1877 - 1914 (37 years)
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Name |
Alexander Porteous |
Birth |
30 Mar 1877 |
Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland |
Gender |
Male |
Death |
19 Jun 1914 |
Hillcrest Mine, Alberta, Canada |
Burial |
Hillcrest Cemetery, Alberta, Canada |
Person ID |
I76618 |
My Genealogy |
Last Modified |
9 Mar 2014 |
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Notes |
- Janet Porteous, widow, was one month of leaving Scotland to join her husband in Hillcrest. She remained in Scotland and died 1950 in Motherwell, Lanark.
Children
Janet Porteous (1901-)
Mary Carkson Porteous (1903-)
Henry Porteous (1906-) Born USA
Alexander Porteous (1909-)
1904 Ship Ethiopia, to USA going to Kangley, Illinois, to his uncle.
1908 Ship Mauretania returned to Scotland
About 1909-1910 returned to Canada
Although the mine was successful, and considered one of the safest in the region, an underground explosion in 1914 (Canada's worst mine disaster) killed 189 men? almost twenty percent of the town's population, and half the mine's workforce.
Alex Porteous was a coal miner. He is reputed to have originally emigrated to the US 'by accident' having got drink and passed out after going on a ship to 'see off' someone he had met as they were going to the docks to emigrate.
If true, this may well have been 1904 when he travelled with a father and son from Uddingston, he left them at Ellis Island and went on to Kangley, nr Streator, Illinois, the home of his aunt and uncle (Helen & John McNeil).
He worked there in the sand mines. He was joined by his wife and 2 daughters, and brother John Douglas (his half brother) and his family. In April 1908 both families returned to Scotland along with his sister Janet and her husband Thomas Quigley, suggesting an urgent family problem.
Alex emigrate again when work became short in 1911. He went initially to the US before moving eventually to Hillcrest, Alberta. by 1911 the whole Porteous family had emigrated (i.e. his parents and all their children and families), with the exception of his wife a children (see notes for Jenny Murray).
Alex and his brother James were killed in Canada's worst mining disaster in 1914.
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