Upcoming Events

Sunday November 17 at 5pm in-person

Eamon McCarthy on Miners, Moguls and their Monuments

The ILHS is very pleased to present an in-person talk by engineer and historian Eamon McCarthy on his new book titled Miners, Moguls and their Monuments – Stories about the Irish Miners in the Bay Area. The talk will be held on Sunday November 17 at 5pm at the United Irish Cultural Center, Members Room.

During the gold rush, the Irish flocked to California using every available transport; many sailed directly from Ireland or England and a large contingent came east from Australia. There are many narratives about those who struggled or failed but some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and left a legacy of great buildings, technologies and companies that survived to modern times. That success was ascribed in the eastern press as being due to ‘the luck of the Irish’, a pejorative this author sets out to refute.

Their travels, tribulations and triumphs are in turn inspiring and sad, funny and tragic, amazing and even shameful. But they are always entertaining, and this talk will relive their stories. It will include those that came before the 49ers, the Silver Kings, the narrator/illustrator J Ross Browne and Maud Bourn on the Lakes of Killarney.

Eamon McCarthy grew up in West Cork, and has engineering degrees from University College, Dublin and the University of Notre Dame. He toiled in the mining industry, mostly in North America, for 37 years, specializing in processing and mineral economics. He is retired, living in Morgan Hill and a fruit farmer in his old age. He has a great interest in mining history and his book the Irish Miners was published on Amazon in June.

The talk will be held in-person on Sunday November 17 at 5pm at the United Irish Cultural Center, Members Room.