irish workers had attained the same jobs as

miners, and were not provided housing or food, as the

16

Cornish were.11 Irish miners from Allihies were

recruited by the Mining Company of Ireland when they

opened the Knockmahon mines.

In the 1840s the various Irish copper mines with

all British Isles copper mines faced several

challenges, the most significant of which was the

appearance of Chilean copper at the Swansea ticketings

in large quantities.12 While the impact was most severe

on the deeper mines in Cornwall, all Cornish and Irish

mines found it hard to compete with Chilean ore which

11 Williams. O Mahony. Des Cowman, “Life and Labour in Three Irish Mining Communities circa 1840,” Saothar 9 (1983), pp. 10-19.

12 Mining Journal, passim. Ronald Rees, King Copper: South Wales and the Copper Trade, 1584-1895 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000).

17

was much richer. There was also ore from Australia and

the United States market shrank rapidly as the Lake

Superior copper mines began meeting domestic demand for

copper and a tariff was instituted. The resulting

depression of prices exerted strong downward pressure

on the already low wages of the Irish miners and many

of the smaller, less productive Irish mines closed. In

addition, beginning in 1845 the potato crop, the main

source of food for the miners had the first of the

series of disastrous years that resulted in the Great

Hunger. Employment in all Irish mines declined steeply

after 1850. While the larger mines such as Allihies and

18

Knockmahon remained profitable for a time, conditions

that had been poor and hard became even worse. The

Allihies mines were private and filed few, if any,

public reports or notices. The MCI reports mentioned

in The Mining Journal refer to providing food for the

miners as an added cost and a drag on profits. Smaller

mines, especially in County Cork, failed. Emigration

from the mining areas in Ireland began in response to

these changing conditions.

The Michigan copper mines began to develop in the

middle 1840s with the opening of several mass mines;

19

most notably the Cliff Mine and the Minesota [sic]

Mine.13 The earliest mines were opened by adventurers,

but as the resource proved out investment capital for

the larger mining corporations, the Quincy Mining

Company and Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, came

overwhelmingly from Boston where the companies were

based.14

13 The best and most recent study of the U.S. copper industry is Charles K. Hyde, Copper for America: The United States Copper Industry from Colonial Times to the 1990s (Tucson; University of Arizona Press, 1998.) A good general history of the Copper Country is Arthur Thurner, Strangers and Sojourners: A History of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994). On the development of mining and community life in the region see, David J. Krause, The Making of a Mining District: Keweenaw Native Copper, 1500-1870 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), Larry D. Lankton, Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines (N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Lankton, Beyond Boundaries: Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840-1875 (N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 1997.)

14 William B. Gates, Jr., Michigan Copper and Boston Dollars: An Economic History of the Michigan Copper mining Industry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951).

20

The Michigan Copper Country was a very remote place

especially in the 1840s and 1850s. The railroad did

not provide a connection to the outside world until

1882. The lure of the mines and the wealth they offered

had brought people well beyond the line of settlement –

there was a lot of wilderness between the Copper

Country and the developed parts of Michigan and

Wisconsin. Wilderness without railroads or other roads

and which received hundreds of inches of snow during

long, cold winters. While the Great Lakes provided

access to civilization and markets, lake navigation in

the pre-1870 period closed generally in late October

21

and did not reopen until late April or even early May

some years. For long periods each year the Copper

Country was cut off from regular contact with the

outside world – the arrival of mail in the winter, an

infrequent event, was always mentioned in the press, as

was the opening and closing of navigation. Both events

were marked with community celebrations. Not only was

the Copper Country remote, there was a strong awareness

of its remoteness.

During this early period, from the mid-1840s, the

Irish did well. They brought needed skills to an

isolated region and appear to have been welcome.

22

Clifton and Rockland, the two earliest mining

communities, had a significant Irish presence.15 Michael

Finnegan and John C. and William Ryan were among the

earliest mine captains and superintendents. They opened

mines and oversaw their operation. The earliest

contract books of the Quincy Mining Company, located

near Hancock, reflect the significant involvement of

Irish miners in opening one of the world’s great copper

mines.16

15 This was especially clear during a controversy surrounding the burial of Rev. Aloysius Kopleiter who had served the Irish community in Rockland. See my“Irish Immigrants in Michigan’s Copper Country: Assimilation on a Northern Frontier,” New Hibernia Review 5, no. 4 (2001). 16 Quincy Mining Company Records. Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, MS-001.,

23

As the pioneer period passed, and the early 1860s

seem to be the time frame for the arrival of large-

scale, well-financed operations, friction developed

between the Irish miners and the now Boston-based

mining firms. In 1862 the mining companies raised

money to send recruiters to Sweden to recruit miners.

A fair number were recruited, but they were met–at the

time the large lake ships could not go directly to

Houghton or Hancock–by Union Army recruiters who had

been alerted to their arrival by the Irish. A large

number of the Swedes took the $400 bounty being offered

by the Army recruiter. The Quincy Mining Company’s

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annual report simply noted that the effort to recruit

Swedish miners had not worked out and would not be

repeated.

In the 1860s anti-Irish sentiment regularly appears

in the local press not only in opposition to the

election of Edward Ryan as sheriff, but in articles

reporting on criminal activity and violence. Irish are

named and identified as Irish lest here be any doubt.

“Dialect” is regularly used to mock the speech of the

Irish. Successful or “good” Irishmen are the

recipients of excessive and effusive praise as such and

many backhanded compliments. In 1865 when Father James

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Sweeney, one of the few Irish priests in the region,

cleared St. Patrick’s Hall in Hancock with a horsewhip

to end a St. Patrick’s Day dance held during Lent, the

Mining Gazette used the occasion to bring a wide array of

anti-Irish and anti-Catholic ideas forward.17

The Irish community in the Copper Country developed

a wide range of institutions rapidly. The St. Patrick

Benevolent Society, owners of St. Patrick’s Hall, were

established by 1860. In 1863 the AOH established its

first division in Michigan in Hancock. There were

societies for men and women attached to the parish 17 Mulligan, “Irish Immigrants in Michigan’s Copper Country: Assimilation on aNorthern Frontier.”

26

church. The Portage Lake Mining Gazette and other area

newspapers are full of stories about Irish

organizations, their balls, lectures and fund raisers

for various Irish causes throughout the 1860s, 1870s,

and 1880s. There was even a hurling match at a picnic

excursion in the 1890s, suggesting the community was in

touch with what was happening in Ireland since the GAA

had begun reviving the sport only a few years earlier.

These activities became more varied and more frequent

over time. The anti-Irish tone of the Mining Gazette

softened somewhat in the 1870s with a new editor. By

the 1880s there is a marked change in attitude toward

27

the Irish in the paper, reflective of their role as

leaders in the community. The activities of Edward

Ryan, the former sheriff by then a successful merchant

and banker–known as the Merchant Prince of the Copper

Country, and a small group of other Irish

professionals–lawyers, physicians, insurance agents,

and government officials were frequently reported. The

Copper Country Irish were, it would appear, a vibrant

and active community, but only on the surface.18

Interestingly few of the Irish elite in the 1880s were

mine captains or superintendents and those who were

18 “‘The Merchant Prince’ of the Copper Country: One Immigrant’s American Success Story,” Tipperary Historical Journal, forthcoming.

28

were survivors from the earliest period. William Ryan,

for example, had moved to Iowa; John C. ran a mine

owned by his brother Edward, the Merchant Prince.

By the 1880s, however, the Irish community had

already begun to decline in numbers. Few Irish were

becoming mine captains or superintendents, as

mentioned. Those positions went to Cornishmen. The

sons and brothers of the Irish elite increasingly

sought their fortunes elsewhere. John C. Ryan’s son,

William, went to Denver where he was joined by his

brother John D. when their father died in 1890.

Physician James Scallon’s brother, William, took his

29

law practice to Butte, Montana after a few years in the

Copper Country.

James Scallon had a more interesting pre-Copper

Country life than most. I was going to talk about it

but since it is well covered in the anniversary book

I’ll leave it for you to read.

None of the Merchant Prince’s Notre Dame-educated

sons pursued their careers in the Copper Country. His

brother-in-law, John Cuddihy (another of the pioneer

generation) ran is business interests after his death

although the dry good stores that were the foundation

of his success were closed.

30

More than a dozen families joined General O’Neill’s

farming community in Holt County, Nebraska in 1873.

They were mostly Sheehans from Hancock. Another

significant group went to Lancaster County, Nebraska

and established a farming community, Sullvan’s Corners,

on land purchased from the Burlington & Missouri River

Railroad Company. Others went to other mining

communities in the Upper Peninsula, especially on the

Gogebic Range where Edward Ryan and other Copper

Country Irish businessmen had mining properties. Many

headed further west to Leadville, Colorado and, for the

31

largest number, Butte, Montana.19 The “social columns”

of the Copper Country newspapers regularly reported on

people moving west or returning from Butte, Leadville,

or another western mining town to bury a parent and

take the survivor back to live with them. Others

returned from the west to be buried with their parents.

Wages were higher in Butte and the mining company

there, the Anaconda, was headed by Marcus Daly, an

Irishman, who won the battle of the Copper Kings. In

1900 Daly was succeed by John D. Ryan, a native of the

19 Information on Nebraska supplied by Holt County Historical Society and Teresa Sullivan. Gogebic information supplied by several members of Beara-L and from Portage Lake Mining Gazette. David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.)

32

Copper Country, whose father had been a captain at the

Quincy mine early on and whose uncle was Edward Ryan,

the Merchant Prince. The local papers regularly

referred to the higher wages in Butte in many articles,

or short notices, on residents moving west or

returning.20 John D. Ryan also returned to visit the

Copper Country frequently and, as the saying goes,

never forgot where he came from.

A more important cause for the movement of Irish

out of the Copper Country is confirmed by a letter from

Thomas F. Mason, president of the Quincy Mining

20 For example see Portage Lake Mining Gazette, May 3, 1888.

33

Company, the largest employer in Hancock, to Mine

Superintendent Capt. S. B. Harris.

I have been a little fearful that the organizing of

Knights of Labour up there might bode trouble, but

hope we may escape any trouble from that source for

the near future – The Irish being the worst

disturbing element I suggest that in any changes

that are being made it may be well to keep in mind

that it is not best to increase in that

nationality.21

21 Thomas F. Mason to Capt. S. B. Morris, April 20, 1887. Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, MS-001, Box 336, folder 015.

34

The Copper Country Irish had achieved a great deal

in their new home in the face of a great deal of

prejudice. As in other areas their success saw the

level of open hostility they faced decline. Successive

editors of the Portage Lake Mining Gazette devoted more space

to Irish accomplishment than to drunkenness and

violence after the mid-1870s, for example, and use much

more positive language in describing Irish people and

Irish activities. In the late 1880s, however, one of

the economic pillars of that success—access to good

jobs and advancement at the Quincy Mine -- was weakened

because of a new wave and source of anti-Irish

35

sentiment. Butte offered new opportunity, an

opportunity many took advantage of. The economy of the

Copper Country was not much diversified, its location

made such diversification difficult. By the time of the

First World War, the Irish were all but gone from the

UP and a generation later they survived largely as the

names of streets, business blocks, and schools.

36