Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Women coalminers

I recently had conversations with two different families about women miners in their family. I am waiting to hear back from one family but I have information on Ollie Lanning from Murray City. Olive Sweet Lanning was born in Illinois in 1862 or 63. She lived to be 100 years and six months old. Family lore says that she once as a child saw Mr. Lincoln.
Somehow Olive moved to OHio and her husband was Zeph Lanning. Olive mined coal from the family mine to keep her home and worked as a midwife, traveling by horse and buggy to New Straitsville , Shawnee and Murray City families. Like most miners, she chewed tobacco.

In Great Britain, women were forced into the mines since they were smaller and could crawl out dragging bushel baskets of coal. For that reason, miners in Ohio. who were mostly from Great Britain had a law passed to make it illegal for women to mine coal as well as boys under the age of 12. I would like to gather names of women miners if anyone knows of one in their family or acquaintance.

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