Hi. I too am working on genealogy for my family, and while I do not think I share the same towns as you do, I do share the fact that my great grandfather was a coal miner, and I too have found it surrounded with shame in my family. In fact most of the facts around his life have not been passed down through the family due to this shame. My g.grandfather was in Willisville, and the coal mine there was virtually the only industry... I am trying to locate the name of the owners of mines in that area to learn more. Do you have any of the Coal Mining Companies Names? Our family, and many others in that town were extremely poor, and most worked in the mines. Of course, nearly all had black lung disease, and were worked to near death. Many of the workers drank in relief from the pains, and diseases. I do remember the stories of the older women who would say that there was a work whistle at the mine, and it blew at the start and end of the day. If it blew during the day, the entire town would run to the mine, because it meant that there was a cave-in, or some accident. I don't know if the job was the bottom of the heap, but I can't imagine that a man would work in the awful conditions, unless he had no other way to feed himself and family. The coal was of course, as we know today, toxic, and dirty. To this day, my older relatives still have this thing about being 'dirty'...even the least little bit, and also about wearing jeans, or overalls. Jeans were the 'uniform' of the coal miners, and a stigma in those days of a very poor class of working people. I don't know about you, but I find the effort that these simple laborers provided, under the worst of conditions, to be no less than amazing. And I often think of how hard they worked. I am very proud of them. They were very honest, hardworking people. Surnames I am researching, Vancil, Repke, Vogt (volk), Glotfelty. Lynn California -----Original Message----- From: Marennad@aol.com <Marennad@aol.com> To: ILMADISO-L@rootsweb.com <ILMADISO-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Monday, November 30, 1998 10:13 PM Subject: Coal mines in Madison County Illinois >This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > >--part0_912492668_boundary >Content-ID: <0_912492668@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> >Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > > ><< In doing my genealogy which seems to be for the most part finding family in >Alton, Collinsville, and Troy I have a question. These family members came in >from New Orleans from Brenen mostly and they all seemed to become coal miners. >How many mines were there in 1860-forward tell when they closed? I went down >in an elevator in 1946 with my dad so he could show me what they looked like. >That was in Troy. I remember there were a lot of small little shacks in Troy >where some of the families lived, and they were very poor. I would really >like to know more about this. It seems like we had two generations working in >coal mining. I also noticed that when they used to talk about this it seemed >to be with a sense of shame. Was this the bottom of the line for laborers? >>> > > >--part0_912492668_boundary >Content-ID: <0_912492668@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> >Content-type: message/rfc822 >Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit >Content-disposition: inline > >From: Marennad@aol.com >Return-path: <Marennad@aol.com> >To: ILMadiso-L@rotosweb.com, Stopan@aol.com >Subject: Coal mines in Madison County Illinois >Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 00:02:52 EST >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII >Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > >In doing my genealogy which seems to be for the most part finding family in >Alton, Collinsville, and Troy I have a question. These family members came in >from New Orleans from Brenen mostly and they all seemed to become coal miners. >How many mines were there in 1860-forward tell when they closed? I went down >in an elevator in 1946 with my dad so he could show me what they looked like. >That was in Troy. I remember there were a lot of small little shacks in Troy >where some of the families lived, and they were very poor. I would really >like to know more about this. It seems like we had two generations working in >coal mining. I also noticed that when they used to talk about this it seemed >to be with a sense of shame. Was this the bottom of the line for laborers? > >--part0_912492668_boundary-- > > >==== ILMADISO Mailing List ==== > List problems? First, read the Welcome Message that you received >when you subscribed. Feel free to contact Yvonne James-Henderson, >list administrator with questions concerning this list! >mailto:hen1@idt.net > >