2. The Leggs in England

(L to R) John Matthew Legg, son
Thomas Legg, and wife Jane
Swinburne Legg.
Image courtesy of Terry Legg.

The Leggs trace their shared family history back to today's Tyne-and-Wear district (historically located in Northumberland and Durham). This is the cradle of the nation's coal industry, where coal was being scraped out of the ground to be burned as early as the Roman Times. (Wikipedia). Thomas Legg, Robert Legg's grandfather, was born and raised in the coal-mining town, or colliery, of Ryton. He likely worked for at least part of his life in the coal mines there. 

Although Thomas spent all of his early life in Ryton, he and his wife Sarah Matthews had relocated to Winlaton (another colliery town) by 1809, when John Matthew Legg was born. 

A bit more is known about John Matthew Legg and his wife, Jane Swinburne, than are known about Thomas and Sarah Matthews Legg. This is partly thanks to the availability of English census records starting in 1841. It's also due to a colorful newspaper article written by Newcastle poet songwriter Matthew Tate, for the Morpeth Herald. Tate described John "Jack" Matthew Legg as a “representative boxer of the olden-time – and a pit-man [coal miner] to boot," and also noted "his faithful spouse, Jane, who, amid victory or adversity, showed that... her courage was equal to his.” The article was published two years after John Matthew Legg's death in 1901, and is subject to the vagaries of the author's memory. Tate's admiring attitude towards Legg tells us that he expects readers to be similarly admiring, and that the ideals of that time and place favored specific demonstrations of masculinity, including working hard, fighting hard, drinking hard, and engaging in games of sport. 

According to Tate, John Matthew Legg was more commonly known as Jack Legg during his lifetime. Sometime after Jack's birth in Winlaton, Matthew Legg moved his family down-river to North Shields, where he operated an unknown number of boats. Young Jack Legg got his start working on one of these tugboats. He would use some of these skills as an adult, as he worked as a steamboatman in 1851.

Jack Legg was a hard worker although his spare time was not spent "terribly profitably," Tate writes. His hobbies were dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and boxing, although Tate's profile of Legg sticks with the latter and neglects the first two. Boxing was a casual sport, with matches organized where men were gathered -- that place frequently being the local public house. Tate regales the reader with various iterations of Jack's boxing prowess, and the names of the fellows Jack bested. Jack is also credited with catching another man using a strategically placed mirror to cheat at cards. When Jack exposed the scoundrel, the inevitable fist fight occurred.  

Jack Legg was not universally successful, however. He was whacked soundly on the head with a kitchen poker during one fight, and in another bout with a man called Fighting Flannagan, Jack was bested to the point of needing walking sticks for some time after. Tate allows that Jack Legg was not a "benefactor of mankind," but Legg's enthusiastic fist-fighting and other demonstrations of 19th Century manliness seem to have won Tate over nonetheless. 

Tate also features several stories about Jack Legg's wife, Jane Swinburne Legg. Jane was born to Matthew Swinburne and Margaret Wilson in Gateshead, Durham County, in 1811. Little is known about the Swinburne family. Jane had a brother who wrote poetry, according to Tate, and we know that she also had a sister named Isabella. Isabella would go on to marry William Laws, and several of their children would make their way to King County, Washington.

Jane Swinburne married Jack Legg in 1832, and their first child was born shortly after. The couple went on to have nine children. The seventh child, born in 1847, was Robert Legg, who would go on to father the main subject of our story, Benjamin Legg.

The Leggs' frequent moves from colliery to colliery are evident in their children's varied places of birth. Tate's article confirms the fact that Jack Legg tended to move around a lot. One such move took the family from Bedlington Furnace to Radcliffe, as Jack had decided to "shift his colliery." When miners were hired on at a new colliery, it was customary for the colliery to move the family for free, transporting the household goods and such furniture that the family had in a "long car" sent by the colliery. 

By the time moving day came around, Jack had decided to go to the Rose & Crown to get drunk rather than help pack. His wife Jane took over the proceedings, and had the drunken Jack wrapped up in a sheet and hoisted to the top of the cart. This story is relayed with great jollity by Tate, but I can't imagine that Jane Swinburne Legg was pleased with her husband's behavior, in spite of her no-nonsense solution. The centrality of drinking to the average coal miner's life is important to note. Friedrich Engels noted, in his 1845 book, Conditions of the Working Class, "That the overwork of all miners must engender drunkenness is self- evident." (Engels, 1845) In addition to overwork, alcohol was likely used as self-medication, an inoculation against the fear that tomorrow's work could lead to injury or death.

In addition to the afore-mentioned cock-fighting, dog-fighting, and people-fighting, Jack also enjoyed a good game of quoit. Quoit is a version of ring-toss frequently played for wagers. During another one of their household moves, Legg and his wife and children were moving their belongings from one colliery town to another when Jack saw some men playing quoit. He stopped to join the game. Eventually he and his opponent had a difference of opinion, which led to the inevitable scuffle. Tate writes that "Jack’s only backer, on this occasion, was his faithful spouse, who acted as clothes-holder, bottle-holder, and picker-up all rolled into one. However, with her encouraging words, and even threats what she would do if he lost, he pulled through."

Tate admits that he doesn't know what kind of headgear Jack might have favored in his youth, but shares that during the time that Tate knew him, Jack always sported a tall silk hat. Sure enough, in a late 19th-Century image of the elderly gent with his wife and son Thomas, Jack is decked out in that very hat. 

After Jane Swinburne Legg died in 1891, scarcely a mile from where she'd been born, Jack Legg lived in a room in Blyth that someone else paid for, and where his nephew's wife looked in on him. While four of his children had immigrated to the United States long before, and several more had already died, at least two of Jack's children (Jane and Thomas) were still in the Newcastle area. For someone who had so many children, it's surprising Jack received care from a nephew's wife.

While Tate paints a rollicking picture of John Matthew Legg, the realities of living with a father who loved drinking and fighting, coupled with the features of life in an English colliery town, would have made made life challenging for young Robert Legg. We will pick up with the story of his life in our next segment.