New Hartley Pit Disaster 1862

[fred111]

Hi Gary
What strange names.
 I can't help thinking that they were not handed down to the next generation as family names.
Pity about the jungle.
Liz

[skingers2]

The family name thing is a nightmare - in my distant family the kids and the parents names are intertwined with uncles cousins and neighbours! Makes researching very difficult!
As you said pity about the jungle.
Ros

[Michael Dixon]

 A little snippet.

 Three Gallaghers died in disaster.
John, born in Byker, left wife Jane and two children, the younger Charles died aged 18 months four months after disaster.

Duncan/Dunkin, born Byker, single lived with his widowed Irish-born mother and widowed sister Margaret Tierney, and Margaret's son James, 13 yrs who also perished underground.

Northumberland Record Office holds many papers/records on disaster and it's aftermath, including payments made to dependants, from the Disaster Fund.

e.g., Jane Gallagher , Fund Recipient Number 65, for herself and two children received 15/- (fifteen shillings) per week.When Charles died in April 1862, benefit reduced to 12/- . Jane remarried in 1864.

One account of the disaster, in the "Miners of Northumberland and Durham", reads.....
" One resolute young man, named John Gallagher, appeared to have been making a desparate effort to clear away the shaft above where the men were located, judging from the position in which he was found".

I researched this family of Gallaghers from cradle to grave, thinking they were mine. I was wrong ! But still very sad !

Michael Dixon

[diddymiller]

talking about passing on family names - i have just been looking into:

Robinson Peacock Bywater of Sunderland!!

actually my own maternal gfatherwas David Cook Aitkin young  - cook / aitkin both in family

I enjoyed the Humble prog. my gggfather was from Earsdon and a miner but luckily not involved in this disaster. i do however have an ancestor who died aged 76 in a Scottish pit when he fell on the winding drum!!

Diddy

[fred111]

It's amazing how many of us have ancestors who were miners!
I wonder just what %age of the population in the NE in the 18th, 19th & early 20THC were involved in mining.
My own mother moved from Seaton Burn, but I was still taken back regularly as a child to see my Auntie Aggie. The kettle was on the fire & there were peg rugs on the floor. 
Her husband Tommy used to come in still black from the pit. I'd hear his boots on the cobbles and then the sneck would go clack, & I remember his white teeth grinning in his sooty face when he saw us.
But he got the dust in his lungs, and died in the chair in front of the range, as he couldn't lie down to go to sleep at the end.
My Dad used to say that Tommy would give you the shirt off his back.
Liz

[angel103]

Totally off topic to Hartley Pit disaster but on the subject of overgrown churchyards, has anyone been to St John's in Red Row?  I couldn't even get near the stones - the grass is shoulder height or more and the gravestones were all lined up against the walls around the perimeter which is inaccessible.
My ancestors were mostly miners and bottlemakers.
Angela

[priorygirl]

My maiden name is Liddle and there were 9 Liddles on the memorial at Eardon church.  My grandfather was William Liddle b 1856 - I don't know whether we have a family connection or not but hoping to talk to me uncle, also William, about it soon

[Preshous]

Hi Priorygirl

Welcome to RootsChat.
If you need any help just ask there are loads of very helpful people on this site.

Gary

[MrsDusty]

I was looking for headstones, 2 weeks ago, in Earsdon. I had read about how bad it was, but thought it can't be 'that' bad. Well it was worse. I think it's shameful to allow our history to decay like that.

I tripped and fell into a colapsing grave, a very scary moment.

I couldn't even find my GGrandfathers grave. I knew where abouts it was as that it was boardered and had green gravel. This I remembered from my childhood.

Anyway my next step is to find out the plot number somehow and have the grave resored.

I drove away very sad and very disappointed. I only get back up to the north once a year.