Transcript for:
Irish Immigrant Experience in America

for major funding for this program was provided by Jefferson smurfit Corporation around the world we're known for our paper paper board and packaging products and paper recycling we are proud of our Irish heritage through our association with Jefferson smurfit group funding for this program was made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you more than a million and a half people fled Ireland in the decade beginning in 1845 the first year of the famine they sailed for Liverpool in Quebec Australia and New Zealand but mainly they sailed for America these immigrants took little with them a love of song and story an abiding Catholic faith and a mutinous humor but most of all They Carried a sense of loss a longing for the way of shared living that had defined them in their Villages and towns lands a longing for that stable community the famine had destroyed that sense of of loss was like phantom pain for an amputated limb sharp and deep in the bone an Exquisite pain perfectly felt for something imperfectly remembered it was this pain that would drive them in America it was by its diminishment that they would measure their progress in the new land The Crossing was simply the Prelude to the long journey toward a new sense of security that Journey begun by these immigrants and finished by their grandchildren would stand as one of the great success stories in American history but it would be hard in ways the Irish had come to expect and hard in ways they couldn't begin to imagine through the years of the famine the Irish escaped Ireland any way they could many wedged into the emptied holes of cargo ships whose captains were eager to take them on as human ballast every ship had its promoters some of the ships were described as lucky ships at the captain was a lucky captain and that the golden Port of New Orleans was really the place to go the poorest immigrants those who couldn't afford the ticket to New York or Philadelphia or Boston hired passage on Cotton ships returning to America's Great Southern Port once they landed on the levy of New Orleans ticket agents assured them it was just a few days walk to the big cities of the East Coast all this noise all this horor of people running back and forth the levy was a very frantic place to be so you take a lost uprooted starving sick person and put him in the midst of of all this all this noise and all these different odors coming from molasses coming from coffee coming from tropical fruit they are strangers lost many of them strangers lost on the levy the older Irish in the group those about 25 or 30 were described as having a glazed expression on their faces Their Eyes Were glassy they moved in almost slow motion they were completely disoriented scarred and depleted by hunger the moralized by the crossing the famine Irish were America's first Refugee population it's first huddled masses they washed into Eastern ports from Maine to Florida by sheer weight of numbers this wave of people would swallow all previous waves of immigration from Ireland the famine Irish poor Catholic and fiercely communal would come to Define irishness in America but they would have no Plymouth Rock no Ellis Island no single place would mark their arrival in life and in death they were for the most Anonymous and for most arrival in America meant little more than the possibility of survival on the levy of New Orleans their only hope for the future was that they would not starve all of the sick were laid out on pallets one beside the other just Skin and Bones too ill and too weak to really even beg for food they went out uh grubbing grubbing for food and grubbing means scratching sometimes scratching in the earth maybe looking for rotten food on the levy the most miserable ones picking that straw from the street and the group that struck contemporary observers as a sdus group were the Lost Children parents had often fled Ireland without their children and only later secured enough money to send for them but no parent could be sure of what ship their children had boarded and even if they knew news of a ship's arrival didn't always reach them they would actually advertise for lost children or a Lost Child Mario Connell sent to New Orleans between such and such dates aboard the steamer Atlantic lost in the city some are really heartrending trying to describe a child named Mary who doesn't know her own last name and the parents desperately trying to find them not with much success I suspect for the newly arriving Irish New Orleans was a Purgatory a Nether world between the watery Crossing and the Solid Ground of America most of the city sat at the bottom of a bow-shaped depression surrounded by the Mississippi River Lake ponchet Trin and hundreds of thousands of Acres of marsh land The High Ground was long since settled so the Irish were forced into the body bottom of the bowl where they watched the waterways drain back at them flood their streets and fill their homes with swamp water these neighborhoods were a bilious soup thick and festering typhus chera and consumption seeped into the population in the sweltering summer months mosquitoes bred in the sisters and the swamps and carried malaria hemorragia malaria and the most feared yellow fever the Irish were especially susceptible to these diseases because once they were strong enough to go to work the jobs they could find were in the swamps very few of them had skills except for scratching a living in a Potato Patch so they're going to take whatever job is available what anybody will pay them to do and one job is is available for an immigrant who's willing risk his life is what's called ditching that meant that uh that you in a area like south Louisiana like New Orleans you have to have ditches to drain slave owners for example respected black labor as much more than they did Irish laborers so you put the Irish into places draining swamps where they could get malaria you put them in kind of working situations where you wouldn't want to risk black slaves slaves were an investment by a slave owner where you would only have to pay Irishman wages if a slave was killed on a dangerous job the entire investment was lost if the Irishman was killed he just got another one it was no downside to using Irishmen chew them up spit them out get another one and there were plenty coming in the famine ships the Irish have a sense coming into the United States that for all the differences of this transatlantic passage they run a very good chance of occupying the bottom place in American society and that's one of the causes of the tensions that will exist between Irish and African-Americans there kind of people at the bottom a kind of classic American confrontation of who's going to get up the ladder that there's not room for both of us free people of color were already moving up that ladder working in skilled trades like masonry carpentry and tailoring for the unskilled and the slaves what little hope they had came from hard labor when the Irish came the jobs were held by the black people of the city some free and some slave even the slaves were allowed to work from time to time for pay some of the Masters split the pay with the slaves others let the slaves have the pay and save it toward buying their own Freedom the ones skill the famine Irish knew was survival wage paying jobs promised survival and the Irish meant to do whatever it took to get them this was the beginning of one of the longest running racial Grudge wars in the country and by 1850 it was already being played out in the ports of Charleston and Savannah up River in St Louis and Cincinnati and in the big cities of New York and Philadelphia in New Orleans the Irish fought their way out of the swamps the most readily available jobs were on the docks the Irish had to have those jobs there was no other way for them to survive so they they fought the they fought a desperate very desperate fight if they didn't get the job where did they go there was nowhere to go if they if they didn't get the job they would starve and their families would starve so the Irish would come up against the blacks form gangs and just attack them Irish gangs would Stone black laborers or beat them up but when the blacks fought back nobody else stood with them the Irish were white men after all and free to do what they had to by 1853 the Irish and New Orleans had taken over the jobs on the docks as sodor's Riverboat crew Balman and on the land as Draymond and hack and there was a sense that New Orleans was a place the famine Irish could make it that New Orleans after all might just be a lucky town in 1853 the uh there was a sense of optimism in New Orleans the um the newspapers and some of the medical journals even was saying that yellow F was a thing of the past that New Orleans had gone through four or five years without any real epidemics on the 27th of may I believe it was the first case of yellow fever was reported in the city it was reported at Charity Hospital and the newspapers failed to pick it up the newspapers actually downplayed the presence of yellow fever in the City of New Orleans during the entire month of June City officials refused to establish a Board of Health for fear it would scare trade away from its bustling docks The Immigrant ships unwarned continued to carry their payload to Port there was a term used at the time uh always in the newspapers and the reports called unacclimated which meant newcomers cuz yellow fever of course once you live it live through it the first time you develop a certain immunity to it uh well the Irish were all un acclimated all the famine Irish had come over after the last epid St so many newly arrived Irish and German immigrants contracted yellow fever that it was commonly called The Strangers disease as it got into the summer months the incidents of yell were picked up they were going from 9 a day think the first week of July and then it was 15 to 20 a day the next week and went up uh EXP inally from that point to the point that it was by the middle of August there were 220 some dying a day by then anybody who could afford to had left New Orleans for the drier towns of baky and Ocean Springs or the North shore of Lake ponchet Trin people of means resumed life in their summer homes while the less well-off hired rooms to wait out the epidemic the poor remained in New Orleans the only people left were the people really who were ill or those who were serving the ill according to the newspapers anyway and in fact it got so bad that one of the newspapers instead of reporting news one day said yesterday was dull there was nothing happening in the city except people dying the Catholic priest who had the responsibility of of last rights and of of burying the dead and having some service they never stopped the funerals were constant so that the business of the city was burying the dead during the months July and August of 1853 almost one Irishman in five died in New Orleans in Ireland during the years of the famine the four or five years one out of seven died it was October before the weather broke and the epidemic subsided by then 10,000 people were dead in a city of little more than 100,000 native new orlans were horrified sure that it was the Immigrant and not the disease that had turned their City into a necropolis the Irish should stop coming to the tropical climate of New Orleans the harshest critics advised and go to Boston to a climate more like their own my great great grandmother came to Boston in December of 1851 and if anybody knows Boston Winters it was very cold and these passengers were noted to be half naked you know that they had very little clothing to begin with and it certainly wasn't heavy winter clothing the Irish peasants from the very beginning looked physically ridiculous you had men in hats that hadn't been worn in 30 years in any fashionable areas and longtail coats and leggings people aren't dressed like this anymore they look they're comical they don't know they're comical so they get off the boats and people are laughing at what new englanders saw was a group of people who would have to learn what it was to be an American which was by their Reckoning a loyal productive and independent thinking citizen but little in the famine immigrants past had prepared them for being citizens of a Nation most had left the old world without an idea even of what it meant to be Irish before leaving for America few had been more than 15 mil from home they identified themselves by the Landscapes they knew their County their towns land their parish and they entered Boston mistrustful insular not a little bit frightened grasping for safety in the familiar and faceless enclaves growing within the city they went to where their friends and families were and in Boston the North End was one of the Premier Irish neighborhoods but even within the North End the cork people went to the area around North Square whereas the Donal people would go over around Endicott Street and another part of the North End My grandmother used to talk about corkill that's where all the coronian stayed then there' be there'd be gallway City they wanted to be with their own kind so they considered gway here and cork here it was a distinct entity native bostonians watched this clannish new immigrant population and grew increasingly uneasy Boston's Protestants took seriously their inheritance and their mission on God's Earth to the degree that these descendants of the Puritans had followed the Creator's light they had prospered World Trade had made great fortunes for the elect and they had built the city for ordained by John winthrip in his sermon on the Arabella two centuries before we shall be as a city upon a hill the eyes of all people upon on us this Merchant ruling class was virtuous forthright abstemious and in God's name charitable they had been among the earliest and most generous givers to the cause of Irish famine relief they had ruled Boston Massachusetts and New England for Generations they held its high political offices ordered its social life and acted as its cultural benefactors but by the middle of the 19th century it was clear to them the Boston they had created and tended so diligently was under siege in one year alone 30,000 Irish Catholic immigrants entered the city of little more than 100,000 the Irish lived in shanties they lived in buildings that had been inhabited by the residents that were here before they got here in the homes that already existed people would have to vacate because they certainly didn't want to live with all these Irish so when they they came in they would split the room up so something that originally housed maybe six people would now house 36 people reports circulated of destitute immigrants living in dank basements and lightless Garretts epidemics swept through Irish neighborhoods and threatened adjacent ones the canand do bostonians took up a study of the problem of poverty they thought they could fix it but the Irish just kept coming if you think of what the Irish were doing at the time it meant that poor people not only were poor when they got here they were voluntarily staying poor in order to get the next batch over so that Americans who may have been uh sympathetic to their poverty start to really begin to blame the Irish as being a very stubborn people that is never going to wholly Embrace American values they're filling the jails they're filling the orphanages they're filling uh hospitals Anglo Protestant saying these people are ruining our city they're destroying this beautiful city on the hill the governor of Massachusetts made a calculation reminiscent of an Irish landlord it would be cheaper to send the destitute back to Ireland than to support them in America the most shrill condemnations however issued from the Yankee Working Class A Class of people frightened by Changing Times displaced Farm Workers were being forced into low-paying jobs in the factories of South Boston and outlying towns skilled Craftsmen were being shoved aside by machines competition from Irish laborers only stirred the pot the average pay of an Irishman per day in Ireland was 8 cents so can you imagine over here an average Workman was paid a $125 a day and here's a guy's willing to work for some somewhere between 8 cents and a125 I mean you you obviously didn't like them instantly the minute you heard about them popular depictions of the Irish the Wild Irish as they were called would grow more and more cruel in the Press they were portrayed as drunken dimwitted addicted to a fight Simeon and as Catholics a threat to democracy itself and the numbers were alarming while protestantism was splintering into new Evangelical sects Catholics were on their way to becoming the largest denomination in America in the 1850s the number of naturalized citizens in Massachusetts most of them from Ireland tripled Catholics suddenly they're becoming not so much of a minority in some cities they coming close to a majority and for the first time in American history you have the idea of political power is going to pass to another religious group to Protestants who had been raised on a tradition that popery was a threat to American Freedom that their ancestors had spent the years before the Revolution fighting against the popish French and the Spanish this was here they were on their doorstep these popish Irish driven by fear a new political movement emerged a movement made up of native born Protestants who were trying desperately to hold on to an America that was already gone an America that belonged to them alone their agenda was clear and simple they meant to choke off the foreign vote they would limit Immigration and Naturalization and deny political office to those not born in America membership in the party was exclusive to native born Protestants born of protestant parents not United in marriage with a Roman Catholic they had many elements of the klock clan there was some guy from Baltimore I think he was called the Grand triumphant illustrator I can't remember the names that they had and they had secret handshakes and and eye and God knows every time they twitched I guess they communicated and when you asked them anything about their organization they were taught to say I know nothing the no nothing movement practiced its politics in the streets election day itself was a physical contest with roving gangs of men escorting voters to the polls and bare knuckle Fighters keeping a vigil on the ballot boxes out of this political Street brawl the no nothing's created one of the most successful third party movements in American history in 1855 they won Governor ships in Kentucky California and Rhode Island and took over the state legislature in Massachusetts they had a former president Millard Filmore as their Chief spokesman so they had a lot of people with some Prestige fronting for them because they thought that they could be built up into a national movement and they had a formable group in the House of Representatives 40 or 50 people and the number of Senators so they definitely were a considerable worry the nativists were passionate they were bold and they were principled after a fashion but they couldn't count the Irish as well as the German immigrants who had streamed into America already had the vote and they were determined to make this point it was their country too as the more pressing issue of slavery overtook the nation Phil Moore ran a distant third for president and the nativist movement and its anti-immigrant agenda was all but dead as a political party but in the few years the no nothing's held sway they made a lasting if ironic contribution they helped to create the first story of Irish America the story that provided these immigrants a new identity for a new world to be Irish as the cronian and the Carman and the far Downs like to tell the tale was to be up against it exiled from their Homeland impoverished persecuted to be Irish was to be just wild enough to stand up and fight for what was yours to be Irish was to be thick skinned and Survivor tough and to know the value of sticking together I think for many of them the first sense that they had of being Irish was when they got to the United States because people didn't care what parish they were from or what county What mattered to people in America they were just Irish and in a sense I think some of them woke up to that Irish identity for the first time when they got to the United States that they weren't coronian or members of a certain Parish they were Irish well it's by the hush me boys and sure that's too hold your noise and listen to poor Patty's sad narration I was by hunger pressed and in poverty distressed so I took a thought i' leave the Irish Nation from the start the Irish were eager to prove their place in America Propaganda s dug into the recesses of American history and found revolutionary war heroes with Celtic surnames and further to the Irishmen who helped to Row Columbus to the shore of the new world but all this was air it was the Civil War that gave the Irish the chance to stake their claim to America well we s 100 more to America say all our fortunes to be made we were thinking when we got to Yankee land they shoved a gone into our hands saying Patty you must go and fight for Lincoln conscripts and volunteers signed on to fight under the colors of Irish brigades or regular army regiments for the union and the Confederate see alike they fought with Valor on both sides at antium and Fredericksburg and Gettysburg where they killed one another by the scores of thousands General Mar to he said if you get shot to lose your leg every mother son of yous will get to pension well myself I lost me leg they gave me a wooden p and beg God this is the truth to youai Manion the full Irish War record was a complicated one incensed by laws that permitted the rich to buy their way out of the fight Irishmen staged the bloodiest riots in the country and on the field of battle just as high a percentage of native born Americans and German immigrants fought and died but it was the Irish who came out of the war with a reputation for bravery and willingness to spill their blood for the country the Germans wrote dark operas the Irish knew how to write a lament people could carry in their heads here's you boys now take my advice to America have is not become there is nothing here but War where the M cannons Roar and I wish I was at home in Dear Old Dublin the the war had created an industrial boom in the north and new ways to raise fast cash for building projects Americans were spreading out across the Plains and toward the Pacific the canals the Irish had helped to build in the 1820s and 30s couldn't move Goods far enough or fast enough new roads were needed and new rails America's appetite for labor was insatiable a big city broad sheet might carry ads for 3,000 laborers each day the ads promised good wages and steady work for any man willing to pick up and leave the city and Irishmen fanned out into the vastness of the continent they knew that as long as they were willing to do the hard and often dangerous work of a of a building and industrializing nation that they would never be out of work this was a nation in the process of being built and they would be its Builders as they pushed the railroad West Irish workmen were killed by Falling beams and exploding steam engines and left behind in unmarked Graves like the Canal workers before them these men lived a reckless hard-fisted life bedding down in Shacks that would collapse a week after the men moved on or in box cars that followed on the rails saloons moved with them Irish women were not anxious to follow in cities along the Eastern Seaboard there was a constant demand for young single women to serve as cooks and maids in the homes of the upper and middle classes American women often regarded domestic service beneath them and except for the Irish most immigrant women arrived in America already married or engaged the jobs were there for the Tak and Irish women grabbed them in the years after the Civil War Irish women would take over 2third of the domestic jobs in America's Eastern cities this seemingly small wrinkle of History would change the fortunes of an entire people though American women would often look down their noses at the Irish servant girl Bridget would remake the story of the Irish in America and in Ireland Irish women had always shouldered responsibility during the famine years the strongest daughter was often sent to America to save the family from starvation and disease in Ireland a live-in servants job meant good pay and few expenses but everything everything she made she owed everyone is telling you that every penny you make could go back to helping someone who literally might die without your help that sense of responsibility was a terrific constant in these people's lives in that first generation by 1875 the urgency of the famine had vanished but it had changed forever the ways of Ireland what little land a family owned or rented was no longer subdivided among the children fathers kept their land intact and passed it on to their favored child and the number of propertied men marriable men shrunk Ireland held little promise for young single women it was their duty to leave home and ease the burden on their families when they left they left for America where they found jobs for one another sent money back to bring over sisters nieces cousins friends and created a community of their own one of my relatives my cousin set up a school for maids where she taught other Irish immigrants The Graces of becoming a maid in a big house in Cambridge and I presumed that her task was fairly substantial because she's taking girls right off the farm who might have actually been Gaelic speaking and not even speak English very well and certainly they and they would would have been Barefoot back in Ireland and now they're having to wear shoes and learn about manners and how people serve using utensils being quiet when they would like to speak to their friends Mistresses began to swap Tales of their Irish domestics about women right off the boat who washed their feet in the soup terrain climbed the stairs on all fours or stoked the fire with a good silver the Comforts of middle class life must have been must have been very very surprising to the young Irish girls coming over and they had to adjust to it if you start with the kitchen itself there was the stove was whether it was fed by uh coal or or wood or whatever the fuel was then the sinks hot and whole running water they had nothing like that maybe they had a a spring back home then the bedrooms the bed linen the pillows the bolsters the the blankets they didn't know anything like this there were kitchens then there were bedrooms there were parlors further in each of those spaces uh you would conspicuously display those things that would uh say to someone yes you truly are a middle class you have a piano you have doilies everywhere the Irish girls saw the tufted sofas and the Brussels carpets Waterford Crystal and Polished silver and scores of ivory Trinkets and glass bobbles but they saw beyond that what they saw at the heart of those homes what they felt so keenly was the warming ease of security the man of the house had steady employment and balanced account books leftover food was thrown out a case of the grip didn't mean certain death for their children thick plaster walls kept out the spring rains summer heat and Winter Chill from the inside these homes seemed impenetrable it was a security that extended even to the servant girls themselves the average uh wife would have a personal maid she would have to dress the lady and help her with her bath and the lady would often confide her personal affairs her personal worries to the maid so they realized their own value they realized that they were wanted and there there are stories about these Saucy young Irish girls Mrs Van Wick says Bridget the sideboard the dust in it I can write my name in it ah ma'am isn't it a grand thing to have an education domestics continued to support family back in the old country in the 1870s as much as a third of all the money circulating in Ireland came from servants in America but now when they sent the week's remittance these women held a little back for themselves they put put this money away for things they could never have had in Ireland School courses and real estate silver-backed hairbrushes and fine clothes there were the entertainments of the big city the theater and the dance hall boat rides and promenades and a few young men left in the cities to court them these women however did not rush to Wed the Irish married later than any ethnic group in America domestics understood what one big thing about marriage possibilities narrowed dramatically the day after the wedding Feast that was the day they gave up their jobs and their lives in the big house after they married many former domestics found themselves living in a tenement yolked to an Irishman of Uncertain work prospects these women saw their savings dwindle and fredd it would there be enough to buy medicine for a sick child enough coal to fire the stove with the food in the house last to the next pay envelope and many Saw husband escaped the daily tangle of worries at the corner Grog Shop where wives appeared only as a stock character the nag there was always that temptation to go out there and be a man to thumb your nose at all the mon senor and uh and all the women they could be they could have at least a semblance of their Wild Irish identity in these saloons talking big maybe uh a little uh fisticuffs too things got out of hand stories began to circulate told with a twinkle and a laugh of the fellow who went out for a drink at the Corner Grocery and didn't return for 20 years he was always discovered at the table waiting for suer but the sad hard fact remained Irish men deserted their families at higher rates than any ethnic group in America young women saw abandoned wives working as Char women laboring in factories or pedaling in the streets many in that second generation simply chose not to marry they teach in the schools nurse in the hospitals or take the vow there was the comfort of stability in a nun's narrow life of sacrifice and service and it put them at the center of life in the Irish Community the Parish church was the one place where all the Irish gathered they not only went to Sunday mass but then they would go to Vespers in the evening after that so and when they went to church it was an opportunity for them to get together with their neighbors many of the maids for instance they would have been working in the big house isolated from friends and family so going to church was a way to reconnect themselves with their Community the church is the bridge of familiarity between the old world and the new world the Catholic parish creates a community for these people in a sense the Catholic parish becomes a a peasant Village in America by 1875 there were 3,000 Irish Catholic priests in America more than in all of Ireland though he was generally the best educated man in his Parish it wasn't scholarship that made a priest's reputation more than a few had the thick neck and strong hands of a Teamster any Parish priest had to be a physically strong man a tough guy that didn't take any nonsense and was capable of putting the fear of God in any of his parishioners if a bread winner was not working as much as he should have if he he was drinking too much the family would go to the local priest and the priest would summon the culprit in or he would go to the house and talk to him and sit down with him and explain to him his errant ways 90% of the time that was sufficient to get him up to go to work in the morning or to have them lay off the the liquor for a while what the church is really saying You must be respectable you must work hard and the fact is that you're giving money to the church means that you're not giving it to the saloon keeper you got to keep your families together no abusing wives no running away from your wives your responsibility of your children the church plays a major role in civilizing and making the Irish a respectable people the up and coming gave generously to their church with nickels and dimes from hundreds of thousands of domestics and laborers the Irish built their churches to reflect their growing stature instructions to contractors were simple and direct it had to be taller than the neighborhood Protestant Church its stained glass Superior its organ had to have more pipes they also wanted schools attached and orphanages and hospitals to take care of their own constructed with a new world alloy of devout faith and chest thumping bravura the Catholic Church held a place of pride in every Irish neighborhood for the church stood as the first creation of Irish America the Catholic clergy come out in A procession to the scaffold and each of The Condemned men or most of them will go through ritual step by step with the appointed clergymen publicly on the scaffold declaring that that if only I had followed the teachings of the church I would not be here now they would say prayers and uh give them the last rights and then they would come back down off the Galls and stand at the bottom of the Gallows when the sheriff who was the Executioner at the Carbon County Jail when he get ready to pull the believer that drops the door that hung these men he looked down at father bunts the pastor of the MTH Conception Church and father bunts dropped his handkerchief and that was the single to pull a lever from 1877 to 1879 20 Irish men were hanged in the hard Cole region of Eastern Pennsylvania it is not known how many of these men were guilty of the crimes for which they were executed and how many were innocent what is certain is that they were among the first and most public victims of the Irish drive to succeed in America it had been only a generation since the famine survivors arrived but the Irish had already spread out Across America to Midwestern cities like St Paul and Chicago the farming frontiers of Iowa and Nebraska and Mining camps in California and Colorado all across the country Irishmen were beginning to win at local politics and make a little money in business and though most still bent their backs to hard labor the Irish were watching their own kind rise and most wanted it for themselves and their own children our troubles are over Mrs Murphy for the Dutch man next door tells me straight that the mindes will start full time on Monday that's what he tells me at any rate sure the boss he says told him this morning has he was about ENT turn the mind that the coal is quite scarce around New York so the rumor is work full time and it's as sure if the news be true me store bills the first thing I'll pay a stuff parlor suit and a lounge I will buy and an organ for Bridget hoay me calico shirt I will throw in the Irish families have been drawn to the hollows of eastern Pennsylvania by the promise of steady work and steady wages but what most Irishmen found in hard cold country was a flinty day-to-day life down in the hole where Mine Workers were crushed by cave-ins and choked to death by poisonous gases and the injured were dropped on their front stoop left defend for themselves you were in essence chatt to the coal company you were beholden to the company for just about everything you as a minor relied on the company for your home you as a minor relied on the company for the equipment that you used because you had to buy your own powder you had to buy your own tools you had to buy everything that you needed as a miner or as a laborer drill bits tools shovels picks augers everything was purchased from the company at the end of the week after rent and inflated store purchases were deducted from his wages a minor likely has not fell further in debt to the company there was only one way out of debt and that meant giving up what little they held away from the mines in those days you actually had a father and son would actually get up and go to work together they would part at the pit of the m at the mine the father going deep deep down inside and the son would go over with other young boys the co was push down in front of them and they would sit there and kick with their heels and they would pick the Slate off and throw it to the side their fingertips were all blood blisters and to strengthen them they would urinate on them just to take the sting out of it and to heal them quicker toughen them up they were 7 8 9 years of age pleas for decent wages and better working conditions were simply batted Away by mine operators like Franklin Gowan president of the Philadelphia and reading coal and iron company and when the workers went on strike owners called on Washington and federal troops were committed to shove the men back into the minds labor organizers cobbled together a union and elected upstanding Representatives they hoped they could gain the respect of the owners and sit down like men to work out a fair deal like laborers all over the country these miners were struggling to find acceptable ways to make their case in a country that put the rights of owners above all others after the workday was done the men would Gather in their Local Tavern talking deep into the night weighing and reeing their meager options by the light of oil lamps and Miner candles The Tavern became the center of all activity in the area it was where uh information was exchanged it was a very important part of life and it's not necessarily because of the intake of lequer but because it was a meeting place and those who own those taverns especially the more successful ones like my grand Uncle Alec Campbell and Jacko were very very important people in the community by that fact both Alec Campbell and Jack Kio fed the minor families during strikes and organized the Irish against the owner's handpicked political candidates Kio was among the few men in his community who could read and write so miners came to him if they thought they were being cheated on store bills my great-grandfather jackieo he was a very forceful individual and they looked up to him and uh he was elected as such the high Cal of the bur of jaral and then eventually the county delegate of the anci of f barans not everyone who worked in the mines and gathered in the saloons thought forat Turnal clubs and labor unions could punch their ticket to security there was a small group of men who had other ideas about how to handle workplace grievances most of these men came from the remote Western corner of Ireland they were often Gaelic speaking and as such isolated even from other Irish in America these Fells were very very tough characters a lot of them came from Donal which is a a wild part of Ireland Stony Rocky and their characters were very much a part of that landscape they were hard men used to a hard life they didn't expect to get Justice for themselves in any way but by force even taken as a group these men were an Impulse they were without forethought or organization they simply lashed out at the person they could get to if you were a coal miner or a laborer your anger was directed at those who were most directly in authority over you and in this case that would be someone like a ticket boss or mine boss because they could directly tie his role in their lives to how much money they had in their pockets because what he said would determine how much money they got at the end of the work week that ticket boss would say well this isn't a full Car Coal there's stone in there or there's slate in there there's sticks in there so you're not going to be able to get full credit for this you'll only get 50% or 60% or 70% for it so they would be docked so much for that coal car and it was an ongoing problem it was a constant complaint complaint occasionally escalated to threat and threat to assault on a hot summer evening in 1862 a ticket boss was beaten to to death by a gang of mine laborers at the time nobody made much of the murder and over the next decade there were only a handful of other crimes against mine bosses then in 1875 after a six-month strike the owners crushed the union and made the men beg for their jobs back at lower wages an uneasy peace fell apart six people were murdered three of them mine bosses by then Philadelphia and reading President Franklin Gowan had funded his own police force and hired the renowned Pinkerton agency undercover detectives emerged with Tales of murder and destruction of property all committed by this gang of donig gallers they dubbed the mly Maguire after one of Ireland's notoriously violent secret societies the ring leaders according to detectives were two Irish Catholic Tavern owners who had long support Ed the laborers and their families against the mine owners Jack Kio and Alec Campbell the Catholic church was horrified and issued an order of excommunication for anyone involved with the mollies a disgrace to us as Irishmen and American citizens said one local priest a conspiracy against The Souls of men said father Daniel mcder against our country against religion against Christ the coal and iron police began to round up dozens of suspected Molly Maguire and an armed vigilante group stormed a house at wain's patch murdering one alleged Molly and gunning down his pregnant sister both Jack Kio and Alec Campbell were dragged off to jail in the middle of the night the coal companies donated the services of their own attorneys to prosecute the mollies Franklin Gowan himself took the lead Franklin gwan because of his gift at oratory was able to very very successfully and very convincingly for a 19th century AUD receptive to the idea that they were indeed being held in the thrall of Irish inspired Terror to convince juries that they had a crusade on their hands that they had to drive out the Irish Rabel Americans everywhere were already frightened by the Countrywide labor violence of the 1870s and while the nation watched the most sensational of that violence was being laid at the feet of the Irish in court and in the newspapers Gowan spun his tale of the mly Maguire a vicious secret society imported from Ireland to disrupt American industry and fronted by the Ancient Order of Hibernians the most prominent Irish fraternal organization in the nation throughout the trial he consistently over 2,400 times brought out the fact that Amal Maguire was a mem of and AOH was Amal Maguire and if you're Irish you're member to AOH therefore you're Amal Maguire so he systematically spread a paintbrush here and smeared everybody who was Irish and Catholic while defense attorneys argued specific cases it was the a the trade unionists and the Catholic church that took up the defense of the Irish and their institutions their defense was to put as much distance as they could between Irish America and anybody remotely connected with the mes the Irish felt for their own salvation they had to reject these wild men they had to uh say they're not part of our heritage that's all there is to it we just don't want to have anything to do with them and we'll not only have nothing to do with them but we'll help you prosecute them nearly all the accused mollies some surely guilty of the crimes and some not were convicted I don't speak much English a juror in Jack kio's trial reportedly said but I'm for hanging 20 men were sentenced to die including Kio and Campbell without physical evidence or a single eyewitness linking him to the crime Kio was convicted of murdering a ticket boss 15 years earlier the first execution with Alec Campbell and nine others on the docket was scheduled for June 21st 1877 around the anthracite towns they were calling it The Day of the Rope the executions were were uh very much public spectacles between 250 and perhaps 300 people attended the principal executions at Pottsville in the form of deputies and Witnesses and privileged observers in other words if you were rich and well connected enough you could come along and enjoy the the show The Bodies as they swung on the ropes were not shielded from the public they saw them die saw them strangle and were allowed up on the scaffold afterwards to examine their faces their bodies after the execution news of the first executions spread across a thankful nation and Irish America itself had the most to be thankful for the Molly Maguire had taken nobody else down with them the bright future of the Irish in America remained intact but in the mining patches there was a frightened sense of regret father Daniel McDermot who had been a strident critic of the mollies argued that the hanging should be discontinued that enough men had died already mmat uh is increasingly convinced that there is a miscarriage of Justice going on here and he publishes a piece in the New York Herald just after the executions saying that there is no effect without a cause and that the cause of Molly maguis and have been the brutal conditions faced by Irish Mine Workers another local priest led the fight to get Jack Kio a stay of execution but by then there was no way to bring the man dubb the king of the mollies back into respectable company on December 18th 1878 as his family watched Jack Kio was hanged with the stain of the mes wiped clean the AOH flourished the Catholic church was celebrated for its loyalty to the cause of American industry and Irish working men led the way in making a new Trade union in the hard coal region in 20 years nearly half of the 110 unions in the American Federation of Labor would be Irish run and Irish labor bosses told owners that while you might have to watch out for the Italians and the slaves and the hungarians the Irish were people you could sit down with to work out a fair deal by hard labor wit and a willingness to sacrifice individuals to the good of the group The Irish elbow their way into an America dominated by Anglo Protestants creating their own enclaves within the bigger Community but in the last quarter of the 19th century individuals began to separate themselves from these insular Irish communes as they moved out into the wider World a few of these men would change the way America saw the Irish and the way the Irish saw themselves and as Irish American heroes like John L Sullivan and John Mackey and Marcus Daly Rose the collective fortunes of the Irish and their communities would rise with them an Irishman who could fight and handle his Dukes was looked up to I can still hear my father use one of his best Expressions he can handle his Dukes gloves were forbidden they were not even considered it was Bare knuckle be chested boxing fist to face it has been described as a human fight it's a very very bloody scene a bloody thing to watch you could always pull somebody's hair you could pull his mustache I mean you could you could bite somebody's ear you could bite him in the nose you could anything went in the early days Irish immigrants in America were driven by conflicting impulses the first a desire for respectability and the security that comes with it the second a gnawing urge to stand up and Avenge the wrongs done them The Lure of the boxing ring was that it was a place where the Irish could watch one of their countrymen do violence to an Englishman or a know nothing or a presbyterian throughout the 1840s 50s and 60s bare knuckle boxing had been dominated by Irishmen of questionable character Yankee Sullivan was a professional criminal lynched at West Mike mcul a falling down drunk Tom hire a pistol happppy gangster in New York and Joe Coburn was sent to prison for nearly beating a cop to death the problem with boxing one commentator offered was that the sewage is not wholly worked out of the blood it was a kid from the rockberry section of Boston who brought the respectable to the ring along the way he proved it possible for an Irishman to live by his own rules and still make it big in America he learned how to fight as a kid as an urchin shineing shoes in some of the taverns and gills around the rugle Street Station in Roxbury that that's all he was was just a street fight he was second generation the son of Irish immigrants and his parents called him joh on by age 20 he'd run through a series of apprenticeships and menial jobs unable to stick to work a day routines he made his reputation hoisting kegs of beer and barrels of flour over his head and he lived for the nights when he and his boyos would go to their favorite watering holes and pick fights the best nights the fight came to them like the night they went to The Dudley Street opera house for a variety show it was the custom for Fighters often to challenge the house to challenge anyone who wants to come up to fight them for a purse of $25 $50 and this young novice this man who had really never been in the prize ring uh had very little experience except for a few street fights uh made mince me of this professional and when of a matter of seconds he had knocked a professional fighter into the the orchestra pit and he just stood up and he announced to the crowd my name is John L Sullivan and I can lick any man in the house it took John L Sullivan just three years to call enough attention to himself to get a title fight with Patty Ryan Ryan was another in a distinguished line of world champions recently recovered from a street fight in which he'd been stabbed in the back and kicked in the mouth Ryan was badly scarred and missing his two front teeth even in fighting trim Patty Ryan cut a less than dashing figure John L knocked him out in 11 minutes and declared himself champion of the world then he did what no man had ever done before he challenged America offered $1,000 to any man anywhere who could stay on his feet for four rounds and he didn't wait for the fight to come to him in 1883 John L got on a train with a new fangled boxing gloves and fought his way from Baltimore to San Francisco St Paul to New Orleans and nearly every place in between that called itself a town he gave everybody a shot and nobody stuck four rounds in Buffalo he knocked a man unconscious for a full 20 minutes in Memphis he knocked out another in 2 seconds flat but John L Sullivan would like a hunter you have the Killer Instinct in we would rather see dead in bleeding there than get up again Patty Ryan said I got hit by him one time it was like getting hit by a telephone pole endwise wherever he fought when John L entered the ring he tied off his colors in his Corner red white and blue always and always the green of Ireland with a harp and a shamrock too now Jewish Fighters or Slavs took the name O'Neal or oir or Kelly when they stepped into the ring John L Sullivan had made Irish something to be and the Irish loved him for it he toured everywhere and everywhere in small towns across the West in California in the Great Plains in the Deep South The Irish where they were there and the Irish were very well scattered in America by this time they came out to see him there was nothing else that they could look up to there was nobody here there was no Saints there were no Scholars we didn't have a thing but John El Sullivan so the guy that's working in the pits all day whatever he's doing he didn't have a thing if he could look up to this man that had achieved this was John El Sullivan he was the hand champion of the world he's one of our own in 1884 John L made the president's salary three times over and he drew bigger crowds at 25 Sullivan was as famous as any man in America it wasn't that he invited the public into his life but if they wanted to watch the show that was okay with him John L lived against the culture he might have had bad taste but he had plenty of it he wore batwing collars silk hats and Diamond stick pins in a day when men of business favored plain dark suits John L sported salmon pink hounds tooth trousers or lemon yellow or lavender then a pale blue waist coat with red and black spots and white stripes the dyer describes it going to John El Sullivan's hotel room and in this room this room is surrounded by champagne buckets and boxes of cigars and shirt collars everywhere and solivan as he describes him lolling back in the midst of this is just this great presence he calls him a pugilistic JP Morgan he had a mammoth appetite for food for liquor and for for the good life I mean he came from nothing all of a sudden people had come Mr Sullivan John L Sullivan but he was a real Rascal and a rogue and he go on Benders for days and weeks and you have to keep him on a very very short leash the problem was as the evening wore on John L lost more and more of his rogish charm in his cups he would fight at the smallest provocation both real and imagined he headbutt smaller men or Club them with a billiard queue he beat his wife regularly and was known to slug his horses for a while his wife apologized for him sometimes Jon oversteps the bounds of prudence in sociability and is a little sirly but she quit making apologies for him as did his friends a son of a of the first water said one if he ever drank any if you're a middle- class Irish person a person who who wants some sort of respectability who it's very important that the Irish as a people have a have a good image Sullivan's a very ambivalent figure heroic uh the strongest man in the world the greatest fighter in the world but at the same time a man often out of control Sullivan began showing up for fights too drunk to enter the ring he boozed until his lungs bled until his liver stopped making cells and his stomach lining washed away twice in only 5 years he nearly drank himself to death by the time he turned 30 he hadn't won a real fight or trained seriously in 2 years he' ballooned to nearly 250 lb aside from drinking and whing John L's real talent was as his trainer put it making flesh rapidly when the coming heavyweight Jake kilrain challenged him to a winner take all bar knuckle contest it took Sullivan more than a year to accept he set himself to training on a farm in Upstate New York but most sports writers agreed that Sullivan no longer had the discipline to get himself into shape on July 8th 1889 when the fighters towed the scratch in a clearing in Richburg Mississippi the odds for the first time in his career were against John L Sullivan the classic picture of John L Sullivan and Jake Kain in the clinch in Mississippi in 115 degree temperature all you look around everybody's got a bower hat on all the they've all to to a man they've all got a smile on their face all 's nose was broken at this point kin was bleeding but I mean these guys really enjoyed it they enjoyed it they enjoyed seeing blood John L was trimmed out in green and white tights with a sash of the Stars and Stripes he lost nearly 40 lb and showed no sign of his dissipations the purse was $220,000 the biggest ever but for John L what was left of his worn and tattered reputation was also on line kilrain drew first blood but Sullivan's Relentless headlong rushes began to wear down his Challenger as kin got weaker with time at one point he offered John L A draw that he they would agree to uh to end the fight together there would be no clear winner or loser Kil rain said want to stop it now and we'll have a draw and Sullivan said we won't have a draw we're going to we're going to go to the end of this every time cine felt bad he put his knee to the ground which was the end of the round and just pray that the the minute interlude between rounds would give him enough to revive himself and just pray that John might slip or something but John didn't slip John would uh John had then his manager said to him what do you want to do do you want to canc he says no I'll stay here till the morning I want to kill him as the fight moved into its second hour the sun began to melt the pitch on the bleachers and the plaster plate on John L's groin at 60 rounds one of Sullivan's eyes was nearly swollen shut and his feet were bleeding through the tops of his shoes but he refused to sit between rounds Kil rin's back was blistered by the sun his entire face was swollen and his chest and shoulders were covered with welts raised by Sullivan's bare Knuckles after 2 hours and 16 minutes and 75 rounds kain's Corner threw in the sponge John L Sullivan was still standing that fight marked the end of an era the last of the bare knuckle prize fights and John L would never fight so well again in just 3 years he would lose his title in a loved about against an Irish kid named Jim Corbett but in or out of the ring Corbett's Fame never matched the size of Sullivan's because no matter what he did before or after John L Sullivan would live in the memory of his challenge to best any man anywhere and in the memory of that blazing summer day in a clearing in Richburg Mississippi when the odds were finally against him long after he lost his championship John L Sullivan could still be found tramping through the big cities and the backwaters of America alike he traveled the country as a Vilan a baseball umpire and finally a Temperance lecturer even when he was old weary and broke John L would not give up the road because he understood that in the new world what people really wanted what they needed did was to touch their Heroes the story started that people would be talking in Topeka someplace and somebody said are you from Boston yes I am from Boston did you ever meet John L Sullivan yes I have met John L sullan did you ever shake his hand yes I shook his hand well let me shake The Hand That Shook the hand of John L sullan as a child when my father would shake my hand he would say you just shook The Hand That Shook the hand of John El Sullivan I didn't know johon oan had been the pope or the Bronx Democratic boss but I knew he was somebody important and I felt proud and honored to have shaken that hand when my father got off the train and was looking at the Rocky mountains out here he wrote a letter back to his brother Pat and he says Pat I think you better get out here fast they got so much land they're stacking it gold was found in California at the same time The Great Wave of famine Irish rolled into America the most ambitious Irish and the most able just kept going west arriving in mining camps from California to Colorado earlier and in greater numbers than any other immigrant group in America but the Irish who came here were looking for more than precious metals what they were looking for was a place of their own a permanent home in a land that defied permanence it was a very common thing for these towns to explode into existence but these places almost always boomed and failed or bodies are not renewable and they occur in the most obnoxious of places and so just when one boom occurred and people migrated to it it petered out and then there would be another boom and they'd move over to that one and it became a way of life it became a migratory way of life among the thousands of Prospectors was a young man who had immigrated from Dublin to New York with little more than a strong back and a persistent stutter that made him self-conscious and quiet in New York John Mackey had Apprentice to a ship's Carpenter and helped build the boat that brought him to California in 1851 Mackey had come West with a simple dream to get back home $25,000 he wanted enough to buy an estate in the countryside outside Dublin where he could settle his mother and set himself up as a Gentleman of Leisure for8 years he worked the diggings around the Yuber River in the Sacramento Valley learning how to sink a shaft read a clay seam follow a vein of ore and Stope it out a man didn't have to talk a lot if he knew his business and went about it with Vigor and despite the backbreaking rigors of Mining and Mountain weather that drops snow 8 months a year John Mackey always felt comfortable there then in 1859 word came that there was gold on the other side of the sieras in the Nevada territory Mackey and his partner Jack O'Brien determined to give it a go as they were walking into the young camp that was being just then named Virginia City City O'Brien turned to his friend John Mackey and said do you have any money on you and he said I don't and he said well I have a 50 c piece and he took it out of his pocket and he threw it into the sage Rush he said now we'll be able to come into town like gentlemen coming in as equals and and saying we're going to have a fresh start is what really mattered to them the minds of the comto load were pistol hot when Mackey arrived and in just half a dozen years he'd worked his way up from laborer to mine superintendent along the way he took bigger and bigger stakes in the mines he worked and by the time he married a cultivated young Widow named Marie Louise Hungerford Bryant in 1867 his equity in the minds made him a wealthy man he was completely caught up in the game but he understood at whole even as he moved his bride into a fine new house where Furs and Jewels awaited her in the Parlor he explained to her that his money could turn to dust in an instant but she needn't worry he assured he could always make a living digging with his hands Macky liked Virginia City and he liked the whole West a lot of the Irish who went West found this experience they liked it because in Mackey's words a man could hold his own in a fair fight soon after he married Macky partnered Ed with an Irish Protestant a practical minor named James Fair though there hadn't been a significant new discovery in half a decade Mackey and Farah supposed there was still a big or body to be found on the comto they bought up Mor abund mines between the two original strikes and their work Crews began tunneling a quarter mile underground for 10 months they followed a thin seam of ore nearly exhausting their fortunes just when they were about ready to give up that seam of ore began to expand just to an inch and then a 2 Ines and then all of a sudden it expanded to a foot and it kept growing and growing until finally they had found what would be known internationally and for all time as the big Bonanza you could walk into this chamber that they had excavated and it was 20 ft High 50 ft wide and 120 ft long and they had taken almost pure P gold and silver out of that chamber and you could sink your shovel or your pick into any of the walls or the ceiling or floor of that chamber and still extract that kind of wealthy gold and silver in mining towns all over the world a vein of AA a foot wide was considered a godsend in places this vein was 300 ft wide and a ton of its ore yielded golden silver worth up to $600 some days John Mackey's boys hauled 1,000 tons of a out of his mind he was making $800,000 a month and he was one of the richest men in the country if not in the world this presented a a tremendous psychological challenge to this man who was he now he didn't want to be removed from the boys in the mine he didn't want to allow the wealth to to be the thing that that divorced him from the thing he loved most which was was that sense of camaraderie he always felt with other miners Mackey still went to old Bill davis' gymnasium where he do a little boxing and gladly suffer the cat calls of men who yelled that all that money had made him too soft to take a punch and though he'd never let them take him at the poker table Mackey gave away money to miners like they were all long lost cousins letters requesting money he throw in the trash unread but if somebody asked him manto man the money came straight out of his pocket in the course of his life he gave away $9 million every so often he'd go through whatever primitive records he kept and he'd find out that about two-thirds of the people hadn't returned any of the money he'd loaned them and say oh well let's just tear them up though Macky shied from public recognition of his generosity he was to be sure proud to to be known as the number one Irishman in Virginia City a town that was fully a third Irish it was no place anybody would have chosen this scrubby patch 6,000 ft above sea level where Rivers ran nowhere but simply emptied into the Earth's sinks and soaked into the ground below in town itself tin roofs ripped from their Moorings by the Gale winds went flapping down the main streets and one night a house disappeared swallowed by the Earth with the lights on and the dog barking but Virginia City was a town that knew how to make a celebration and the biggest were the 4th of July and St Patrick's Day on each of those holidays the Irish and American flags flew side by side as equals at the head of the parade the Virginia City Irish 6,000 strong were leading the way and making something new in America in the 1870s Virginia City mines were creating nearly a tenth of the nation's New Wealth companies were t tunneling half a mile into the ground and 2,000 horsepower hoisting engines could draw 6 tons of ore to the surface in less than a minute Mills pulverized thousands of tons of ore a day separated and melted down the precious metals and produced gleaming loaves of silver and gold my mother my aunt and my uncle were always very proud that their mother had been born in Virginia City they recognized that it was not an ordinary place to grow up it was a terribly noisy place all these stamp meals that went you know 24 hours a day stamping this ore grinding this ore 45 trains a day roared through town carrying cords of Timber and two tons steam engines iron stoves and upright pianos comto miners were the best paid in the country the first of every month more than a half million dollars in wages was paid out all in solid silver dollars or gold visitors from Back East carrying their demurely folded greenbags were unnerved by the constant jingle of coin in people's pockets as they Saed down Sea Street the people who lived here began to think of this place more as a community rather than a boom bust Wild West mining town they were able to believe to hope that this was actually the last stop but not everybody could Overlook the rough edges of the Town John Mackey's wife for one decided she'd had enough of the West in 1876 Marie Lou Macky kicked the dust off her shoes and left Virginia City for good taking Mackey's stepdaughter and his two sons she meant to assume her place in New York's High Society with the Vanderbilts the asers and the nation's other moneyed families but word went round that Mrs Macky was a Catholic who had once worked as a servant girl snubbed in New York she had to cross the Atlantic to find the place she supposed was hers her husband remained in Virginia City to attend to business in his Minds he really clung to this Irish identity and he let his wife and family pursue this new identity which the money enabled them to uh achieve Macky would occasionally join the family at their mansion on route of tilsed in Paris on one trip to Europe he paid a visit to Ireland and found there was nothing left for him there no friends no family no attachments no home to return to that was about the time he was making another Discovery by 1878 he knew his Virginia City Minds were nearly played out and though Mackey would sink more than a million dollars into his best property he grudgingly began pulling up Stakes by 1883 just a decade after his great strike John Macky conceded that his commstock mind were spent stamp Mills closed down and the Machinery was unbolted from its foundations and moved on it went to tonopa it went to Goldfield it went wherever it was needed so that where you had this huge noisy bustling Enterprise all of a sudden there were just foundations and you know big uh bolts sticking out of Foundations with no nuts on him to hold down the Machinery it got quieter and quieter and quieter and then nothing when Virginia City fell silent John Mackey was a man with no place to be he was cut off from his family the city he had helped to build and presided over was Vanishing Ireland was a faded dream for the next 20 years Mackey lived a wanderer's life bedding down in hotels in San Francisco or New York while he busied himself building an international cable company occasionally Macky would visit his family in Paris or London where his sons were being raised as English gentleman and his wife was the toast of European royalty but John never found a place for himself in their home even when he was living in New York San Francisco and was one of the richest men in the world he used to keep list Virginia City as his home address even after the place had completely collapsed the mines had run out and uh the place was basically abandoned uh he still did it if you just can't find that ex door body that Community is going to fail it's a fact of life in the mining West I think it's a fact of life that the Irish Community tried to deny in particular and they stuck around perhaps longer than many others but eventually even the Irish needed to move on for probably the only city in the United States for the Sullivans out never The Smiths there were hundreds of Sullivans here literally hundreds of them I mean 14500 probably in the 1880s 1890s it was the most Irish place in America I've seen quotes of people amazed to see that you hear more Gaelic than you hear on the streets of Dublin what they brought was the stories the community in the Irish word they brought the muner this powerful sense of themselves as Irish which allowed them to recreate their worlds regardless of the physical environment in which they found themselves I think if the Irish had the numbers on the power to recreate the world it probably would have looked a lot like but Montana but Montana belonged to the Irish in the way that Salt Lake City belonged to the Mormons and Boston to the Puritans a city literally set upon a hill said one resident of but which cannot be hid it was the Ferocious communal will of the Irish that built the town sustained it and gave it its character and in this unlikely spot 5,000 mi from their Homeland these wandering immigrants found a last stop the first prospector is to the giant but that sits on a broad plane just down the Western slope of the Continental Divide were out for silver and gold but Marcus Daly an Irish immigrant who'd once worked Mackey's mines in Virginia City found one of the world's largest masses of copper in 1882 that was the year Edison lit Pearl Street and electrified the nation it was copper daily understood that would carry the new current of America copper of course was a very different kind of metal from from silver or gold you had to mine tons to process pounds it was going to take then a lot of men skilled men willing to take the risks it was going to require some very very heavy equipment this is mining at a scale that America had not known Dy put out the word and his old friends from the dying Virginia City mines came first then Irish miners from the hardore whole region of Pennsylvania and the copper mines of Michigan and finally from the mines in be Haven County Cork Ireland don't stop in America they were told come straight to but there's plenty of work in Marcus Daly's Minds American history is filled with stories of Irishmen working for non-irish what bu provided was a chance for Irish miners to work for Irish run mines and I'm speaking here not simply of DA's dominance of the Anaconda company I'm speaking also of the hiring officers of of men like Rimer O'Neal or Jim Brennan uh of Higgins and Tui and and Jeremiah Kelly the bosses lived and worked among the men sat in the same pews at mass and at the same tables at the meetings of the Ancient Order of Hibernians or the Robert EMT literary Association if a man needed a job for a newly arrived brother or cousin or if he had a problem he just pay a visit to the hiring boss's house and the bosses would put oldtimers in the cool spots in DA's Minds where little or no work was expected but everybody was paid the union scale Dy uh would give his workers days off to go see his race horses run out by Anaconda uh they would give turkeys or other bottles of wine uh way on holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas it's not the typical capitalistic boss with the workers and the opposition is he is the chieftain he's the chief in the way you O'Neal is the chieftain in the 16th century Ireland he is the man who takes care of people and he wins their loyalty by taking care of them and as long as he's taken care of them they're loyal to him but every Irishman working the minds in but knew to be skeptical of a man who fancied himself a Chieftain they understood that Dy had high hat bankers and investors to keep happy and they suspected when push came to show that he'd gladly do it on the backs of wage laborers Irish or not the great man himself people would call him behind his back or simply himself the most cynical called him a Shonen a sellout worried first and last about making a dollar the Irish andb hated him for it and they loved him for it Marcus Daly personified the the American dream that the Irish were all uh soaking up with their American Experience of the of the guy who started with nothing and Rose to the top to be one of the great millionaires in the American West as well as one of the great miners these were times when how much how big how Grand mattered more than ever and but was building itself the richest Hill on Earth the city put out a third of America's copper and a quarter of the world's with nearly 50,000 residents but led the country in per capita income and Union membership and it led the world in suicides by Dynamite its mines operated Around the Clock three shifts a day and only closed on miners Union day in St Patrick's the seven stacks of the never sweat never stopped belching smoke killing off every living piece of vegetation for miles around making it one of the ugliest Hills on Earth too it was okay for be people to uh to joke about the unsightliness of the city or to uh joke about uh uh the rough way of life the the underside of Bea but nobody else better joke about that the only Island surrounded by land someone once said of but and like Islanders the but Irish help hel to their own odd Customs the day after Christmas they sent their children out on the ren an old Gaelic ritual honoring their king of all birds they'd go door too with a turkey head tied to a stick singing the song of the ren a Cornish family might call the cops but the Irish would shower their children with apples and oranges and copper pennies the children would sing back buckets of whiskey bottles of beer wish you all a Happy New Year and every June 13th miners Union day children would gather with shopkeepers and clerks and clergy and maids to watch The Proud procession of miners on Main Street when the miners paraded they were parading to a certain extent the way soldiers did combat veterans they taught their sons that what they did was not only honorable work and hard work but dangerous work these were men uh these were be Irishmen and they wore that as a kind of uh as a badge it was a badge of honor for them uh it also of course killed them early any time there was a uh bad accident or a death in the mind that would blow the whistle at the mind that the accident happened and uh this be happened any time of the night and when you heard that whistle I mean it was just like the Cry of the Banshee it meant death everybody had somebody in their minds and somebody was dead you didn't know who it was in the mines a precariously perched Boulder became known as a Dugan because if it fell it could put somebody in the embalming room of old man Dugan's Mortuary fire in the mines could trap and kill dozens of men in an hour mistakes with dynamite could disappear a man in an eye blink the mines could kill quick and they could kill slow whenever somebody started coughing up pieces of his lung on Anaconda Road everybody knew he was stricken with miners consumption the con they called it when they're drilling the uh the blast for the ore it's a fine Rock quartz especially gets in the lungs and just destroys you an old man in those days was 40 years old you didn't see anybody Beyond 40 they were dead with the dust up in Corktown in St Mary's parish you could go for about two blocks down the street uh where the old St Mary's Church was and in my childhood there were just a handful of houses where the father was still living and St Mary's parish was really a parish of widows but in St Mary's parish the Irish prided themselves on the way they handled death and pointed to it as the shest measure of the strength of their Community the miners Union and the AOH both stocked a fund for widows and orphans the Anaconda company would sign over a fine Brick House to a Dead Man's family when a miner was badly injured Irish fraternal clubs made sure his partner was paid while he dumped his shifts in the mine and sat bedside day after day nursing his friend and if the injured man didn't pull through then everybody dumped a shift as soon as somebody died and that the they brought him back to the house for the for the Wake everybody start cooking my mom used to cook and they everybody make bread and rolls and cakes and may maybe a roast uh one poor fell was dying and he kind of rallied out of it and he said to his wife God Kate that ham smells good could you give me a piece of it she says I will not that's for the Wake well they have Murphy's wake and they put the casket on three chairs in the front room or the dining room and the beer was in front so he could kneel down and say your prayers and usually all the women were in the front room and the men were in the kitchen and they were having a few drinks they were drinking and smoking cigars and they ran out of chairs for the men that were in the kitchen so they went in and they picked Murphy up casket and all and stood them in the corner and they took the tree Chairs into the kitchen in come father O'Brien and he took one look at Murphy standing in the corner in the casket he said oh my God it's a acerage and he run out in the kitchen he said give me three chairs for the corpse hipay hipay hip hipay the Wake was so good they'd say we had to postpone the funeral after the burial the Irish would go in a procession of rented horses and Buggies out to the road houses beyond the cemetery the saloons like the mines operated around the downtown at the Atlantic the bar itself was a block long and served 12,000 glasses of beer in a day Irish fraternal clubs spent a fair portion of dues on Refreshments for meetings where they'd get together and tell soggy stories about the old country most men laboring in the mines talked like John Macky of saving enough to buy a farm in the Irish Countryside few Irish women shared in their husband's romance about Ireland while the men often obsessed about the old country about what was the women kept their eye on what would be and every Irish mother's son in but knew that you can go to college you can go in the army you can get a job in the ranch but you're not going to go down the hole I think that same thing was said to every Irish family in but you're not going to go down the hole and they didn't the sons in the the first generation Irish and be they they got apprenticeships they were carpenters and boiler makers and electricians or whatever but very few of them went down to mine when I was 17 years old I thought I knew everything about everything and my dad was telling us about Ireland what you know about his home and I said to him Dad if it was so great why did you leave believe it and he looked me right Square in the eye and he said to make a home for the likes of you and I never asked the question again in but like in places all over the country Irish immigrants set out to remake what they'd lost in the famine but along the way they created something entirely American a place that held promise of possibility unimagined in Ireland a place where the future was as wide open as the Montana range and you could almost see it coming over the mountains like the weather still days away of course they still sang the old songs sha o farell far from the shores of inish fall there never was a coward where the Shamrock grows and always always the song's about the return to Ireland well they gave a party when a came back and they came from near and far the rod was laying for near a mile with the Irish junting car the whiskey flooded like buttermilk to fill me heart with joy and the piper played an Irish re to greet his yane boy there came Branigan Flanigan Milligan Gilligan Duffy M Duffy Maly Malone laughery rafy Don conly dly oh holy mcginness Malone colon lahan flahan Flyn Shanahan manahan f h KY o KY minin M and I'll shake the hand of my Uncle Mike and the Hand of my sister Kate I'll hug and I'll sze as much as I play the girl in the garden gate and invite all of the neighbors to the wedding great and small and I'll live content and pay no rent old dny G as the 19th century closed memories of Ireland had become so distant that they were no longer about a place but about a longing in the Irish American song the lyrics might be about dear old Donal but the melody was simply about finding your way home there's an old story they tell in but a place where all the stories are old and some of them true about an Irish immigrant who came to America young he grew up in but worked in the mines and raised a family in his retirement he went back to see the old country while in Ireland he fell fatally ill on his deathbed he made one final request when I die he said take me home bury me in be oh S as far I wonder oh where your rolling River oh sh that's far I wonder oh away I'm B to wrong cross the w tell know oh I your daughters where way way you rolling River oh sh know I love your daughter and I'm going I'm going away cross the wde W was oh sh Lord I long to see you oh roll oh sh I long to see you and I I'm B oh I'm B to go CR the world We Major funding for this program was provided by Jefferson smurfit Corporation around the world we're known for our paper paperboard and packaging products and paper recycling we are proud of our Irish heritage through our association with Jefferson smurfit group funding for this program was made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you this is PBS