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 ...

 Witness to History This story is not (yet) about a direct relative but about someone who's part of my One-Name Study.  George Bell Chicken was the last civilian to be awarded the Victoria Cross, not just a witness to a historical event but part of it. George was born in Howden Pans, Northumberland in 1833, the first son of George and Elizabeth (nee Bell) Chicken. He followed in his father's footsteps to become a mariner but unlike his father wasn't content to stay in merchant shipping. For reasons which don't seem to be recorded he signed off his ship in Calcutta in 1855 and spent time in the "Country Merchant Service" sailing in the region of Singapore, Penang, Malacca etc. In a letter to his uncle in England he said that during this time he had lost money due to speculation and was therefore disgusted with the Merchant Service so he left it and went to the Government River Surveying Service where he worked until news of the massacre at Cawnpore reached Calc...

A Favourite Photograph This week's prompt came in the same week as the 10th anniversary of my mother's death so it seemed appropriate to share this photograph, one of the nicest ones I have of her. It was taken by one of her nephews who visited from Ireland less than 6 months before she died. It captures perfectly her lovely smile. I know she'd be saying to him "What on earth are you doing with that camera".  He had copies of it made and gave them to my sister and me before the funeral. It now sits on top of the piano near the dining table and her smile is there with us at every meal.  She was an amazing woman, though also very ordinary. Her childhood was spent on a very small farm in Ireland and as a teenager she made the journey to England where her aunt arranged a job in the local hospital as a ward maid - making beds, emptying bed pans, scrubbing floors, all the jobs that are needed to keep a hospital clean and operational but none of them exciting or easy. A ...

 Origins Where does the name come from? Many British surnames have an obvious origin: some are related to a trade or craft like Butcher, Baker etc; others are related to a place and others to a physical attribute like red hair or being tall or small. But what am I to read into Chicken as a name? Is it related to being a poultry keeper? Or is it, as some have suggested, related to being as brave (or not!) as a chicken? Or did it arrive in England with the Norman invasion as a corruption of Chicon? I'm no closer to knowing the answer to that question than I was when I started on this family tree research more than 2 decades ago. What I do know is that it is found in much of the English-speaking world though it's still not a very common name. Some of those in other countries are definitely descendants of families that I've traced here in England. Others have no known link at present. The search is endlessly fascinating, and I fully accept that I might never know the answer. #5...

  Stories that are handed down When I first started to look at my ancestry an uncle, my father's brother, told me that my great-grandfather had come to the North East from Cornwall. The story was that the Cornish tin mines were closing down and the Durham coal field needed miners so men travelled the 400 miles or more to find work, bringing their wives and children with them. The desperation to find work must have been overwhelming to travel that far.  For years I treasured that additional Celtic link, the other side of my ancestry being Irish. I searched the records that were available on line but to no avail. Nowhere could I find anything about a Chicken family in Cornwall. As years went by more and more records became available but still no sign of the family. I carried on working (intermittently) on the information I could glean about them in County Durham. Eventually I realised that I had in fact found records of my great-grandfather, not in any way in Cornwall. He was Du...

Doing a One Name Study alongside my own family history has thrown up some interesting people and stories and I hope one day to have links from them into my own family. This week's efforts have centred on a family of mariners originating around the mouth of the River Tyne in North East England. In County Durham we have the town of South Shields while in Northumberland we have North Shields, both home to seafarers for many, many years. George Chicken, baptised in July 1769, grew up in Gateshead, south of the Tyne. He became a glass and pot maker in South Shields, married and had four children. His eldest son, William, became a sailor. He worked hard and learned how to navigate and manage a ship, gaining his master's ticket.  William married and continued his seafaring life while his wife continued to live in South Shields and bring up their nine children. She must have had a hard life at times, but she was part of a community of mariner's wives who would support each other em...