John Cooke ( Cook), Thomas Alfred b1889 (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, November 03, 2023, 01:55 (177 days ago) @ billcs777

That all makes sense. And yes Kear is a proper old Forest surname !
Apologies as I've been adding-to my previous post while you've been typing your last one, so you might like to refresh it and read it again, it MAY give you some pointers - altho clearly the professions I suggested don't apply.
Regarding the movement of workers around the UK, and even the world, this forum has seen several discussions as to how and why this happened, as you've found it was almost the norm for coal miners to move great distances for work, especially in the first decades of the c20th as work became scare. We've seen many cases of them goig from the Yorkshire coalfields to Glos, and vice versa. My father's ancestors were mostly coal miners (btw the term "hewer" was used for the act of hewing, or cutting a "slice" of coal out of the coal face, it was often used as a badge of rank as it were, by the best miners who worked right at the coal face, as agains the "lesser" mortals who worked elsewhere in the mines).

I'll be honest, I've never heard of there being any coal mines in the Cheltenham area. As you probably know The Forest of Dean is about 20 miles southwest of Cheltenham as the crow files, and the FoD coalfield is effectively an easternmost extension of the much larger coalfields of south Wales. My home town Cinderford (or East Dean as was known around the 1890s) is on the eastern edge of the FoD coalfield. This map, and it's associated website, gives a good idea of the main UK coalfields, and there isnt any at or near Cheltenham. Odd !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:British.coa...