An Immigrant Story - Andrew Ednie

Andrew Ednie rests in Calumet Township's Schoolcraft Cemetery.

NPS Photo

Alexander Ednie was a coal miner in Fife, Scotland. By the age of 16, his son Andrew mined beside him. After first immigrating to Red Jacket in 1878, young Andrew removed to Long Bay, Ontario where he married longtime family friend Ann McArthur. Soon, the family was in Calumet where he worked in the Calumet & Hecla mines. Only four years later Andrew perished in a mining accident at the age of 38, leaving Ann and three young sons behind.

 

The Red Jacket Shaft, a rare vertical shaft for the Copper Country. Most mine shafts followed the copper lode angle.

Keweenaw NHP Archives Foster GP #70 Red Jacket Shaft ca. 1915

Andrew died in what mine inspector Josiah Hall referred to as one of the most appalling disasters in Copper Country history when ten men were accidentally dropped down the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company's Red Jacket Shaft on May 14, 1893. A few years later, Ann remarried and with her Calumet-born children moved back to her hometown on the shores of Lake Huron at Manitoulin Island, Ontario. There, Andrew and Ann's sons began an immigrant story all their own.