2025 Week 41: Water #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Water - we cannot live without it, yet it has been the cause of death for at least three of the people in my family tree  who suffered death by drowning. 

My 2 x great uncle, David Johnston, was a coalminer in Lanarkshire, like many of my family in the past two hundred years. By 1867, he had risen to the position of overman in the Windyedge Pit in Motherwell. An 'overman' ( or overlooker) was usually the 3rd in charge, tasked with overseeing the safe operation of the mine. He would visit the underground workings, record reports and generally manage production underground. The 3rd of June 1867 would have started out as a normal working day for him, but by 11 a.m. that morning, he would have been declared dead,along with one other miner,  in an accidental drowning in a mineshaft.

The following report is from the Scottish Mining website, where it gives details on mining deaths:

David Johnston, dead at 51, through no fault of his own, just doing his job. Mining was, of course, a dangerous business to be in.

Water was also fatal for another 2 x great uncle of mine, Alexander Walker, just one year later in 1868. Alexander had followed in his father's footsteps and become a blacksmith at the local Carnbroe Colliery in Lanarkshire. He had married a local girl, Mary Miller and together they had eight children, whose ages ranged from 3 to 20 in the 1861 census. What happened to Alexander is recorded in the Glasgow Herald newspaper in December 1868:

Source: www.newspapers.com

Alexander's body had been found on a Sunday afternoon in the Monkland Canal. The article 'supposes' that he had fallen in to the canal while taking a shortcut home from the centre of the town. It is interesting and somewhat surprising that there is no mention of an investigation and it is 'presumed' he fell in accidently. Could this be because he may have been drinking on that Saturday night? Was this outcome for some reason not surprising? I guess we will never know. What we do know is that his widow was left to raise the children on her own - she never had the opportunity to remarry as she herself died less than two years after her husband.

My third drowning victim died in more historic circumstances. Lamond Proudfoot, who happened to be the grandson of the above mentioned Alexander Walker's brother had been brought up in Lanarkshire too. He had been 8 years old when Alexander had been found drowned in the canal.  Lamond was a coal miner and in 1909  he decided to set out for America on the ship Caledonia. From the arriving passengers lists at Ellis Island, we can see that he had a friend already in Pennsylvania and that was to be his destination. Lamond comes back to Scotland within the next couple of years, before returning to America heading for Pittsburgh.

At that time Pittsburgh was sitting atop one of the world's biggest coalfields powering the steel industry, railroads and steamships. It must have been a good prospect for a young Scotsman. However, Lamond was not destined to end up there. He decided to come back to Scotland in 1915, maybe to visit his father who was ill with diabetes. Unfortunately he is in the wrong place at the wrong time - he sails on the Lusitania heading for Liverpool. And the rest, as they say, is history.

RMS Lusitania

This ill fated ship was torpedoed by a German U-Boot just 11 miles off the coast of Ireland on the 7th of may and sunk with a loss of over 1200 lives, one of those being Lamond, aged 31 years.

Inventory for Lamond Proudfoot courtesy of Ancestry.com

Three men - three drownings - three different circumstances - but all tragedies.