Episode 15 - Bridget Shea

Welcome to Mining City Reflections where we illuminate the history of Butte, Montana through the stories and observations of 20th century women who lived there. I’m your host, Marian Jensen.

In this last installment in our oral histories about Butte’s Women’s Protective Union, we depart from our usual format. While the voices of its members bring to life the remarkable accomplishments of the organization to which they were all so dedicated, one voice is missing. Over and over we heard members recall the words and actions of Bridget Shea who served as President and walking delegate of the Union for 25 yrs. She was both feared and revered. Unfortunately, Shea died in 1955 at age of 79 long before any oral history project had begun.

What does remain, however, is the residence where she lived for 37 years. The city of Butte boasts one of the largest National Register-listed districts in the country, and the most National Register designated buildings in Montana. Bridget Shea’s house is among them.

Producer, Daniel Hogan and I visited the home to see what we might learn about Bridget Shea’s life during those years. Fittingly, the house’s current owner is yet another woman who also reveres the memory of Bridget Shea. Cindy Shaw, a member of the Butte Silver Bow Council of Commissioners and a prominent community leader, has lived in the former Shea home since 1996. 


An historian herself, Shaw has researched the house’s history, and has even spoken with Bridget Shea’s relatives. She considers herself a custodian of the Shea legacy.

“So, when I bought this house I had no idea what the history was… I feel like a steward of this house”

The brick workman’s cottage sits on West Quartz Street high above the Summit Valley floor, its original varnished woodwork and French hardwood floors still gracing the interior.

“So this house was, 211 West Quartz Street, was built in 1885 and it was built by Josiah Beck. We have a Beck Block on Park Street which is just above the terminal meat market, and he was a capitalist, he just bought land and built houses”

Not surprisingly, the Shea’s bought a home in an area where they were surrounded by fellow Irishmen.

“We have the Sullivans, the Kearneys, the Sheas and the Lowneys”

Born in County Cork in 1876, Bridget Murphy had left Ireland at the turn of the century and immigrated to Butte. In ensuing months she met and married fellow Irishman, James Shea, a member of the Teamsters’ union who drove a horse-drawn wagon for the Butte Brewing Company.

To say that the Shea family took their Irish heritage seriously is an understatement. James wanted to enlist in the Irish militia ready to defend, if need be, the burgeoning rebellion against the British and the formation of the Republic of Ireland. Despite the threat of deportation by the U.S, Government, young single Irishmen in Butte were already part of the militia. Married men were excused unless their wives agreed to their service. One of the few who did, Bridget gladly gave her consent.

“That you had to have permission, I thought that was even more amazing. That he had to have permission from his wife to even do that, because he could have been sent back to Ireland”

Sadly, their national pride would lead to what must have been the darkest days of the Shea marriage. In 1917, a short time after moving to their new home, James Shea made a fateful stop at a local establishment. Shaw recounts the incident from a newspaper account.

“So James was a teamster and he drove truck, er not truck, he drove a wagon and they lived here. And on Main Street, on North Main I forget the address it’s in here, at around noon he went to have a beer. An he went in there and this Harry Godfrey was sitting at the bar and he was drunk.

Harry Godfrey, 28 years old, a blacksmith originally employed at the Original Mine, lies a corpse in a local undertaking establishment. The victim of knife wielding James Shea of 211 west quartz… Mike Sullivan’s Saloon on North Main. So anyway, Harry Godfrey started making some… I don’t know if he knew that James was Irish but Godfrey was Cornish. Of course, there ya go that’s it in a nutshell. And he was, this Godfrey was making remarks and slurs and I guess they got into an argument and James came home, put on his militia uniform, went back and was like y’know, “this is me.” And this Godfrey got into his face and he claims, there were witness’, and he claims that Godfrey threatened him with a bottle or something and James pulled a pocket knife with a 3 inch blade on it and was going to defend himself, and the witness’ say that Godfrey lunged into James and he got stuck with the knife and he ended up dying on the sidewalk.

There was a lot of dispute about whether it was self defense or not and then the rest is history.

Poor Bridget… he ends up in prison in July and y’know they let him come home because he had a family and four children until it was time to go to jail and he ended up there for 18 months and died of the Spanish flu.”

Bridget Shea’s domesticity as a wife and mother came to an abrupt end. Not unlike the COVID pandemic, prison contagion was rampant. The death of James Shea during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 left Bridget a widow with four small children and a mortgage.

“She got a widow’s pension every month of $35 and she had to list her children and their ages and you could see every month she got the $35 because it was checked off and written on the side.”

In the house’s enclosed front porch, Shaw has hung a copy of the Shea family portrait taken not long before James Shea’s death.

“And there’s Neil, Emmet and Eileen. And so I know James was nine and Eileen was probably two in that picture and just imagine; they had just bought the house and had a mortgage and then he passes away and she’s got 4 kids with a house, how tough is that with a $35 widow’s pension”

Like so many other Butte women at that time, Bridget was forced to join the ranks of waitresses to support her family. No doubt, part of her appeal that lead to her successful leadership in the union, she knew first hand the hardships of widowed mothers.

The Shea home sits on Nanny Goat hill in the Butte business district. The view from the house is nothing short of spectacular. At an altitude of more than 6000 feet, much of the southern aspect of the Summit Valley floor, including two mountain ranges, spreads below.

“Look at the view I have! So ya, I have a million dollar view from up here. Bridget Shea had a 250 square foot front porch with windows and lace curtains just like I have. And when you looked out the windows you could see the East Ridge, Timber Butte, the Pintler’s and almost if you go up to the top off the hill just behind my house you can see the top of the Immaculate Conception Church so you can just… its an incredible view especially during thunder storms.

Just below my house off the corner of Quartz and Idaho is the Copper King Mansion which is the largest building in Butte and like I said before, the gentlemen that had my house when it was brand new was a correspondence clerk for the Clark Bank”

Only in Butte could a miners’ cottage be built within 2 blocks of a 34-room residence of Romanesque Revival Victorian architecture. The mansion’s owner, William Clark, at that time was a multimillionaire and one of the wealthiest men in the world.

From there, Bridget set out each working day, dressed in widow’s black, to visit employers in every direction, almost always walking. You can imagine her stopping at the Women’s Protective Union office building a scant three blocks away. Then on to other destinations farther afield.

“For her to walk to Centerville or Walkerville it was quite the trek and I understand she even walked to Meaderville which, holy moly that was clear down east of here”

Devoted to her children and the memory of her husband, Bridget never remarried. It is hard to overstate the height of her accomplishments in Butte as an Irish immigrant and a woman at that time.

“When they came here, Irish were considered less than, talk about discrimination, Irish were considered less than the Chinese and the African Americans and she did rise above that and its amazing that she reached the position that she did because I don’t know if you hear about too many Irish women… anywhere”

After her retirement from the union, she continued her devotion to her family and provided a continuing inspiration to them and to Butte’s working women.

“I can feel the energy in this house, I don’t know why, maybe its because all of the people that have lived here. But Bridget was an amazing person I wish I had known her, I got to know her through her grandchildren that came to visit me which I thought was just a blessing that they just came and knocked on the door and wanted to see their grandmas house and when they came in here they all just got tears in their eyes because the house has been preserved and they didn’t know what to expect and then they shared the treasures that they share with me and their experiences with their grandma”

Bridget Shea’s life became an example for WPU officers like Blanche Copenhaver and Val Webster who succeeded her.

“Well, and Bridget was probably their example. That they knew that somebody that could overcome all the obstacles that she had to, instantaneously really, in her life what happened with her husband when he died. I can’t imagine being in her place, she had no other family here, she may have had a brother”

When she died in 1955, the Rev. James Shea, one of her three sons, celebrated her requiem mass at St. Patrick Church, five blocks from the house. Her name was subsequently chosen for the Butte chapter of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians.

The spirit of Bridget Shea can still be found up on the Butte hill. On the National Historic Register plaque, written in part by Cindy Shaw, Shea’s home and its carefully tended garden of shrub roses, lilacs, and lavender are a fragrant and lasting legacy.”