Edith Hale (1859 - 1900) possibly neeTownsend (General)

by lesleyr , London, Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 12:11 (4966 days ago) @ lesleyr

Hello
Many thanks for your help in solving my query.
Paul's find in the IGI of the marriage parish for Thomas Hale and Edith Townsend was a breakthrough. The actual place of marriage on that entry (Stockingford) rather than the registration district which I had found previously (Nuneaton) made sense when I took Rookancestry's suggestion of looking wider in the family. The name Stockingford rang a bell so I dug a bit deeper in my notes and found the marriage of Thomas's brother Milson Hale (1858 – 1927) to Elizabeth Proctor in Stockingford a few years before the marriage of Thomas and Edith. So it looks like Thomas went to Nuneaton to work in the coal mines there along with his brother Milson. That makes it most likely that I have the correct Thomas Hale and that his wife was indeed Edith Townsend.
Thomas and Edith moved around a lot, presumably because of work. So far I have found them in the Forest of Dean, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, the USA and now Warwickshire.
Edith died in Roslyn in the state of Washington on 6 December 1900, aged 41. By sheer coincidence a friend has bought a house there. She has sent me a photo of Edith's grave and of the coal miners' memorial there which has the name of another Hale on it, Mitchel Hale having died there in a pit explosion in 1892. I wonder if any other Forest of Dean miners went out there too. Although Mitchel was not born in the Forest he was the son of another Thomas Hale (1832 – 1883) from Coleford who left to work in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.
Roslyn became a bit of a ghost town after the mines closed but it was revived in the 1990s as the setting for the US TV series 'Northern Exposure'.
Thank you once again for your help. I shall add Edith to the list of emigrants on the site now that I know her family name.
Lesley