Unusual Sources

Diamond_Mine_Disaster_Historical_Marker_Grundy I, courtesy WiikMediaCommons

 

Finding the Stories: Unusual Sources 

Many, if not most, of us are interested in going beyond "genealogy" to "family history." More than just the names, dates, and places, we want to know the stories our ancestors could have told us. They may not be around anymore but there are lots of other sources for these stories. Sometimes you find what you're looking for where you least expect it!

I knew that my paternal grandfather's family migrated from Belgium to Grundy County, Illinois, in the 1880s to mine coal. Few people realize it, but the northern Illinois coalfields were some of the best coal in the country, strongly preferred by the railroads because it was much cleaner than Pennsylvania anthracite. However, the fields were comparatively small and pretty much were only able to supply Chicago and the railroads operating there.

The city and village names in Grundy County reveal the importance of coal in the area: Coal City, Diamond, Carbon Hill. There was also plenty of farming, but that's a different twig on the family tree. Those in my direct line were there to work the coal.

The Morris Public Library—Morris is the county seat—has a very respectable genealogy section for such a small city. One day I was looking through the shelves and ran across a master's thesis written by a student at Illinois State. I don't remember the student's name, and the computer where my notes are is inaccessible right now, but I remember the title: "The Coal Mines of Grundy County, Illinois." There went the next hour!

What I learned from this thesis was that by the late 1890s the coal was beginning to play out. Unfortunately, the miners didn't put two and two together and decided this would be a good time to go on strike. The owners, saw no reason to increase pay when they'd be closing the mines anyway in the foreseeable future, so they just closed the mines and, in effect, said "too bad, so sad."

Then a new seam was discovered a few miles away, in the South Wilmington area. According to the thesis, the owners gathered up some of their most trusted employees and started digging again.  The new mines lasted only a few years, but they were tapped to their full potential.

How did this relate to my family? 

Braceville to South Wilmington ILvia GoogleMaps

When they came from Belgium they settled in Braceville, where some of the mines were located.  My grandfather and three of his siblings were born there between 1889 and 1898, but the fifth was born in 1902 in South Wilmington.  

Aha!  Now I have some inkling of why they probably moved!

It just goes to show that you never know where you're going to find pertinent information. Who would have suspected a master's thesis would reveal so much?

Dave Liesse

 

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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