Genealogy Chat

I should imagine it was a case of being offered better wages up north than in London. As OC says, trains were a reasonable way of travel then and they had 3 classes of compartments! Or barges that went up the coast - it may be your ancestor who I take it was a coal whipper spoke to the bargees and was told what good wages were to be had at the mines and so upped and left.

hi thanks to all for your thoughts on this i was very excited when i discovered my ggreatgranma cam from london, all the others in my family never moved very far! just hopped over the border from west yorks to east lancs every now and again so i was intigued as to how they eventually ended up here, and what the conditions of travel was at that time. funny old crone you should mention the mills, there was also a mill in this village but i dont think they worked there, as the local mine was just up the road my gggreatgrandfather died tragically in this mine at the age of only 42. thanks. sharmala

They probably did move for economic reasons, dock work could be erratic but coal mining was regular and came with a house and a coal allowance too in most cases. If your family were involved with the poor law union in their area they may have paid for them to relocate to an area where work was available as there was a mobilisation agreement between the unions. Caz

Sharmala I remember being very puzzled to find an ancestor, hundreds of miles from home, in a tiny village - more of a hamlet really. I couldn't see a family connection and couldn't imagine what the attraction of this place would be to anyone who wasnt born there, lol. However, this hamlet boasted a new cotton mill (in the 1830s) and the owner turned out to be a big mill owner in my ancestor's native village. I assume the owner bribed his best workers to go to the new mill to run it. And after all, there have always been more coal mines in Yorkshire than in London! You may find a link in previous generations. OC

what used to happen too was if a family was in the workhouse and there was work elsewhere the parents would be given the money to relocacte. We had a talk on workhouses at one of our Family History soc. meetings. shirley

hi old crone yes i suppose thats a possibility, the place they ended up is a very small village just outside of skipton, it is only 12 miles from where i live now, and even i struggled to find it i wonder how they did before roads and such like? luckily for me they stayed there or i wouldnt be here now! sharmala.

Possibly the coal mine transferred him to another pit. But far more likely they just went of their own accord - sold their few bits of furniture and jumped on a train - train travel was very cheap in the 1800s. Some of my lot moved by canal barge - also a cheap way of shifting yourself and your belongings. OC

hi yes he was a miner and ggreatgrandma married into a mining family.

hi forgot to mention he also did a similar job in yorkshire too.

Depends on what they did when they got to Yorkshire. Did he become a miner?

hi wasnt sure what to put in title. Part of my family (ggreatgrandmother and her parents and 2 of her siblings) moved from Hackney, london, sometime between 1861 and 1871 up to the area around skipton, yorkshire. I had heard that sometimes the parish or the company that they were working for paid for them and sent them up north to the counry for health reasons, (he was acoal porter on the docks in london). i cant see them having the money themselves to pay for it does anyone know anything about this? thankyou.