Monday of this week marked the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising1. So I’ve been wondering what my Irish-born great grandfather Joseph Kieron might have been thinking as the events unfolded that week in 1916.
Joseph had immigrated to the United States from Ireland in about 1895 and made his way immediately to Butte, Montana. With its large Irish population, stories of the rebellion must have been big news in Butte.
So of course I got right on the computer to see what more I could learn.
According to this recent article from the Montana Standard, the impact on Butte was “huge”. Both the Anaconda Standard and the Butte Miner ran nearly identical stories but the headlines of each paper were quite different – the Standard being the more “restrained” of the two. And among the group of activists eventually tried and shot for treason was James Connolly who had visited Butte in 1910.
On April 30th, the day most of the Irish nationalists surrendered in Dublin, at least 1,000 Butte Irish met at the Hibernia Hall to establish the Butte chapter of The Friends of Irish Freedom – a group founded to support the goal of national independence of Ireland.
Quite accidentally, I also learned that the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives has a CD which contains “scans of documents pertaining to the Friends of Irish Freedom from 1910 to 1936”, including membership rosters. I’ve ordered a copy of the CD – it should arrive any day.
Do you suppose Joseph attended that meeting in a show of support for his countrymen? I’m hoping to find out.
Copyright (c) 2016, Lark M. Dalin Robart
- The Easter Rising was an armed rebellion by a group of Irish nationalists determined to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic. ↩
