Only one event to report for today.
10 April 1870
Birth of John Strachan, my great uncle, at Crookedholm, son of Joseph Strachan and Jeannie Haddow. No surprise that he was a coal miner. On 21 December 1890, at 15E Block, Railway Buildings, Hurlford (known to locals as “The Blocks”), he married Lucy Alice Robertson. In 1901 they were at Cowan’s Row, Crookedholm, which is also where my grandparents Henry and Helen Strachan lived: Henry was John’s next youngest brother. Then at some time between 1906 and 1910 John, Lucy and their children moved to Tollcross, Glasgow, which is around the same time as my grandfather Henry and his family also moved to Tollcross, so it sounds as if the two families were close. In 1911 John, Alice, their 7 surviving children and a boarder were at Fullerton, near Tollcross, and John was working as a roadmaker at a coal mine. John died in 1941 at the age of 71.
71! That’s a ripe old age for a coal miner. My coal mining relatives all died in their 30s or 40s, so far.
I’m surprised how long some of my coal mining ancestors lived. Plenty of them got to their 70s s the Strachans must be must be made of strong stuff. Though my Strachan grandfather died in his 40s.