When I travelled all over during my active working time in the mining industry, I came across the places that the Irish miners had toiled 150 years before. But it was reading David Emmons’ ‘The Butte Irish‘ that really awakened me to the great research that had already been done. I had known Emmett Larkin and Larry McCaffrey during my studies at Notre Dame, but was only vaguely aware of the great work being done on the Irish diaspora. Fellow student Andy Winiarzyk from Pennsylvania introduced me to the Molly Maguires and Sean Connery brought them to life. So Emmett, Larry, David and Andy inspired me to do this book.
There were many others who helped along the way. Noel Kirshenbaum introduced me to the Mining History Association. Professor Bill Mulligan, John Heussler and Jeremiah Mason helped on the Upper Peninsula. Ellen Crain and her staff at the Butte Archive and the staff at the Montana Historical Society in Helena were wonderful. Professor Corby Anderson, Pat Cuneen and Dick Gibson live Butte history every day. The staff at the San Jose Sate Library California Room and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley are great professionals and Professor Glen Genzel and the review provided by MA graduate Maria Lynch were invaluable.
I am in awe at the great work done by the Mining Heritage Trust in Ireland and I treasure their journals. In particular Des Cowman and the late Riobard O’Dwyer have done herculean work in Waterford and Cork respectively. I have a very well thumbed copy of Allan Noonan’s 2016 UCC thesis on the wandering laborers. Special thanks to Mike McCarthy at Priority Drilling and John Kearney at Buchan’s Resources for their thoughts on the Tara Four. I am deeply indebted to Donald Borthwick and his co-researcher David McAnelly for their help on the McDonald and Hyland families.
George Luxbacher and Kathleen Strabryla at NIOSH were very helpful on Daniel Harrington. My son Michael of Radical Research did great work extracting the IPUMS database that proved beyond me and my wife Patricia kept pushing me to complete the project. My grandson Desmond got me through the maze that is WordPress. It has been a pleasure to work with Fintan O’Connell at Inspire Press.
There are probably many more I have omitted, and I apologize.
Eamon McCarthy
