Irish Immigrants in Michigan's Copper Country

Large-scale emigration from Ireland has been a fact of life for many generations, both before, and especially after the Great Famine. Those Irish men and women who arrived in the United States were part of a vast dispersal of people whose native land was no longer able to sustain them. Most, especially during the early years of migration, stayed in the coastal cities where they had landed and there found work. Their particular story has been well told by historians. ¹ Others ventured inland along the canals and railroads they helped build, settling along the way as opportunity arose. ² Their story is beginning to be better understood. Still others ventured even farther afield and established communities far from the coastal cities. Their story is less well known and only recently beginning to be told. ³ Immigrants to one such area far from the coast, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, are the subject of this article. These Irish miners came from copper mining areas in the Beara Peninsula of County Cork, the Knockmahon mines in County Waterford, and mining communities in County Tipperary. Their experience as skilled workers deserves attention it has not yet received.

It is hard to imagine a place more different from Ireland than the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Ireland is known for its many shades of green; meterologists of the Upper Peninsula have identified nearly as many, or more, different types of snow. Winter is long and hard and snow often covers the ground for nearly half the year. The Copper Boom that followed Douglass Houghton's description of the copper resources of the Keweenaw in the early 1840s was followed rapidly by John Burt's discovery of iron ore near Teal Lake in 1844. ⁴ These discoveries brought many people to the region seeking wealth, opportunity, or simply a new start in life. ⁵

Irish immigrants were well represented among these early settlers, especially in the copper mining regions of the far western Upper Peninsula. By 1859, there were several Catholic churches serving the needs of Irish immigrants and a small number of other Catholics in the Upper Peninsula--St. Ignatius in Houghton, St. Ann's (later St. Patrick's) in Hancock, Holy Redeemer in Eagle Harbor, Our Lady of the Assumption in Clifton, and St. Mary's in Rockland. In 1860 a St. Patrick's Society was organized in Hancock with seventy members; it had 180 members when it was formally incorporated in 1874. Other communities in the Copper Country also established St. Patrick's Societies and, later, divisions of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Such other groups as the Robert Emmett Young Men's Benevolent Society and the Emerald Library Society, both in Hancock, indicate that there was a growing, prosperous Irish community. ⁶

There were, by the 1870s, a number of Irish merchants, businessmen, and saloon keepers as well as physicians, attorneys, and successful politicians in the various communities of the Upper Peninsula. Yet, by 1920, the Irish had all but disappeared from the Copper Country and the entire Upper Peninsula. Their apparent economic, social, and political success had not fully insulated them from prejudice and discrimination, even in a region far removed from the settled areas of the United States. In a narrow economy, so heavily based on a single industry and dominated by a small number of large employers, these obstacles to persistence were harder to overcome. This was especially true when the Quincy Mining Company in Hancock, a major employer of Irish immigrants since it was established, began hiring fewer and fewer Irish after the mid-1880s. ⁷

Two incidents from the very early years of the Irish communities of the Copper Country--the burial of Fr. Kopleter and the St. Patrick's Day Ball of 1865--reflect some of the difficulties and adjustments these Irish immigrants faced in their new homes. Their status as skilled workers and their location seemingly far from the entrenched...