Wow! The Lonaconing Journal! Who knew?

Mom and I had talked about the "Lonaconing Journals" a couple of times and we even thumbed through her copy on one trip back east from here in San Diego where I live to the little mountain town of Frostburg in Western Maryland where our ancestor lived and Mom still lives. One of the great sagas of our family that carried through the generation of the 1800s and into the 1900s is that of the coal miner. Mining was the occupation put on many a census for the men of the family from that first wonderfully descriptive census in 1850 down to about 1940. That's over 100 years of the hard, crippling and low paid work of mining.

"The Lonaconing Journals" is by a woman who really knows her way around the coal mines of Allegany County Maryland, and that's Katherine A. Harvey. The proper and full title of this work is "The Lonaconing Journals: The funding of a coal and iron community, 1837 - 1840". Published in 1977 by The American Philosophical Society, it was I've been told, a master's degree thesis. This work along with Ms. Harvey's PhD dissertation, "Best-dressed Miners: Life and labour in the Maryland coal region, 1835 - 1920", Cornell University Press, 1970, is all you'd ever need when trying to imagine your coal miner ancestors, especially if the come from Western Maryland. Of all that I've ever read about coal mining and coal miner's families in the area, these two are the very best!

Here's how Harvey describes the facts of the Lonaconing Journals:
The Lonaconing journals, kept by the super-intendents of the George's Creek Coal and Iron Company, cover the period 1837-1840. Their setting is the recent Appalachian frontier, and their subject is the building of an experimental iron furnace and the development of its adjacent company town in western Maryland. The principal figure in these activities was John Henry Alexander (1812-1867), topographical engineer for the state of Maryland, professor of mining and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the founders of the National Academy of Science, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and author and editor of works on many topics.
Harvey states on this same page, page one, that the Journal chronicling the earliest days of the company miraculously survived all moves and destructions of other company documents, files, and papers! It is a window into a point in local history not otherwise available.

It paints the picture of an area in the first days of a boom time. The lives of the miners here - mostly immigrants from Wales, Ireland, England and Scotland with a few from Germany - were better than miners elsewhere and they were more prosperous too. When they moved into the area back then, miners brought the entire family and the area had as a result a much more stable population, unlike other mining town where the miners were almost always single men. This was a relatively peaceful and prosperous mining community.

Don't want to paint too idyllic a picture of it all. There were wage disputes, attempts at unionizing that met with management's resistance and dirty dealing, and awful strikes. The ill or injured miners and their families were sometimes summarily evicted from their cottages because they could no longer work. It was a hard life by today's standards but a pretty good deal for the miners of the day and much better than they were going to get in Pennsylvania to the north and West Virginia to the south.

Mom's ancestors along her father's line, the Williams family,  were almost exclusively coal miners in the George's Creek Mine Field in Allegany County, Maryland until the 1920s. The Williams family's patriarch, Daniel, came from Wales from a line of coal miners, and all worked in the Western Maryland mines from about 1841 to the time of the Roaring Twenties. Mom's father, Camey or more formally Cambria and given the very traditional name for Wales, was brought to the mines to work at a young age. His father, Daniel Williams, immigrated to work there and became a supervisor. He eventually got the fever of owning a mine during the boom times of WWI and purchased one in Mt. Savage near his home place in Ocean, Maryland where he worked for the Consolidation Coal Company. He then bought another mine over in West Virginia. The West Virginia mine, as best Mom and Aunt Betty can figure out, was rich in tin. After he passed it was eventually lost for unpaid taxes. The Mt. Savage mine property is still in the hands of one of Daniel's descendants.

Daniel and his progeny weren't the only miners who came from Wales on Mom's side. The most famous is Benjamin Thomas and his family. Below is the ships' passenger list for the Barque Tiberius where his family is listed. You can see that Benjamin and four of his sons are listed as "colliers" or coal miners.  My great great grandmother, Diana, is just 6 years old!

 

 



 

 Benjamin Thomas and family were recruited in Wales by the Consolidation Coal Company and as such their passage was paid for by the Company and they arrived at the Port of Baltimore in July of 1837. The Company had been busy with their engineers and workers building out the mine and iron works. All was ready for the miners to get to work making a profit, and they did in the fall of that year. And their plans were BIG! Once the whole operation got going, there were was a superintendent, four managers, numerous clerks, and 400 mine workers working under them. Periodically the Journals noted that a couple more families from the Tiberius had arrived, found lodging and were ready to work.

The passages included in Harvey's book are excerpts from the complete set of Journals. She admits to leaving out much of the technical details. Included are some passages from the actual journals kept by John H. Alexander from 1837 to 1840 with a lot of technical description about how the furnace was built as well as some of the more innovational aspects of the entire projects. But the day-to-day stuff about the miners is the real fascinating material.

A post office is established. Local clay gets turned into bricks and those bricks get put to work on many projects and were even used as floors in the dirt floor "shantees" or very modest cottages purchased from farmers nearby. Blacksmiths were hired. Blacksmiths up and quit, likely hired away by mines in neighboring states. Boarding houses popped up for the few single men but mostly housed families until they could find a proper house or cottage. Roads got built, men were injured.

The activity continued at a fast pace until the usual harsh Western Maryland winters gave the whole project a reason to slow down.
February 21.-Mercury stands at -1 at 7 A.M. The mornings have been so cold for several days past that the stonecutters at the hearth could only work in the afternoons.
February 22.-Thermometer at 7 A.M. stands at --9. It is so cold that a number of hands could not work out of doors. Carpenters again stopped working at the molding house in consequence of the severe cold.

Some newly hired workers just don't work out.
February 23.-John Thomas, who has been here since October last and was intended for a furnace keeper, will persist in getting drunk and has been discharged.
I have no idea if this John Thomas was the son of our Benjamin Thomas, listed on the Tiberius manifest above.

And more accidents happen. Snow comes in March and again in April finally making a last appearance in May. Talk about harsh weather!

In Volume 2 of the Journals, the details of the lives of the miners working for The Consolidation Coal Company were recorded. This is the very best description of the terms of employment and daily life under the Company I've ever had the great pleasure to read!  Rules like no dogs being kept in the heart of the winter without the specific approval of the superintendent are noted and a directive that  houses must be kept clean and tidy, making a pleasant appearance. It was set out in writing that the miners must work from sunrise to sunset all days of the year except Christmas and Sundays. And most importantly, no distilled spirits and no drunkenness. Ever. At all. And if the rule was violated, people were fired.

On page 46 I read this.
February 19.-The night passes off quietly. The revelers at Buskirk's pass the sentinels by keeping high up the hill. Benjamin Thomas, miner, and wife stopped by sentinels in a state of intoxication.
WOW! That's our Benjamin Thomas! He and Hanna (Evans) his wife were drunk. Now that's well worth knowing! So the story is that they and others would scamper up the hillside and move as quietly as possible through the woods to get to the home of the Buskirk's where liquor was served. Everyone knew about it and most found their way, often on a Saturday night. And of course the mining company knew. It was no problem at all for them to wait in hiding for intoxicated miners and their wives as they loudly stumbled home.

It always amazes me how such juicy details are hidden and waiting for us to find them, deep in an obscure record. If Mom hadn't been so curious about the life and times of her ancestors she might have skipped the "Lonaconing Journals" in search of some index or listing with less of a beating heart. But she didn't. She found it in a local library and copied out the pages. Her notes from this time when she first read the Journals are a treasure to me. It's like she's right here with me, and we're finding it all over again!

Daniel Williams (1852-1920).

 

 

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More about the Thomas Family's new home in America

I was thinking about my Thomas ancestors and their journey to America. It seems similar to many folks' ancestors in that the Thomas family came for a better economic future, from the South Wales coal mines to coal mines in Western Maryland.

You can see yesterday's post about the 175th anniversary this week of their sailing here, entitled, "The 175 Years Ago: the start of the Thomas family in America." But what of the world they came to? What was life like in Lonaconing, Allegany, Maryland?

Luckily I had the answer right at my fingertips in an article mentioned by Pat Thomas' page about the Barque Tiberius' ship's list. I copied the URL at the bottom of Pat's page and plugged it into my browser and went to a lovely and helpful write-up about the very place my Thomas ancestors move to. "Lonaconing: Home in the Hills", by Mary Meyers, describing "The Growth and Development of Lonaconing, Maryland". So today I thought that I'd copy some of it below, or at least the parts that give a better description of the mining town that was Lonaconing.

And because it says I need to do this, here's the USGENWEB notice that must accompany the text:

USGENWEB NOTICE
In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations.

OK, now we're good to go:) So here's something about Lonaconing, thanks to Pat, Mary, and Pat Hook who transcribed Mary's text. Hugs to you! What a blast it is for me to read this and think about Benjamin Thomas and his family arriving there in 1838!

The earliest white settlers-farmers, hunters, and woodsmen-came to Lonaconing in the latter part of the eighteenth century. They came with their families, prepared to stay, although the area at that time was an unbroken forest with just a wagon trail and bridges over the creek. Their names live on in their descendants, residents of Lonaconing to this day -- Duckworth, Fazenbaker, Green, Dye, Grove, Van Buskirk, Knapp and Miller, to name a few. The stone house built in 1797 by Samuel Van Buskirk still stands in Knapps Meadow.

Lonaconing can trace its beginning as a town and a commercial center to the coming of the George's Creek Coal and Iron Company, a Baltimore and London, England, syndicate which purchased 11,000 acres of land along the George's Creek and, in 1837, built a furnace complex to manufacture pig iron, using coal and coke rather than charcoal for the smelting process. The Lonaconing iron furnace was the first in the United States to successfully use bituminous coal and coke in making pig iron.

Besides building a furnace it was necessary for the company to bring in workers and furnish houses for them. The local farmers contracted to erect log houses-about 20 from West Main Street to Watercliff and Knapps Meadow. The furnace workers and their families lived under the "Rules of Residency" set down by the George's Creek Coal and Iron Company. The company endeavored to meet the needs of the people. A store was opening and a post office established. A doctor was brought in to care for the health needs of the community. From the beginning, education and religion held a high priority.

The furnace produced pig iron from 1839 until 1855, when, because of a combination of circumstances, the operation ceased. By then the mining of coal had assumed a much more important industrial role and the George's Creek Coal and Iron Company, which already owned thousands of acres of land along with the mineral rights, turned to coal mining as its sole interest.

The developement of the coal industry issued in an era of growth and prosperity for Lonaconing as well as all of the George's Creek environs. Numerous coal companies were formed and mines were opened on all hillsides. Workers flocked in from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland and Germany. Business was booming and all varieties of stores came into being to meet the needs of the people. Transportation improved and the railroad made several runs each day, bringing in people and materials and transporting goods to the market.

Hotels were opened in the vicinity of the railroad station and provided livery stables for the many "drummers" who came to sell their wares. Using Lonaconing as a base, these men would hire a horse and wagon and travel the country roads with the various items needed in households along the way. Many of these drummers were so successful that they were able to open stores in town to sell their merchandise.

Eventually other businesses offering employment and economic stability were a glass factory, silk mill, brick plant, grist mill, ice plant, undertaking establishments, blacksmith, carpentry and tin shops, saddlery and livery stable.

With the growth of the population, schools came into being, each section of the town having its own small school, with the largest in the town proper. A library was established and newspapers published in Lonaconing furnished news of the world as well as items of local interest.

Music played an important part in the life of the town and a city band, along with several cornet bands, had no difficulty in getting members. Plays were presented in the "Opera House" by traveling companies and also local talent. Later, two moving picture theaters were quite popular with the residents.

My Welsh ancestors prized education and music as well as hard work and family life so I can easily envision them being happy upon arrival in Lonaconing. At least that's how I like to think of them on this 175th anniversary of their sailing for America: basically, it was worth the trip!

This postcard is from: http://www.bandkgreen.net/lonaconing.htm

Many thanks for use of the image!

Please visit this page for more images and old postcards from Lonaconing.

 

 

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175 Years Ago: The start of the Thomas family in America

Wait, I thought as I looked at that ship's register transcription on USGenWeb by Pat Thomas, that's 175 years ago! This week! My Thomas ancestors sailed on the Barque Tiberius from Newport (or New Port) Harbor in Wales headed for Baltimore exactly 175 years ago this Sunday. At 109 feet long, it carried 76 passengers and took 46 days to reach Baltimore, Maryland, which they did on 11 Sept 1838.

When I visited Mom last fall we went to the Frostburg Museum in lovely little Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland, and I took a photo of their replica of the ship's passenger list. When I got back home and looked very carefully at it, it jumped to life. Imagine what their journey was like!

Benjamin Thomas, my 3rd great grandfather, head of the family and 45 years old at the sailing, had been recruited out of the coal mines of South Wales by the George's Creek Coal company, which is referenced on the manifest, as you can see below. He came with wife Hannah (Evans), and eight children ranging from an infant, Jane, to four boys who were colliers (William, Benjamin, James, and John) as well as my 2nd great grandmother, Diane (or Diana) age six. Joseph, age three, and Phillip, age two, were also listed. That's a family of 10 people.

George's Creek Coal Company had its headquarters in London and Baltimore and was the owner and operator of their mine in Western Maryland, near Frostburg. They recruited skilled miners from Wales and then paid for their passage with the proviso that the cost was to be deducted from wages. There were 29 "colliers" on that ship and that would mean 29 good and strong men who were immediately available, well trained and experienced, who could go to work in the coal mines. And that strong work force would be tied to the company for however long it took to pay off the cost of the passage.

There were two Thomas families on that ship who came and worked in the mines and prospered. Lewis, Watkins, Reese, two Williams families, two Davis families and a Treasure family were there as well. I'd love to find out more about them all, especially that other Thomas family. Were they related?

The legacy of our Benjamin Thomas is broad and deep, and there are many avid genealogists amongst their descendants. And all of my Thomas cousins are the nicest folks! Benjamin and Hannah would be proud, I think, to know that here we are 175 years later, scattered from coast to coast, all communicating and sharing what we know of them... and wishing we knew much more!

I recently was enticed to find out more about the South Wales coal mines, especially those of the Rhondda Valley, when I came across a web page by one of the descendants of the Lewis family, also on the Barque Tiberius sailing, Debbie Lewis Allen. You can see her blog here. Debbie's posts about the Lewis surname, the preponderance of Welsh surnames amongst African-Americas, and especially the coal region of South Wales got me thinking and googling around. Debbie has some nice information about where her Lewis people lived and maybe worked and I got to thinking that all of the coal mining families who were on the Barque Tiberius were likely recruited out of close-by mines. And, that I should probably know more about where exactly that was if I ever hoped to make any progress in finding locations for my Thomas ancestors. More on that in a later post:)

Here's what Debbie posted about her ancestor on the Tiberius, and note that she has a birthplace for him:
John F. Lewis, Born October 31, 1802 - Died November 7, 1885, He was born in Merthyr-Tidwil Wales.

Hey, what's a "barque" anyway? Off to Google. It's a three masted sailing ship. Interestingly, the barque was also used as a collier or coal ship. Now I'm wondering if the Georges Creek Coal company owned it? The barque was faster and required a smaller crew than other vessels of the day. There were even four-masted barques and they were faster still. San Diego's own Star of India was a full-rigged ship converted into a barque.

Typical three-masted barque.

 

Star of India, the oldest active sailing vessel in the world.

(Both images above, Wikimedia Commons.)

 

So today I'm imagining my Thomas ancestors of 175 years ago, saying their goodbyes to family and friends knowing that they would never see them again. Leaving loved ones behind, that would be the hardest part. Then packing up what they could in trunks, gathering the children, little Diane and baby Jane, too. The older boys hoisting the trunks to start the journey. Did they take a rest in Newport before the journey? I do not know. There is too much that we do not know. But we do know that on the last day of June 1838 the Thomas family sailed out of Newport Harbor set for Baltimore and a brand new life in the coal mines of Western Maryland. And Mom still lives there, and Aunt Betty and Cousin Daniel, and all the rest! Ahhh-mazing!


Here are two other posts about the Thomas Family. This first is mostly about the Barque Tiberius and the second is a Surname Saturday post tracing back from me to this Thomas family.
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/02/treasure-chest-thursday-barque-tiberius.html
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/surname-saturday-thomas-family-from.html
UPDATE: Next blog post about the Thomas family in America here:
http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/06/more-about-thomas-familys-new-home-in.html

In the Frostburg Museum, The ship's register of the Barque Tiberius!

(Here's a link to the transcribed version of the manifest on the Imigrant Ships Transcribers Guild.)

 

The heading for the ship's register mentioning the George's Creek Coal company.

 

My Thomas ancestors on the ship's list.

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Wisdom Wednesday: One Little Keystroke

Oh, gosh. Here it is Wednesday all over again. My stupid cold is almost gone and my brain is sort of working, so let's do a thing with the GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays. This week it's all about how one little click of the mouse can make a difference.

Poof! Gone: last week's Wisdom Wednesday post! So I was on my Blogger post listing page and noticed a draft of a post that didn't look like it was going to amount to much so I thought to delete it. Thing is, I sometimes begin a post and then look at it later and see that what I thought was just this side of brilliant now looks pretty unworthy. So I decided to delete it. (Can you see this coming?) I deleted last week's Wisdom Wednesday post by mistake and I really can't even tell you how that happened, except to say: did I mention I had a cold?

Ancestry.com and cousins. I really like finding new-to-me cousins because you never know what treasures they hold. The odd photo, the name or date of birth for the woman Uncle George married, maybe an old diary or family bible. You never know until you find a cousin and ask. And that cousin might be waiting for me, one click away. This past week received an old wedding photo from a Thomas cousin. We have a nice little group of six who all descended from Benjamin Thomas (1793 - 1846) and Hannah Evans (1798 - 1868) who came to America with their 10 children on the Barque Tiberius in 1883. All from one click on a shaking leaf on Ancestry.com to send a message and connect!
White hair shock at temple = Waardenburg Syndrome. Who knew? Grandma Kelly had a big shock of white hair at her right temple. When I think about her in my mind's eye, it's always there. Was thinking about it the other day and musing over how unusual that is to have a big clump of white hair and wondering if it was a vitamin deficiency or some other medical symptom cluster. So I googled it... one little click... and had my answer. It's Waardenburg Syndrome! Mom said that Grandma used to get real mad at people who asked her why she'd dyed her hair white. Grandma likely never new that Waardenburg Syndrome was responsible for her fashion statement. Mom and I don't think that she had the other symptoms of this genetic disorder such as hearing impairment, and unusual eye pigmentation. Just the distinctive patch of white hair.

Grandma Kelly with her shock of white hair. That's my baby brother and GrandPop Kelly.

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Wisdom Wednesday: My Changing World

It's Wednesday again so I'm using GeneaBlogger's blogging prompt called Wisdom Wednesdays and time is flying because I'm having fun! Hope you are too:) This week I'm struck by how fast my genea-world is changing. News flies in the window at every turn, DNA is my new toy, new-to-me cousins are teaming up to bust down brick walls (at least that's the plan), and I'm feeling like the 18-wheeler of information pulled up to my door and unloaded! That's a good thing:)

Right now, it's hard to stick to task as so much pops up and I need to respond to it. Seems like just when I get going on a project, get it organized and make a research plan, a juicy piece of new information about another family line falls in my lap and I need to turn my attention away from my plan to capture information that could be fleeting. That ever happen to you? I was working on the Biggerstaffs and whatta ya know, my Bridget Cocoran Kelly, my 2nd great grandmother, makes an appearance at the exact same time as I hear from a cousin who has information about my 3rd great grandfather Benjamin Thomas and possibly Benjamin's father who might be named Thomas Thomas. Where to turn first?
Feels like what I need is a two-pronged system in which I first save my latest thoughts on the present project, but move swiftly to capture what I can about the other lines. Multitasking, anyone?
Evernote is working for me on the long-term projects. However, I'm thinking that I might actually go back a couple of steps in the technology time line to ye olde spiral notebook that I can grab and go with for stuff that pops up. It's about solving problems with whatever works for each of us, isn't it?

I made a contribution to Ancestry.com by correcting/ updating an entry or three. Was having trouble finding my Whetstone ancestors in the 1850 census. Couldn't figure it out. They should be there, of that there was no discussion. But where had they hidden? Explored all the usual reasons some family might not be where they should, such as a move that year or being missed by the enumerator. Finally I just went "door to door" so to speak looking for them in the area where they should have been. Found them listed as Wheatstone. Now I don't know what it was about that search and the way it was processed but it wouldn't bring back my Whetstones no matter what I tried, and admittedly I was probably just not doing the magical combination of things the search gremlins wanted. But when I found them, I suggested the way it should be listed and they accepted the update and notified me. Cool, they notify you! That felt good.
The same thing happened to my Kelly people in the same census. They were listed as Kelley which I kinda guessed might happen. That got updated and accepted too and I got to feel good all over again.
But here's one I didn't know how to handle and maybe didn't do this correctly. My 3rd GGF, Benjamin Thomas came over on the Barque Tiberius. No discussion there at all. Well documented. Easy-peasy. Except I couldn't find it on Ancestry. Whaa? The other day I finally did find it but the ship's name was listed as the "Liberius" and not "Tiberius". I didn't know how to enter an update for a ship name, so I did it using the update mechanism for my 3rd GGF's name. If there's a better way please let me know! If this confounded me it's probably confounding other.

Geo-Grave, anyone? My good genea-pal, Shawn, mentioned that she puts the Find A Grave memorial numbers in her Family Tree Maker files! Cool idea! This good idea had not crossed my radar before, but it's brilliant and so I'm thinking that everyone but me must be doing it:)
Was also thinking about those really hard to find stones and how a hand-held GPSr (Global Positioning System reader) would be a great helper in knowing exactly where those markers are.
Over here in our house we're avid geocachers (adult hide-and-seek using million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods.) We can see the opportunity to tie Find A Grave memorials into their GPS locations (and package it as a Geo-Grave system...?) My hand-held GPSr will make note of any location anywhere and it would be a breeze to add that notation to the Find A Grave listing, especially for difficult-to-find tombstones or family cemeteries off the beaten path, and we've all been to those. Most GPSr will give an audible beep when you're close to target as well as info on which direction you need to go to get there. It's very cool stuff!

Eckhart Cemetery, Eckhart Mines, Allegany, Maryland.

Could have used a Geo-Grave system there!!

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Talented Tuesday: They Were Coal Miners

Well you might not ordinarily think of an occupation as being a talent but I'm willing to bend the definitions and I think that you too will go along with it and come to see my ancestors and their lives with coal as a sort of a talent. That's what we'll be doing today with the Geneabloggers prompt of Talented Tuesday.

Great grand father Daniel Williams (1852 - 1920) was born in Wales into a mining family, The area where he was born was a lead mining area, but the men there often went south for a period of months to work the coal mines as the tin mines were worked out by the mid-1800s.  On the Wales census of 1841 and 1851 the family men are listed simply as "collier", and everyone knew what that meant: they worked in a coal mine. So we might say that coal was in their blood.

We feel that he was superior at his work because when he came to America and worked in the Greorge's Creek coal fields, he was a boss at the mine. Aunt Betty emailed me a while back with these details:

As far as we know, Daniel lived in Midland and Ocean, MD after he arrived in the United States. He was Foreman of Mine No. 16, Consolidation Coal Company. He was a member of the George’s Creek Valley Lodge of Masons in Lonanconing, MD. He was selected to take a large lump of coal from Ocean Mines, Maryland to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He was elected as a Trustee in the Ocean School District #18 on June 22, 1907.

Pretty heady stuff, being asked to accompany the record-breaking lump of coal to Chicago!

 

Aunt Betty also told me that he owned two mines, one was a coal mine in Mount Savage, Maryland and the other, possibly a tin and/or silver mine, in West Virginia. It was his intention to work these mines with his sons, and presumably, make a ton of money. Looks like he purchased the land during the boom-times of coal and coal mining. But after WWI the market for coal lagged seriously. Then Daniel died in 1920, leaving the mines to be worked by his sons. The land in Mount Savage, Maryland is still in the family, as per Aunt Betty who keeps up with these things. The land in West Virginia was lost in the 1930s to back taxes. It was the Great Depression and presumably Daniel's sons couldn't find a way to put food on the table and pay taxes for land over in West Virginia that might or might not have tin and silver in it.

There were other coal miners in Mom's line. Benjamin Thomas whom I wrote about here came to American in 1838 specifically to work for the George's Creek Coal Company in Ocean Maryland. It's my suspicion that the management of the George's Creek Coal Company, who had executives in London as well as Baltimore, knew of the difficulties of the Welsh coal miners and sought out families to have their passage subsidized in some way. At present I have no proof of this and imagine it will be difficult to connect the dots. That said, I look at the list and see that there are five strong healthy men to work their mines in Ocean Maryland. Sounds like a deal was made to me... but I have not proof as yet.

Manifest of the Barque Tiberius, left Wales on 31 June 1838

Then there was the Price family line and there was at least one, maybe more miners there, and you can read the recent post on this family here celebrating Surname Saturday so I won't spend too much time on them. Look for William Price 1829 - 1872.

The last on my list of coal mining men is my grandfather on my father's side, John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) who contracted black lung disease from working in the mines. You can read about him here. Taken from school in the sixth grade, this smart man with the inquiring mind was sent to work in the coal mines and earn what was called a "half turn" or half or quarter pay of an adult man. Times were very hard, the men were struggling with the thought of joining a union and the mining companies were cutting wages whenever they could.

Grandpop Kelly sitting on the front porch.

I first heard about the coal mines and mining from Grandpop Kelly. He described it in detail. But I couldn't wrap my mind around it, until I visited the Frostburg Museum last fall. There was a display there, as exact as possible, of a typical coal mine interior arranged with a number of tools of the trade, including a couple of lunch pails.

As I stood there I was dumbfounded at the closeness and darkness of it. And I am sure there was a smell because open earth always has a smell. It wouldn't be a pretty smell either: moist and dank. I thought of my grandfathers, all, working there, making a living there. Day after day, month after month, dealing with often stingy mine owners dictating wages. All they wanted in the world was a decent wage and a peaceful family life with a loving home to come to at the end of the day. Most of them got it, somehow.

Frostburg Museum: typical coal mine interior.

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Treasure Chest Thursday: The Barque Tiberius Brought Them

Last fall when on a trip back east to see Mom and the family, we went to the Frostburg Museum over in the old Hill Street School. Frostburg is the tiny Western Maryland town where Mom and Dad grew up, met, got married and where almost the entirety of the first few generations of my tree come from. So I was excited to see what the museum had and how it might relate to the family.

The first floor was super fascinating and we all roamed around looking at an amazing variety of stuff that we had some familiarity with. There's a small room with a lot of personal family history items relating to some of the families of the town that go way back. The Porters, The Workmen, and the Troutmen families all had genealogies there.

In that small room a couple of document facsimile were presented in glass cases. I took a close look and then with the permission of the docent, photographed them. I noticed the ship's list from the Barque Tiberius and knew it fit into our family's history but just as I was puzzling out where and who, one of our group drew my attention away to some other item, equally fascinating. It was like that all day! A wealth of relevant items to look at and consider in the ongoing process of understanding the world my ancestors inhabited. It was hard to take it all in and we plan to go back when I visit next time.

Back home and months later I'm sitting thinking, hey what about that Barque Tiberius? So I googled it and found a link to a transcription of the manifest and some very interesting notes which you can see here. Seems that it sailed from New Port, Wales to Baltimore, Maryland, and arrived in Baltimore 11 September 1838. Then I read the top of the manifest:

A List of Passengers on board of the American Barque Tiberias of Boston U.S., whereof George Sears, is Master, bound from New Port to Baltimore, U.S., burthen 299 tons Reg.

Columns represent: Name, age and occupation. The intention of all is George's Creek Co.* except Mary Bannista who is for Baltimore.
 

On board are three people who interest me to the max! They are:
Diana Thomas (1832 - 1871), my 2nd great grandmother, who was only 6 years old.
Benjamin Thomas (1793 - 1846), age 45, a collier (miner), and his wife,
Hannah (Evans) Thomas (1798 - 1968) age 40. Together, they are my 3rd great grandparents.

Holy-moley!! Seeing that just stops me in my tracks. Imagine! Benjamin with his entire family, all ten of them, confined to a small ship of just 299 tons, making their way for 46 days to cross, to the George's Creek Coal fields in a place they have never been to or seen. And with an infant child, Jane.

There's another Thomas family on board and in some way, I do hope they were connected, these two Thomas families, so as to be able to share the great adventure of their lives.

I feel for this family and don't have many details of their existence at hand which I can share with you. I do know that mine work was hard and dangerous. But I also know that the George's Creek Coal fields were the richest in the state, or adjoining states too at that time, and the miners who worked it prospered.  They raised large well-fed families and eventually purchased their own homes. Their children had good educations and they prospered as well.

Mom found one mention of Benjamin and Hannah in a small publication, The Lonaconing Mining Journal, 1837 - 1840, which is the recording journal of the mine manager. It was transcribed by Katherine Harvey about 1976. In it is recorded that Benjamin and Hannah were making merry and drinking on a Sunday evening at someone else's home, and arrested for being drunk! Here's the story. On Sundays, and after a long hard week of work, someone in the community opened their home to serve as a public house, a pub. Bars were outlawed by the mining company who kept an iron hold on the morals of their workers. It did not serve their best interests to have hungover miners working on Monday morning. So it seems that off went Benjamin and Hannah to have some downtime with neighbors. And they got caught by the mining company!

Also on the link, and written by Patricia Thomas, whose husband is also a direct descendant of Benjamin and Hannah is the following:

The Barque Tiberias appears to have left Wales on 31 June 1838 and is 109 feet long. The voyage took 46 days to cross from Newport, Wales to Baltimore, Maryland. The names of 76 passengers appear on the manifest. A cargo of 3,689 pieces of railroad iron was also on board. Most were men (and their families) hired as colliers (miners) due to mass recruiting by the George's Creek Coal and Iron Company in Allegany County, Maryland.

I thank Patricia Thomas for this paragraph, above.

In the Frostburg Museum, The ships register of the Barque Tiberius!

My 3rd GGF Benjamin Thomas and 3rd GGM Hannah Thomas on the Barque Tiberius roster along with my 2nd GGM Diane Thomas.

The Frostburg Museum now residing in its permanent home at the Hills Street School in Frostburg Maryland. There is much local history within its walls!

Mom and Brother look at her high school graduating class photo on display at the Frostburg Museum while our docent, Ralph, looks on.

Treasure Chest Thursday is a blogging prompt of GeneaBloggers. Find out more here.

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