Working along the Boundaries between History andGenealogy: (Re)Discovering the (Forgotten) History

of the Irish in Michigan's Copper Country

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

Presented to the Irish Genealogical Society InternationalNovember 16, 2002

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today and

discuss my research on Irish immigrants in the Michigan

Copper Country with you. My plan for today is to approach

this a little differently than most presentations I make and

focus on the HOW, that is the sources I have been using;

rather than the WHAT, that is the findings, of the project.

But first let me describe HOW and WHY I started on this. I

will try not to go on too long so there is ample time to

address any questions you may have.

I started on this project in 1993 and have pursued it

with increasing commitment of time since 1997. I’ve been to

Ireland six times on this project, once to present a paper

and five times to do research for a total of twenty one

weeks. I now hope to finish during 2003. The balance has

begun to shift from research to writing, although I am not

sure I will ever be able to do all the research I might. I

should also confess at the outset that I enjoy doing

research – searching out the answers to questions -- much

more than I enjoy writing it all up. I’d like to take this

opportunity to acknowledge one of the advantages of being an

academic – Murray State University has been very generous in

supporting my research with five summer research awards.

Even my mother is amazed that a Kentucky university supports

research on Irish people in Michigan so well. I say, “What a

wonderful country!” I’d also like to acknowledge support

from the Irish American Cultural Institute and the Friends

of the J.R. van Pelt Library at Michigan Technological

University. They have all been wise enough to support my

work. Or, perhaps, I have been persuasive. They did turn me

away from the Blarney Stone, when I tried to kiss it. The

attendant said, “The likes of you don’t need any more

blarney.” My reputation preceded me, I guess. Mother has

also suggested that more sex and violence might help me sell

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more copies of my books. But, when you do books like A

Historical Dictionary of American Industrial Language the opportunities

for including sex and violence are limited. Then there’s the

problem of how mother would respond if my books did have a

lot of sex and violence.

Since this is a genealogical group, I will answer one

question I am sure you all have in the back of your mind –

to the best of my knowledge I have no ancestors in the

Michigan Copper Country or anywhere in Upper Michigan.

Although I did buy a postcard recently on e-Bay that shows a

Mulligan working underground at Calumet. My personal Irish-

American roots are largely in New York City and Cortland,

New York. Dock workers and police officers in NYC and dairy

farmers from County Kildare in Cortland. I am interested in

my own family history, and have been researching it for some

years, but this project is within the sphere of my

professional work as a professor of history. At least it

started out that way and usually remains so. As I hope I

will develop in the course of my remarks, it is very

difficult, and unwise, for a social historian to ignore the

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body of material created by genealogists as it relates to

the area or group he or she is studying.

In 1993 I was living in Negaunee, Michigan, once a

prosperous mining town on the Marquette iron range on the

south shore of Lake Superior. Negaunee boasts of once having

had more millionaires per capita than any city in America. I am

sure that is true, but equally sure it was not true while I

lived there. It may have more bars per capita than any place

in America, but my research on that point continues. I lived

not far from Healy Avenue and there were other Irish names

on streets and old business blocks. When my work led me to

do some research on the history of Negaunee and the other

old mining towns on the Marquette Range I encountered still

more Irish names and Irish people. Yet, I seldom if ever met

anyone of Irish ancestry. It is one of the few places I have

lived where I often had to spell my name for people in

businesses. Most of the current residents were Italian or

Finnish, with some Scandinavians (I quickly learned that

Finns are NOT Scandinavians, who knew?) and the odd Cornish

person (Cousin Jack or Jennie) thrown in. When I ventured

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over to the Copper Country, some ninety miles to the west, I

found much the same situation, with the balance of Italians

and Finns reversed. They actually observe St. Urho’s Day in

the Copper Country on March 16. Do you have that here? He is

a pale, or purple, imitation of St. Patrick, a REAL saint,

as we all know. He, Urho, it is said, drove the grasshoppers

out of Finland. MY money is on the cold and lack of sun, but

I digress.

Where had the UP Irish gone? Why had they disappeared

when it appeared they had been well established in the area?

Basic questions, these, the kinds that usually lie behind

any historian’s works. We historians are inquisitive people

for the most part – some say nosey because we often read

other people’s mail and diaries. It IS what we do. As the

phrase goes, “enquiring minds want to know.” This reminds me

of the low point of my career. When I was director of the

Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University we

received as a gift a copy of the smallest book in the world.

We sent out a press release. Only two publications responded

with questions --- Playboy and the National Enquirer. (Yes,

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apparently the University sent them press releases.) The

Enquirer did not believe us -- we had to send picture to

prove something so small could be a real book. Talk about a

low point – not being believed by the National Enquirer! Of

course, I now believe everything in the Enquirer because of

their research methods, which I saw first hand.

Usually the people we study are dead, so I guess it’s

OK to snoop, but you do get attached. They become like

family, you root for them, want them to do well. It can be

emotionally draining when they don’t. I think of them as my

people. I can be very possessive that way. So, it is a

little like genealogy.

When I started this project I was ambitious and thought

I would do the Irish in all of Upper Michigan, but once I

moved to Murray State –about 900 miles due south of

Negaunee, I decided to focus on the Copper Country. A

principal reason for this was that the Michigan

Technological University Archives and Copper Country

Historical Collections was an established institution with

very rich, easily accessible collections, including the

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records of the two largest mining companies. The firmest of

all the common ground we occupy as historians and

genealogists is our dependence on records. No matter how

logical your theory might be or how credible the family

tradition might be, if you cannot support it with

documentation it won’t get very far. We absolutely must have

documents of some kind. I have some very impressive theories

about history. Now, if I can find some documents to support

them . . . Harvard may finally call. This can be especially

challenging when working on the Irish side because so much

was lost in the Four Courts fire during the Civil War. There

are other historical problems with Irish records, but I

don’t want to get ahead of myself.

So, I began research for my history of failure – why

did the Irish community in the Copper Country disappear? For

some reason, you don’t see a lot of histories of failure. In

1997 I was ready to begin presenting papers at academic

conferences on what I was finding. In September of that

year I was invited to speak at a conference on the Irish

Diaspora at University College Cork. After my presentation I

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met Andy Bielenberg, who is on the history faculty at UCC,

and he asked me if the people I was studying had been copper

miners in Ireland. I said I wasn’t aware of copper mining in

Ireland and he told me about the Berehaven mines in Allihies

on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. That caught my

attention – it seemed logical, would you send people

underground with high explosives who had no experience

working underground with high explosives? The answer is

pretty clear, but logic isn’t proof. Perhaps some of the

Irish in the Copper Country had been miners – although that

was not part of the local understanding of the history of

the Copper Country. In the local understanding the early

miners were Cornish and a few were German. I had my agenda

-- look for evidence that at least some miners in the

Michigan district were from mining districts in Ireland. At

first printed sources were little help, and the census, of

course, only said Ireland. So, I decided to read all the

tombstones I could find in the oldest cemeteries in the

district. Why, you might ask, did I decide to do that? I had

used tombstones in my book on the history of Northborough,

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Massachusetts and I have a great grandfather who has carved

on his tombstone in Old St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the South

Bronx “May this monument outlast British Rule in Ireland.” I

hoped some of the Irish in the Copper Country had been like

old John Carty and had recorded something about themselves

on their tombstones.

Once I had reliable reports that the snow was finally

melted in the woods – about mid-June I think it was. All

y’all can relate to that, I’m sure. I drove the 900 miles

due north and ventured out with map, camera, notebook, and

extra strength bug spray to explore the older cemeteries of

the Copper Country. I don’t think many academic historians

tramp through abandoned graveyards and lie flat on their

bellies to read toppled tombstones – but I was on a mission.

I would like to say that the cemeteries were neat and

well maintained, orderly places all, and that my work was

easy. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. The lack of

attention to the burial places of the region’s pioneers

should be a source of profound shame in the Copper Country.

I crawled through all of them I could find, often literally

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crawling through heavy brush. The cemetery that served the

Catholic population at the Cliff Mine, a pioneer site, is

completely overgrown, heavily vandalized, and certain to

disappear forever within a decade, if not sooner. I’ve seen

pictures from twenty years ago and 75 percent of what was

there has been lost in the time that has passed. I was

tempted to take some of the tombstones so they would be

preserved, but I know that is wrong. I do have slides and

pictures. The Hecla Cemetery on the Calumet and Laurium

boundary is overgrown and heavily vandalized – fires have

been built on the Finn family, a very prominent Irish

family, monument in Laurium and it and other stones are

spray painted and toppled – and this is within sight of

houses that are occupied. It is one of the sites where I had

to lay down flat on the ground to read inscriptions.

Longfellow, the oldest cemetery in Calumet, is densely

overgrown; most stones are toppled or lost. A Cornish

genealogical group has begun trying to restore order and

dignity, but it is probably too late to make any real

difference. This has become one of my crusades – simple

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respect for those who went before us. The Irish Hollow

Cemetery – the name a clue, I thought – near the site of the

Minesota [sic] Mine is densely overgrown. Worst of all the

nineteenth-century cemeteries for the Catholic and

Protestant populations in Hancock, the major Irish

community, are now under large churches. I understand the

theology, but, what a terrible loss. This was all very sad

and reinforced my desire to recover the history of these

forgotten people and restore their lives to the collective

memory of those who live in their former homes.

It was a lot of work to find many of these early

cemeteries and then to explore them. I made sure someone

knew where I had gone and when I expected to be back – in

many cases they were well out of sight of highways and full

of holes and other hazards. In any event, it was an

adventure and I am glad I did it, because there were results

and I had concrete evidence of a connection that had long

been forgotten between the copper mines of Ireland and the

copper mines of Lake Superior. I had a new focus –

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transportation of skill, not failure. I had found Irish

miners where no one had thought there were any.

For example, in the old Clifton Catholic cemetery, now

long abandoned and overgrown, near the site of the Cliff

Mine, there are several tombstones that help establish

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

their birthplace as 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 – a major mining district in Ireland --are found

in the Irish Hollow Cemetery near Rockland, the site of the

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

tombstones in the Pine Grove Cemetery at Eagle Harbor, Irish

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Hollow, and Clifton refer to Kill Parish, the site of the

Knockmahon mines, or County Waterford, another mining area

in Ireland, generally.1 This was enough to convince me that

Andy’s observation was worth pursuing.

Through Andy Bielenberg I tracked down five reels of

microfilm of records of the Berehaven Mines. I wanted to

collect as many names of Berehaven miners as I could. As

everyone here knows one of the greatest losses in the Four

Courts fire was the Irish censuses. With those my work would

be far easier. The Parish Applotment books and Griffiths

Evaluation do not list occupations so there was no help

there. Not everyone in a mining district would be a miner;

after all, I needed names of people I could document as

miners.

1 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. The transcription of thelater 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.

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Well, as it turns out some records of the mines at

Allihies had been found in the attic of the home of the

Puxley family, who had owned the Berehaven mines, in Wales.

A microfilm was made for the Geological Survey of Ireland

(GSI) and loaned to a young woman who was doing a thesis

with Andy at UCC. But, she had married a fisherman, had a

baby, and was in Casteltownberehaven, not Cork. So after a

few phone calls I was off on the bus to Castletownberehaven.

I say THE bus deliberately – there is one bus a day from

Cork to Castletownberehaven during the summer. It stays for

half an hour and returns. I met Collette and got the reel

with the payroll records – I had booked time on a microfilm

reader at the University library the next day. Well, to make

a long story short, we got talking, I admired her young

daughter, and I missed the bus. I hitchhiked the 60

kilometres to Glengariff and caught the last bus from there

to Cork. The first person to pick me up when I was

hitchhiking was, of course, from Texas.

In any event I now had a sampling of names of Irish

miners and supplemented that with names from the Parish

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Applotments and Griffith’s. Many of these names matched

those I was finding in the early censuses and mining company

records in the Copper Country. I had my connection. As I

found the Parish Applotments and Griffith’s for the parishes

with mines in counties Waterford and Tipperary I found more

congruence – the names matched. Now, because the dates of

these records sets do not match up precisely it is hard to

track specific individuals, but fairly easy to establish

patterns.

One very specific area where the work of genealogists,

specifically that of Riobard O’Dwyer, whose incredibly

important work many of you know, was critical was

identifying family “nicknames.” Such a large percentage of

Beara people are either Harringtons or O’Sullivans

(Sullivans) that there are sub-family names to identify

members of different branches, many of whom are less (more?)

than first cousins, and therefore marry. There is no way I

could have made sense of the records without Riobard’s help.

Finding Harringtons or O’Sullivans in the Beara is like

finding hay in a haystack.

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Now, not everything has been roses and success. We’re

Irish, life is not that simple. One disappointment has been

the inability to get a Copy of the Berehaven mine records

microfilm from the GSI. Another was finding a large quantity

of records of Avoca (County Wicklow) mines at the National

Library of Ireland and spending a day to determine that no

payroll or other employment records were included. The lack

of any surviving records for the Mining Company of Ireland

(MCI), which operated the copper mines at Knockmahon in

County Waterford, in any public repository is another

disappointment. I have some leads, however, on where these

records might be. I am hoping to be able to locate then and

arrange access.

I’ve already mentioned Andy Bielenberg of UCC as one

person who helped me with this project and Riobard O’Dwyer

as another. When I first began doing research in Ireland he

was someone I kept being told I needed to meet – and I did.

I first met Riobard through his books, as I am sure many of

you have, Riobard has become a good friend and I have

benefited greatly from his genealogical research. I do not

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think his work could be replicated. It has helped me

identify more strongly the connection between the Copper

Country and the Beara Peninsula miners. He’s also taken me

around the Beara twice, sharing his love and knowledge for a

very special corner of Ireland. We have even survived a head

on collision while en route to Dursey Island. For those of

you who are not aware of it. Dursey Island, a stronghold of

the O’Driscolls – any O’Driscolls out there? -- is off the

Beara coast. It is connected to the rest of Ireland by a

cable car that holds six people or one cow. Well, Riobard

decided I need to ride in the cable car and I, of course,

agreed. To make a long story not quite so long, we were

involved in a collision despite Riobard’s best efforts to

get to the edge of the road – the idea of a shoulder having

never caught on in Ireland as all of you who have driven

there know only too well. No one but the two vehicles was

hurt (much) and we sort of milled around with the two

bachelor brothers (of course) who owned the farm where we

were “stopped” waiting for the Garda. Cars, one hesitates to

use the word traffic, backed up. Then the cows – some two

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dozen -- decided to come home to be milked, picking their

way through the line of cars, the two wrecks, and assorted

lookers on. A very memorable moment, for me at least.

In developing the history of the Irish in the Copper

Country the work of genealogists has been very helpful.

There is little mention of the Irish in recent histories of

the area. Individuals of Irish birth and ancestry are

mentioned in the early histories from the 1880s and early

years of the twentieth century – I’m not quite ready to say,

“last century.” The decline in numbers of the Irish has been

reflected in their disappearance from local memory. So, it

was back to the newspapers.

I think I have now read every surviving newspaper

printed in the Copper Country before 1890 – all on

microfilm. I may have missed a few, but not many. The

papers have allowed me to reconstruct a great deal about the

Irish community in the Copper Country – organizations formed

by and for the community (no records of which seems to have

survived) and the observance of St. Patrick’s Day to cite

two examples, but also to look at the level of prejudice the

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community faced and to get a sense of where people went. In

the 1870s and 1880s the papers refer from time to time to

individuals or families relocating – usually to mining

communities in the west. The papers also mention people

returning for funerals, or to be buried, and where they had

gone. This has all been helpful. I remain convinced that the

local newspaper is the single most useful source for

historians interested in the history of a community.

However, I’ve also gotten quite a bit of material on

the dispersal of the Copper Country Irish community from

genealogists who have traced their ancestors. A good example

is the group of families who had migrated from the Beara

Peninsula to the mines in Hancock, Michigan and then in the

1870s to Holt County, Nebraska as part of a colony organized

by General John O’Neil, the Fenian. There does not appear to

be any memory of this in Michigan, but there is in Holt

County. Connecting with Teresa Sullivan, a genealogist and

descendant of one of these Michiganders, through Beara-L

gave me a lead that will bring this part of the area’s

history into the record.

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There was a time when there was a gap or gulf between

history and genealogy. I remember during the 1980s when I

was director of the Clarke Historical Library at Central

Michigan University genealogists coming in and only being

concerned with filling in a form – name, place, date, on to

the next ancestor. I have a very nicely printed family tree

that traces the McGuire line I am part of back to Maynooth

in County Kildare. It doesn’t have a single date on it. The

purpose was to sort everyone out and list them by family

grouping. This minimalist approach won’t satisfy most

genealogists today. They (we) also want to know about the

lives of their ancestors and the world in which they lived.

What did it mean to be a copper miner in Ireland in the

1840s – or in Michigan in the 1860s? These are the kinds of

questions historians try to answer and are trained to

address. On the other side of the coin, as historians become

more and more interested in the lives of ordinary people in

all their dimensions, lives not well-documented in the types

of sources we are accustomed to using the work of

genealogists becomes more and more important.

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For example, I have nearly 300 – yes 300 – messages

saved that have been useful in my research from the Beara-L

alone. It would not have been possible to document the

migration form the Beara mines to those in Michigan without

the work of Riobard O’Dwyer and the dozens of active

genealogists who share their work on line on that list. The

lack of an O’Dwyer for the Bonmahon area in County Waterford

or any of the mining areas in County Tipperary has made it

much more difficult to document the connections between

those areas and the Copper Country. The gap between

history and genealogy is closing, if it has not already

closed. The overriding common concern we share is to

preserve the record of the lives of those who have gone

before us and to insure that their lives and their

contributions are not lost.

Thank you for your time and attention.

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