Cambria County, Part 4 of 8: James Birchall

In 1910 Herbert and Delila Shank lived on Sheppard Avenue in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. Down the street from the Shanks was another young couple, James Birchall Jr. and his wife Mary Ann (née Dukes).

Both Herbert and James worked for the Barnes & Tucker Mining Company, so it’s likely they knew of each other. Besides, Shepperd Avenue was only a quarter-mile long.
James and Mary Ann both came from immigrant families. The Birchalls had immigrated in 1887 from Lancashire, England (near Liverpool), when James was an infant. The Dukes came from Nottinghamshire at about the same time. In fact, as shown in the 1900 census, Mary Ann was the first “natural born citizen” in her family.
This situation was common for many families in Cambria County at the time. The Smith family was from Durham, in northeastern England (30 minutes south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne). The Mansell family was from Staffordshire County, near Manchester. The Jones family had come from Bristol, in southwestern England, and Wales. These places were all significant coal mining areas.
Both James’ and Mary Ann’s fathers were coal miners who’d come for the jobs that were fueling Pittsburgh’s steel industry. James, too, worked for the mines, though as an engineer rather than a miner. Even at 60 years-old, Mary Ann’s step-father Henry Mansell was still working for the mines as a laborer. The mines represented not just jobs – they represented an entire way of life.

James and Mary Ann married in a civil ceremony on January 1, 1908, and welcomed their first daughter, Stella Mae, on July 10th of that year. Whether she was born premature or not is unknown, but it seems that in those times the math wasn’t really important. Working class people were accorded a certain … flexibility. Mr. Mansell’s son Henry Jr (by his first marriage) had even married a young lady from the Smith family with an illegitimate child…

The Birchalls welcomed several more children in the following years. Hilda arrived in late summer 1910. Frederick in 1913. Bernard in 1915. And Evelyn in 1917.

But then tragedy struck during the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. Mary Ann fell ill in October, while she was pregnant with their sixth child. She went into labor on the 12th, and gave birth to Theodore Birchall prematurely. Sadly, he died within 10 minutes.


Mary Ann joined her newborn son in death three days later, on October 15th. Her neighbor Herbert Shank followed ten days later, on October 25th.

This left their surviving spouses, Delila Shank and James Birchall, with complementary problems. Delila lacked a breadwinner; James lacked a housekeeper. They probably married in early 1919, because the 1920 census shows them having moved to Chestnut Avenue.
By the time of the 1930 census, Jennie, Stella Mae, and Hilda had moved out, but James' younger three were still in high school. Plus, two more additions had arrived: Philip in 1926 and Henry in 1927.
Sadly, James would not be around for the 1940 census, having passed away in 1936. Delila lived until 1962, but did not marry a third time. Apparently, two prematurely lost husbands seem to have been enough.
James Birchall led a fairly ordinary life, but to me he's an unsung hero. He worked for the mines, dealt with unforeseeable tragedy, and found a way to move past his grief. He is also a kind of lynchpin for my mother’s side of the family. His older sister married Mary Ann’s older brother, and his older brother Thomas married into the Jodon family.

As I'll explain later, it's by those connections that James Birchall was related to both my mother's parents.