Searching For Ancestors?

Learn the basics of starting your own research on The BBC Family History Site.

If you are trying to trace your ancestors then there are many groups that may be able to help you, ranging from local history groups to the larger family history societies. Some of the local history groups that maintain their own web pages have contacted the Durham Mining Museum and they have provided a link to their web site via their Links page.

A very important source is the Coal Mining History Resource Centre run by Ian Winstanley. Ian has been extracting the names of fatalities from the Mines Inspectors Reports and other sources for quite some time and has a database of over 90,000 names covering the whole country. Check his web site for further details.

• National Database Of Mining Deaths In Great Britain
• 1842 Royal Commission Reports
  Available on CD-ROM as PDF, PC and Mac Word versions.
• List Of Mining Disasters In Great Britain
  disasters in which 5 or more lives have been lost.
  Ian has tried to give a documentary account of the incident from official and local sources including a list of the victims.
• Mines Location Maps in Great Britain and the Isle of Man 1908 - 45 (free)

In which collieries could they have worked?

If you have an address or village name from your research then it is possible to find the local collieries using the Durham Mining Museum web site. For each colliery they show all the other collieries and pits for which they have information within a 5 mile (8 km) radius of each other. If the only information you have is for the latter part of the twentieth century then this information will not be enough as people travelled further to work as the availability of public and private transport increased. For the nineteenth century and before the information they provide will be sufficient as it is likely that your ancestors walked to work each day - from the house provided by the colliery companies as part of the miners pay. Be aware though that when the Miners' Bond was active it was possible for a miner to work in a different mine (locally) each year!

If you are looking for death certificates for relatives who died in a pit disaster, then the registry office is a good place to start.
John Miles

There is also a large amount of information for those interested in genealogy in the UK and Ireland provided on the internet via the GENUKI site.

Mine Related Deaths

First of all check our Durham Mining Museum Memorial Roll to see if they have an entry for the person you are trying to find. The list of fatalities is by no means complete, but as they continue their own research the number of names grows - They also welcome contributions from all sources. The sources they use are as follows:

• Annual Mines Inspectors Reports. These Government reports provide an annual overview of mining accidents in the region and provide information on the cause of the accident and the names of any fatalities. They also provide some information on non fatal accidents, gallantry awards etc. The North East of England was included in the reports from 1859.
• Newspapers.
• Parish Records - burial registers.
• Tombstones/Monumental Inscriptions.

If you know the rough time period in which your ancestor died and if this is after 1837, you can search the GRO index of deaths and order a copy of the death certificate using the reference number in the index from the GRO. The GRO indexes of Births, Deaths and Marriages are available at most main libraries in the UK and at the Family History Centres provided by the Church of Latter Day Saints throughout the world.

Coroner's Inquests

Having obtained a death certificate you may see that a Coroner's Inquest was held. Unfortunately very few records of these inquests have been deposited with local record offices, generally speaking the records were destroyed. However, there may have been coverage of the inquest in the local newspapers, the coverage varies from a single line or paragraph to many column inches for disasters.

Are there any employment records for your colliery?

What records survive from the colliery companies (including the NCB) will have been deposited with a local archives service. Tyne and Wear Archives have a web page that shows what records they hold for individual collieries. The index of holdings for Durham Record Office can be searched using their web site. Both of these web sites show what documents have been deposited with them - you will have to visit the archives to view the documents themselves.

Forest of Dean

The Forest of Dean Local history Society mining fatality CD can be obtained from The Publications Officer, Forest of Dean Local History Society, The Cottage, Ross Road, English Bicknor, Glos. GL16 7PA

Fatalities in Nottinghamshire Collieries