*stone wall, Derbyshire
I had to dig a little sideways for some tradesman, for as I stated to an acquaintance earlier this week, I come from sturdy farm stock, as probably greater than 90% of my forebears worked their own or someone else's farm for a living. There are noted exceptions in my Dutch great-grandfather's line - they were shoemakers, both of traditional shoes and wooden klompen.
Back to my Gramps Clyde Chamberlain's birthplace and his biological father: Harry Edgar Coleson, unacknowledged father of Clyde, was also a farmer, however his father Lester (who somehow appears not to have stuck around to know or raise his son, certainly not past infancy) did work in the trades for some time. The 1880 census lists him as "working in the hinge works" in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, which is not terribly far from Pittsburgh. This record is difficult to read. Later he is employed as a foreman (factory supervisor, perhaps?) at the streetcar company, and even later at the same streetcar company as "watchman, age 79!
His father, Ulysses Coleson, is enumerated in both 1850 and 1860 (Pennsylvania and Illinois, respectively) as a stone mason in construction. Stonemasonry is one of the oldest professions, stonework comprising the most ancient of structures. As the 4th son of his parents, though his father in turn was far from wealthy, he may have needed to learn a trade to support himself, as he wouldn't have been the primary inheritor of his family's farmland or finances under traditional inheritance practices of the day.
I certainly haven't researched this branch of my family nearly as thoroughly as I need to (as covered in previous posts, the Colesons were something of a surprise), but now I have a reason to be more curious. Perhaps stone masonry was something handed down through the generations. Before Ulysses were Thomas, then Samuel, and before that Thomas John Coleson from Derbyshire. Wouldn't it be wonderful to discover a medieval stone structure in ENgland built by a forebear?
No comments:
Post a Comment