Union leader and Cumberland coal miner, Joe Naylor, was at least a third-generation miner who followed in the footsteps of his father Joseph and grandfather John, new research has shown.

Joe lived in Cumberland from 1909 until his death from prostate cancer in 1946. We know he left England some time after 1901 because he was recorded in that census, living in Upholland near Wigan, Lancashire, with his widowed father Joseph, 69, and sister Mary, 24. Joe was then 29. The Canadian Mineworker, reporting on Joe's death, said he worked in the Wigan area until 1908 when he emigrated to Canada. By Joe's own account, he arrived in Cumberland in 1909 having worked (it must have been briefly) in Nanaimo and Montana.

British records show Joe was born on Aug. 6, 1872, in the village of Upholland (the name was changed in 1954 to Up Holland) five miles west of the industrial town of Wigan. His parents were Joseph Naylor, a miner, and Elizabeth Highton. They were married on Dec. 18, 1854, in Wigan. Joe had four sisters, Elizabeth, Hannah, Jane and Mary, and two brothers, James and John. They lived with Joe's grandfather John, a retired miner, in Upholland Moss in 1881, the decennial census shows. Interestingly, brother John, also a miner, was listed as a Primitive Methodist and a preacher. Primitive Methodists sought to restore the spirit of revivalism they felt was found in the ministry of John Wesley. They played important roles in the formative phase of the trade union movement in Britain and were active in coal mining villages. Thomas Burt, leader of the Northumberland miners, and a member of Parliament for several decades, said in 1882: "As a religious agency, this Church was almost without rival in the colliery villages." When Joe's best friend Albert (Ginger) Goodwin and his family were evicted along with more than 2,000 men, women and children from their company homes in Denaby Main, Yorkshire, in the winter of 1903 for non-payment of rent during a strike, it was noted by author J.E. MacFarlane in his book "The Bag Muck Strike Denaby Main 1902-1903" that, "The foremost providers of shelter for the evicted miners and their families were in fact the Primitive Methodists in Denaby, Mexborough and Goldthorpe, and the Baptist Mission Church in Denaby Main." The Mexborough and Swinton Times published a sketch of a classroom provided for evicted children at the Mexborough Primitive Methodist School.

When Joe died on Oct. 5, 1946, aged 74, his only known relative was stated to be Mrs. T. Woods of Atherton, Lancashire. This, it has turned out, was his sister Hannah, four years older than Joe, who was married to Thomas Woods of Atherton.

Roger Stonebanks
Victoria, BC