Cornish miner who died in British Columbia
Died: 3rd November, 1904
Commemorated: St Day Road Cemetery, Redruth
Born in Redruth to a father who was a tin miner, John Nicholas had two older brothers - William, who was a mine carpenter, and Stephen who was a tin miner age 15, but subsequently became a teacher of music - a younger brother, and two older sisters. Their mother, Ann, sadly died in 1890, at the age of only 52,and the eldest daughter, Elizabeth - known as Bessie - took over care of the family. In the 1891 census, John is shown as working as a grocer's assistant in Redruth.
John's eldest sister, Bessie, died early in 1898. John married a local girl, Mary Jeffery, in November 1898, at the Treleigh church, and they lived, perhaps together with her parents, in the North Country area just outside of Redruth. By this time, John was working as a tin miner, and in 1901 a son, called William, was born to the couple.
Not long after the 1901 census, John must have migrated to Canada to work as a miner - perhaps work in Cornwall was becoming hard to obtain as mines closed down in response to not being economically viable. John found work in Canada as a miner, and worked there for 3 years, but unfortunately he died in Ladysmith, aged 31, of a form of pulmonary tuberculosis, after an illness of 4 months. It is not clear whether his wife and child went with him to Canada, or whether he had travelled alone and intended to send remittances back to Cornwall, as many miners did at this time of economic difficulty.