A chance meeting on a grouse moor led to teenager Joe Nixon crossing the Atlantic. Jim McTaggart reports.

THE lead mines had closed and the outlook for 19-year-old Joe Nixon must have been a bleak one. But the course of his life was to change on an August day in 1908 when he set off to go grouse beating.

For one of the shooters on the Teesdale moor was Henry Payne Whitney, from New York, who had inherited $24m.

His visit caused intense excitement in the dale a century ago, but the ensuing story of Joe's transatlantic adventures have only just emerged.

For Whitney so admired Joe's skill and manner as he worked on the moor at Holwick, near Middleton-in-Teesdale, that he offered him a job and a new life in the US.

He would spend the next 50 years on the other side of the Atlantic, mostly as a successful sheep farmer, instead of struggling to find regular work in Teesdale.

His good fortune was revealed yesterday by his niece, Dorothy Nixon, 86, who lives in Alpine Terrace, Evenwood, near Barnard Castle, and has had tales about him passed down through her family all her life.

Mrs Nixon looked at her only photograph of her uncle as she said: "Joe must have been a very good beater to get such a wonderful chance. He went off and seemed to have a very enjoyable life in America."

He left school at the age of 11 or 12 and, like others in Teesdale, had difficulty finding regular work.

But after that meeting in August 1908 he was employed by Mr Whitney in New York for a time, and then became a sheep farmer, with one spell in Montana and another in Wyoming.

He never married, but retired and lived in a comfortable apartment before his death in 1960 at the age of 70.

Mrs Nixon added: "Uncle Joe used to send us long letters in lovely handwriting. It was amazing that he could write so well after leaving school so young. He must have had a very good teacher.

"He came back to Britain for only one visit. That was in 1922, the year I was born, so I can't remember him.

"But we used to talk a lot about how he was given his new life in America.

"If it had not been for meeting the rich man, he might have stayed in this area and become a coal miner like his brother, George, who was my father. He died at the age of 50 after being down the mines.

"At one stage, Joe had a bad setback when he was robbed of £400, which was a lot of money at the time. But he just set about working hard again until he made up all the loss."

After Joe's death, his money was shared out - in dollars - among a number of his nephews and nieces living in County Durham.

"I can't remember exactly how much I got, but it was a handy sum," said Mrs Nixon.

"His landlady wrote to give us details of his funeral, saying it was well attended by his many friends."

Mrs Nixon spoke after reading an article about Harry Payne Whitney's visit in the Teesdale Talk column, which appears weekly in the South Durham edition of The Northern Echo.

It told how he travelled to Teesdale in a special carriage on a train, with a number of friends. Two local bands which played for him were each given a £5 note.

Mr Whitney later inherited a further $12m from an uncle and was involved in various businesses. When he died in 1930, aged 58, he left $62m - despite having given away large sums to good causes