Shamrock City has its roots in a story passed down in my family for the past hundred years.

Michael Conway, one of my father's great uncles, came to America from Ireland in 1910. He sailed from Cove, County Cork to Philadelphia on a ship called The Haverford. He was 19 years old.

Six years later, having made his way to Butte, Montana to work in the copper mines, he was dead at the hands of the local police. His death was ruled a homicide, and the tale persisted within the family that he had been beaten at the behest of the local sheriff for refusing to throw a boxing match in which he was fighting, on which the sheriff had bet a fair sum of money. Records being what they are, we may never know more than the newspapers of the day reported, but we do know for certain that after three years of working as a Station Tender for the Blackrock Copper Mine, Michael Conway died on August 5, 1916 at the hands of two police officers, Patrolmen Brady and Carlson, who were later charged with his murder.

These tantalizing nuggets of information whetted my appetite to learn more about the short life of my father's ancestor, and about the history of Butte, Montana.

The discovery of copper in Butte was preceded by two seminal events that would change the course of world history: the inventions of the telephone and the "incandescent lamp". To wire the planet with these new technologies, copper and lots of it would be needed. Butte had more than enough to meet the demand and became known as "the richest hill on earth." Seemingly overnight, the city became a center of industry, heaving with people from all over the world, hungry to make their fortunes pulling this now precious commodity out of the earth.

Buoyed by the promise of employment at a time when "no Irish need apply" was a common disclaimer on job notices, the Irish poured into the city. It was well known that the Anaconda Mine, owned by the Irishman Marcus Daly, was particularly favorable to hiring the Irish. In a letter that survives from the time, an Irishman writing to his family back home implored his brother to join him, saying, "Come directly to Butte, don't even stop in America!"

As one might expect horrendous working conditions were the norm. Death in the mines was a constant companion. At one point, more people were buried in the cemeteries around Butte than populated the city itself. The push to provide more and more copper led to labor unrest. The clash of differing cultures and traditions led to social disharmony. And national and world events led to political upheaval. No other immigrant group felt this upheaval more than the Irish, and it was in this churning cauldron that Michael Conway found himself immersed in 1913.

One need only remember how the eyes of the world were riveted by the spectacle of the trapped Chilean miners to appreciate how universal is the story of the man who risks his life to bring light and energy to those who need never undertake such physical risk. Michael Conway was part of a very important wave of Irish immigration, as were the men who dug America's tunnels and laid its tracks. He experienced everything it meant to be an immigrant working in one of the world's most dangerous professions, living life on a razor's edge, when any day could be his last. Michael personally felt the growing pains of our industrialized nation and reflected the cataclysmic events that were shaping a new world.

Yet there was also joy and vitality in this life, his life: music and boxing, singing, drinking, dancing, people falling in love, coming together, bringing forth children. The vitality of Butte in these heady early days deserves also to be celebrated and preserved.