RESEARCH by amateur historians and the family archives of Advertiser readers are slowly beginning to reveal the final resting places of the men and boys who died in the region's worst mining disaster.

Though 168 died in the Stanley Burns Pit disaster of 1909, archivists at Durham County Council were baffled to discover that the grave sites of just 128 appeared to have been recorded.

But now the names of a number of men and boys have been located on grave stones in Stanley. Their positions were not held in the official records.

Three others have been confirmed as being buried elsewhere in County Durham, even though only one of the dead was given an address outside the Stanley area.

One of the three was George or 'Jack' Gittins, officially recorded as Gittens at the time. The 30-year-old was living at Hilda Street in Stanley on that fateful day, February 16. However, Mr Gittins had a wife and four children living at Low Garbutt Street in Shildon, in the south of the county.

His great-grandson, Keith Gittins, still lives in the small former railway town. He said: "I saw the article about the lost graves and thought, 'well, I can help with one straight away.'

"We've even got a memorial card and postcard of him.

"The funeral cortege actually left from the street where I live on Freville Street and he is buried at St John's. He left a wife, my great-grandmother Lizzie, who carried on living in Low Garbutt Street until 1964. She brought up the children and never married again."

Meanwhile, an amateur Stanley historian, who did not wish to be named, has located two other graves. Thomas Short, 18, whose address was given as Manx Street in Stanley, was in fact from Ouston, near Chester-le-Street, but is buried at Pelton. And George Bowers, sometimes recorded as Bowes, was living at Wood Street in Stanley at the time of his death but was buried at Sacriston, near Durham City.