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Thread ID: 141720	2016-02-09 22:11:00	Geology of Britain	John H (8)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1415804	2016-02-09 22:11:00	I believe there are one or two old Brits on this forum... I just came across this resource on the Forest of Dean Family History Trust forum, and thought a few of the odder characters on this forum (e.g. the very odd one from Derbyshire) may be interested. mapapps.bgs.ac.uk Quite fascinating when you drill down to a location you are interested in. My Forest ancestors were farmers and iron miners; my wife's mother's ancestors were iron miners in Cumbria. When you look at the areas you derive from you realise how complex the geology of a country can be, and the resources that have been scratched out of holes for centuries - the Romans were mining in the Forest of Dean when they were there, but earlier generations of little dark men were delving in holes before then. Apologies if this isn't interesting to some of you, but I found it fascinating.	John H (8)
1415805	2016-02-09 22:14:00	I should have said, you can magnify (scroll wheel does it for me), move the map around, and then right click on an area you are interested in and a box comes up describing the geology represented. On a wider map view, the Pennines coal fields show up as being enormous.	John H (8)
1415806	2016-02-10 00:32:00	My ancestors were Free Miners in the Forest Of Dean. My great great uncle was Warren James who led the Dean Forest riots in 1832. en.wikipedia.org My grandfather and his brother came out to NZ around 1900-1905. My grandfather lived in Blackball and worked at Blackball Mine before moving north to Huntly for health reasons. TB I think, quite a common thing with UK miners. He died aged 47 at Hikurangi. My great uncle (Isaac Angelo James) did rather better and was a mine manager on the Coast and ended up Manager of NZ State Mines. In 1917 he was the mine manager in the pay car taking the wages out to the James Mine at Runanga when they were held up by a robber (Eggers) who shot and killed the guard who was clearing away the road block, and shot and fatally wounded the driver and put 3 bullets into my uncle as he tried to escape. paperspast.natlib.govt.nz Interesting times Ken :2cents:	kenj (9738)
1415807	2016-02-10 00:43:00	One of mine was a soldier that went there to fight with the William of Orange lot. Stayed there. No idea if he took up farming, mining or whatever after, presume he wasn't slaughtering people forever. His wife came with him, wasn't till later the mingling with the natives happened.	pctek (84)
1415808	2016-02-10 00:47:00	The Forest Free Miners were used a lot as sappers in WW1 because of their expertise, as were many NZ miners (some of whom no doubt were Forest descendants like your family). There are lots of James names in the Forest family history records, to such an extent it looks about as hard to trace your James line in the Forest as it is to trace Powells in Wales. We lived in a subdivision in Woodend (North Canterbury) that was developed by a local James family. I notice that they named one of the lanes after a Forest village, but the younger generation of James who lived in the subdivision sadly didn't know what the connection was to that name. My guess is that the family were Forest descendants. You might like to follow up your James family here: www.forest-of-dean.net/ It is an unbelievable resource, with free access to parish records, wills, and lots of other resources. There are 3 1 pages of James on the Freeminers Register - no Warren though. My lot got out of mining as soon as they arrived here in 1860. 5 of the 10 children of my great great grandparents came out and the other 5 stayed put. 3 of my uncles served in WW1, and when on leave in England tried to contact surviving family members without success - in about 50 years, the family ties had been completely severed, which I suppose was often the case in the days of sailing ship migration and postal services.	John H (8)
1415809	2016-02-10 01:06:00	kenj - there are a lot of articles on the Forest of Dean website about the riots and Warren James. I think you would have to sign up to access them, but it is free. The documents (including petitions, transcripts etc) are all downloadable, and are on the resources>documents and articles>stories and articles directory. They are collected under the first heading you come to 'Riots in the Forest of Dean 1831'. There is a copy of Warren James first registration as a free miner with his signature. The book on your ancestor can be found here: openlibrary.org There are a number of FoD James descendants who are members of the forum, including at least one in NZ.	John H (8)
1415810	2016-02-10 02:11:00	I believe there are one or two old Brits on this forum... I just came across this resource on the Forest of Dean Family History Trust forum, and thought a few of the odder characters on this forum (e.g. the very odd one from Derbyshire) may be interested. mapapps.bgs.ac.uk Quite fascinating when you drill down to a location you are interested in. My Forest ancestors were farmers and iron miners; my wife's mother's ancestors were iron miners in Cumbria. When you look at the areas you derive from you realise how complex the geology of a country can be, and the resources that have been scratched out of holes for centuries - the Romans were mining in the Forest of Dean when they were there, but earlier generations of little dark men were delving in holes before then. Apologies if this isn't interesting to some of you, but I found it fascinating. My wife's rellies come from Beatrice Potter county, Cockermouth to be exact. My mother came from Derby, Derbyshire. The dictionary on this site comes from the USA, rofl. lurking.	Lurking (218)
1415811	2016-02-10 03:14:00	genealogy becomes a nonesense once you try & go back a more than a few hundred years . Just the math, just how it is. Like the famous tale of the inventor of chess, wanting his reward to be 1 grain of rice , then that doubled in each next square .Same thing with our ancestors . io9.gizmodo.com phenomena.nationalgeographic.com "The most recent common ancestor of every European today (except for recent immigrants to the Continent) was someone who lived in Europe in the surprisingly recent past—only about 600 years ago. In other words, all Europeans alive today have among their ancestors the same man or woman who lived around 1400. " Yep, we are all related to the muck rakers, the perverts , the commoners ..and the royalty . :)	1101 (13337)
1415812	2016-02-10 03:27:00	We have been to Cockermouth a few times on trips to Britain. My wife was born nearby in Whitehaven Hospital but her mother's family were from Egremont where my wife's grandfather and later step-grandfather were iron miners. The grandfather went the way of many miners with the lungs, whereas it looks like the step-grandfather may have pickled his lungs in copious pints of ale, thus avoiding the early death of the miner. We visited the Florence mine at Egremont in 2004 - everything coated in a greasy red deposit from the iron ore. It was still operating in private hands - the last working iron mine in England. Your wife's family will know St Bee's Head, which is where we tried to scatter my wife's parents' ashes in an onshore wind - they are probably in the North Sea now instead of the Irish Sea. Great ales in Cumbria!!!	John H (8)
1415813	2016-02-10 03:36:00	My sister in Aus is the tracker in our family. I am interested in the results but not the searching. They are pretty well off so travels to the UK fairly often and she has compiled a large amount of stuff which she feeds to me every so often. She has a copy of Ralph Anstis' book which she loaned me to read. Thanks for the links John. Ken :)	kenj (9738)
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