MTM - Update on last weeks post

Last week I reported on the Burns pit disaster that happened a hundred years ago in Stanley Durham. (Stanley is 250 miles away from where we live) Last week we visited the area for a few days and went to the church yard where the victims were buried. We had no trouble finding the Church, but strangely had trouble finding the graves and memorial stones. Another visitor eventually pointed us in the right direction, the graves were down the bottom of the hill and out of sight from just outside the church.



The above photo is a shot of the grave stone of the two brothers, it is the exception as most men were buried in a mass grave (as they were) but there was a joint memorial stone.




The above stone was dedicated around 10 years ago to the miners memory by the manager of Newcastle United Football Club, Kevin Keegan.

We also visited Beamish Museum where they had a display of artifacts from the incident. They also had a slide show of the rescue efforts and headlines from the papers. One of the papers produced a poster featuring photos of all the victims, it looks like our relatives who were listed did not have any photos to share.

I am glad that we visited and as a bonus we discovered more family members in the grave yard, which will help in my family history studies!!