My great grandfather, William Davis, a coal miner of St. Martins, Shropshire, left his family in about 1869, to go to the U.S.A. to "look for gold, I was told." I don't believe that there were any of the great gold rushes at that time, but wonder if there was then any recruitment of British miners for the States which induced him to go and probably provided an assisted passage for which he would have been unlikely to have had the means himself? I would be grateful for any information. I know that William settled in America, but have never been able to locate him there in the records, amongst the myriads of William Davies's. Don Tomkinson