The Miners of Beara and Butte.(Irish emigration to Montana)

Father Sarsfield O Sullivan is a retired priest who still lives in Butte, Montana. He remembers hearing from his father Sean who emigrated to Butte from Bere Island that one year he had two cousins living in Butte, and the next he counted 42 cousins from County Cork.

More than 55 percent of the Irish who settled Butte, Montana came from County Cork's four parishes. By 1900, Butte had 12,000 residents of Irish descent in a population of 47,635. One quarter of the population was Irish, a higher percentage than any other American city at the turn of the last century, including Boston. Of 1,700 people who left the parish of Eyeries to emigrate from 1870 to 1915, 1,138 ended up in Butte. Members of 77 different families of Sullivans left Castletownbere in Cork for Butte and in 1908 there were 1,200 Sullivans in Butte.

John T. Shea worked in Butte's mines all of his life, first underground and then later in the Anaconda Company's Berkeley open pit mine except for a brief vacation during World War II. As he left for War, his father assured him that he would return home safely to his family. Then he told him of his own leaving from his home village in Cork. When he was 15, he and his twin brother Pat were made to understand that it was time to take their places in the world apart from their childhood home. For them and for thousands of others from West Ireland, that meant joining relatives in Butte, Montana.

When they arrived, they found that Butte had as much in common with West of Ireland as did the moon. Butte is situated high in the Northern Rockies beside the Continental Divide, 600 miles from the coast, frozen in winter by sub-zero temperatures and Arctic winds, and baked in summer by withering heat with little rain. It was a hard life in a hard land. But, they found one distinct similarity--the people they knew back home. Butte was fast filling with relatives from the Beara Peninsula and they made their homes in neighborhoods named Corktown and Dublin Gulch close to the mines.

The magnet who drew Irishmen to Butte was Marcus Daly. Marcus Daly mined Butte's hill for silver. Then, he found a massive vein of copper ore 50 feet wide that flowed like a river through the middle of his Anaconda mine. It was to become one of the world's largest copper mines just as the global demand for copper boomed to provide wiring for electric lights. Daly, who tended pigs as a boy where he grew up near Ballyjamesduff in County Cavan, found himself one of the wealthiest men in the West. For many years after, his wealth and expanding business interests controlled the destiny of Montana. He established towns such as Anaconda and Hamilton and established businesses in timber, newspapers, coal mines, railroads, and agriculture to support his mining ventures. He built a lavish mansion in the Bitterroot Valley across the mountains from the industrial chaos in Butte and on this vast estate he raised champion race horses. However, he never forgot his beginnings as a working miner and he was a benefactor to any of his men in need and in return he received their loyalty as sure as if he would have been a chieftain in a village back home. It could be said of all his men as it was said of one, "He loves Marcus Daly as the savage loves the sun."

In all of his business endeavours, the word spread of Daly's preference to hire Irishmen. Despite bitterly cold winters and Montana's remoteness, jobs waited for able-bodied Irishmen and from all directions they heeded his call.

First they came to Butte following Daly from Nevada's Comstock Lode, then friends and relatives came from the farther away Pennsylvania coalfields and Michigan copper mines. Soon, they came directly from Ireland, often by way of Fall River, Massachusetts, especially anyone with the slightest experience in the Allihies mines. As working Irish called for relatives to join them in Butte's prosperity, many were sent off with the admonition, "Don't tarry in America, go straight to Butte."