How To Find Coal Miners In Your Tree

You don’t have to dig too deep to find valuable resources to help your research

Ancestry.co.uk now hosts the searchable database of UK mining accidents and disasters from 1878 to 1935, originally compiled by Ian Winstanley: bit.ly/anc-mining. Also Fionn Taylor’s healeyhero.co.uk site (in memory of Phil Healey, a Mine Rescue officer at Ilkeston) has a lot of useful material, including memorials, fatality lists, family history help, and an excellent glossary of ‘pit words’.

Local and regional newspapers contain a huge amount of information about coal mining, and libraries and record offices may have cuttings and newspaper files that are not yet available in a digital format. The growing subscription database britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk is searchable via family names and colliery names for

selected areas and time periods. Original newspapers still not scanned can be viewed at the British Library’s Boston Spa reading rooms near Wetherby, Yorkshire: bl.uk/visit/readingrooms/boston-spa.

Annual HM Mines Inspectors’ reports (and lots of other information too) can be consulted in libraries at the National Coal Mining Museum for England in West Yorkshire ( ncm.org.uk), the National Mining Museum Scotland in Midlothian ( nationalminingmuseum.com) and the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea ( museumwales.ac.uk/en/swansea). It’s also worth consulting family history societies in former coalfield areas, because they may have information about local miners – see ffhs.org. uk/members2/contacting.php.