I know from asking this question on the Berkshire List, that rural life at this time was far from idyllic (Swing riots, famine, transportation and the like). Clearly they needed employment but what possessed them to go as far as the Black Country? ________________ One branch of my family who are traced back to Oxford, Banbury, Northants were agricultural labourers and boat builders. Once the canals in the West Midlands were built and coal from the rich coal seams in the area etc, was able to be more easily transported than by horse and cart. A whole new motorway of it's day came into being. Some of them were coal dealers, others included boatmen according to the census with families actually based at Willingsworth colliery, in the Black Country. I can track movements up to coal fields in Stoke on Trent . The farthest I've got them is Middlewich in Cheshire. Also my husbands ancestors who had been in the shropshire countryside until the 1840's lost land and moved to Bilston. They were blacksmiths but in tracing that family I came acrossa relative who was a mine agent and sale of land for coal mining. One of the earliest traced members of the family had moved from Shropshire to Walsall in the 1600's. Did they somehow keep in touch over the centuries and when times got tough, moved to areas where they already had other relatives, in search of the work developing due to the industrial revolution? Or did they move to these areas taking with them skills that they had already gained. Ironbridge is on the River Severn. Banbury is on a canal and near the River Cherwell. I have an ancestor from Montgomeryshire, another link to a canal, this time the Montgomery canal . http://www.wbct.org.uk/branches.htmThis is a link to a map showing the Wilts and berks canal and it looks like it joins up to the Oxford one, so it looks like it's a possibility that yours traveled the same route mine did, only farther. What I've often wondered is how long, being horsedrawn, it used to take the boats to travel along stretches of the canals. I've been told that they traveled during the night has anybody seen any links on the web or of knows of a good book that has anymore info about this? Gaye