 The Pearson Connolly Fife and Drum Band originated in Butte, Montana in 1917. At that time Butte was a hub of the Irish diaspora in America. It was a major mining town. As David Evans notes, who is the renowned historian of the Butte Irish, in population production and size of workforce, it had no rivals among mining cities anywhere in the world. It also bore the distinction of having a higher population of Irish in 1900 than any other American city. This population, which had been arriving in small numbers in Butte since after the famine, accelerated in the 1880s and 1890s. Marcus Daly from Ballet James Duff, County Cavern, a miner who went to Butte to manage a mine, ended up purchasing the Anaconda Mine himself in 1880. Irish immigration to Butte increased in the 1880s and 1890s as a result of the development of the mines, and some say because of the presence of Daly himself as a visible and incredibly successful Irish mine owner. As a result of growing arrivals of Irish immigrants in enclave formed with many thriving associations. Many of this generation of immigrants settled in Butte and created a home there. A new wave of Irish immigrants, however, started to arrive that were characterized by a different set of experiences and expectations. As David Evans notes, the Butte they entered in 1906 or 1916 was not the same town it had been 20 years earlier. It was a much harsher place for an Irishman. The Butte of 1912 resembled other Western mining towns more than it did the Butte of 1892. Two layers of change that added to this changing Butte were the changing landscapes of Irish politics and labor conflicts. The two often collided. The Easter 1916 rising against the British occupation of Ireland was a turning point in Irish history that had impacts far across the Atlantic, including in Butte, Montana. As AOH State President, ancient order of hibernians, state president Jay G Cummings told the Montana Convention, the hibernians are the Irish who fight. They are the soldiers, the men in the forefront. But the AOH was not generally interested in the radical potential for militant labor activity as espoused by James Connolly, a leader of the rising. That potential was focused by James Larkin, an Irish trade union leader and social activist who lived and organized in the U.S. from 1914 to 1923 and made three trips to Butte during that time. He was aided in spreading this message to Butte by another Irish socialist, Con LaHaine. After LaHaine's visit and before Larkin's return to Butte for the third time, a new Irish organization showed up called the Pierce Connolly Irish Independence Club. It was most attractive to the younger generation of Irish immigrants, many of whom were suspicious of the conservatism of the AOH. This new group rose up in Butte, animated by changes in Ireland as well as in Butte. As Emmons notes, quote, Butte offered no promise of a fair living to these younger ones. By 1916, it was just another industrial town filled with boarding houses, hazardous jobs, and roving gangs of unskilled disposable workers. Larkin and the Pierce Connolly's appealed to the unsettled Irish because Butte's Irish enclave had no room for them and because their work was unsteady, safe, and paid too little to allow them to return to Ireland or to bring a part of Ireland to them. One thing that Emmons doesn't account for here, and that comes up in the recording that I made of Dan McCormick in conversation with my father Eugene McPeak in 1988, is the presence of actual participants in the 1916 Rising in Butte and in the formation of the Pierce Connolly Club. According to Dan McCormick, many of those who came from Butte to San Francisco were veterans of the Rising. So if we take that into consideration, this population becomes another layer in understanding the reason why a new organization sprang up in Butte at this time. One explicitly interested in the Republican and socialist heritage of the Rising, and one that was not interested in shying away from conflict and making manifest the ideals of that socialist heritage in Butte. This interest in both sides of the revolutionary inheritance led almost immediately to conflict with the established Irish community in Butte. St. Patrick's Day 1917 came on the verge of the U.S. declaring war with Germany. This was a major issue for the Irish who were not interested in supporting a war in which the U.S. was an ally with England. In this context, Emmons notes, there is no record of what it was the Pierce Connolly's wanted to do, what the theme of the parade would be. Mayor Charles Lane, however, thought he knew their purpose. He denied the Pierce Connolly's parade permit saying that it was an IWW affair, an indication that the Pierce Connolly's were seen as more than just another group of Irish merry-makers. The parade proceeded in defiance of his orders. AOH had been invited to participate, and many of the Emmits and Irish volunteers, some in uniform, seemed to have done so, though the RELA, the Robert Emmitt Literary Association, accepted the invitation, quote, only conditionally. But the Hibernians in Division III in a tersely worded note answered for thousands of conservative Irish when they, quote, turned down the invitation of Pierce and Connolly Club to parade, announcing instead that, quote, we are going to mass, unquote. So the Irish establishment in Butte started to split with the Pierce Connolly's, a move that continued when they staged another parade just after St. Patrick's Day in which 750 people participated in about which establishment Irish leaders were not consulted. Anti-war sentiment came to the fore after a national draft registration order was made on June 2nd, 1917. The following day, two men described as young Irishmen recent arrivals were arrested for distributing anti-draft pamphlets in Butte, a pamphlet that included the phrase that men were being asked to fight in a war to, quote, aid the nation that had riveted the chains of slavery around Ireland, unquote. The Pierce Connolly Club took credit for the pamphlet, and two of its officers, James Trainor and John Lennon, were also arrested. In addition, on June 5th of 1917, the Pierce and Connolly Club led a large anti-draft protest march, which ended in what's described as a small riot. Within the same week, the Pierce Connolly's were involved in the formation of the Metal Mine Workers Union on June 5th in response to the draft order. That week, the speculator, Mindfire, claimed the lives of 165 miners of the 410 men who went to work on that night shift. Charles Stevens, a reporter for the Anaconda Standards, stated, quote, leaders of the P.C. Club were also the leaders of the I.W.W. in Butte. This is something that Ammons doesn't agree with. He considers an overstatement. Nevertheless, the Pierce Connolly's were the most visible target during the years of World War I, and their anti-war stance was coupled with labor activism. As Ammons notes, the Pierce Connolly's did more than just share offices with the miners' Workers Union and the I.W.W. They supported the strikes of 1917 and 1918 and ensured that their members would be blacklisted by joining Frank Little's funeral cortege. Little was a labor leader, a member of the I.W.W., who was lynched for his union and anti-war activities in Butte in August of 1917. As a result, the organizations filed were confiscated by federal authorities. Its officers, quote, roughed up by company thugs. This visibility had consequences for their profile in the Irish community. In 1918, the Pierce Connolly Club asked Captain Omar Bradley in charge of U.S. peacekeeping in Butte for permission to parade. Bradley agreed to allow them to parade as long as it was not, quote, unquote, unpatriotic. Yet the mayor of Butte rescinded that permission. And in 1919, that separation from the Irish establishment continued. I have a picture of it here. They issued a statement in the Butte-Delley bulletin in March 14, 1919, reporting that they would not be marching in the parade because it was not granted. They were not granted a permission from the mayor, quote, unless they joined the hibernians. This is a direct quote from the statement. And this they absolutely refuse to do. The hibernians here before have been averse to the stand the Pierce Connolly Club has taken in demanding equality and justice for all liberty-loving people. No later than last year, they approached the mayor and influenced him to prevent the Pierce Connolly men from parading on that day. So you can see a continuation in this in this split. As a result, the Pierce Connolly Club staged its own parade that invited, quote, all returned soldiers and sailors and lovers of liberty invited to join in. 1919 was also the year that Devallara, an American-born leader of the Irish Rising, and the only commandant of a battalion who was not executed on account of his American birth visited Butte, Montana, as president of Sinn Féin. And as reported in the Butte-Delley bulletin on July 25, thousands of marchers are expected to be in line, including a large detachment of soldiers, sailors, and Marines in uniform, prominent among which will be the Pierce Connolly Club with its drum corps and delegates from various fraternal labor and industrial organizations. The following year, 1920, was the year of a strike that would change the fortunes of labor in Butte. On April 19, 1920, a strike was called in the mines around Butte, and it was abruptly ended when gunfire erupted at a picket in the Never Seat Mine on April 21st. Company security guards, open fire, wounding 15 and killing one, all had been shot in the back. And even though all but one were strikers, the company blamed the IWW for the violence and federal troops arrived the next day to impose martial law and end the strike. On May 12, the company banned all members of the IWW from working in the mines. So this is, sorry, that's the daily bulletin piece showing the arrival of Devallera. And this is a picture from the Anaconda Standard in 1922 showing the arrival of Countess Markiewicz on April 29. And beside her is Kathleen Berry, who is the sister of Kevin Berry, who'd been executed in 1920. Pearson Connolly was still in Butte for Markiewicz's visit in 1922, right before the start of the Civil War. And just to give you a sense of Pearson Connolly's perception or profile in the community at that time, what she says, and I think Mary McCormick pulled this out as well in your history, that Butte was one of the places that stood out for its reception. They met us with a band and an army. And it wasn't a band and an army, it was the Pearson Connolly Five Fender Band, but it just appeared like an army. Okay. And now I'm going to play you the first of a series of clips from a conversation, a recorded conversation that I had with Dan McCormick, the grandfather and great-grandfather of many in the band now, and also with my father Eugene McPeak. So this was recorded in 1988. And he's going to tell us about what was happening when the band moved to San Francisco. The band worked up in the Copper Monument where Iri was. Yeah. So anyhow, they protested the war called in the Nicema Guard. And of course, they knew there were all, a lot of them were arrested, then they were confined to their homes. They couldn't come out from the streets. They had to be hiding. So the only thing that they were able to do was get Montana to leave and come to San Francisco. So the men that were in the band, I think there were some maybe 40 of them there, all came to San Francisco. And some beefs amongst themselves, when they went back to work and the mines was always brought up to them in their strikes here in the two scabbards, huge Montana. But none of the band members was on that beef with all the private guys that had to leave there because of the mines that were done. And it came to heart, they put that all in. They did object to the country going to war. All righty. So the memory is alive and well for Dan McCormick about the serious outcomes for the band of this activity in this time period. Edmunds suggests that just briefly that the Pierce Connolly's, once they arrive in San Francisco, are actually working in collaboration with the IWW directly when they had been suspected of doing so in Butte. It's nothing I can corroborate, but it's something that Edmunds claims. I'm going to play you another clip from McCormick who gives us a sense of how the club existed alongside of the band as it came to San Francisco and kind of the composition of the groups. Well that was that the club themselves were struggling veterans in nineteen-nineteen. So if we took in everybody from the street, we would normally bust it up to the top because you would have turned it into some kind of a political degree. The thing I think that the band, the band in no way could claim that this was the first Connolly out that the county carried the club or the club carried it more than that. The language in there I think writes that all off. I'll have to find that in a minute. But you could be a member of the band and one thing that the club would not stand for if you were in the free state army, you couldn't, you couldn't wear the uniform if I would say so. So they even wore a restriction that took the uniform off a guy that had a water pump right from the top of the hole. What you can, I don't know if you can hear it too quickly and I apologize for the quality of the audio clips here, but you could not be a member of the band if it had been identified that someone was a member of the free state army. And so McCormick is saying that there was one person for whom that knowledge when it was uncovered resulted in him being stripped publicly of the band's uniform when they were performing, presumably. Dan McCormick himself joined the band in 1932 when he says that a man from County Down by the name of Joe McNulty was running it. He also names others of what he calls the original guys. In other words, those who had come from Butte, including Pachy Doherty, the O'Neill brothers, Dennis Scannell, old Ed McGovern, as he calls him, and others. And he says that the band had about 30 members in those days, but that they would always be down about five or six since you had, quote, had to get work wherever you could get it. In addition to playing in the parades and attending community commemorative events, such as going to the grave of Father York, the band also participated in picnics. And I thought that I would play you a final clip here about the picnics because it seemed like it was such a fun outing for everybody involved. Oops, sorry. Here we go. Really? So that gives you a sense of what a big, you know, first of all how hard it was to get up the country and out of the city and how it really was, you know, the party started essentially immediately upon, you know, exiting San Francisco. So that's just a short snippet of some of the activities that band members were involved in. Just quickly, you know, World War II had a very negative impact on the band. McCormick tells us that they got nine or ten, you know, nine or ten of the guys were enlisted and that after the war there were missing members and people were getting married and moving away. I'm not entirely sure if there was a stoppage of the band at this point or not. He talks about a reorganization of the band happening in 1956 and this happened simultaneous to a huge influx of immigrants in the 1950s from Ireland, the second largest wave of immigration into the U.S. in the 20th century and that came to be known as the 50s generation. And those, that included my father as well as other folks by the name of John Devine, Joe McHugh, Pete Laffey, Bill Ferrell, Tom Riley from various places that really provided a shot in the arm to band membership at that time. And, you know, somebody like my father who came from Tyrone in the north had experience in playing in Fife and Drum bands in Northern Ireland where Fife and Drum is a big part of the tradition. And so he, you know, they also benefited from people who are coming from Ireland who had a variety of expertise and experience as well. In addition, the band benefited from an influx of new recruits which are called in this conversation between the amicormic of my father natives which I think is interesting or in other words meaning American-born people um and I'll just play you a tiny bit of this this clip on new recruits. We got different fights because we wanted uh to use a low-scale monogil gear, you know, the alto type pipe, and uh they got the pipe amongst themselves, but finally the pot cutter became good. He would deal with the the artist was here and there, you know, he got the music, he could reach my music gutter anyway and uh he got them more or less on the right scale so everybody would come under who came in who were able to play right away. I saw them little oh sorry um so as the beneficiary I myself learned how to play from Pat Cotter and many many many in my generation in the band were uh were beneficiaries of of his work and so you had an enlivenment of the band in the 50s and 60s and I found as I was poking around my my my parents uh a collection of photos I found a few photos from the 60s here that I thought are interesting to look at. This is clearly from a parade um taking a break during the parade. This is from an advertisement in a GAA program in 1962 when the county down team the all Ireland champion team was visiting San Francisco. This is from the late 60s I would say and you can see that wonderful hat and tie in the uniform. We have a very old uniform courtesy of the McGoverns in the back of the auditorium today. Another another this is from March of 1968 so the 60s were I think a really rejuvenated um time for the band and then in the 1970s there was a huge influx of of children myself included and girls so for the first time the band had female members starting in the 1970s. Also in the 1970s the the band's position as a representative of Irish Republicanism became more central to its identity. The conflict in the north that erupted in the 70s produced organizations in the United States in response four months foremost among these was Irish Northern Aid. The band marched in front of Irish Northern Aid in the in the Saint Patrick's Day parade all during this period and the band continues to march as part of the Republican movement um in other words uh group supporting unification with Northern Ireland today. So without further ado um I'm going to turn the mic over to Mary, Mary McCormick McLaughlin