Reading Mystery Occupations

Reading Old and Mysterious Occupations

As a Find My Past "Ambassador", I like to report that I have has success using the site to work with the Scotland and England census record TRANSCRIPTIONS that they provide.

I have the images from other sources, but reading all the words on the actual images can be tricky. I transcribe them as best that I can and annotate them with possible ideas in my research log. It is working quite well for me so I thought I'd pass this tip on to others as well.

1901 England Census for Crompton family

In England, my uncle's family were coal miners. I didn't find this out until my mother told me that my aunt and uncle went to the movies to see the 1980 movie, Coal Miner's Daughter.  This was a long time after I interviewed my family. I didn't ask about occupations because I thought everyone was involved in the granite industry or the laundry business. My uncle died in 1985. He was a great person and I am trying to tell his story and it will have to be a series of blog post.

 But, for now, I had success using the transcription of this census at Find My Past to figure out what this occupation says.

It says, "Colliery Fireman Under Ground" the word penciled in says "Below"

If you are curious, you can do a Google Search to find out what kind of occupation this is.