Chicken Family Tales

Immigration & Emigration Members of this family have flown all over the world for all kinds of reasons over the years. There were Featonbys who joined the Gold Rush to Australia and settled in Victoria, including one who became a founder shareholder in the transport company that developed into Yarra Trams; Ritcheys who left coal mining in the North East of England to make a new life as farmers in Canada, though one joined the army there and came back to Europe to fight in WW1 before moving down to Detroit, Michigan; one William Chicken emigrated in about 1881 to Bohemia (now Czech Republic) to work in the coal mines there.  William and his wife, Mary, had two children in England before moving to Bohemia. It's hard to imagine the courage needed to move a family overseas to a country with a different language, different customs and different culture. William probably met other English men at the mine - he wouldn't be the  only immigrant but Mary would have to go to shops whe...

 Earning a Living from Coal The men of my Chicken direct line have all been coal miners, as far back as Thomas who in 1808 at the baptism of his first child, born at Hebburn Colliery, was recorded as being an Engineman. His son John, my GGGrandfather moved to Haswell and then to Murton when the new seam opened there. His son, grandsons and several great-grandsons carried on the tradition, some working at Murton until it closed for the last time at the end of 1991.  This image is the pit as I remember seeing it, taken from a Facebook page dedicated to Murton Colliery .  Unfortunately the page doesn't seem to be monitored any longer and I've been unable to contact them so if you're reading this and you're associated with that page please do let me know. Working in the pit in those early days was far from easy. Boys started at around the age of 10, often pulling the carts of coal that the older miners (hewers) had wrenched from the rock face deep underground with nothing ...