Thanks to everyone who provided me with suggestions regarding Mine Worker records. I received the following response from the Scottish Mining Museum and post it to save others a similar inquiry....Allison "Dear Allison Vidal, Regarding your recent enquiry, I am afraid that I have to disappoint you in your efforts to track down your ancestors via mining records. The fact is that very little remains in the way of employment lists relating to the people who worked in the mines of the 19th century. I don't think that they were regarded as important enough for that information to be worth keeping! Even the mining records kept in the National Archives of Scotland are mostly about coal company and coal owner details - board meetings; legal document; mineral leases; financial matters etc. The other aspect is that going back to James Ross your coal mining great great grandfather takes you to a time when little in the way of formal record were kept anyway. As we are principally a coal mining museum, we don't have anything on Daniel Ross's shale miners associations activities. However, as you may be aware, there is a shale oil museum at Livingston in West Lothian and a visit there when you are over might be worthwhile. They may have some historical information on union activities. If you intend to research other official sources, - births, deaths, marriages registers, parish records, census returns, valuation rolls, and you come across colliery or mining village names or mining occupations we may be able to help fill in the background of the working lives of your family. Best of luck George Archibald Volunteer"

Reading this reply jogged my memory of something I read in a book a few years ago. Miners or colliers were classed by the mine owners and the 'upper' classes as the lowest form of the working classes and humans life in general. I was shocked when I read that and it angered me at the time because my Father (thankfully only for a few years), my Grandfathers on both sides and most of my male relatives were colliers. I always admired them for the dangerous work they did, my Grandfather was a brusher down the pit, they say the most dangerous of all the jobs. They worked all their lives in atrocious conditions to afford them who looked down on them the luxuries of the times. Some of them died very young leaving young widows and children, we find that out in our research, and that saddens me, the women must have been distraught not only at losing their husbands but how they would survive. For there to be no records of the employees rankles, because in the southern states of America they kept impeccable records of their slaves, even a dog breeder or a horse breeder keeps records, shows how much value was put on their lives. No wonder so many of them were socialists and communists. In my view the men who employed them could never lace their boots. (one of my Fathers auld sayings) right that's me got that off my chest..... regards to all Elizabeth. > > ""The fact is that very little remains in the way of employment lists relating > to the people who worked in the mines of the 19th century. I don't think > that they were regarded as important enough for that information to be worth > keeping! Even the mining records kept in the National Archives of Scotland > are mostly about coal company and coal owner details - board meetings; legal > document; mineral leases; financial matters etc.""