By Thomas Blackah and members of his family
Published by the Nidderdale Museum in 2009, 32 pages. A5 size Booklet (N7759)
From the foreword: Thomas Blackah, "The Miner's Poet", was born in 1828 at Hardcastle, a small now deserted village near Greenhow Hill, Pateley Bridge, and died at Leeds in 1895. He was an uneducated lead miner with a natural gift for writing, particularly verse. A collection of his work was published in 1867 under the title "Sonqs and Poems" and a further selection entitled "Dialect Poems and Prose" in 1937 with a short biography by Harald J. L. Bruff.
All his life he was Q poor restless individual, and it is recorded that in less than seventeen years he lived in seventeen different houses. In 1857 he was persuaded by an emigration agent to try a new life in America, so with other members of his family he travelled to Canada, only to find on arrival that the expected lead mines did not exist and they all had to return much the poorer.
He kept a detailed diary of his journey, and the original came into the possession of his great-grandson Michael Blackah, who was himself a journalist. Prior to his death in January 1997, Michael and I transcribed the diary and talked of having it published...
The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The covers are clean and bright, the staple spine is intact, and all pages are clean, tidy, unblemished and tightly bound.