Irish Immigrants in Michigan's Copper Country

Abstract

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 ven tured 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 expe rience 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; meterol