Part Two- The Quincy Copper Mines - Mining Below Ground At the Quincy Location, Hancock Michigan 1858 - 1894

Quincy Mining Company - underground view of a miner perched on mass copper. Note the candle for light.   Courtesy LOC 

The copper mines of the Keneewaw (pronounced KEY-wa-naw). [1]  Peninsula brought Maytor Healy from Ireland to Michigan in 1858, he was 40 years old.   At the time of his arrival there where many active mines in both the Upper Peninsula and the Goebic Range around Marquette.  Initially, before Nellie and the children joined him, Maytor may have worked any of these mines but for certain he was working for the Quincy Mining Company and living on their Quincy property, located on the hill above Hancock, by 1862 when he sent money to his family so they could join him in October of that year.   
      

The failure of Ireland's potato crop in 1845 was especially severe in southern County Cork, including the Beara Peninsula.  In the mid- 1840s many miners headed for the new mines in Michigan's Copper Country.  A comparison of the names in the Allihies Mine payroll records, and the Griffith's Valuation for the mining area with those in the federal census for Keweenaw, Declarations of Intent to become a U.S. citizen, and the Quincy Mining Company records shows a strong connection with the Minesota, Cliff, and Quincy Mines.[9]   

 

  On the north side of Portage Lake, above Hancock, stood the Quincy, Pewabic and Franklin mines.  At the time of Maytor's arrival they were in major production, hiring 200 men that year.  Employment at the Quincy mine jumped to 469 men in 1860 and to 583 in 1861.           

At the time of his arrival in 1858, the Quincy Mining Company had bunkhouses for their unmarried employees, located on the hillside between what is now Hancock and the Quincy mine location on top of the hill. 

   We know from the 1870-80 US Census records that Maytor Healy was a miner.  There are two contempory definitions of the job title "miner".  In it's narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, or otherwise working and removing the rock.  In a broader sense, a "miner" is anyone working with a mine, not just a worker at the rock face. [5]  The nineteenth-century, Upper Peninsula mining companies (Quincy, Franklin, Pewabic) narrowly defined the job of  "miner" as being only the men who drilled and blasted rock.  That class of worker reserved the term for themselves because it signaled their higher status among underground laborers.  Men performing other tasks had other titles. [2, pg. 23]   Indications are that Maytor was a skilled experienced miner and he worked below ground.    

Miners in the Quincy Mine,  Michigan 1870   

 
 "Miners employed sledge hammers, hand drills and powder to open up all parts of a mine.  Because hand drilling was slow, skilled miners first read the mine rock and placed the shot holes where the one miner held the drill's sharpened chisel bit against the rock face.   His partner, or partners, then hammered the drill home with eight-pound sledges.   After each strike, the holder lifted the drill just a bit and turned it slightly so that the next blow cut a better chip.   Since the angle and location of the holes differed from one to the next, miners needed the physical dexterity to swing their hammers through a variety of arcs, always striking the drill head squarely while missing the holder's hands and wrists.   The number of men on a drill team varied, depending on the size of the opening.   In a large stope, often one man held the drill steel while two men wielded sledges.   In a small drift, as little as six feet high and five feet wide, there was no room for a third man, so one man "jacked" (hammered) the drill while his partner held it.
   "Using a succession of hand steels of increasing length, miners drove shot holes to a depth of perhaps four feet.   As the end of the shift neared, they cleared the holes of chips and charged them with explosives and fuses.   For the first two decades the mines used black powder made up of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal.   Mines stored explosives in magazines on the surface, and some mines transported powder underground on Sundays, when fewer men would be around if a big, accidental explosion occurred.   The mining teams had lockboxes underground to store explosives and drew from their own powder kegs to charge holes.   

The holes are drilled and and charged, now ready to light the fuses. 

After lighting fuses, they retreated a safe distance and waited for the explosions.   When a burning fuse ignited a charge, the explosive detonated at a rate of about 1500 feet per second.   The expanding gases heaved the rock, breaking it free.   From their place of retreat, the miners counted the blasts.   If they set eight charges and heard eight explosions, they were done for the day.   If not, they had a missed hole- a charge had not fired.   In that case, they waited around long enough for it to be safe to go back in and try to fire that hole again.  Unexploded charges were accidents waiting to happen and needed to be dealt with."  [2] 

    "When miners discovered a large mass of copper, they drilled and blasted all around it.   To free the mass from the last ground holding it, miners tucked full, twenty-five-pound powder kegs around the point of contact and used sandbags to help direct the force of the blast.   Copper is a gummy, malleable metal.   Explosions do not fracture it, and no machine existed to cut it up as it sat on the mine floor, so men cut it up by hand." [2]   

1865 - Cutting mass copper at the Quincy mine location.   Three miners underground using a chisel and sledge to break up the large piece of copper.   A candle burns on the rock ledge on the far left.
Photo courtesy of Mich. Tech. University

   "Knowing how large a piece of copper that man could transport out of the mine, a mining captain drew lines across the mass, showing copper cutters where to part it.   One man held a chisel to the copper; others struck its head with sledges.   The chisel holder walked the chisel along the cut line, and the tool produced a long chip as it moved from one side of the mass to the other.   The men repeated this operation time after time.   As the channel deepened, the holder reached for a longer chisel.   Finally, the men cut through the bottom of the mass.   They parted it again, if necessary, and then others transported the pieces of mass copper to the shaft for hoisting to the surface." [2]
   "To light their way underground, each man carried a shift's worth of tallow candles with him, using their extra long wicks to tie them to his belt.   He walked along a drift by the light of a candle held to his helmet with a ball of clay.   A mining team drilled rock by a light of a few candles spiked to the wall or held to the rock with the clay balls taken from helmets.   The men worked in a dim pool of light, and a vast darkness spread from one team of men over to the next.   Looking over, a man saw a pinpoint candle flame in the distance, but little in the way of human features." 
   "Mining Companies almost wholly depended on natural ventilation to move fresh air into and through their mines.   Shafts filled with air columns of different heights, coupled with temperature gradients between the surface and the underground, kept the air moving.   Certain shafts were downcast and carried a strong draught of fresh air underground.   Other shafts served as chimneys.   Upcast shafts exhausted stale air, blasting gases, and dust into the atmosphere at grass.   For decades the Lake mines resorted very little to mechanical fans to augment their system of natural ventilation, and all the while, experts lauded the mines for their clean and cool air."

Quincy mine installed the man-engine in 1866.  Despite the seeming hazard of workers having to step from one platform over to another in order to go up or down, very few men died form falls while using these contraptions.   Maytor Healy would have used this man-engine in Quincy.   (Historic American Engineering Collection, LOC)

   "Until the mid-1860s, men transported themselves in and out of a mine.  In a vertical shaft, they sometimes rode out of the mine on a rope sling or in a kibble.   In an inclined shaft, they hitched rides on rock skips.   But wooden ladders remained their principle means of getting to and from work.   Rough planks often separated the ladder way from the shaft's adjacent hoisting compartment.   Men risked falls from ladders, whose rungs could be damp or slippery or in poor repair.   In winter, close to the frigid surface, a ladder might even be covered in ice." [2] 

Early underground miners.  Note the use of candles. 

   "In 1865 the use of a man-engine began.   The man-engine was a mechanical ladder, moved by a steam engine on the surface and assisted by counterweights.   It consisted of two lines of heavy timbers bolted together continuously... resting on a steep incline on rollers, with steps at certain distances the entire length.   When the propelling power at the top starts, one of these timbers moves up the incline and the other down, a measured and equal distance, until the steps come opposite each other, when both halt for a second, and then move in reverse directions - up and down, up and down, continuously.   The mining captain takes his position on a step which comes up to a level with the floor... as the timbers move on their measured tread and the step on which the leader stands moves down to a vacant step on the opposite timber, he changes from one to the other, and gives the word of command, "Step over," and all the party do the same, and are carried down gradually in this way, until the bottom of the moving timbers are reached."
   "At the end of a shift, underground workers reversed the procedure to get up to grass.   Instead of stepping over the rod poised to go down, after each pause of the man-engine rods, they stepped over the rod ready to move up." [2]  

Quincy Mine Man-Engine, 1870-80

 
"From the time they left the surface until their return, underground workers toiled nearly ten hours a day.   Once underground, most men stayed there for the entire shift.   They ate a meal underground, most men stayed there for the entire shift.  They ate a meal underground; men carried their victuals below in tin pails and reheated them over candles.    The underground was a world unto itself: dark, rough, hazardous, enclosing, steeply pitched, filled with the sounds of hammer blows and the smell of spent blasing powder.   It was a place of work with a single purplse: to liberate copper and get it to the surface.  Atop the mine, a very different world existed."[2] 

Earliest known photograph of the Quincy Shaft - House, view showing No. 1 Winze and Nos. 2-4 shaft houses, 1875, courtesy LOC

The Quincy Location,  Shafts No. 1,2,4 on the right. , courtesy LOC

The Quincy Mining Company, after its fortunes picked up in the late 1850s, had no intentions of building or controlling its own town.   Above Hancock, on Quincy Hill, beginning in 1865 it erected a typical mine location, with many shafts, a full complement of mining structures, a range of company houses, and a single store. 

Earliest known map of the Quincy Mine Co. property and their plot lay out for Hancock, below their location.   Quincy Mining Co. purchased all of the land from Portage Lake, up the hill and the Quincy mine location.  The company plotted the City of Hancock with three by four city blocks, then sold parcels to merchants, businesses and individuals allowing them to develop the city of Hancock.  This was to support the Quincy Mine workers.   The workers had the choice to live in Hancock, or in company housing, located at the Quincy location.   Courtesy LOC 

Quincy did, however, support the development of the village of Hancock.   Quincy platted and sold lots to help create a town that offered a wide range of housing and services to Quincy employees and others in the area. [4]

Laborers pose outside Quincy Mine Rockhouse 1875, courtesy LOC

Maytor Healy Sr. and Maytor James Jr. worked in the Quincy mine during this time period.   Notice the young boys seated behind on the far right. 

Quincy Mine No.4 Rockhouse.   Note the Tramroad that led to the Stamp Mill on Portage Lake and the buildings on the left., courtesy LOC

Enlargement of the previous map - Quincy Hill 1865  

Notice the company houses located in the planned segregated neighborhoods - Hardscrabble and Limerick (and later, Frenchtown).  The captain's office, blacksmith shop, supply office, dry and change house, carpenter shop, clerks house, doctors house, store (for mining employee families), company office, and agents house.   The locations of each building, including the mine shafts 1 thru 5, rockhouses, and Tramroad (which led down to the Village of Hancock and the Stamp Mill on Portage Lake) in the above map. 

The blacksmiths outside their shop (built in 1860) at the Quincy location, the Rockhouse is in the background on the far left, courtesy LOC

Quincy's underground workers posed near the boiler and hoist house between No.3 and No. 4 shafts.  ca. 1875. The low board-and-batten structure is a snowshed built over the Tramroad.  About eight to ten boys sit atop the snowshed on the far left.   The water barrels on the roof are for fire protection. [2] [13]

Due to the time-frame of 1875-80, that this photo was taken, and because Maytor Healy worked underground in the Quincy mines, it is possible that Maytor and his son, Maytor James Healy are in this photo.  Maytor Sr. would have been between 58 and 63 years of age, Maytor James Healy would have been between 11 and 16 years old. 

The Quincy Mines sat on the hilltop above Portage Lake.   Initially the Quincy Mining Company bought all of the land from Portage Lake up to the mines, after plotting the streets of Hancock they sold the parcels to merchants and individuals for development.  The Quincy workers had the option to lived in the planned company neighborhoods, Limerick, Hardscrabble and Frenchtown at the Quincy location or to live in  Hancock. 

The Quincy Mine Office, located at the Quincy location above Hancock. 

Samuel B Harris, superintendent of the Quincy Mining Company Mines in Hancock - 1883 - Men of Progress, pg. 253

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Sources

[1] From the Emerald Isle to the Copper Island; The Irish in the Michigan Copper Country 1845-1920, by William H Mulligan Jr.

[2] Larry D Lankton, Hollowed Ground: Copper Mining and Community Building on Lake Superior, Wayne State University; Google Books

[3] Church of the Resurrection, 900 Quincy St., Hancock Illinois

[4] Historic American Engineering Record Collection, Library of Congress

[5] A Glossary of the Mining and Mineral Industry, Albert H. Hill 

[6] Daniel Sampson Healy, an Oral History 

[7] Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections 

[8] Donald G Magill, Canvas of St. Joseph Graveyard, Hancock Houghton Michigan

[9] Who Where My Ancestors? by Riobard O' Dwyer

[10] New Hibernia Review, Irish Immigrants in Michigan's copper Country , William H. Mulligan, 2001, University of St. Thomas; Center for Irish Studies

[11] Memories of Edward Murphy, recorded 20 July 2013

[12] Irish Immigrants in Michigan's Copper Country, William H. Mulligan

[13] Beyond the Boundaries, Life and Landscape at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1840-1875, by Larry Lankton

The Quincy Mining Company, Then and Now

The Quincy Mine location is up the hill, north of Hancock and Portage Lake.   Houghton is on the south side of Portage Lake. 

A view from Houghton on the south side of Portage Lake you can see Hancock and the Roadtram going up the hill to the Quincy Mine location.

1859 - The earliest known map of the Quincy Mine site was produced by Samuel W. Hill, Quincy's Agent.  -  [2] 

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Sources

1. National Parks Service - Historic American Engineering Record, HAER No. MI-2

2. Quincy Unit Cultural Landscape Report - NPS

Part Three - At Home in Hancock Michigan 1858-1894

   

When Maytor Healy arrived in Hancock Michigan around the end of 1858, the Quincy Mining Company was working with 57 men.  The following year they employed an additional 200.  Maytor Healy was one of them.   He worked to open the underground mines and reshape the outside landscape.   As the labor force grew, so did Quincy's concern for housing.   Between 1859 and 1861 the company constructed more than 100 wood framed houses.   Workers unable to rent a company owned home could rent from boardinghouses, privately owned homes, or build a home on land leased from the company.   Most boardinghouses were privately run in Hancock but the Quincy Mining Company also managed a few.     In addition to providing this additional housing, Quincy hired a doctor.   

In 1859, "downtown" Houghton, which is located on the southside of Portage Lake, consisted of businesses interspersed with houses. Merchants were setting up stores and mines north, south, and east were trying to make a go of it. [1] Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech


Although Quincy was concerned about improving the mine location and addressing the needs of their employees, acceptable conditions in 1859 were remarkably different than they are today.   The thickly forested hillside was transformed into a coarse landscape; evidence of Quincy's past activity appeared as field stumps, abandoned exploration trenches and growing piles of waste rock.   Company buildings were tailored specifically to the function they served,  The company's location and remoteness affected company operations and community life. [2]    

A view of Hancock on the north side of Portage Lake from Houghton, Michigan.   You can see the tramroad going up the hill the Quincy Mine Location. [1]  

Throughout the 1860s, mail was delivered to the region by dogsled in the winter and by boat in the shipping season.   By 1860 Quincy's crew had grown to 469 employees, to accomodate it's rapid growth the company established a company operated farm.   Although it's location is unclear, what is known about the company's farm is that, then as now, local conditions provided a challenge to farming agricultural crops: soils are poor, the growing season short, and the climate is cold.  The company harvested hay, oats, timothy, onions, cabbage, squash, potatoes, and turnips.   Other vegetables and fruit were grown in individual gardens.  [2] 

Mr. Antoine LeDuc, a mail carrier between L'Anse and Houghton, pictured with his sled and three dogs, abt. 1870 [2] courtesy [1]

Historian Larry Lankton gives a physical description of the Quincy location by 1862: 

A shaft house, 35 to 40 feet tall, stood over each of the six shafts and the timber-cribbed collars.   along the row of shaft houses Quincy had erected for sorting houses and three hoist houses, timber-framed buildings that stood on poor-rock foundations.   On one side of each hoist-house a tall wrought iron chimney stood atop a masonry base, and on another stretched long rows of cordwood, taken in 1862 and thereafter, from Quincy's own woodlots... a little east of these structures stood four kiln houses.   The hoist and shaft-houses were connnected by pulley stands that supported the hoisting chains; narrow gauge tramways interconnected all the shaft, sorting, and kiln houses; and a tramway running past all the sorting and kiln houses terminated at the drum house on the southwestern end of the mine which served the stamp-mill incline. 

In addition to these major structures and facilities, by 1862 Quincy had its copper house for storing barrel and mass, a stone magazine for black powder, and a general-purpose warehouse.   It had one change or dry house, two small blacksmith shops, plus a carpenter shop with a small steam engine for driving bench saws and a lathe.   The road leading from the village of Hancock up to Quincy Hill neatly divided the mine location into halves.   Excepting the blacksmith and carpenter shops, all the technological mine structures stood on the east side of the road.   On the west side stood the company office, a store, a barn and root-house, a forty-bed hospital, and numerous company-built houses.  [4]

The earliest known photo of Quincy's shaft houses No.s 2-4, courtesy LOC

By 1862 the Quincy Mine was finally paying off.   As the company experienced financial success, it examined its operations and sought to improve living conditions for their workforce.   The housing that had been constructed during the 1850s provided basic shelter, but it was relegated to land distant from valuable, workable ground; workers often preferred to live near the mine.   Initially this resulted in homes scattered in an irregular manner across the steep hillside south of the mine, and situated among the stumps, rock piles and earlier attempts at prospecting for copper.   A report from 1862 indicates that the company also owned one large boardinghouse and ninety-five wood framed two story tenement houses at the time.   Although their exact locations are unknown, irregular development patterns shown on later maps suggest these homes may have been located near the top of the hill along the country road, and in a field to the west. [2]

QMC, View of No. 2 Shaft-Rockhouse, housing development "Limerick",  first established in 1865.   Sears-Roebuck houses - in middle distance (1917).   Water tower (1916) 

Workers also continued to lease lots from the company and build their own homes.   It is likely that fourty-one such structures were constructed in "Shantytown," a small enclave of homes located on the Hill about halfway between the mine and Hancock.   In addition to leasing land to workers.   As Quincy's need for worker housing increased, the location of company-built homes gained consideration.   Company housing built during the early 1860s lacked order in it's spacial arrangement but their future developments became more organized.[2]

In 1862 Quincy also began thinking in detail how to provide food for their workforce, they leased the farm to O.K. Patterson and Co., the teamsters at the mine.  That year teamsters cleared 250 acres of land, and used most of the harvested feed for their animals.   In 1863 the company built a store along the county road near the mine office to sell goods at or near wholesale.  This was to provide workers with fair-priced goods and prevent local merchants from profiteering.   The store did not last long in company hands, and was sold in 1866 to Seth North.[2]   

The 1860s presented another change:  Quincy felt the impact of the Civil War as demand for copper increased and prices rose.   High copper prices encouraged new mine ventures needing skilled workers.   This coupled with voluntary enlistments and the draft resulted in a serious labor shortage of experienced miners.[2]     

The Quincy School built in 1867, west of the county road

By the late 1860 the mines production had slowed down allowing Quincy to turn it's attention to social concerns.   Public education was becoming an issue, and was first addressed in 1867 when a Quincy Township school district was created.   Quincy chose a site west of the county road and constructed a wood frame school large enough to accommodate 150 students and then rented it to the School District. 

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Quincy's construction efforts in 1869 consisted of ten frame houses built for the Stamp Mill employees.   This development followed an April fire disaster in Hancock that devastated the community, whose population had grown to 2,000 people.   The fire originated in the northwest corner of town, near Quincy and Ravine streets, and moved quickly.   Within six hours, it had consumed 150 buildings and left more than 200 families without homes.  The impacts were felt by all who relied upon the goods, services and diversions that the commercial and cultural center offered. 

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 Rebuilding efforts included a new telegraph system in the copper district with the Quincy mine featured as one of the twelve office locations.  
In 1872 the company decided to change the way it reduced rocks before sending them to the stamp mill.   They built a large rockhouse to break rocks mechanically.   This eliminated the bottleneck in production and ultimately kilnhouses.   Construction began on the three story heavy-timbered structure in 1872, which included an engine to power an endless rope tramroad extending to the shafthouses.   It was completed in 1873.  

The Quincy school near the Frenchtown neighborhood was expanded in 1877 to house 300 students

Next the company focused on social infrastructure.   They built a two-story wood frame dispensary west of the physican's house.   Because Hancock had rebuilt and expanded after the fire, providing greater housing opportunities, Quincy needed to build only nineteen additional houses between 1875-76, these included six double houses in the log home settlement of Frenchtown, located a quarter mile west of the country road.   At nearly the same time, Quincy expanded the schoolhouse to ninety-six by twenty-six feet, by 1877 it could house 300 students. 

By 1879, telephone lines were in use at many of Quincy's key facilities: the dock, mill, mine office, store and supply office were all connected, and one line rand down the No. 4 shaft.  By the early 1880s Quincy was using the "Little Giant" air drill, giving miners the ability to drill holes faster and deeper, while the dynamite blasted more rock per charge than black powder.   Together all of these improvements increased production dramatically.

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Quincy's success in the early 1880s was reflected in the construction of the grand Italianate residence for the mine superintendent.  Work began in 1880 and was completed in 1882.  The home was built west of the county road at the south end of the mine, where it was the focal point on the hill.   It also offered a dramatic example of the companies priorities: Quincy invested approximately $25,000 in the superintendent's home in 1882 but spent only a few hundred dollars to construct a typical worker's house, that had no electricity, plumbing or running water, and would not have them, until almost 30 years later in 1910.


A railroad connection between Houghton and Marquette, with connections to Chicago, was finally established in 1883.   The first railroad bridge across the Portage Lake was built in the mid 1880s.   

The Quincy Company Houses, taken during the construction of the Quincy No.2 hoist. [1]  Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech. Univ. 

In 1863, three years after Nellie and kids arrived in Hancock, the Quincy Mining Co. built 68 homes at the Quincy location above Hancock, for their workers.   Each home was identical to the next, perfectly spaced, and fenced.  There were two neighborhoods, Limerick, Hardscrabble, then later Frenchtown. 

In 1862, four years after Maytor immigrated from Ireland Nellie joined him in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   Ellen departed Ireland with Mary age 16 years, Patrick age 14, Ellen age 11, Julia age 9, Belinda age 7 years, and Daniel age 4.  

The following year, the Irish community of Hancock observed St. Patrick's day (an Ireland national holiday) as a special occasion on March 21, 1863.  The Portage Lake Mining Gazette, reported a day-long celebration beginning with a procession by the 312 members of the Hancock St. Patrick Society to a Mass celebration by the local priest, Father Sweeney, with "an oration" on the life of St. Patrick delivered by Father Jacker.  The celebration ended with a large ball at the St. Patrick Society Hall.  [10]


After their arrival in Hancock, their son, Patrick Healy worked in the timber around Hancock using a steam donkey engine, clearing land, then after the Civil War in 1865, he joined the Union Pacific Rail Road laying line to build the Transcontinental Railroad from Omaha Nebraska to Pomentory Point in Utah. [6]   There are no records found for Ellen Healy from 1862 (age 11) until 1878 (age 28) when she appears in Leadville Colorado.

In 1865 Maytor and Nellie had their last child.  A son who they named Maytor James Healy was; born April 3, 1864 in Hancock Township.   

Maytor Healy's family appears on the 1870 US Census in Hancock Township.  Maytor is 53 years old, Nellie is 47, Mary is 23 years, Belinda is age 16, Daniel is 12 years and Maytor Jr. is 5 years old.   Belle and Daniel are attending school in Hancock and Maytor Junior is at home with Ellen.   Julia Healy isn't on the 1870 census with her family.  

As was common for young boys, when Daniel was about 9-years-old (and Maytor James would follow) he began working in the Stamp Mill in the village of Hancock which was located down the hill from their home in Quincy.  He separated the copper from it's host rock.  He may have also worked in the Smelter, melting and refining the copper mineral. 

Quincy Employee House, Hancock, Houghton, Michigan 1864

Because Maytor was a miner for the Quincy Mining Company it is fairly certain his family lived in one of the sixty-eight T-shaped, wood-frame company houses built in 1864.   They were aligned in orderly rows in the new neighborhoods of Limerick, Hardscrabble, and Frenchtown.   For many decades, fences enclosed each of these unadorned, flat faced houses.   Fences may have given occupants a sense of proprietorship; they also kept animals in or out. [4]

The Quincy School, located by the Quicy Co. neighborhood Frenchtown, built in 1867

Belinda and Daniel attended this school, located near Frenchtown from 1867 until at least 1870.  It was built by the Quincy Mining Company.

In 1872, Maytor's daughter Julia Healy married James Wilson Young in Marquette Michigan

In 1878 Maytor's daughter Belle Healy dies in Hancock at the young age of 24 years.   She is buried in the old St. Joseph Cemetery on Quincy St. in Hancock.   

1880 US Census, Franklin Township, Houghton, Michigan 

In 1880 Maytor was 63 years old, Nellie was 58 and Maytor James 16 years.   It appears that Maytor was no longer working below ground but in some other mine labor.   Young Maytor is also working for the Quincy Mining company.   

Ashland Daily Press, Ashland, Wisconsin, Monday, 10 September 1894, The above article was found and provided by the Ashland Historical Society Museum in Ashland, Wisconsin.   

On Sunday, September 9, 1894, Maytor Healy died at his daughter, Mary B Healy Hoppenyan's home in Ashland, Wisconsin.   The above article appeared the next day in the Ashland Daily Press.  

Maytor Healy Record of Death.  The Church of the Resurrection cemetery records,   death date - September 9th, 1894, burial date Sept. 12th, 1894, place of birth Hibernia (Ireland) , place of death Ashland Wisconsin, burial St. Joseph Cemetery in Hancock Michigan

Death and Record of Nellie Donovan Healy,  date of burial January 19, 1902, date of death January 16, 1902, location of birth Hibernia (Ireland), place of death Ashland Wisconsin,  record found at the Church of the Resurrection in Hancock, Michigan

1974 - An aerial view of the old St. Joseph cemetery on Quincy Street,  Hancock, Michigan.   Belle Healy was first buried here in 1878,  Maytor's body was buried beside Belle's in 1894 and in 1902 Nellie Healy's body was buried beside Maytor.   Plots 471,472, and 473.   In 1974, a new church, and parking lot was built at this location, leaving the remaining graves undisturbed. [3]  

The St. Joseph Cemetery in Hancock, where Belle, Maytor, Nellie Healy and Maytor's granddaughter Kate Hoppenyan were buried was kept by the local Roman Catholic churches in Hancock.
In the 1970s it was decided to build a new church since the area churches were then consolidated into one parish.  After deliberation by the parish and the diocese, and after contacting the proper government authorities the site chosen to build the new church was over the old St. Joseph Cemetery.

The families of those buried in the old cemetery were contacted ahead of time to let them know of the plans and let them remove their family to a different area cemetery.   The remaining grave markers were then removed after the recording was done and buried in a trench at the site of the present-day church.   The new church was started in 1975.

St. Joseph / St. Patrick Catholic Church, Hancock Michigan - plot map

This map shows the grave locations for Maytor, Nellie, Belle Healy and Kate Hoppenyan (Mary Healy's step daughter) which are now under the current parking lot of the new Catholic church.   Nellie Donovan Healy is buried in plot 471, Maytor Healy plot 472, and Arabella Healy plot 473, their locations are noted by the yellow dot.   Kate Hoppenyan in grave plot 200, is marked with the blue dot.  

The graves are located under the parking lot of the current church - Church of the Resurrection, 900 Quincy Street, Hancock, Michigan 49930. [3]

Website link where the above information was found

Link to the above map

Link to the grave and plot number information

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Sources

[1] Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections

[2] National Parks Service - Quincy Unit Landscape Report, 2008

[3] Cradle to Grave, pg. 163, Larry Lankton, 

[4] Technological Change, pp 296-297,  Larry Lankton