Livingston Family Newsletter 2002

Hurry don't delay on marking your calendars and making reservations for our Reunion.

Date: July 11-13, 2002 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday)
Place: Zion's Ponderosa

We have heard your request for doing an extended family reunion. We tried to pick a place that would accommodate all types of facilities for an over night stay. If you choose not to stay at Zion's Ponderosa Ranch there is a near by town with motel and other accommodations etc. We are very excited to be going to Zion's Ponderosa Ranch for three fun days of activities for our family members. Come stay the entire time or just drop in for one of the planned days, the choice is yours.

Zion Ponderosa Ranch is in one of the most beautiful parts of the state and the next door neighbors to Zion's National Park.

Below is a little excerpt of what they have to offer.

Zion Ponderosa is an "all inclusive" resort located on the East Rim of Zion National Park, in Southern Utah. Here, we combine comfortable, cozy lodging in log cabins, delicious food, and unlimited recreation all for one great price. See world-famous Zion National Park in an adventurous and natural setting. Join us for spectacular hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, rappelling, ATV tours, wagon rides, swimming and hot tub, tennis, sand volleyball, and much more."

Corey and Lisa Child will be our hosts and coordinators of this year's family reunion activities. You can contact them directly at 800-293-5444 or visit the web site at www.zionponderosa.com

We have blocked out a section of cabins and campground units for our family reunion. If you are interested in staying in one of these locations you need to contact Corey or Zion Ponderosa by FEBRUARY 15, 2002. Tell them you are with the Livingston Family Reunion. Corey and Lisa are giving us a special rate if you choose the campground option, camping, food and activities will be one low price, so give them a call for details. Because everyone's situation and needs are different, you will have to book your accommodations directly with them.

Important - You must Act now and contact Corey or Zion Ponderosa before February 15, 2002. They will only hold the block of cabins and campground facilities until that date.

Contact Corey and Lisa for additional questions about the area and facilities, they can recommend other alternatives for your stay. Don't delay, Zion is a popular area for vacation season.

More information and the family agenda will follow in our next newsletter, which will be sent sometime in May.

Livingston Mailing List

In preparing to send out this newsletter, we spent many hours, and made dozens of calls across the country trying to bring our mailing list up to date. Many of you answered our call, and provided us with updated and new addresses. We currently have 460 confirmed addresses on our mailing list.

Family newsletters are important. They give us a chance to learn more about our family. They bring important news, including family reunion announcements. Printing and posting newsletters is also expensive. Please help us keep our mailing list accurate by sending us additions, deletions, and corrections to our list. When we get a returned newsletter without a forwarding address, we have lost that name from our list. Please help us make sure we don't lose anyone else.

We would love to add additional members of your families to the list, please check with your children, extended family members, and see if they are getting the newsletter, if not get the information to us ASAP. Send new additions, corrections to either Ross or Shaunna, mail, email or fax would be wonderful.

A great big thanks goes to outgoing board members Joyce Davis and Carolyn Shackelford for all their great service.

Welcome and welcome back to Board members Shaunna Wozab, Charlene Clark and Enid Cox. Kay Livingston is currently filling in for Enid Cox while she is on her mission.

2001 Livingston Family reunion - June 21, 2001

We had a great reunion last year. In spite or very short notice, we had a good turnout. We enjoyed a nice meal together, and there were a lot of fun games for the kids. We held a short family meeting to elect new board members.

We were honored to welcome Bill and Jean Livingstone of Scotland to our reunion. Bill is a descendant of Archibald Livingston (1760). Bill and Jean live in Dunfermline, just a few miles from where our family lived for many years.

After the family meeting, we watched some slides of important Livingston family history sites. Bill was gracious enough to narrate the presentation. We all learned a great deal about the life and living conditions of our ancestors.

We have included two histories of the "Collier" and "Coal Towns" in the Livingston Family newsletter.

Bill's entire presentation was recorded, and has been copied onto CD. If you would like a copy of this CD, you can have one for cost plus a small donation to the family association. Send your address and a check for $10 to the address below. If you would prefer to pick the CD up at the reunion, just let Ross know. Please refer to the Board list for contact information.

Excerpt from Bill Livingstone's talk about the Livingston Colliers

Here we have the collier. The coal, just as the monks found, was very useful in the wintertime for fire. [-] The demand for coal rose and rose and rose, particularly in those big stone houses. There was no central heating in those days, no air conditioning. You had these vast rooms made of flagstones. You needed vast fires, and of coarse coal became very profitable for these landowners. And James VI saw this, and he passed an act of Parliament. This act of Parliament consigned many people, but above all, as far as we're concerned, it consigned the Livingstons, to nearly 250 years of - there's no other word for it - slavery, or serfdom, as it was called.

Now there were a number of main parts to the act, but the main part of the act that was acted upon severely each time it was broken, was that if a coalminer moved away, tried to run away to sea, tried to join the army to fight the American colonists perhaps, or just tried to go and get a job as a shepherd, he was brought back because he was deemed a thief, and treated as a thief, having stolen himself from the landowner. Now this was rigorously applied.

Many of the romantic novels that were written of this time talk about the hiring fair. If you were a shepherd you could go along with your crook to various towns within Scotland, and you could stand there. And a farmer would come down and he would hire you for a year and a day. He would give you a house, a hovel really, free eggs, some chickens, and perhaps a side of beef, and a few pennies for your hire. But at the end of that year and a day you could walk away. A coal miner couldn't do that. He was bound in perpetuity to the collier. And this of coarse was very similar to the Negroes in the plantations in the south of the United States, for many years.

There was a miner in Fordel, not a Livingston, but a miner in Fordel, who ran away with a lass. Ran away romantically with a young lass, across the river to Edinburgh, to marry, possibly. The collier sent men, and the sheriff's officers after the young man, and brought him home, and got two men, two of the older colliers to sign a bond on their behalf promising that the young man would stay and work at his proper work in the colliery. Sometimes they were brought back and they were put in an iron collar, and you couldn't get out of it, it was sealed. And they had to work with the iron collar and so on because they were a runaway. Very similar again to the Negroes. So when people talk about the good ole days, and the Livingstons - the Livingstons had a hard time working for 250 years.

Another thing about it was that their families, for a small sum of money, they would go down to the old church and they would arl their child. And this meant, that in front of the collier, in front of the minister of the religion, and in the house of God, they would promise the future labor of this child, boy of girl, and for a very small sum of money. They very seldom went to church. It was nearly three and a half mile walk from where the old Coaltoun was, the village, to where the church was. But on the occasion of the birth of the child, they went down in the records, the very records that we have to use, and they signed, "Daughter or Son to Archibald Livingston or James Livingston was born in the Coaltoun." This was all in the records of the church. And that was during the arling of that child. Granny, for example, that is so beloved in this part of the world, was arled as a child. Granny, in all probability, her future life at that particular time when she was born, her work life was probably promised to the collier. The arling of the children [made it such] that they went on from generation to generation to generation into slavery. And they couldn't break out of it. It was the law of the land. And all the villages were outside the main towns. And the colliers were somewhat looked upon, even by very poor people, as something very low indeed, because they were serfs, they were slaves. It was a very, very harsh life. And the mining itself was just horrendous.

Here is Bill Livingstone giving a presentation to the family:

The Collier

An Excerpt from The Livingstons of Foredell, 1980
William Livingstone, Dunfermline, Scotland

Much has been written about the coal miner and his way of life, and, if interested, the reader would be well advised to read "The History of Scottish Miner" by R. Page Arnot.

The early mining of coal, as is well established was by the monks of the various Abbeys surrounding the shores of the Forth. Records show that the monks of Newbattle Abbey and Inchcolme Abbey used to work the "coalheughs" or outcrops.

Mining became an industry with rapid growth during the reign of James VI. With this expansion new and deeper pits wee sunk and other problems of water, ventilation, winding and above all, labour, came to the force. The greatest problem of all was the supply of labour for the pits to meet the sudden and enormous expansion of the market.

In the year 1606 the coalminers were made into slaves. The act of Parliament which accomplished this and solved the manpower problem was in force for nearly two centuries from 1606 6o 1799, and its victims could still be met in the times of our grandfather.

The dissolution of the Monasteries cast upon the countryside those for whom there was no agricultural type of work. Laws exceedingly harsh were enacted against what were termed "vagrants and beggars." In 1606 the new act had several main provision. First, no one could hire a coalminer without leave of the Coal Owner. Second, no coalminer could leave his place of work without the consent of the Owner. Thirdly, the new employer was forced to surrender the miner within twenty-four hours. Fourth, a deserting miner was to be deemed a thief (he had stolen himself away from his owner).

In 1641 a further act deprived the colliers of their day's holidays and ordained they must work six days a week throughout the year.

The 1606 Act was carried out to the letter and succeeded in making the collier an enslaved class. Their lot was very similar to that of the Negroes on the plantations in the South of the United States prior to the Civil War.

A custom grew up among the miners of "arcing" their children to the Coal Master. This "arling" which was the sale of future labour of the child in return for a sum of money was witnessed by the minister and others and became a formal and regular custom. Thus the child of the collier was sold into slavery. "Wives, sons and daughters went from generation to generation under the system which was the family doom." So said Lord Cockburn in his "memorials."

The wives and daughters were the coal bearers who went to the coal face, took the coal to the pit bottom, then climbed up ladders to the surface. They did this many times a day.

The legal and social degradation by many Acts of Parliament caused the rest of the populations to look upon the miners as something less than human. They were hered together in miserable hovels in villages close to the pits. In Fife the dead collier was not allowed to be bured in the same ground as a free labourer.

An inguiry was set up to look into Coal Mining in 1840 and an extract from the evidence gives some example of how the miner and his family lived.

Margaret Leveston, 6 years old, coal bearer:

"Been down the pit at coal carrying for six weeks - makes 10 - 14 journeys a day. Carriers a full 56 lbs. Of coal in a wooden backit. The work is na gaid; it is so very sair. I work with sister Jesse and mother; dinna ken the time we gangit is gae dark. Get plenty of broth and porridge and run home and get a bannock. Never been to school it is so very far away."

Another example is the evidence of a 12 year old boy. Alexander Reid, aged 12: "I have worked two years at Sherriff-hall and go below at two or three in the morning and hew coal till six at night. The pit I work in is very wet. We often work in slushy over our shoe tops. When first below I used to fall asleep. It is most terrible work. I am wrought in a 30-inch seam and am obliged to twist myself up to work on my side. This is my everyday work except Friday when I go down at 12 at night and come up at 12 noon.

It was not until 1842 that Parliament passed a bill that women, girls, and boys under 10 were not to be employed underground.

This therefore was the life style of the collier. This was the way of life for the Livingstone family from which I descend. They lived for over two centuries on the Lands of Fordell as pit men and colliers.

The Coal Town of Fordel Moor

Robert Adamson, Brisbane, Australia for Fife Family Hist Soe journal

I have a family interest in what was variously named Coal Town/Coll toun/Colton of Fordel/Fordel Moor. This was near Fordell and Crossgates, Fife. Three generations of my Adamsons lived and worked in and around Coaltown from 1720 - 1795.

Coaltown is shown as a ruin a little over a mile southeast of Crossgates on the1856 Ordnance Survey map of Fife. It features on the early 1775 Ainslie map of Fife, as does Fordel Moor. Fordel village (later Fordell) was about ¾ mile east of Crossgates.

So what was this coal mining village, Coaltown? One of a number of such tiny villages, (they were usually just tows of miners' cottages) near Fordell, it had flourished in the 1700's, to become a "ghost town" by the early 1800's as its coal supply was exhausted. The Muir Rows, a little to the north, was included in "Coaltown" in the 1841 sensus. I have been told that about 90 years ago "Colton" was known to George Luke, growing up in fordell, but consisted then of ony two houses.

Coal had been mined in the Fordell area from early times, when the outcropping coal seams near Vantage, a little to the south of Coaltown, were mined by primitive "bell pits". These were vertical shafts sunk to the coal and then widened out along the seam as far as it was safe to go were generally for shallow coal seams the old Coaltown pits became exhausted (shown as abandoned coal pits on the 1856 map), mining moved progressively northward foloowing the depper seams of coal to the pits near the Muir Rows, and finally to the 20th century pits nerar the model mining village of Fordell. Little remains of this village now; the ;ast Fordell mines cloased in 1947. In the 1790s, a "day level" was built -drainage tunnel linking the pits where water drained by gravity from the mines southward to the fordell Burn. It was nearly three miles long, so it mut have extended up to Fordell Village.

Early History:

From the early 1600s till 1799, colliers (coal miners) and their families in Scotland had been bound to the mine owners by a virtual serfdom. This was enforced by legislative acts of 1606, 1641 and 1647. The miners ere in effect, bound to the pit in which they worked, regardless of who the owner was at any gien time. There was the possibility of changing employment or ocupation, once a year on 1 December, but this was more in theory than reality. The main reason for this was the need for mine owners to ensure a sonstand supply of labour for a brtalising occupation. The only other occupations that were so bound, were "salters" - salt workers, and lead miners.

Coal from the early pits near Coaltown was originally sent by pack-hours train to St David's on the Firth of Forth near Dalgety. Salt pans had been established there from early times, to use the lcaol caol to extract salt and concentrated brine form boinling sea-water. Salt was in strong demand for preserving food - especially meat. (In warmer, drier claimtes like the Mediterranean and later, Sotuh Australia, sea-water slts ponds ere evaporated by the heat of the sun.)

While the demand for salt grew, there also developed an increasing demand for Fife coal, to be shipped away from St. David's. A small port was established there, and a wooden waggon -way was abuilt about 1770 to carry the coal from the mines around Coaltown and Fordell to St. David's- a distance of some three miles. Later still, about 1833 (after my Adamsons moved from the area), the wooden waggon-way was replaced by the Fordell Railway, built with iron rails, to take the coal to the coast.

Partial emancipation of coal miners was achieved in an Act of Parliament in 1775, when the 'arling' or 'binding-in' of children at birth was outlawed, and it became possible, though difficult, for adult miners to obtain their freedom. However abolition of these conditions was not achieved until another Act of Parliament in 1799. Not only adult men were employed in the mines - women and children were too. A Royal Commission in 1842 investigated the plight of children in the English and Scottish mines, with some harrowing tales uncovered. This led to the prohibition of underground work for women and girls.

From the New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1836 (Dalgety Parish) by the local parson, Rev. Alexander Watt:

"The colliers who compose such a large proportion of the parishioners are, with a few exceptions, the most sober and civilized of that class of the community any where to be found. They are quite a distinct class from the agricultural population. Their prejudices,

their domestic habits, and even their style of dress are altogether peculiar. So completely have they kept themselves apart, and so much have intermarriages prevailed, that for centuries back the same family names have generally obtained amongst them. The ameliorated condition of the Fordel colliers, when compared with that of many others, is principally to be traced to the effects of education. Before the parish school was removed to their immediate neighbourhood, where it has been for upwards of thirty years, it was their uniform practice to maintain by subscription a teacher amongst themselves. This fact may be of some importance to those proprietors, many of whose colliers are so far behind the other classes of the community, both as regards general education and moral improvement."

And from the Beath Parish account "...The colliers earn higher wages than any other class of labourers" [ like many of their modern-day counterparts].

My g-g-g-grandfather Adam Adamson moved from Coaltown to Crossgates with his family about 1795 when he escaped from coal-mining. He became firstly a tapster (hotel worker) and then innkeeper. This progression is shown in the successive Dalgety Parish baptism records of his children. This would have been the old Dalgety kirk, dating from the 12th century, now a ruin maintained by Scottish Heritage. A little over 2 miles' walk from Coaltown to Kirk. His eldest son James Adamson was born in Coaltown in 1791.

A carpenter and wheelwright in Crossgates, James and his wife Elizabeth (Beveridge) emigrated with their seven children to South Australia in1839. There they found prosperity.

My thanks to a number of people for information to help compile this account:

• Mr George Robertson, Dunfermline (letter)
• Mr John Cameron, Dalgety Bay (letter)
• Mr W. John Shepherd, USA (he has an extensive mining bibliography - email <SHEPHERW@cua.edu>)
• Mr Chris Sparling and Michael Martin, webmasters of http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mmartin/fifepits (includes accounts of the children)
• Fife FHS members who transcribed "New Statistical Account of Scotland. Part X Fife", in http://www.ffhsoc.freeserve.co.uk/fifestats.htm
• Information on "Children in the Mines Royal Commission": http://www.cmhrc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/citm.htm

Book references:

• Rosalind Mitchison, "A History of Scotland", Second Edition, Methuen New York 1982.
• J.C. Inglis & F. Inglis, "The Fordell Railway" 1946 (a few pages from George Robertson).

Picture below is from our Family Reunion 2001, Bill and Jean Livingston visiting with family members after a wonderful barbecue meal.

Reminder, mark your Calendars for our next family reunion July 11, 12, and 13 at Zion Ponderosa Ranch. Please see front of newsletter for contact information and details. Please call Corey or Zion's Ponderosa for more information about your travel accommodations.

If you have any additional questions, please give Shaunna Wozab or anyone of the other Board members a call (see Board contact information).