If you were to visit the town of Universal, Indiana in the 1920s, you would have found a surprisingly large number of residents from Leigh, a small town in Lancashire, England. I would bet that even today many residents can trace their families back to Leigh, through surnames like Counsell, Winstanley, Farrington and Gallagher. So why is that? Bunsen Coal Mines No. 4 and No. 5, Universal, Indiana This image from wikitree , originally from The Coal Town & Railroad Museum, Clinton, Indiana Universal was a coal mining town. It owes its name and its very existence to the nearby Universal Mines No. 4 and No. 5, originally sunk by the Bunsen Coal Company in about 1910. The town grew up to support the miners, and then shrank again when the mines closed in the 1930s. Leigh was also a coal mining town, in the heart of England's industrial revolution. Leigh was a textile center in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to local legend even laying claim to the invention of the Spinning Je...
Stories of families from Leigh, Lancashire.