Cork to Copper

The Old Parish Road

Before they were Haggartys, they were O hEigceartaigh, an ancient Gaelic sept descended from Eoghan, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a legendary High King of Ireland. The name means "the unjust one." Make of that what you will.

The family roots run through County Kerry and County Cork, in the far southwest corner of Ireland where the land narrows to peninsulas reaching into the Atlantic. William Hagarty and Mary Griffin were from that corner of Ireland; family memory places them marrying in a church in Ballybunion, a fishing village on Kerry's north coast. The church is still there. If you know more about where William and Mary came from, we want to know.

Cork's tithe records show 156 Hegarty entries, with the largest cluster of 20 in Aghadown parish, Barony of Carbery West. Kerry has its own Hegarty presence near Kenmare and Listowel. The family may have moved between the two counties, or married across them. Either way, this is where the story starts: the Beara coast, where the land runs out and the ocean begins, and leaving was always easier than staying.

Exiled for an Attempt on the King's Life

That's the family story. Someone tried to kill the king, and the Haggartys were exiled for it.

The truth is probably more complicated and less cinematic. In 1821, the Rockite rebellion erupted across Munster: a violent agrarian uprising of secret societies against landlords, tithe collectors, and the Protestant establishment. The violence was heaviest in exactly the baronies where the Hegartys lived.

Participants were charged with treason, a crime against the Crown. The punishment was execution or deportation. Over generations, "charged with treason against the Crown" became "tried to kill the king." That's how family stories work. The shape of the truth survives even when the details compress.

The numbers back it up. In the first year of the uprising, 1,500 Munster men were arrested. More than 200 were convicted and transported to Australian penal colonies. In February 1822 alone, 36 were executed. At the Battle of Keimaneigh Pass, near the Haggarty homeland, 200 rebels ambushed a troop of yeoman cavalry in a mountain gorge. Daniel O'Connell himself defended the prisoners at trial. This wasn't a minor disturbance. This was war.

What we know for certain: by the 1830s, the Hegartys were leaving Ireland. And they weren't coming back.

Six Names on Ship Manifests

Between 1833 and 1838, six Hegartys boarded ships bound for New Brunswick, Canada. We have their names, their ages, and the ships that carried them.

Daniel Hegarty, age 23, aboard the barque Pallas from Cork, 1833. Two Johns on the Highlander and Eleanor Gordon from Derry, 1834. William and Peter, ages 21 and 16, on the Robert Watt from Cork, 1837. A third John on the Pallas again, 1838.

That William, age 21 on the Robert Watt, is almost certainly William Hagarty, who would later settle in Killaloe and Eganville, Ontario. Both of William's properties were found through 1850s-1860s library records during a family visit to Ontario. The timeline fits perfectly: arrive 1837 at 21, settle in the Ottawa Valley, have a son Edward around 1850.

The family says they were brothers. The records can't confirm that. But six people with the same surname, from the same part of Ireland, arriving in the same corner of Canada across five years? That's not a coincidence. That's a family leaving in waves.

They crossed the Atlantic in the holds of timber ships: cargo vessels that had just unloaded Canadian lumber and needed ballast for the return voyage. The families were the ballast. A ticket to New Brunswick cost about two pounds. To America, it was four. That price difference is why the Hegartys landed in Canada instead of New York. Economics, not destiny.

Lumber Camps and French Brides

The Hegartys followed the well-worn Irish corridor from the Maritime ports into the interior. Up the Saint John River, over the Temiscouata Portage, into the Ottawa Valley lumber camps. Young Irish men cut timber in winter and farmed in summer.

Somewhere along the way, a Haggarty married a French-Canadian woman. The DNA points that way: the Haggarty line carries the "Southwestern Quebec French Settlers" genetic marker. The Irish lumber camps and the French Canadian settlements shared the same river valleys. The families mixed.

By 1850, Edward Haggarty was born in the Eganville area, a small town in Renfrew County, Ontario, on the Bonnechere River. He married Ellen Deloughery, whose family was one of the founding families of Grattan Township, the area around Eganville. The Delougherys were also from County Cork. Two Cork families, reunited in the Ottawa Valley.

Edward and Ellen raised at least four children: Michael T. (1888), William Patrick (1891), Elizabeth Ann (1892), and Edward Leonard (1894). William Patrick served in World War I with the Canadian 5th Battalion and was wounded at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915.

Edward was one of at least five children. His siblings, Timothy, Elizabeth, William Jr., and Johanna, scattered across Ontario and beyond. AncestryDNA has matched 31 living descendants back to William Hagarty through these branches. The family tree is wider than anyone knew.

Edward died in 1913 and is buried at Saint James the Less R.C. Cemetery in Eganville. His gravestone is still there. A Patrick Deloughery, almost certainly Ellen's brother, is buried in the same cemetery. If you know how they were connected, we'd like to hear from you.

The Copper City

In the early 1900s, Butte, Montana was the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco. Marcus Daly's Anaconda copper mine paid $3.50 a day, nearly double the industrial average, and word traveled fast through the Irish communities of Ontario and the old country alike.

By 1900, Butte had 12,000 Irish-descent residents out of 47,635, the highest Irish percentage of any American city. It had Irish pubs, Irish parishes, Irish unions, and an Irish cemetery: Holy Cross, on the hill above town.

The money came at a price. On June 8, 1917, a foreman's lamp ignited cable insulation 2,500 feet underground at the Speculator Mine. The fire consumed the oxygen. 168 miners died, the deadliest hard-rock mining disaster in American history. Thirty-eight of the dead were Irish-born. Michael T. Haggarty was 29 years old and working in Butte when it happened. Everyone in the city knew someone who didn't come home that day.

A federal study found that 42% of Butte miners had silicosis, a lung disease from breathing rock dust underground. It was slow and it was certain. Michael T. died at 50.

Michael T. Haggarty, born in Renfrew County in 1888, followed the pipeline west. The entire family left Ontario before 1901, settling in Montana's mining country.

In 1926, Michael married Marie Irene Hanley in Butte. Marie's story is its own kind of hard. Her father John N. Hanley, a Cork Irishman, died in 1899 when she was a baby. Her mother Katherine Harrington, whose own parents were from the Beara Peninsula community, died in 1911. Marie was twelve years old. And yet she built a life, married at 27, and raised a family.

Michael and Marie had a son, Tom Haggarty, born in Butte in 1933. Six years later, Michael was gone. He died young at 50, in February 1939, and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Block 6, Lot 26. Marie moved to Bronxville, New York in her later years, but when she died in 1958, she was brought back to Butte to rest beside him.

The Montana Convergence

Tom Haggarty married Doris Anne Mudd in Missoula in 1955. The Mudd family had their own deep American roots, stretching back to colonial Maryland and a probable connection to Dr. Samuel Mudd. Together, Tom and Doris raised five children in Montana: Mike, Anne, Ellen, Pat, and Sean.

Michael T.'s siblings had scattered too. His brother Edward Leonard settled in Anaconda and Great Falls. Their sister Elizabeth Ann ended up in Seattle. Tom's brother Edward W. Haggarty, born in Butte in 1927, eventually landed in Texas, where he died in 2000. The Haggarty name spread across the Mountain West and beyond, but Butte and Missoula remained the center of gravity.

The next generation brought new families into the fold. The Haggarty line married into Montana ranching country: the Stewarts of Powder River County and the Kanes of Miles City. Two cultures, copper and cattle, under one roof.

Today the Haggarty family stretches from Montana to Washington to California and beyond. The Haggarty DNA still tells the old story: 71% Munster, Ireland. Six generations removed from Cork, and the blood still knows the way home.

What We're Still Looking For

This research is alive. Every answer opens new questions. Here's what would unlock the next chapter of the story.