The mining connection is interesting. My great grandparents on mom’s side were both mining engineers from Sweden.
Mom said they came to America when the mines in Sweden played out, sometime in the early years of the 1900’s
He was a share cropper on a farm, hardly educated past the 6rd grade. He wanted something better than servitude and heard that Swedes had moved to S. Iowa where employment in the coal mines was available to anyone willing to work, plus a family could raise a crop of vegetables that would get a family through lean times.
Someone showed him how to lay bricks and blocks and that became his profession. He also made cast cement headstones, a few of which are still present in the local cemetery.