SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND
IN HISTORY

The Ironstone Miners Friends.

Every two years the Cleveland and Teesside Local History Society awards a prize of £250 for a newly researched essay on a local history topic.
Josie Bland's entry can be read by Clicking here.
Josie lives in Skelton and has contributed much to this website in the past.
The essay, which must have taken many hours of research and work, covers the years 1872-1889, during which time the Cleveland Miners’ Association (CMA) was founded and developed.
In researching her birth and adoptive families, she discovered a remarkable coincidence linking Stephen and Hannah Emmerson, of Hollybush Farm Skelton, (from the family who adopted her), with the Reverend Thomas Leslie of Eston Congregationalist Church, (from her birth family).
All three supported the Cleveland Miners' Association and the miners in their fight for better working conditions.
Josie finds she is descended from two Miners’ Friends, Stephen Emmerson and the Reverend Leslie, through her two families - who, as far as she is aware, knew nothing of each other.

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