something not quite adding up here...

[ali607]

Hi - see if you can shed some light on this please...i have a working class family all born down in worcestershire - labourers/brickmakers and coal miners - bit by bit the family move up to south yorkshire for the coal mines...luke follows his brother john up to yorkshire - both have already married down in worcestershire. They seem to move round south yorkshire to various mining communities such as darfield, monk bretton, south kirby etc However, on one of censuses one of lukes children is down as being born in 'america, united states;!! How on earth can that be - theres no way they could have gone over there surely?

Also i know where lukes wife is buried - iv seen her gravestone - its white marble - the rest of the stones in the graveyard are just normal stone nothing fancy...however iv found a relative who took a picture of the same grave decades ago and it was like one of these huge tomb graves!! You can see its the same headstone - but its not only a headstone but a whole vault type thing ALL SOLID MARBLE right down the length of the grave and the footstone too - raised up off ground by about 4 foot it looks like. Now theres not a trace of all this today - just the headstone. Where on earth did a coal miners wife get a grave like that?? ANd secondly where did it go? Is it beneath our feet - i dont belive  a monster of a grave like that one could have just sunk and if it had been vandalised which the relative said it had been then there would at least have been some trace...

Does anyone have any ideas how a coal mining family could have been so well off and how on earth they managed to have a child in america??
Thanks!
Alison

[Arranroots]

Yup!

My impoverished mining family made their way over to Ohio - miners were actively recruited it seems.

I thought they had stayed there, but I can find evidence that they travelled back & forth at least once.  Mine were from Gloucestershire/ Wales.

Possibly yours found that conditions were even harder there than at home (honestly!) and returned?

Would be worth checking on the Emigrants board to see whether there are any shipping records to match.

kind regards, Arranroots 

[ali607]

houll not belive this but i was just doing a search of this families address in wombwell, yorkshire and a home page of this family came up! Iv found relatives! Apparently they came back from US cos of a big flood where they were living!!

How lucky was that find!
Anyway just thought id let you know! Im going back to find out more now!
Alison