Marcus Daly (1841-1900)
The Copper King of Montana
Marcus Daly was one of the people who opened up the American North West. His contributions to the history of mining are well known, but he also did much work to develop agriculture, forestry and horse breeding; his support for The Anaconda Standard Newspaper, while self-interested, assisted the creation of a very important chapter in the history of American journalism.
Marcus Daly was born in December 6th 1841 in the townland of Derrylea, to the west of the small town of Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan in Ireland. His place of birth is now occupied by a cow-shed; the location was shown to me by retired post master Jimmy McCabe of Corglass.
The area where Marcus Daly was born was made up of small subsistence farms. Accounts differ as to the size of family he was born into. Some say he was one of six, others seven, even eleven. Regardless of the family size it must be noted that the largest farm in the townland of Derrylea in the decade before Marcus was born was only thirty acres (hardly enough to feed a family of one). The crops grown were potatoes, oats and ‘bad flax’ i.e. substandard flax for which there was little demand from the linen industry.
These statistics came from a time of massive over-population. The number of people in Ireland as a whole had passed eight million; while the population of County Cavan approached a quarter of a million - it is still less than a quarter of that figure today. This surge in population was due in part to the adoption of the great miracle food, the potato. These could be grown on smaller and smaller plots. An already uneconomical holding was often divided by the head of the family when the eldest son got married. The Lords Farnham, (landlords of Derrylea) to do them justice, opposed the subdivision of their tenants' holdings.
In essence he came from a background of subsistence farmers. His ancestors had been the hereditary poets to the local rulers the Ui Raghallaigh of Breifne in the sixteenth century. His family’s lot was in terrible contrast to that of the landlords of Derrylea; the Lords (or barons) Farnham. The Farnhams owned over 10,000 acres in Co. Cavan alone, and unlike many of their class they resided on their lands, though this was of little comfort to their tenants. They took what might be positively termed a paternalist interest in their tenants' welfare, even employing a Moral Steward to ensure that drunkenness and lewd games like cock-fighting were absent. The Farnhams were also a dominating (and domineering) force in local politics.
Marcus claimed in later life that he had received no formal schooling, apart from that provided by his mother. In 1830 the British Government had instituted a system of universal primary education in Ireland, and schools were set up throughout the country. Schooling was available for those who wanted it. The standard varied enormously; many of the these teachers were poorly trained and poorly motivated. Some had serious drink problems. Many chose not to attend, or to attend only spasmodically. Demands for assistance in helping the family in agricultural tasks were seen as more important than education. The denial of education in favour of work on the farm, though arduous, was seldom lamented by the children. This was a problem in rural Ireland down until the 1970s. Ballyjamesduff boasted a Classical school where intellectually gifted students destined for the Catholic priesthood were given a first grounding in Latin.
In 1857 Marcus left Ireland. The Great Famine had an enormous impact on rural Ireland. Within many parishes in Co. Cavan the population fell by a third, due to death and emigration. There was slightly more land than before the Famine, but the catastrophic events of 1845-49 did nothing to improve land quality. Apart from farming there were few other opportunities in Ireland; little industry and few large towns with service-sector jobs. The British Army was attractive to some, while railway construction offered jobs which were relatively low-paid, and highly dangerous. There was little to tempt the young Marcus to stay.
The nearest urban centre Ballyjamesduff had been in decline even before the Famine. Some less than kind folk say that the decline continues to this day. It had grown up as a staging post on the post-road between Dublin and the north-west. In the early 1820s a new road was laid between Cavan town and Virginia, bypassing Ballyjamesduff altogether. It maintained its role as a market-place, especially for black cattle.
Marcus’ sister Anne had already emigrated to America, living in San Francisco with her husband, and she may have assisted his passage. A story, bordering on the libellous, is told by some in Ballyjamesduff to describe the background to Marcus’ departure and passage to America. It forms a part of the generally ambivalent attitude towards Marcus Daly that exists in the county. It claims that he stole a highly-prized cow, sold it at the local market in Ballyjamesduff, and with the proceeds sailed for America.
Whatever means he used to get to America, he arrive there in 1857 or 1858. He first worked in New York, doing various menial tasks such as errand boy and even working in a livery stables. After a short time he had saved up enough money to enable him to go to California. The ‘Gold Rush’ had ended, but it was still a place where hard work was rewarded, He started to work in the mining sector, first as an ordinary digger, but in time rising to the level of mine foreman. His skill and dedication brought him to the attention of various mine owners.
He worked in many parts of the west. In Virginia City, Nevada he got to know a local journalist Samuel Clemens, better known to posterity as Mark Twain. He subsequently moved to Utah where, in 1874, he became an American Citizen. It was in Ophir, Utah he met and married Margaret Evans, a miner’s daughter. I have heard it said that she was a Protestant, and Daly, by marrying ‘outside the faith’ assigned himself to historical obscurity in Cavan.
In 1876 he was in Butte, Montana, managing mines for the Walker Brothers. A silver mine named ‘The Alice’, interested him. Its developer offered to sell it to him, and he passed the offer on to his employers who were not interested, but Daly, together with financial backing from William Hearst and William Haggin bought the mine. Its days as a silver mine were numbered, yet Daly sensed that it had far more profitable quantities of copper. In fact it had one of the largest deposits of copper yet found.
This presented problems: there was only a limited demand for copper, and this was largely met by mines along the Great Lakes. The only smelter was in Wales. However, by employing the most up-to-date mining techniques he was able to mine more copper and still sell it at a cheaper price. He solved the smelting problem by building his own smelter at Anaconda, and he solved its insatiable demands for fuel by developing logging in the Bitterroot Valley, near America’s great watershed. High transport costs between the mine and smelter were removed when Daly built his own railway. The availability of cheaper copper along America’s east coast stimulated its use for a wide variety of private and public uses, not the least being electricity distribution.
All this made Daly incredibly wealthy. He built a mansion (still standing) in the Bitterroot Valley near Hamilton, Montana. This has recently passed into the governance of the University of Montana. It has a wonderfully informative website. Here he indulged in his passion for racehorse breeding.
Marcus was a very energetic individual, yet the pace of his life had a harmful impact on his health. In the late 1890s he developed diabetes, as well as Bright’s Disease, and a visit to Europe in search of a remedy was of no avail. On the morning of November 12th 1900 he died in New York City. He was only 58.
Daly was one of those people who built America, filling in large tracts of the nation’s map – the embodiment of the rags-to-riches American dream. He was certainly controversial, and even today his name evokes strong emotions, not all of them friendly or agreeable. For the sake of balance, we might remember the original native inhabitants. There was also a heavy toll on the environment, but this was an age when people knew virtually nothing about ecosystems. Nevertheless, the name Marcus Daly and his efforts deserve to be better known, especially in his native county.
I wish to thank Cecil Merill, California for her unsurpassable help. Without her assistance my knowledge of Marcus Daly would be very threadbare. I also wish to pay tribute to Miriam Poe Ryan of Montana, author of the very readable Riverside.
Copyright Ciaran Parker, June 2, 2000.