1870s Influx of Miners

By Kay McMeekin

There was a great increase of miners in Cumnock in the late 1860s and 1870s. This is tied in to the fortunes of Bairds of Gartsherrie who opened Lugar Iron Works and required ironstone. They also owned coal mines. More research to be done on this.

We know miners moved in from the north of England, Cumbria, Durham, the West Midlands - Wolverhampton area and Cornwall at this time.

1870 miners from the West Midlands - these are the ancestors of CHG Chair Kay McMeekin

Price, Rolinson and Yates, related families from the West Midlands came to Cumnock, to work as miners. Some stayed for generations, others for just a while and went south again or moved on to Lanarkshire or Kirkintilloch in Dunbartonshire.  They were all Holmes descendants.

First came Mary Ann Holmes and husband Joseph Price to North Ayrshire by 1851.

By 1871 her sister Jane Holmes and her husband John Rolinson, 2 sons and a lodger were in Kilnholm Place, Cumnock a couple of doors away from her sister Mary Ann Price. Jane’s son Matthew Rolinson had just married Mary Ann’s daughter Mary Ann Price (so they were first cousins) and they also were living next to the Prices. That marriage didn’t last, but that’s another story!

	Aaron Holmes		John Rolinson
Mary Ann Holmes &Joseph Price	Sisters	Jane Holmes & John Roilinson	Brother and sister	Ann Rolinson & Abraham Yates
Mary Ann Price m cousin Matthew Rolinson		brothers: James &  Matthew   Rolinson		Ben Yates & Sam Yates

In 1881 The Rolinsons were at 8 Glengyron Row in Cumnock but births of children in England in the intervening years showed they had gone back south. Son James Rolinson had married Emma Ball in in Dudley in 1873 and their first 2 children were born in that area in 1874 and 1877. In 1880, though, the wonderfully named Delilah Rolinson was born in Glengyron Row, Cumnock. By 1883 they were in Rotherham, Yorkshire (birth of my grandfather James) and by 1890 they were in Lanarkshire where they settled. The parents John Rolinson and Jane Holmes moved with them as far as I can see. Next door in 7 Glengyron Row were John and Jane’s son Emmanuel Rolinson with his wife, 4 children, a lodger Charles Dickens and brother-in-law Zechariah Jones age 17. Emmanuel and his wife and children returned to Walsall but Charles Dickens who married Fanny Price in 1883 and Zechariah Jones remained in Auchinleck.

Mrs Rolinson about 1890

The Prices were in Auchinleck. But John Rolinson’s sister Ann Rolinson and her husband Abraham Yates had also moved to Cumnock by 1873. They also lived in Glengyron Row which was a row of 44 houses up the Skares road built for miners about 1872 by Bairds. ( More about Glengyron Row here) I can only assume the promise of work and a house was what lured them all north.

They came mob-handed with friends and relations. Early marriages were from the within the larger group.  Gradually they integrated with neighbours, many of whom were incomers such as James Hancock from Cornwall who married Margaret Price in 1875.

There remain some unanswered questions.

How did they communicate with each other living hundreds of miles apart as the older generation were illiterate. Did they get someone to write on their behalf eg a teacher or minister? 

Did the mine owners have a recruitment drive in the West Midlands?

How did they manage to travel so far with small children? You hear of people walking hundreds of miles to find work.

There was a railway line that passed in front of Glengyron row.  Did they travel by train? Was there a halt there? The nearest station was the Dumfries House Station.

Most of the Prices stayed in the area. The Yates family too. One son Benjamin Yates moved to the mining village of Benwhat, above Dalmellington. Most were in Auchinleck.

There are parallels with the Cornish miners who arrived in Ayrshire late 1860s.