Achievement - Certificate of Competency

This week's topic for #52 Ancestors was Achievement and it nicely corresponded to a homework assignment given by Gena Philibert-Ortega for a SLIG course. She asked us to analyze a document, ask questions, find answers, and really understand what we were looking at. 

I've had this Certificate of Competency of Coal Miner that belonged to my grandfather for ages, but I only really looked carefully at what it meant this week. 

The certificate was issued to Mike G. Martin on 10 November 1927. My grandfather, George Michael Martin, always went by Mike. The Department of Mines and Minerals, State Miners' Examining Board, issued it in West Frankfort. The certificate notes that he made an oath, provided evidence that he had worked in coal mines for at least two years, and answered questions required by law. 

The Certificate lists his age as 27, height 5ft 10 1/2 inches, and weight 150 pounds. He was an American with brown hair and eyes and no distinctive marks. He noted nine years of experience. 

The photo to the left was supposedly taken about 1930, just a couple of years after he received the Certificate. My grandparents married in Albia, Iowa, in 1925. Their first child, my aunt June, was born in Albia in January 1926. Sometime in the next year, they moved to West Frankfort, Illinois, where they lived the rest of their lives. 

My grandfather's nine years of previous experience was in Iowa, where he had started working by age 18. I wrote a bit about the horrible death of his father in a previous post. https://connectingskeletons.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-grandfathers-recliner.html

When moving to West Frankfort, they moved to an area that was one of the country's largest coal producers at the time. According to the law of Illinois, anyone working in a coal mine needed one of these certificates. 

On 10 November 1927, the examining board held examinations in West Frankfort. My grandfather was there, along with 120 other applicants. Ninety-one certificates were issued, and 30 candidates were rejected. While it is unclear what the exam questions were, they consisted of twelve practical questions "to determine the competency and qualification of the applicant." The exam was given orally, which made sense since many miners were foreign-born and likely read little English. 

People who worked without a certificate could be fined and even jailed. So, this certificate was necessary for my grandfather to provide for his growing family (my dad was born in 1929), and he must have felt a sense of achievement mixed with relief when he passed that exam. 

Resources Consulted:

• Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals, General Information and Laws, Effective July 1, 1921 (State of Illinois: Springfield, 1921).
• Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals, Forty-Sixth Coal Report of Illinois(State of Illinois: Springfield, 1927).