2024 Week 6: Earning a living #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

There is a history of metal working and mining running through both sides of my family. My 3 x great grandfather, Alexander McAra, his brothers as well as his father and uncles, worked in the iron mills in Cramond, Midlothian. Cramond was an important industrial centre in the 1700s and 1800s. In 1799, when Alexander was 20, Cramond had three iron furnaces, two steel furnaces and three water powered rolling mills. Alexander worked in one of the iron furnaces, until his untimely demise. (See https://rootsshootsandstories.blogspot.com/2023/02/ancestors-in-52-weeks-week-6-social.html)

At some point after Alexander's death, his son John, my 2 x great grandfather, and at least two of John's brothers moved through to Lanarkshire, where they continued to work in the iron trade, John being employed as a hammerman at Moffat Forge in New Monklands.

Source: https://www.tradeshouse.org.uk/crafts-hammermen/

John's son, my 2 x great grandfather carried on the family tradition of metal working. During his lifetime he moved from being a labourer and iron puddler to being overseer, then supervisor at the Monkland Iron and Steel Company. In the publication "The Builder" Vol 5 p112 he is credited with supervising the making of "the heaviest shaft ever made in Scotland."

My grandfather, his son John, for whatever reason, did not follow in his forefathers' footsteps, but instead joined many who became coalminers in the late 19th century. He was a 'hewer' so worked in awful conditions at the coalface all of his working life. Three of his sons followed him down the pit. One of them, my Uncle James, died in a roof collapse at Kingshill No. 2 Colliery in 1940. The other two changed 'careers' and became poultry farmers.

My dad, the youngest, became a civil engineer - so according to the definition given previously, may also belong to the 'Hammermen'.

Comments

2024 Week 43: Lost contact #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

When we research our ancestors and their families, it is all to easy to become a collector of names, dates and places. After all, we want to 'know' who they were and where they lived and when, in order to get a glimpse into what their life was like. We look for photographs of our most recent ancestors to see what they looked like. We trawl censuses, Poor Law Applications, Wills and Testaments to get some detail about their rank in society, their jobs, their financial circumstances. We discover their families, the children they had, the children they lost. We may read their obituaries and gravestones and scan their death certificates for cause of death. Through research, we can slowly start to build up a picture of them, a notion that we know 'who they were'. But something will usually elude us - we will never truly know their feelings/emotions, even if we know the key moments in their lives. Take my grandmother, Christina, who lost her first four children and then anot...

2024 Week 19: Preserve #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

A few years ago, I came into the possession of a family bible. It was the family bible of my paternal grandparents, John McAra and Christina Walker. Until her death in 2018, the bible had been in the hands of my Aunt Inez, widow of my Uncle Will McAra. When I started enquiring as to its whereabouts, I found that it was her grandson, John, who now had it. John himself had no real interest in it at all, so he was quite happy to hand it over to me. However, it was, to say the least, in a bit of a state. The front cover was completely detached and there were many loose pages as the spine of the book was also damaged and detached. I had no choice but to take it to a book repairer in Glasgow, where it was repaired as best it could be. The bible itself had been originally published in Glasgow in the late 19th century. In Victorian times it was common for Christian families to have such a large bible in which they could record events such as births, marriages and deaths. The one I have al...

2024: Week 41: Most #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Looking at my DNA matches over various platforms and my family tree research, it is obvious to me that my paternal grandmother's line - the Walkers - are the line which have the most descendants (or at least the most descendants who have tested) and who have spread out furthest over the world. My great great grandparents James Walker (1777-1862) and Ellen Muir (1790-1866) from Linlithgow in Scotland had ten children - eight boys and two girls. Such large families were not uncommon in those times. Two of the boys never married, but between them the other eight siblings produced at least 52 grandchildren! The eldest of the siblings, George Walker was, however, the only one of the children to ever leave Scotland and that was later in life, when he followed his son John, a miner, over to the USA. It is, however, many of the grandchildren of James and Ellen who decide to leave their homeland for the USA and for Australia. Their USA destinations included Kansas, Colorado, Ohio and Maryl...

Roots, shoots and stories

Search This Blog