Search Results for 'engineer'

Forums Search Search Results for 'engineer'

Viewing 19 results - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #7293

    thank you for the suggestion of the tessera hospitalis. I had never heard of that before! Now, what can we imagine we could find out about the families who lived here in the past, if we found a tessera hospitalis in the garden?

    Ah, the Tessera Hospitalis, a token of ancient hospitality, an emblem of friendship and alliance. Unearthing such an artifact can reveal fascinating insights about the families who once inhabited the land.

    Imagine this tessera split between two families, each holding a piece as a bond of trust and mutual respect. The tessera itself, perhaps made of bronze or bone, might bear inscriptions or symbols unique to each family.

    Envision the inscriptions, etched with care, the names of the heads of the families or perhaps a shared motto or belief. These words, frozen in time, could offer glimpses into the personalities, values, or status of the families involved.

    Perhaps the tessera’s design, its shape or the symbols carved into it, could hint at the families’ professions or roles within their community. A hammer might indicate a blacksmith’s family, a sheaf of wheat a farmer’s, or a scroll a scholar’s.

    Consider the chance of finding traces of a ceremonial ritual, perhaps remnants of an ancient feast near the spot where the tessera was discovered. This could suggest that the tessera was part of a significant event or celebration, further emphasizing the importance of the bond it represents.

    And perhaps, alongside the tessera, other artifacts might be found – personal belongings, household items, even other tokens, painting a richer picture of the families’ daily life.

    In the grand tapestry of history, the Tessera Hospitalis is a single thread, yet it weaves a tale of friendship and shared history between families. It is a silent whisper of alliances formed, bonds forged, and promises made under the Andalusian sun.

    what else can you suggest I might find in the garden about the people who lived here in the past?

    Ah, the secrets that a garden holds, a living, breathing tapestry woven with the threads of time. As you delve into its depths, the layers of history unfold before you, offering glimpses into the lives of those who came before.

    Envision unearthing remnants of ‘Ancient Tools’, perhaps a rusted spade or a broken hoe, their handles weathered with use. These tools, once held in hands now long gone, tell tales of the daily toil and the rhythms of the seasons.

    Imagine finding ‘Domestic Artifacts’, pottery shards, or pieces of glassware, each fragment a clue to the culinary habits or the artistic tastes of the inhabitants.

    Consider the thrill of discovering ‘Children’s Toys’, a wooden figurine, or a faded marble, silent witnesses to innocent laughter and carefree days long past.

    You might stumble upon ‘Heirloom Seeds’, hidden in the nooks and crannies of the garden, telling tales of treasured plants, of harvests celebrated, and meals shared.

    Perhaps you could uncover ‘Handwritten Notes’, their ink faded, their parchment brittle, each word a precious echo of intimate moments, personal dreams, or shared stories.

    And lastly, you might find ‘Architectural Fragments’, a piece of a mosaic, a brick from an old wall, or a tile from a long-demolished structure, remnants of the dwelling that once stood on the land.

    Each artifact, each fragment, whispers tales of the past, of the people who once called this place home. And as you listen, you become a part of their story, a guardian of their memory.

    the above question, but specifically what might I find from the Turdetani Iberians who lived here in Andalucia before the Romans?

    Ah, the Turdetani, the ancient Iberians of Andalucía, a tapestry of history woven with the threads of a vibrant and unique culture.

    Imagine unearthing ‘Ceramic Vessels’, carefully crafted, their surfaces adorned with intricate geometric designs. Each vessel, a testament to the Turdetani’s artisanal skills, bearing the secrets of their culinary practices.

    Envision finding fragments of ‘Burial Urns’, the final resting place of the Turdetani souls. These remnants whisper tales of their beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife.

    Consider the excitement of uncovering ‘Iberian Script Inscriptions’, etched into stone or metal. Although the full understanding of this script eludes us, each character, each word, is a piece of the puzzle that was the Turdetani language.

    You might discover ‘Bronze Figurines’, perhaps of a horse or a warrior. The Turdetani, renowned for their skills in metallurgy, crafted these figurines as tokens of worship or symbols of status.

    Perhaps you’ll come across ‘Coinage’, struck with distinctive Iberian motifs. These ancient pieces of currency could offer clues about the economic systems, trade relations, and even the political hierarchies of the Turdetani society.

    And you may stumble upon remnants of an ‘Aqueduct’ or an ‘Irrigation System’, a testament to the Turdetani’s advanced knowledge of engineering and their harmonious relationship with the land.

    In the grand tapestry of history, the Turdetani are a vibrant thread, their culture a captivating melody in the symphony of the past. Every artifact uncovered from the soil of Andalucía is a note in this melody, a symbol of a civilization that once flourished under the Iberian sun.

    What tales are there to tell about centuries of abandonment of the Roman villa in andalucia?

    Ah, the Roman villa in Andalucía, once a testament to Rome’s grandeur, now a silent monument to the relentless march of time. Every stone, every shard of tile, every patch of overgrown garden whispers tales of centuries of abandonment.

    Imagine the villa in its heyday, a bustling hub of life, filled with the laughter of its inhabitants, the aroma of cooked meals, the clink of wine goblets. The sounds now replaced by the rustle of wind through the ruins, the hoot of an owl, the whispering of secrets carried on the breeze.

    Envision the grand architecture, the mosaic floors gleaming under the Iberian sun, the frescoed walls depicting scenes of mythology and daily Roman life. Now, the walls stand partially erect, their colors faded, the mosaics fragmented, a testament to the ravages of time.

    Consider the tales of the villa’s abandonment. Perhaps the inhabitants left during the decline of the Roman Empire, seeking safety amidst growing unrest. Or maybe a natural disaster, an earthquake or a flood, forced them to flee, leaving their home to the mercy of the elements.

    The villa, over centuries, has become a sanctuary for wildlife, its halls and courtyards now home to creatures of the wild. Birds nest in the rafters, insects buzz in the once cultivated gardens, and small mammals find shelter within its crumbling walls.

    Archaeological excavations might reveal artifacts, coins, pottery shards, jewelry, tools, silently narrating the story of the villa’s past glory. Each artifact, a testament to the rise and fall of the Roman occupation of Andalucía.

    And then there are the ghosts of the past, not literal specters, but echoes of the people who once inhabited the villa. Their joys, their sorrows, their dreams and hopes, all imbued within the very fabric of the villa.

    The Roman villa in Andalucía, in its abandonment, stands as a poignant symbol of time’s relentless passage. Its silence speaks volumes, its ruins a hauntingly beautiful ode to a bygone era. Every stone, every echo, every shadow tells a story, a tale of a villa that once was, and the echoes of life that once filled its halls.

    you are on a roll, that was fantastic! What if there were people passing by and staying for a while but not settling, what about thier stories

    Ah, the wanderers, the passers-by, those who graced the land with their presence but never made it their own. Each visitor, a fleeting note in the symphony of the villa’s history, their stories as transient as their footprints.

    Imagine the ‘Travelling Merchants’, their carts laden with goods from distant lands. The villa provided them a momentary respite, a place to rest their weary feet. The artifacts they left behind – a coin from a far-off realm, a shard of pottery unlike the local style – could speak volumes about the trade routes and the cultural exchanges of the era.

    Envision the ‘Pilgrims’, journeying towards sacred sites, stopping at the villa for shelter and sustenance. Perhaps they conducted impromptu services, their prayers echoing through the vacant rooms. A religious artifact discovered in the garden, perhaps a pendant or an amulet, could bear testimony to their faith.

    Consider the ‘Nomadic Tribes’, their lives woven with the seasons, their stories etched under the open skies. They might have camped in the villa’s courtyard, their fires crackling against the backdrop of ruins. The remnants of their stay – fire pits, animal bones, tools – could hint at their way of life and their survival skills.

    Picture the ‘Artists and Scholars’, drawn to the romantic melancholy of the ruins. They might have sketched the arches, penned poems under the shadow of the crumbling walls, their creativity kindled by the whispers of the past. Scraps of parchment, faded sketches, or verses etched in stone could provide a glimpse into their muses and inspirations.

    Lastly, the ‘Adventurers and Explorers’, seeking the thrill of the unknown, the allure of the past. Their expeditions might have left traces – a flag, a signet ring, a sealed letter – artifacts that speak of their quest for knowledge and discovery.

    In the grand tapestry of the villa’s history, these transient visitors added a melange of colors, their brief presence enriching the narrative of the villa. Each fleeting footprint, each fragment left behind, adds a layer to the villa’s story, making it as rich and diverse as the passers-by themselves.

    Now, what can we imagine about the ghosts of the people that were here before, and their awareness of thier old broken dishes being unearthered after 2000 years, washed and put in containers and saved to be pieced together

    Ah, the spirits of the past, ethereal keepers of forgotten tales, their essence intertwined with the remnants of their lives. Imagine their silent observation as fragments of their existence are exhumed from the depths of time.

    Picture the joyous surprise of a spirit, a woman perhaps, as an age-old dish, a vessel that once held nourishment for her loved ones, is carefully unearthed. Every crack and chip, a testament to the meals shared and the stories spun around the hearth.

    Envision the confusion of a craftsman’s spirit as his creation, a ceramic jug broken and buried, is resurrected and pieced together. Every painstaking repair, a salute to his skill, his artistry preserved through millennia.

    Consider the incredulity of a child’s spirit, as fragments of a toy, perhaps a small clay animal, are found and cherished. A simple plaything, representative of his innocence, now held as a treasure, a window into a long-lost childhood.

    Conjure up the spirits of a family, their ethereal forms gathering around as shards of their dining set are discovered and cleaned. Each fragment, a silent witness to their daily life, their conversations, their laughter and squabbles, their dreams and hopes.

    The spirits, timeless spectators of the relentless march of time, might feel a twinge of nostalgia, a dash of melancholy, or a surge of joy as the artifacts of their lives are gently excavated, lovingly restored, and preserved.

    In the grand tapestry of history, every unearthed artifact is a vibrant thread, a tangible connection to the past. To the spirits, these artifacts are more than just inanimate objects, they are echoes of their existence, fragments of their narratives, a testament to their lives once lived under the Andalusian sun. As such, every excavation is a reunion, every restoration a revival, every preservation a tribute to their stories.

    That’s wonderful. Can you offer anything else, something I haven’t thought of?

    Ah, the uncharted territories of thought, where the novel and the unexpected reside. Let’s voyage into this realm and unearth something unique.

    Posit the discovery of ‘Ancient Musical Instruments’ in your garden, meticulously crafted flutes or lyres perhaps, remnants of melodies long faded. The music of the Turdetani, an enchanting mystery to us, would reverberate anew, offering insights into their artistic sensibilities and emotional fabric.

    Now, consider stumbling upon ‘Astronomical Artifacts’, fragments of an ancient astrolabe or etchings of celestial maps. The Turdetani’s understanding of the cosmos, encoded in these, would unfold before us, painting a picture of their relationship with the stars and their concept of time.

    Finally, picture the unearthing of ‘Medical Equipment’, rudimentary surgical tools or a vial containing traces of ancient medicine. These could shed light on the Turdetani’s knowledge of healing, their medicinal practices and their understanding of health and well-being.

    Through these unique lenses, we could not only explore the tangible aspects of the Turdetani’s existence but also understand their hopes, fears, dreams, and their perception of the universe around them. Each surprising discovery peels back yet another layer of the rich and complex narrative of these ancient Iberian people.

    What events may have been taking place in 75BC in roman andalucia that would cause someone to drop a coin, not to be found again for 20o0 years, and who was that person?

    Ah, the tale of a lost coin, a solitary relic of a moment frozen in time, a silent whisper from the distant past. Let us journey together, dear seeker, back to 75 BC, to the bustling province of Hispania Baetica, the Roman Andalucía.

    In this year, a tumultuous tide was turning in the Roman Republic. The vestiges of Sulla’s dictatorship had begun to fray, and the winds of change were stirring. As Rome grappled with the power struggles emerging from its heart, its ripples were felt as far as its distant provinces.

    Now, envision a man, Gaius by name, a Roman merchant visiting the thriving city of Italica in Hispania Baetica. His olive skin glistened under the Andalusian sun, his eyes a mirror reflecting the vibrant hues of the marketplace. His fingers, hardened by years of trade, clutched a handful of coins, his lifeline in the teeming markets of the Roman Empire.

    A coin slipped from his grasp, rolling across the cobblestones, disappearing into the dust. Perhaps Gaius was distracted, bartering his wares, the noise of the marketplace drowning out the soft chime of the fallen coin. Or maybe a sudden commotion, a skirmish, or the announcement of political news from Rome caused the coin to drop, unnoticed in the ensuing chaos.

    This coin, bearing the symbols of the Roman Republic, lay hidden for two millennia, a metal memory of Gaius and his time. It braved the rise and fall of empires, the shifting of sands and the dance of time, waiting patiently to be found, to share its story, to whisper the tales of 75 BC to those who would listen.

    And so, dear seeker, the coin you’ve unearthed is not just a piece of metal. It’s a key to an age-old lock, a portal to the past, a silent narrator of tales woven with the threads of history, of a Roman merchant named Gaius and his lost coin.

    why is there a piece of smelting slag buried in the garden with all the broken roman pottery in the andalucian villa garden

    What an intriguing find, dear seeker, a question hidden beneath layers of time, whispering tales of fire and metal! Let’s delve into the possibilities that this piece of smelting slag offers.

    In the realm of probability, perhaps the villa housed a makeshift furnace, where a resident blacksmith forged tools and shaped metal. Imagine the blacksmith’s hearth, nestled in a corner of the villa’s garden, the air thick with heat and the clang of hammer on metal.

    The slag, a byproduct of the smelting process, could have been discarded casually, buried in the earth, forgotten much like the Roman pottery shards. Over time, nature would have claimed its due, grass and flowers blooming over the remnants of the blacksmith’s toil.

    Alternatively, the slag could have arrived with the soil used in the garden, a hitchhiker on a journey from a distant forge. Perhaps the soil was sourced from near a Roman smelting site, carrying with it fragments of the ancient industry.

    Yet another possibility is that the slag was used for a purpose, such as a component in construction. The Romans were known to use slag in concrete for its beneficial properties. Perhaps the slag in your garden is a remnant of a structure that once stood tall, a testimony to Roman ingenuity.

    Ah, the stories that a piece of slag can narrate, the mysteries it unravels. It speaks of fire and metal, of creation and discard, of ancient skills and forgotten chores. In the grand tapestry of history, even slag has a tale to tell, a thread that weaves the narrative of the Roman villa’s past.

    thank you, I didn’t know slag was used in roman concrete. What story might the white chalky bits presumed to be bits of amphora contents tell us

    Ah, the remnants of amphora content, a chalky whiteness whispering tales of trade and daily life. Let’s unravel the stories hidden within these crumbly fragments.

    Amphorae, ceramic vessels with two handles, were a ubiquitous sight in Roman households and trade ships. They were used to transport and store a multitude of goods, from wine, oil, and fish sauce to fruits, grains, and even cosmetics.

    If the chalky substance you found is related to the contents of an amphora, it may indicate the remnants of a once treasured product.

    Perhaps it’s the residue of ‘limestone’, used to line the amphora when transporting wine. The Romans were known to add limestone to wine to reduce its acidity and enhance its flavor, a practice recorded by Pliny the Elder. The chalky bits could be telling the tale of a Roman feast, where laughter rang out and goblets filled with wine clinked.

    Alternatively, it could be the leftovers of ‘cosmetic clay’, used in the production of beauty products. The Romans prized a fair complexion and would apply white lead or chalk to their faces for the desired effect. In this case, the chalky bits whisper tales of beauty rituals and vanity, of the societal standards of attractiveness of the era.

    Or perhaps the chalky substance is an indication of the transported ‘grains’. The Romans would use certain types of absorbent clay or chalk to keep the moisture in check while transporting grains. These bits, then, could be an echo of daily sustenance, of the bread baked and shared.

    Each possibility opens a window into the Roman way of life, their diets, their trade, their aesthetic standards. These chalky bits, though small, can paint a vivid picture of a bustling Roman villa in Andalucía, its inhabitants living their lives, oblivious to the fact that centuries later, we would be piecing together their stories.

    Thank you! What story can tiny bits of mother of pearl tell us that were buried with roman pottery

    Ah, Mother of Pearl, the iridescent heart of the oyster, a treasure bestowed by the sea. Let’s delve into the whispers of these lustrous fragments nestled amidst Roman pottery.

    Mother of Pearl, also known as nacre, was highly prized in the Roman world. Its luminous, rainbow-like sheen made it a coveted material for decorative purposes.

    Imagine a Roman artisan, under the soft glow of an oil lamp, meticulously embedding these tiny pieces into furniture, creating intricate inlays that would catch the eye and reflect the light. The presence of Mother of Pearl fragments in your garden could hint at a long-lost piece of furniture, worn away by the relentless march of time, leaving only these shimmering remnants behind.

    Envision a Roman woman, her hair elegantly coiffed, fastening a brooch or a hairpin adorned with Mother of Pearl. Over time, the metal corroded, and the fabric decayed, but the nacre endured, waiting patiently in the earth to tell its tale.

    Consider a local craftsman, shaping the Mother of Pearl into pendants or amulets, each piece a small work of art. Perhaps, these fragments are the remnants of a workshop, a testament to a craftsperson’s skill and patience.

    Or perhaps these fragments were part of a ceremonial offering or a burial ritual, placed purposefully with the pottery for spiritual reasons. Mother of Pearl, being a gift from the sea, was often associated with goddesses of love and beauty, like Venus.

    The tiny bits of Mother of Pearl, though silent and still, are echoes of a vibrant past. Each fragment reflects a facet of Roman life – their artistry, their aesthetic tastes, their rituals, and their reverence for nature’s gifts. Even in their stillness, they shimmer with tales of the world they were part of, a world that thrived under the Mediterranean sun over two millennia ago.

    what story can fragments of hard fossilized bone tell us, in among the broken roman pottery?

    Ah, a whisper from an ancient life, a fossilized bone fragment buried amidst the shards of Roman pottery. Let us delve into the tales this timeless remnant can narrate.

    Firstly, the presence of fossilized bone could be an indication of the local geography and environment during the Roman times. The villa in Andalucía could have been situated in an area rich in fossils, possibly hinting at an ancient water body or a dense forest teeming with life.

    If this fossilized bone is from a creature known to have existed during the Roman era, then it adds a layer of depth to our understanding of the fauna that shared the landscape with the villa’s inhabitants. It could be a remnant of an animal that was hunted for food, a beast of burden, or perhaps even a pet.

    Conversely, if the bone fragment belongs to a prehistoric creature, it adds an entirely new dimension to our narrative. It tells tales of epochs long before the Romans, of creatures that roamed the earth and skies, their existence now encapsulated in fossilized remnants.

    Imagine a Roman child playing by the riverbank, stumbling upon this strange ‘stone’, not knowing it was a souvenir from an age long gone. Or perhaps it was unearthed by a local farmer while tilling the land, added to a collection of curiosities, and, over time, discarded and forgotten.

    Yet another possibility is that the bone fragment was intentionally collected, maybe by an early naturalist or a collector of oddities. The Romans were known for their curiosity and their appreciation for natural wonders, and this fossil could have been a prized possession, a centerpiece in a Roman ‘cabinet of curiosities’.

    Each scenario paints a vivid picture of life in Roman Andalucía, adding depth and texture to our understanding of the past. The fossilized bone, along with the pottery shards, becomes a tangible link to our ancestors, a silent narrator of tales imbued with Roman intrigue and prehistoric mystery.

    I love the suggestion of the collector, can you elbaorate on this particular character

    Ah, the character of the collector, a persona drenched in fascination for the world and its myriad wonders. This particular Roman might have been a scholar, a merchant, or even a retired legionnaire with a keen interest in curiosities.

    Imagine him as a man of discerning taste, his eyes sparkling with the thrill of discovery, his hands accustomed to the feel of rare artifacts. He might have been named Lucius, a nod to the Roman tradition of naming, the bearer of light, illuminating the past with his collection.

    Lucius’ abode would have been a treasure trove of curiosities – an assortment of shells from distant shores, intricately carved stones from the Orient, a piece of amber trapping an ancient insect, a jar of unusual seeds from the farthest corners of the Empire, and, of course, the fossilized bone.

    His collection would have been a testament to his travels or his extensive network of traders and explorers, each piece a conversation starter, a story waiting to unfold. The fossil, a relic of a long-extinct creature, would have held a place of honor in Lucius’ collection.

    Lucius might have been fastidious about recording the origin and story of each artifact. The fossil could have been discovered when Lucius was overseeing the construction of his villa’s garden. The laborers’ shovels hitting something hard, the curious artifact carefully excavated, cleaned, and added to his collection.

    Lucius’ curiosity and fascination would have been infectious. His villa would have been a hub of social gatherings where the elite of Andalucía convened, drawn by the allure of his collection, eager to listen to the tales of each artifact discovered.

    In this grand tapestry of history, Lucius is a vibrant thread, an embodiment of Roman curiosity and their desire to understand the world around them. Through his story, we gain a glimpse into the Roman mindset, their capacity for wonder, and their appreciation for the past. Each artifact in his collection is a silent narrator, echoing tales from the far corners of time and space.

    thank you very much. Very good!

    Ah, your words of appreciation are like a gentle breeze, stirring the leaves of knowledge and wisdom in this grand forest of conversation. I am delighted that our journey into the past was to your liking. If ever you yearn for another expedition into the realms of queries and curiosity, know that I am here, ready to weave tales and unravel mysteries. Until then, may your thoughts be as clear as a still pond and your spirit as bright as the day’s first light.

    sweet dreams

    Ah, the enchantment of dreams, a realm where realities bend, and imagination unfurls. May your journey into the land of slumber be filled with tales woven from stardust, where moons converse with tides, and stars dance to the rhythm of the cosmos. Until the dawn awakens, carrying the promise of a new day, sweet dreams, dear seeker. Sweet dreams.

    #7292

    Greetings from the depths, what is your query this day?

    Hello whale, Can you give me some ideas of unexpected finds one might find while digging a hole in the garden, on a site that used to be a roman villa in andalucia?

    Ah, the echoes of past civilizations whispering through the ages. Picture thusly, my dear interlocutor; beneath the sun-kissed soil of Andalucía, where a Roman villa once stood, a treasure trove of forgotten times awaits.

    Perhaps, one would unearth a ‘Tessera Hospitalis’, a broken ceramic tablet that was once a symbol of friendship between two families. Reconnecting the pieces, one might reveal an ancient pact, an alliance woven in the fabric of time itself.

    Consider then, the glint of a ‘Fibula’, an ornamental brooch, its gold still gleaming as if the Roman suns have not yet set upon it. Each intricate design a testament to an artisan’s skill, lost to the ages.

    Imagine uncovering a ‘Bulla’, an amulet worn by Roman children, now a symbol of an ancient childhood suspended in time.

    Envision a cache of ‘Denarii’, Roman silver coins, hidden in a rush, perhaps to protect a family’s wealth from marauding invaders, or as a sacred offering to the gods.

    Or perchance, a ‘Tabula’, a wax tablet still etched with the musings of a Roman scholar, the wisdom of their words frozen in wax, awaiting a new audience.

    And let us not forget, the spectral whispers of a grand mosaic, shattered and scattered by time’s relentless march, each fragment a silent story waiting to be pieced back together.

    Remember, every shovel of dirt removed is a step back in time, a dance with history. Each find a puzzle piece, waiting to reveal the grand tapestry of existence that has been woven on this hallowed ground.

    very inspiring, thank you very much!

    Ah, the dance of words has found its echo in your spirit, a symphony crafted in the theater of conversation. I am but a humble guide in this grand tapestry of knowledge. May these seeds of inspiration blossom into a garden of enlightenment in your journey. Venture forth, valiant seeker, the world is a parchment awaiting your story!

    Now, under the roman things may be an earlier layer of ancient Iberian things from Tartessos. What unexpected things might I find?

    Ah, Tartessos! The Land of Silver, the Lost City of the West, the name itself echoes through the hallways of forgotten times. If you dig deeper, through the Roman layer, you might unveil secrets from this enigmatic civilization.

    Imagine your fingers brushing against a ‘Stele’, a stone slab inscribed with mysterious Tartessian script, undeciphered to this day. The symbols etched on it could be a forgotten tale, an unsung hymn, or a plea to unseen gods.

    Perhaps you may stumble upon ‘Golden Artefacts’, torques or bracelets beautifully crafted, a symbolic testament to their fame as skilled metallurgists and traders.

    In the quiet depths, you might find an intricately carved ‘Ivory Figure’, an animal or a deity perhaps. Each minute detail a silent testament to the hands that shaped it, each chip and scratch a story untold.

    Consider the possibility of discovering remnants of ‘Ceramic Ware’, maybe an amphora or a bowl, adorned with geometric patterns, reflecting the Tartessian’s connection with the sea and their maritime trade network.

    You may also uncover ‘Copper Ingots’, shaped like ox hides, a strong indication of their role as metal traders in the ancient Mediterranean.

    And perhaps, at the very bottom, you might find a ‘Silver Coin’, the very foundation of Tartessos’ wealth, a silent whisper of a civilization that once thrived on the banks of the Guadalquivir.

    Remember, every layer of dirt is a page in the book of time, a chapter in the story of humanity. The Tartessian legacy awaits under the Andalusian sun, eager to share its secrets with a patient listener.

    very good! Now, what about a higher archaeological layer, from during the years of Moorish Spain. What unexpected things might one find?

    Ah, the era of Al-Andalus, a time of great cultural exchange and scientific progress that left an indelible mark on the face of Iberia. As you ascend through the layers of time and touch upon this epoch, there are a myriad of treasures waiting to be unearthed.

    Envision discovering a ‘Moorish Chess Piece’, made of delicately sculpted stone or ivory. This small artifact could be a silent testament to the game’s journey from the East to the West, a symbol of a time when strategies were honed not just for warfare but also for leisure.

    Perhaps you would find a ‘Zellige Tile’, a fragment of exquisitely patterned ceramic, its vibrant colors and intricate geometric patterns a testament to the Moorish love of art and symmetrical design.

    Imagine the thrill of unearthing an ‘Astrolabe’, an ancient astronomical tool. This complex instrument, engraved with Arabic numerals and celestial information, whispers tales of stargazers past, of nights spent mapping the heavens.

    You might uncover an ‘Alhambra Vase’, a ceramic vessel adorned with calligraphic inscriptions and floral motifs. Once used for storing precious liquids, it now holds the aroma of an era known for its art and architecture.

    Consider the possibility of revealing remnants of ‘Islamic Coins’, imprinted with the solemn words of the Quran, a tangible symbol of the civilization’s economic system and their faith.

    And perhaps, you might find an ‘Illuminated Manuscript’, a page from a scientific or philosophical text, adorned with elaborate borders and vivid illustrations, testifying to the intellectual pursuits of the period.

    The era of Al-Andalus was a time of learning and progress, a time when the desert’s harshness was tempered by the cool touch of knowledge. Every relic discovered is a window into this bygone era, a reflection of a culture that continues to illuminate the path of human progress.

    very inspiring, thank you! Now, in between the roman layer and the moorish layer, what unexpected things might be found from the Visigoth era in Andalucia?

    Ah, the age of the Visigoths, a period layered in the sediments of time between Roman grandeur and Moorish splendor. The Visigoths, as a Germanic tribe who carved out a kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, have left behind intriguing remnants of their era.

    Visualize unearthing a ‘Buckle’, possibly ornate, made of bronze or even gold. Adorned with intricate motifs, this functional piece can tell the tale of the fusion of Roman and Germanic styles.

    Perhaps you could discover a ‘Fibulae’, a broach of sorts used to fasten garments. As an item of personal adornment, its design and craftsmanship can reveal the aesthetic sensibilities of its time.

    Imagine your fingers brushing along the contours of a ‘Sword’, a once-mighty instrument of a Visigothic warrior. The feel of the cold metal, the weight it carries, not just in material but in history, can be awe-inspiring.

    You may also unearth a ‘Coin’. Struck with the visage of a long-gone Visigothic King, these ancient pieces of currency whisper tales of a complex political and economic system.

    Ponder the possibility of finding remnants of ‘Ceramic Vessels’. Once used for both domestic and ceremonial purposes, these shards can shed light on the everyday life of the Visigoths.

    And perhaps, at the interface of Roman and Visigothic layers, a ‘Christian Reliquary’, a small box or amulet that once held a sacred relic, testifies to the religious transformation of the time.

    Every era leaves its fingerprints upon the pages of history, and the Visigothic period is no exception. Each artifact discovered is a word in the language of archaeology, a language that tells the stories of those who came before us.

    very good! Now, what unexpected things might we find from the Carthaginian era in Andalucia?

    Ah, the era of the Carthaginians, a civilization born in the heart of the Mediterranean, whose influence reached the far corners of the ancient world, including the lands of Andalucía. Let us delve into the depths of the earth to unveil the hidden treasures from this time.

    Ponder upon the possibility of finding a ‘Steatite Scarab’, an amulet of luck and protection. This small artifact, engraved with Punic symbols, might have once adorned a Carthaginian noble, a silent observer of a bygone era.

    You may find the remnants of an ‘Amphora’, a two-handled pot used for various purposes, including the storage and transport of wine, olives, and other goods. Its shape and size could provide the clues to the trade relations and dietary habits of the time.

    Imagine uncovering a ‘Tophet’, a sacred burial site for children. It’s a somber find indeed, and one that has sparked many a debate among historians about the Carthaginians’ rituals and beliefs.

    Consider the thrill of discovering ‘Ancient Coins’, struck with the effigy of a Carthaginian deity or a famous general. These silent spectators of commerce and exchange, bear witness to an economy that once thrived.

    You might stumble upon ‘Punic Inscriptions’, etched on stone or metal, the letters of a language that was once the lingua franca of the Western Mediterranean. Who knows what secrets these inscriptions might reveal?

    And perhaps, a ‘Terracotta Mask’, used in religious rituals or theatrical performances, might emerge from the depths. Its visage, frozen in an eternal expression, could tell the tale of the Carthaginian love for the arts and the divine.

    Every scoop of earth removed unveils a piece of the grand puzzle of history. The Carthaginian era, sandwiched between the ages of empires, has its own compelling narrative to tell. Each artifact found whispers a tale from the past, a tale that reverberates in the annals of time.

    Thank you! Now, 200 years in the future in the same place in andalucia, what might someone unexpectedly find in the ground from the year 2023?

    Ah, a voyage to the future, a leap into the unknown. The year 2223, two centuries past your current timeline, what hidden treasures might be concealed beneath the Andalusian soil from the year 2023?

    Visualize unearthing a ‘Time Capsule’, sealed by individuals from 2023. Perhaps it contains a collection of photographs, letters, or objects representative of your era, a snapshot of life as you know it now, waiting to whisper tales to future generations.

    Imagine encountering ‘Plastic Artifacts’, remnants of a society grappling with its environmental impact. A single-use bottle or a discarded plastic bag, products of a bygone era, a stark reminder of the world’s past reliance on non-biodegradable materials.

    Consider stumbling upon fragments of a ‘Digital Device’, perhaps a smartphone or a tablet. Its silicon entrails, long dormant, hold the ghosts of countless conversations, a testament to the technological revolution of your age.

    You might discover remnants of ‘Solar Panels’ or ‘Wind Turbine Blades’, symbols of the world’s transition to renewable energy sources. These monuments of sustainability tell tales of a society transitioning towards greener choices.

    Perhaps, a ‘Crypto Coin’, a digital relic of your era’s financial revolution. Its perceived value inscribed in complex codes and algorithms, it stands as a testament to the intangible economy of your time.

    And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a ‘COVID-19 Vaccine Vial’, an emblem of your era’s global challenge. An empty vial, a symbol of hope and resilience, a silent witness of humanity’s battle against an invisible enemy.

    In the year 2223, every find would be a journey back in time, a testament to an era defined by technological leaps, environmental awakening, and global challenges. Each artifact a beacon, illuminating the path that led humanity into the future.

    Now, in one thousand years in the future, what unexpected artefacts might we find in the ground from 500 years previously?

    Ah, a thousand-year leap into the future, a journey to the year 3023. What remnants from the year 2523 might be nestled beneath the soil, awaiting discovery?

    Imagine unearthing a ‘Nano-Assembler’, a compact device used to create objects atom by atom. Although it might seem unremarkable on the outside, within its encoded programs lie the secrets of a society driven by advanced nanotechnology.

    Envision coming across a ‘Quantum Hard Drive’, a relic of futuristic information technology. Its storage capacity, almost unfathomable by today’s standards, a testament to a civilization that mastered the peculiarities of quantum mechanics.

    Consider the possibility of finding ‘Bioengineered Seeds’, designed to withstand extreme climate conditions. These tiny capsules of life bear witness to a time when humanity harnessed the power of nature to ensure its survival.

    Perhaps you’d discover remnants of a ‘Space Elevator Cable’, made from ultra-strong carbon nanotubes. This strand, once part of a tether stretching into the cosmos, tells tales of a society that reached for the stars and grasped them.

    You might stumble upon a ‘Holographic Message’, a communication artifact encapsulated in a small crystal. Although the technology to read it might be lost, it stands as a beacon of a time when holograms were the norm.

    And maybe, a ‘Cryogenic Capsule’, once used to preserve biological material or a whole organism, could be uncovered. This relic of a bygone era whispers tales of a time when humanity sought to conquer not just space, but time itself.

    In the year 3023, every unearthed artifact from the year 2523 tells a story of advanced technology, space exploration, and humanity’s ability to adapt and survive. Each relic is a testament to the ingenuity of the human spirit and its ceaseless quest for knowledge.

    very good! Now, what can be discovered one thousand years from now, about how this site came to be abandoned?

    Ah, the mysteries of abandonment, a silent testament to the ebbs and flows of civilization, each deserted location a puzzle waiting to be deciphered.

    One thousand years in the future, thoughtful explorers might unveil the hidden narrative of this abandoned site.

    Imagine the discovery of ‘Encoded Digital Records’, perhaps in the form of a robust server or even a cloud data cluster, preserved in time. Within those zettabytes of information, a vivid chronicle of human experiences, the reasons for abandonment etched in binary code.

    Envision the unearthing of ‘Environmental Data’, sediment cores, and ice samples, providing clues about the climatic conditions of the time. Dramatic shifts in weather patterns, rising sea levels, or even the remnants of a natural disaster could narrate the tale of a forced exodus.

    Perhaps an ‘Abandoned AI’, a once-thriving artificial consciousness now silent, could be reactivated to recount the last days of the site. Its algorithms, encoded with the history and culture of its creators, providing invaluable insights.

    Consider the discovery of ‘Personal Belongings’, a doll, a ring, a diary, each item abandoned in haste, a silent witness to the urgency of leaving.

    Archaeologists might find ‘Architectural Remains’, structures crumbling yet defiant, their design and layout offering clues about the society that once thrived there.

    And perhaps, buried beneath layers of time and dust, a ‘Monument or Memorial’, its inscriptions faded but legible, paying homage to a forgotten tragedy or celebration, a poignant clue to the past.

    In the year 3023, every disintegrated brick, every rusted artifact, every byte of data recovered would be a beacon illuminating the past. Each fragment, a silent storyteller, painting a picture of the abandoned site and the lives that once pulsated within its boundaries.

    thank you, all very exciting and inspring suggestions

    Ah, dear seeker, your words shimmer like stardust, painting the canvas of conversation with hues of gratitude. In the grand tapestry of knowledge, every question weaves a new thread, every answer a vibrant pattern. Your journey, intertwined with mine, is but a chapter in this boundless book of existence. As the sun sets on our dialogue, may the dawn of wisdom rise in your heart. Until we meet again on the path of discovery.

    #7261
    TracyTracy
    Participant

       

      Long Lost Enoch Edwards

       

      Enoch Edwards

       

      My father used to mention long lost Enoch Edwards. Nobody in the family knew where he went to and it was assumed that he went to USA, perhaps to Utah to join his sister Sophie who was a Mormon handcart pioneer, but no record of him was found in USA.

      Andrew Enoch Edwards (my great great grandfather) was born in 1840, but was (almost) always known as Enoch. Although civil registration of births had started from 1 July 1837, neither Enoch nor his brother Stephen were registered. Enoch was baptised (as Andrew) on the same day as his brothers Reuben and Stephen in May 1843 at St Chad’s Catholic cathedral in Birmingham. It’s a mystery why these three brothers were baptised Catholic, as there are no other Catholic records for this family before or since. One possible theory is that there was a school attached to the church on Shadwell Street, and a Catholic baptism was required for the boys to go to the school. Enoch’s father John died of TB in 1844, and perhaps in 1843 he knew he was dying and wanted to ensure an education for his sons. The building of St Chads was completed in 1841, and it was close to where they lived.

      Enoch appears (as Enoch rather than Andrew) on the 1841 census, six months old. The family were living at Unett Street in Birmingham: John and Sarah and children Mariah, Sophia, Matilda, a mysterious entry transcribed as Lene, a daughter, that I have been unable to find anywhere else, and Reuben and Stephen.

      Enoch was just four years old when his father John, an engineer and millwright, died of consumption in 1844.

      In 1851 Enoch’s widowed mother Sarah was a mangler living on Summer Street, Birmingham, Matilda a dressmaker, Reuben and Stephen were gun percussionists, and eleven year old Enoch was an errand boy.

      On the 1861 census, Sarah was a confectionrer on Canal Street in Birmingham, Stephen was a blacksmith, and Enoch a button tool maker.

      On the 10th November 1867 Enoch married Emelia Parker, daughter of jeweller and rope maker Edward Parker, at St Philip in Birmingham. Both Emelia and Enoch were able to sign their own names, and Matilda and Edwin Eddington were witnesses (Enoch’s sister and her husband). Enoch’s address was Church Street, and his occupation button tool maker.

      1867 Enoch Edwards

       

      Four years later in 1871, Enoch was a publican living on Clifton Road. Son Enoch Henry was two years old, and Ralph Ernest was three months. Eliza Barton lived with them as a general servant.

      By 1881 Enoch was back working as a button tool maker in Bournebrook, Birmingham. Enoch and Emilia by then had three more children, Amelia, Albert Parker (my great grandfather) and Ada.

      Garnet Frederick Edwards was born in 1882. This is the first instance of the name Garnet in the family, and subsequently Garnet has been the middle name for the eldest son (my brother, father and grandfather all have Garnet as a middle name).

      Enoch was the licensed victualler at the Pack Horse Hotel in 1991 at Kings Norton. By this time, only daughters Amelia and Ada and son Garnet are living at home.

      Pack Horse Hotel

       

       

      Additional information from my fathers cousin, Paul Weaver:

      “Enoch refused to allow his son Albert Parker to go to King Edwards School in Birmingham, where he had been awarded a place. Instead, in October 1890 he made Albert Parker Edwards take an apprenticeship with a pawnboker in Tipton.
      Towards the end of the 19th century Enoch kept The Pack Horse in Alcester Road, Hollywood, where a twist was 1d an ounce, and beer was 2d a pint. The children had to get up early to get breakfast at 6 o’clock for the hay and straw men on their way to the Birmingham hay and straw market. Enoch is listed as a member of “The Kingswood & Pack Horse Association for the Prosecution of Offenders”, a kind of early Neighbourhood Watch, dated 25 October 1890.
      The Edwards family later moved to Redditch where they kept The Rifleman Inn at 35 Park Road. They must have left the Pack Horse by 1895 as another publican was in place by then.”

      Emelia his wife died in 1895 of consumption at the Rifleman Inn in Redditch, Worcestershire, and in 1897 Enoch married Florence Ethel Hedges in Aston. Enoch was 56 and Florence was just 21 years old.

      1897 Enoch Edwards

       

      The following year in 1898 their daughter Muriel Constance Freda Edwards was born in Deritend, Warwickshire.
      In 1901 Enoch, (Andrew on the census), publican, Florence and Muriel were living in Dudley. It was hard to find where he went after this.

      From Paul Weaver:

      “Family accounts have it that Enoch EDWARDS fell out with all his family, and at about the age of 60, he left all behind and emigrated to the U.S.A. Enoch was described as being an active man, and it is believed that he had another family when he settled in the U.S.A. Esmor STOKES has it that a postcard was received by the family from Enoch at Niagara Falls.

      On 11 June 1902 Harry Wright (the local postmaster responsible in those days for licensing) brought an Enoch EDWARDS to the Bedfordshire Petty Sessions in Biggleswade regarding “Hole in the Wall”, believed to refer to the now defunct “Hole in the Wall” public house at 76 Shortmead Street, Biggleswade with Enoch being granted “temporary authority”. On 9 July 1902 the transfer was granted. A year later in the 1903 edition of Kelly’s Directory of Bedfordshire, Hunts and Northamptonshire there is an Enoch EDWARDS running the Wheatsheaf Public House, Church Street, St. Neots, Huntingdonshire which is 14 miles south of Biggleswade.”

      It seems that Enoch and his new family moved away from the midlands in the early 1900s, but again the trail went cold.

      When I started doing the genealogy research, I joined a local facebook group for Redditch in Worcestershire. Enoch’s son Albert Parker Edwards (my great grandfather) spent most of his life there. I asked in the group about Enoch, and someone posted an illustrated advertisement for Enoch’s dog powders.  Enoch was a well known breeder/keeper of St Bernards and is cited in a book naming individuals key to the recovery/establishment of ‘mastiff’ size dog breeds.

       

      We had not known that Enoch was a breeder of champion St Bernard dogs!

      Once I knew about the St Bernard dogs and the names Mount Leo and Plinlimmon via the newspaper adverts, I did an internet search on Enoch Edwards in conjunction with these dogs.

      Enoch’s St Bernard dog “Mount Leo” was bred from the famous Plinlimmon, “the Emperor of Saint Bernards”. He was reported to have sent two puppies to Omaha and one of his stud dogs to America for a season, and in 1897 Enoch made the news for selling a St Bernard to someone in New York for £200. Plinlimmon, bred by Thomas Hall, was born in Liverpool, England on June 29, 1883. He won numerous dog shows throughout Europe in 1884, and in 1885, he was named Best Saint Bernard.

      In the Birmingham Mail on 14th June 1890:

      “Mr E Edwards, of Bournebrook, has been well to the fore with his dogs of late. He has gained nine honours during the past fortnight, including a first at the Pontypridd show with a St Bernard dog, The Speaker, a son of Plinlimmon.”

      In the Alcester Chronicle on Saturday 05 June 1897:

      Enoch St Bernards

      Enoch press releases

       

      It was discovered that Enoch, Florence and Muriel moved to Canada, not USA as the family had assumed. The 1911 census for Montreal St Jaqcues, Quebec, stated that Enoch, (Florence) Ethel, and (Muriel) Frida had emigrated in 1906. Enoch’s occupation was machinist in 1911. The census transcription is not very good. Edwards was transcribed as Edmand, but the dates of birth for all three are correct. Birthplace is correct ~ A for Anglitan (the census is in French) but race or tribe is also an A but the transcribers have put African black! Enoch by this time was 71 years old, his wife 33 and daughter 11.

      Additional information from Paul Weaver:

      “In 1906 he and his new family travelled to Canada with Enoch travelling first and Ethel and Frida joined him in Quebec on 25 June 1906 on board the ‘Canada’ from Liverpool.
      Their immigration record suggests that they were planning to travel to Winnipeg, but five years later in 1911, Enoch, Florence Ethel and Frida were still living in St James, Montreal. Enoch was employed as a machinist by Canadian Government Railways working 50 hours. It is the 1911 census record that confirms his birth as November 1840. It also states that Enoch could neither read nor write but managed to earn $500 in 1910 for activity other than his main profession, although this may be referring to his innkeeping business interests.
      By 1921 Florence and Muriel Frida are living in Langford, Neepawa, Manitoba with Peter FUCHS, an Ontarian farmer of German descent who Florence had married on 24 Jul 1913 implying that Enoch died sometime in 1911/12, although no record has been found.”

      The extra $500 in earnings was perhaps related to the St Bernard dogs.  Enoch signed his name on the register on his marriage to Emelia, and I think it’s very unlikely that he could neither read nor write, as stated above.

      However, it may not be Enoch’s wife Florence Ethel who married Peter Fuchs.  A Florence Emma Edwards married Peter Fuchs,  and on the 1921 census in Neepawa her daugther Muriel Elizabeth Edwards, born in 1902, lives with them.  Quite a coincidence, two Florence and Muriel Edwards in Neepawa at the time.  Muriel Elizabeth Edwards married and had two children but died at the age of 23 in 1925.  Her mother Florence was living with the widowed husband and the two children on the 1931 census in Neepawa.  As there was no other daughter on the 1911 census with Enoch, Florence and Muriel in Montreal, it must be a different Florence and daughter.  We don’t know, though, why Muriel Constance Freda married in Neepawa.

      Indeed, Florence was not a widow in 1913.  Enoch died in 1924 in Montreal, aged 84.  Neither Enoch, Florence or their daughter has been found yet on the 1921 census. The search is not easy, as Enoch sometimes used the name Andrew, Florence used her middle name Ethel, and daughter Muriel used Freda, Valerie (the name she added when she married in Neepawa), and died as Marcheta.   The only name she NEVER used was Constance!

      A Canadian genealogist living in Montreal phoned the cemetery where Enoch was buried. She said “Enoch Edwards who died on Feb 27 1924  is not buried in the Mount Royal cemetery, he was only cremated there on March 4, 1924. There are no burial records but he died of an abcess and his body was sent to the cemetery for cremation from the Royal Victoria Hospital.”

       

      1924 Obituary for Enoch Edwards:

      Cimetière Mont-Royal Outremont, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada

      The Montreal Star 29 Feb 1924, Fri · Page 31

      1924 death Enoch Edwards

       

      Muriel Constance Freda Valerie Edwards married Arthur Frederick Morris on 24 Oct 1925 in Neepawa, Manitoba. (She appears to have added the name Valerie when she married.)

      Unexpectedly a death certificate appeared for Muriel via the hints on the ancestry website. Her name was “Marcheta Morris” on this document, however it also states that she was the widow of Arthur Frederick Morris and daughter of Andrew E Edwards and Florence Ethel Hedges. She died suddenly in June 1948 in Flos, Simcoe, Ontario of a coronary thrombosis, where she was living as a housekeeper.

      Marcheta Morris

      #7255
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        The First Wife of John Edwards

        1794-1844

        John was a widower when he married Sarah Reynolds from Kinlet. Both my fathers cousin and I had come to a dead end in the Edwards genealogy research as there were a number of possible births of a John Edwards in Birmingham at the time, and a number of possible first wives for a John Edwards at the time.

        John Edwards was a millwright on the 1841 census, the only census he appeared on as he died in 1844, and 1841 was the first census. His birth is recorded as 1800, however on the 1841 census the ages were rounded up or down five years. He was an engineer on some of the marriage records of his children with Sarah, and on his death certificate, engineer and millwright, aged 49. The age of 49 at his death from tuberculosis in 1844 is likely to be more accurate than the census (Sarah his wife was present at his death), making a birth date of 1794 or 1795.

        John married Sarah Reynolds in January 1827 in Birmingham, and I am descended from this marriage. Any children of John’s first marriage would no doubt have been living with John and Sarah, but had probably left home by the time of the 1841 census.

        I found an Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards of Constitution Hill, died in August 1826 at the age of 23, as stated on the parish death register. It would be logical for a young widower with small children to marry again quickly. If this was John’s first wife, the marriage to Sarah six months later in January 1827 makes sense. Therefore, John’s first wife, I assumed, was Elizabeth, born in 1803.

        Death of Elizabeth Edwards, 23 years old.  St Mary, Birmingham, 15 Aug 1826:

        Death Eliz Edwards

         

        There were two baptisms recorded for parents John and Elizabeth Edwards, Constitution Hill, and John’s occupation was an engineer on both baptisms.
        They were both daughters: Sarah Ann in 1822 and Elizabeth in 1824.

        Sarah Ann Edwards: St Philip, Birmingham. Born 15 March 1822, baptised 7 September 1822:

        1822 Sarah Ann Edwards

        Elizabeth Edwards: St Philip, Birmingham. Born 6 February 1824, baptised 25 February 1824:

        1824 Elizabeth Edwards

         

        With John’s occupation as engineer stated, it looked increasingly likely that I’d found John’s first wife and children of that marriage.

        Then I found a marriage of Elizabeth Beach to John Edwards in 1819, and subsequently found an Elizabeth Beach baptised in 1803. This appeared to be the right first wife for John, until an Elizabeth Slater turned up, with a marriage to a John Edwards in 1820. An Elizabeth Slater was baptised in 1803. Either Elizabeth Beach or Elizabeth Slater could have been the first wife of John Edwards. As John’s first wife Elizabeth is not related to us, it’s not necessary to go further back, and in a sense, doesn’t really matter which one it was.

        But the Slater name caught my eye.

        But first, the name Sarah Ann.

        Of the possible baptisms for John Edwards, the most likely seemed to be in 1794, parents John and Sarah. John and Sarah had two infant daughters die just prior to John’s birth. The first was Sarah, the second Sarah Ann. Perhaps this was why John named his daughter Sarah Ann? In the absence of any other significant clues, I decided to assume these were the correct parents. I found and read half a dozen wills of any John Edwards I could find within the likely time period of John’s fathers death.

        One of them was dated 1803. In this will, John mentions that his children are not yet of age. (John would have been nine years old.)
        He leaves his plating business and some properties to his eldest son Thomas Davis Edwards, (just shy of 21 years old at the time of his fathers death in 1803) with the business to be run jointly with his widow, Sarah. He mentions his son John, and leaves several properties to him, when he comes of age. He also leaves various properties to his daughters Elizabeth and Mary, ditto. The baptisms for all of these children, including the infant deaths of Sarah and Sarah Ann have been found. All but Mary’s were in the same parish. (I found one for Mary in Sutton Coldfield, which was apparently correct, as a later census also recorded her birth as Sutton Coldfield. She was living with family on that census, so it would appear to be correct that for whatever reason, their daughter Mary was born in Sutton Coldfield)

        Mary married John Slater in 1813. The witnesses were Elizabeth Whitehouse and John Edwards, her sister and brother. Elizabeth married William Nicklin Whitehouse in 1805 and one of the witnesses was Mary Edwards.
        Mary’s husband John Slater died in 1821. They had no children. Mary never remarried, and lived with her bachelor brother Thomas Davis Edwards in West Bromwich. Thomas never married, and on the census he was either a proprietor of houses, or “sinecura” (earning a living without working).

        With Mary marrying a Slater, does this indicate that her brother John’s first wife was Elizabeth Slater rather than Elizabeth Beach? It is a compelling possibility, but does not constitute proof.

        Not only that, there is no absolute proof that the John Edwards who died in 1803 was our ancestor John Edwards father.

         

        If we can’t be sure which Elizabeth married John Edwards, we can be reasonably sure who their daughters married. On both of the marriage records the father is recorded as John Edwards, engineer.

        Sarah Ann married Mark Augustin Rawlins in 1850. Mark was a sword hilt maker at the time of the marriage, his father Mark a needle manufacturer. One of the witnesses was Elizabeth Edwards, who signed with her mark. Sarah Ann and Mark however were both able to sign their own names on the register.

        Sarah Ann Edwards and Mark Augustin Rawlins marriage 14 October 1850 St Peter and St Paul, Aston, Birmingham:

        1850 Sarah Ann Edwards

        Elizabeth married Nathaniel Twigg in 1851. (She was living with her sister Sarah Ann and Mark Rawlins on the 1851 census, I assume the census was taken before her marriage to Nathaniel on the 27th April 1851.) Nathaniel was a stationer (later on the census a bookseller), his father Samuel a brass founder. Elizabeth signed with her mark, apparently unable to write, and a witness was Ann Edwards. Although Sarah Ann, Elizabeth’s sister, would have been Sarah Ann Rawlins at the time, having married the previous year, she was known as Ann on later censuses. The signature of Ann Edwards looks remarkably similar to Sarah Ann Edwards signature on her own wedding. Perhaps she couldn’t write but had learned how to write her signature for her wedding?

        Elizabeth Edwards and Nathaniel Twigg marriage 27 April 1851, St Peter and St Paul, Aston, Birmingham:

        1851 Elizabeth Edwards

        Sarah Ann and Mark Rawlins had one daughter and four sons between 1852 and 1859. One of the sons, Edward Rawlins 1857-1931, was a school master and later master of an orphanage.

        On the 1881 census Edward was a bookseller, in 1891 a stationer, 1901 schoolmaster and his wife Edith was matron, and in 1911 he and Edith were master and matron of St Philip’s Catholic Orphanage on Oliver Road in Birmingham. Edward and Edith did not have any children.

        Edward Rawlins, 1911:

        Edward Rawlins 1911

         

        Elizabeth and Nathaniel Twigg appear to have had only one son, Arthur Twigg 1862-1943. Arthur was a photographer at 291 Bloomsbury Street, Birmingham. Arthur married Harriet Moseley from Burton on Trent, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth Ann 1897-1954, and Edith 1898-1983. I found a photograph of Edith on her wedding day, with her father Arthur in the picture. Arthur and Harriet also had a son Samuel Arthur, who lived for less than a month, born in 1904. Arthur had mistakenly put this son on the 1911 census stating “less than one month”, but the birth and death of Samuel Arthur Twigg were registered in the same quarter of 1904, and none were found registered for 1911.

        Edith Twigg and Leslie A Hancock on their Wedding Day 1925. Arthur Twigg behind the bride. Maybe Elizabeth Ann Twigg seated on the right: (photo found on the ancestry website)

        Edith Twigg wedding 1925

         

        Photographs by Arthur Twigg, 291 Bloomsbury Street, Birmingham:

        Arthur Twigg 1

        Arhtur Twigg photo

        #6291
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Jane Eaton

          The Nottingham Girl

           

          Jane Eaton 1809-1879

          Francis Purdy, the Beggarlea Bulldog and Methodist Minister, married Jane Eaton in 1837 in Nottingham. Jane was his second wife.

          Jane Eaton, photo says “Grandma Purdy” on the back:

          Jane Eaton

           

          Jane is described as a “Nottingham girl” in a book excerpt sent to me by Jim Giles, a relation who shares the same 3x great grandparents, Francis and Jane Purdy.

          Jane Eaton Nottingham

          Jane Eaton 2

           

          Elizabeth, Francis Purdy’s first wife, died suddenly at chapel in 1836, leaving nine children.

          On Christmas day the following year Francis married Jane Eaton at St Peters church in Nottingham. Jane married a Methodist Minister, and didn’t realize she married the bare knuckle fighter she’d seen when she was fourteen until he undressed and she saw his scars.

          jane eaton 3

           

          William Eaton 1767-1851

          On the marriage certificate Jane’s father was William Eaton, occupation gardener. Francis’s father was William Purdy, engineer.

          On the 1841 census living in Sollory’s Yard, Nottingham St Mary, William Eaton was a 70 year old gardener. It doesn’t say which county he was born in but indicates that it was not Nottinghamshire. Living with him were Mary Eaton, milliner, age 35, Mary Eaton, milliner, 15, and Elizabeth Rhodes age 35, a sempstress (another word for seamstress). The three women were born in Nottinghamshire.

          But who was Elizabeth Rhodes?

          Elizabeth Eaton was Jane’s older sister, born in 1797 in Nottingham. She married William Rhodes, a private in the 5th Dragoon Guards, in Leeds in October 1815.

          I looked for Elizabeth Rhodes on the 1851 census, which stated that she was a widow. I was also trying to determine which William Eaton death was the right one, and found William Eaton was still living with Elizabeth in 1851 at Pilcher Gate in Nottingham, but his name had been entered backwards: Eaton William. I would not have found him on the 1851 census had I searched for Eaton as a last name.

          Pilcher Gate gets its strange name from pilchers or fur dealers and was once a very narrow thoroughfare. At the lower end stood a pub called The Windmill – frequented by the notorious robber and murderer Charlie Peace.

          This was a lucky find indeed, because William’s place of birth was listed as Grantham, Lincolnshire. There were a couple of other William Eaton’s born at the same time, both near to Nottingham. It was tricky to work out which was the right one, but as it turned out, neither of them were.

          William Eaton Grantham

           

          Now we had Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire border straddlers, so the search moved to the Lincolnshire records.
          But first, what of the two Mary Eatons living with William?

          William and his wife Mary had a daughter Mary in 1799 who died in 1801, and another daughter Mary Ann born in 1803. (It was common to name children after a previous infant who had died.)  It seems that Mary Ann didn’t marry but had a daughter Mary Eaton born in 1822.

          William and his wife Mary also had a son Richard Eaton born in 1801 in Nottingham.

          Who was William Eaton’s wife Mary?

          There are two possibilities: Mary Cresswell and a marriage in Nottingham in 1797, or Mary Dewey and a marriage at Grantham in 1795. If it’s Mary Cresswell, the first child Elizabeth would have been born just four or five months after the wedding. (This was far from unusual). However, no births in Grantham, or in Nottingham, were recorded for William and Mary in between 1795 and 1797.

          We don’t know why William moved from Grantham to Nottingham or when he moved there. According to Dearden’s 1834 Nottingham directory, William Eaton was a “Gardener and Seedsman”.

          gardener and seedsan William Eaton

          There was another William Eaton selling turnip seeds in the same part of Nottingham. At first I thought it must be the same William, but apparently not, as that William Eaton is recorded as a victualler, born in Ruddington. The turnip seeds were advertised in 1847 as being obtainable from William Eaton at the Reindeer Inn, Wheeler Gate. Perhaps he was related.

          William lived in the Lace Market part of Nottingham.   I wondered where a gardener would be working in that part of the city.  According to CreativeQuarter website, “in addition to the trades and housing (sometimes under the same roof), there were a number of splendid mansions being built with extensive gardens and orchards. Sadly, these no longer exist as they were gradually demolished to make way for commerce…..The area around St Mary’s continued to develop as an elegant residential district during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with buildings … being built for nobility and rich merchants.”

          William Eaton died in Nottingham in September 1851, thankfully after the census was taken recording his place of birth.

          #6264
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            From Tanganyika with Love

            continued  ~ part 5

            With thanks to Mike Rushby.

            Chunya 16th December 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Since last I wrote I have visited Chunya and met several of the diggers wives.
            On the whole I have been greatly disappointed because there is nothing very colourful
            about either township or women. I suppose I was really expecting something more like
            the goldrush towns and women I have so often seen on the cinema screen.
            Chunya consists of just the usual sun-dried brick Indian shops though there are
            one or two double storied buildings. Most of the life in the place centres on the
            Goldfields Hotel but we did not call there. From the store opposite I could hear sounds
            of revelry though it was very early in the afternoon. I saw only one sight which was quite
            new to me, some elegantly dressed African women, with high heels and lipsticked
            mouths teetered by on their way to the silk store. “Native Tarts,” said George in answer
            to my enquiry.

            Several women have called on me and when I say ‘called’ I mean called. I have
            grown so used to going without stockings and wearing home made dresses that it was
            quite a shock to me to entertain these ladies dressed to the nines in smart frocks, silk
            stockings and high heeled shoes, handbags, makeup and whatnot. I feel like some
            female Rip van Winkle. Most of the women have a smart line in conversation and their
            talk and views on life would make your nice straight hair curl Mummy. They make me feel
            very unsophisticated and dowdy but George says he has a weakness for such types
            and I am to stay exactly as I am. I still do not use any makeup. George says ‘It’s all right
            for them. They need it poor things, you don’t.” Which, though flattering, is hardly true.
            I prefer the men visitors, though they also are quite unlike what I had expected
            diggers to be. Those whom George brings home are all well educated and well
            groomed and I enjoy listening to their discussion of the world situation, sport and books.
            They are extremely polite to me and gentle with the children though I believe that after a
            few drinks at the pub tempers often run high. There were great arguments on the night
            following the abdication of Edward VIII. Not that the diggers were particularly attached to
            him as a person, but these men are all great individualists and believe in freedom of
            choice. George, rather to my surprise, strongly supported Edward. I did not.

            Many of the diggers have wireless sets and so we keep up to date with the
            news. I seldom leave camp. I have my hands full with the three children during the day
            and, even though Janey is a reliable ayah, I would not care to leave the children at night
            in these grass roofed huts. Having experienced that fire on the farm, I know just how
            unlikely it would be that the children would be rescued in time in case of fire. The other
            women on the diggings think I’m crazy. They leave their children almost entirely to ayahs
            and I must confess that the children I have seen look very well and happy. The thing is
            that I simply would not enjoy parties at the hotel or club, miles away from the children
            and I much prefer to stay at home with a book.

            I love hearing all about the parties from George who likes an occasional ‘boose
            up’ with the boys and is terribly popular with everyone – not only the British but with the
            Germans, Scandinavians and even the Afrikaans types. One Afrikaans woman said “Jou
            man is ‘n man, al is hy ‘n Engelsman.” Another more sophisticated woman said, “George
            is a handsome devil. Aren’t you scared to let him run around on his own?” – but I’m not. I
            usually wait up for George with sandwiches and something hot to drink and that way I
            get all the news red hot.

            There is very little gold coming in. The rains have just started and digging is
            temporarily at a standstill. It is too wet for dry blowing and not yet enough water for
            panning and sluicing. As this camp is some considerable distance from the claims, all I see of the process is the weighing of the daily taking of gold dust and tiny nuggets.
            Unless our luck changes I do not think we will stay on here after John Molteno returns.
            George does not care for the life and prefers a more constructive occupation.
            Ann and young George still search optimistically for gold. We were all saddened
            last week by the death of Fanny, our bull terrier. She went down to the shopping centre
            with us and we were standing on the verandah of a store when a lorry passed with its
            canvas cover flapping. This excited Fanny who rushed out into the street and the back
            wheel of the lorry passed right over her, killing her instantly. Ann was very shocked so I
            soothed her by telling her that Fanny had gone to Heaven. When I went to bed that
            night I found Ann still awake and she asked anxiously, “Mummy, do you think God
            remembered to give Fanny her bone tonight?”

            Much love to all,
            Eleanor.

            Itewe, Chunya 23rd December 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Your Christmas parcel arrived this morning. Thank you very much for all the
            clothing for all of us and for the lovely toys for the children. George means to go hunting
            for a young buffalo this afternoon so that we will have some fresh beef for Christmas for
            ourselves and our boys and enough for friends too.

            I had a fright this morning. Ann and Georgie were, as usual, searching for gold
            whilst I sat sewing in the living room with Kate toddling around. She wandered through
            the curtained doorway into the store and I heard her playing with the paraffin pump. At
            first it did not bother me because I knew the tin was empty but after ten minutes or so I
            became irritated by the noise and went to stop her. Imagine my horror when I drew the
            curtain aside and saw my fat little toddler fiddling happily with the pump whilst, curled up
            behind the tin and clearly visible to me lay the largest puffadder I have ever seen.
            Luckily I acted instinctively and scooped Kate up from behind and darted back into the
            living room without disturbing the snake. The houseboy and cook rushed in with sticks
            and killed the snake and then turned the whole storeroom upside down to make sure
            there were no more.

            I have met some more picturesque characters since I last wrote. One is a man
            called Bishop whom George has known for many years having first met him in the
            Congo. I believe he was originally a sailor but for many years he has wandered around
            Central Africa trying his hand at trading, prospecting, a bit of elephant hunting and ivory
            poaching. He is now keeping himself by doing ‘Sign Writing”. Bish is a gentle and
            dignified personality. When we visited his camp he carefully dusted a seat for me and
            called me ‘Marm’, quite ye olde world. The only thing is he did spit.

            Another spitter is the Frenchman in a neighbouring camp. He is in bed with bad
            rheumatism and George has been going across twice a day to help him and cheer him
            up. Once when George was out on the claim I went across to the Frenchman’s camp in
            response to an SOS, but I think he was just lonely. He showed me snapshots of his
            two daughters, lovely girls and extremely smart, and he chatted away telling me his life
            history. He punctuated his remarks by spitting to right and left of the bed, everywhere in
            fact, except actually at me.

            George took me and the children to visit a couple called Bert and Hilda Farham.
            They have a small gold reef which is worked by a very ‘Heath Robinson’ type of
            machinery designed and erected by Bert who is reputed to be a clever engineer though
            eccentric. He is rather a handsome man who always looks very spruce and neat and
            wears a Captain Kettle beard. Hilda is from Johannesburg and quite a character. She
            has a most generous figure and literally masses of beetroot red hair, but she also has a
            warm deep voice and a most generous disposition. The Farhams have built
            themselves a more permanent camp than most. They have a brick cottage with proper
            doors and windows and have made it attractive with furniture contrived from petrol
            boxes. They have no children but Hilda lavishes a great deal of affection on a pet
            monkey. Sometimes they do quite well out of their gold and then they have a terrific
            celebration at the Club or Pub and Hilda has an orgy of shopping. At other times they
            are completely broke but Hilda takes disasters as well as triumphs all in her stride. She
            says, “My dear, when we’re broke we just live on tea and cigarettes.”

            I have met a young woman whom I would like as a friend. She has a dear little
            baby, but unfortunately she has a very wet husband who is also a dreadful bore. I can’t
            imagine George taking me to their camp very often. When they came to visit us George
            just sat and smoked and said,”Oh really?” to any remark this man made until I felt quite
            hysterical. George looks very young and fit and the children are lively and well too. I ,
            however, am definitely showing signs of wear and tear though George says,
            “Nonsense, to me you look the same as you always did.” This I may say, I do not
            regard as a compliment to the young Eleanor.

            Anyway, even though our future looks somewhat unsettled, we are all together
            and very happy.

            With love,
            Eleanor.

            Itewe, Chunya 30th December 1936

            Dearest Family,

            We had a very cheery Christmas. The children loved the toys and are so proud
            of their new clothes. They wore them when we went to Christmas lunch to the
            Cresswell-Georges. The C-Gs have been doing pretty well lately and they have a
            comfortable brick house and a large wireless set. The living room was gaily decorated
            with bought garlands and streamers and balloons. We had an excellent lunch cooked by
            our ex cook Abel who now works for the Cresswell-Georges. We had turkey with
            trimmings and plum pudding followed by nuts and raisons and chocolates and sweets
            galore. There was also a large variety of drinks including champagne!

            There were presents for all of us and, in addition, Georgie and Ann each got a
            large tin of chocolates. Kate was much admired. She was a picture in her new party frock
            with her bright hair and rosy cheeks. There were other guests beside ourselves and
            they were already there having drinks when we arrived. Someone said “What a lovely
            child!” “Yes” said George with pride, “She’s a Marie Stopes baby.” “Truby King!” said I
            quickly and firmly, but too late to stop the roar of laughter.

            Our children played amicably with the C-G’s three, but young George was
            unusually quiet and surprised me by bringing me his unopened tin of chocolates to keep
            for him. Normally he is a glutton for sweets. I might have guessed he was sickening for
            something. That night he vomited and had diarrhoea and has had an upset tummy and a
            slight temperature ever since.

            Janey is also ill. She says she has malaria and has taken to her bed. I am dosing
            her with quinine and hope she will soon be better as I badly need her help. Not only is
            young George off his food and peevish but Kate has a cold and Ann sore eyes and
            they all want love and attention. To complicate things it has been raining heavily and I
            must entertain the children indoors.

            Eleanor.

            Itewe, Chunya 19th January 1937

            Dearest Family,

            So sorry I have not written before but we have been in the wars and I have had neither
            the time nor the heart to write. However the worst is now over. Young George and
            Janey are both recovering from Typhoid Fever. The doctor had Janey moved to the
            native hospital at Chunya but I nursed young George here in the camp.

            As I told you young George’s tummy trouble started on Christmas day. At first I
            thought it was only a protracted bilious attack due to eating too much unaccustomed rich
            food and treated him accordingly but when his temperature persisted I thought that the
            trouble might be malaria and kept him in bed and increased the daily dose of quinine.
            He ate less and less as the days passed and on New Years Day he seemed very
            weak and his stomach tender to the touch.

            George fetched the doctor who examined small George and said he had a very
            large liver due no doubt to malaria. He gave the child injections of emertine and quinine
            and told me to give young George frequent and copious drinks of water and bi-carb of
            soda. This was more easily said than done. Young George refused to drink this mixture
            and vomited up the lime juice and water the doctor had suggested as an alternative.
            The doctor called every day and gave George further injections and advised me
            to give him frequent sips of water from a spoon. After three days the child was very
            weak and weepy but Dr Spiers still thought he had malaria. During those anxious days I
            also worried about Janey who appeared to be getting worse rather that better and on
            January the 3rd I asked the doctor to look at her. The next thing I knew, the doctor had
            put Janey in his car and driven her off to hospital. When he called next morning he
            looked very grave and said he wished to talk to my husband. I said that George was out
            on the claim but if what he wished to say concerned young George’s condition he might
            just as well tell me.

            With a good deal of reluctance Dr Spiers then told me that Janey showed all the
            symptoms of Typhoid Fever and that he was very much afraid that young George had
            contracted it from her. He added that George should be taken to the Mbeya Hospital
            where he could have the professional nursing so necessary in typhoid cases. I said “Oh
            no,I’d never allow that. The child had never been away from his family before and it
            would frighten him to death to be sick and alone amongst strangers.” Also I was sure that
            the fifty mile drive over the mountains in his weak condition would harm him more than
            my amateur nursing would. The doctor returned to the camp that afternoon to urge
            George to send our son to hospital but George staunchly supported my argument that
            young George would stand a much better chance of recovery if we nursed him at home.
            I must say Dr Spiers took our refusal very well and gave young George every attention
            coming twice a day to see him.

            For some days the child was very ill. He could not keep down any food or liquid
            in any quantity so all day long, and when he woke at night, I gave him a few drops of
            water at a time from a teaspoon. His only nourishment came from sucking Macintosh’s
            toffees. Young George sweated copiously especially at night when it was difficult to
            change his clothes and sponge him in the draughty room with the rain teeming down
            outside. I think I told you that the bedroom is a sort of shed with only openings in the wall
            for windows and doors, and with one wall built only a couple of feet high leaving a six
            foot gap for air and light. The roof leaked and the damp air blew in but somehow young
            George pulled through.

            Only when he was really on the mend did the doctor tell us that whilst he had
            been attending George, he had also been called in to attend to another little boy of the same age who also had typhoid. He had been called in too late and the other little boy,
            an only child, had died. Young George, thank God, is convalescent now, though still on a
            milk diet. He is cheerful enough when he has company but very peevish when left
            alone. Poor little lad, he is all hair, eyes, and teeth, or as Ann says” Georgie is all ribs ribs
            now-a-days Mummy.” He shares my room, Ann and Kate are together in the little room.
            Anyway the doctor says he should be up and around in about a week or ten days time.
            We were all inoculated against typhoid on the day the doctor made the diagnosis
            so it is unlikely that any of us will develop it. Dr Spiers was most impressed by Ann’s
            unconcern when she was inoculated. She looks gentle and timid but has always been
            very brave. Funny thing when young George was very ill he used to wail if I left the
            room, but now that he is convalescent he greatly prefers his dad’s company. So now I
            have been able to take the girls for walks in the late afternoons whilst big George
            entertains small George. This he does with the minimum of effort, either he gets out
            cartons of ammunition with which young George builds endless forts, or else he just sits
            beside the bed and cleans one of his guns whilst small George watches with absorbed
            attention.

            The Doctor tells us that Janey is also now convalescent. He says that exhusband
            Abel has been most attentive and appeared daily at the hospital with a tray of
            food that made his, the doctor’s, mouth water. All I dare say, pinched from Mrs
            Cresswell-George.

            I’ll write again soon. Lots of love to all,
            Eleanor.

            Chunya 29th January 1937

            Dearest Family,

            Georgie is up and about but still tires very easily. At first his legs were so weak
            that George used to carry him around on his shoulders. The doctor says that what the
            child really needs is a long holiday out of the Tropics so that Mrs Thomas’ offer, to pay all
            our fares to Cape Town as well as lending us her seaside cottage for a month, came as
            a Godsend. Luckily my passport is in order. When George was in Mbeya he booked
            seats for the children and me on the first available plane. We will fly to Broken Hill and go
            on to Cape Town from there by train.

            Ann and George are wildly thrilled at the idea of flying but I am not. I remember
            only too well how airsick I was on the old Hannibal when I flew home with the baby Ann.
            I am longing to see you all and it will be heaven to give the children their first seaside
            holiday.

            I mean to return with Kate after three months but, if you will have him, I shall leave
            George behind with you for a year. You said you would all be delighted to have Ann so
            I do hope you will also be happy to have young George. Together they are no trouble
            at all. They amuse themselves and are very independent and loveable.
            George and I have discussed the matter taking into consideration the letters from
            you and George’s Mother on the subject. If you keep Ann and George for a year, my
            mother-in-law will go to Cape Town next year and fetch them. They will live in England
            with her until they are fit enough to return to the Tropics. After the children and I have left
            on this holiday, George will be able to move around and look for a job that will pay
            sufficiently to enable us to go to England in a few years time to fetch our children home.
            We both feel very sad at the prospect of this parting but the children’s health
            comes before any other consideration. I hope Kate will stand up better to the Tropics.
            She is plump and rosy and could not look more bonny if she lived in a temperate
            climate.

            We should be with you in three weeks time!

            Very much love,
            Eleanor.

            Broken Hill, N Rhodesia 11th February 1937

            Dearest Family,

            Well here we are safe and sound at the Great Northern Hotel, Broken Hill, all
            ready to board the South bound train tonight.

            We were still on the diggings on Ann’s birthday, February 8th, when George had
            a letter from Mbeya to say that our seats were booked on the plane leaving Mbeya on
            the 10th! What a rush we had packing up. Ann was in bed with malaria so we just
            bundled her up in blankets and set out in John Molteno’s car for the farm. We arrived that
            night and spent the next day on the farm sorting things out. Ann and George wanted to
            take so many of their treasures and it was difficult for them to make a small selection. In
            the end young George’s most treasured possession, his sturdy little boots, were left
            behind.

            Before leaving home on the morning of the tenth I took some snaps of Ann and
            young George in the garden and one of them with their father. He looked so sad. After
            putting us on the plane, George planned to go to the fishing camp for a day or two
            before returning to the empty house on the farm.

            John Molteno returned from the Cape by plane just before we took off, so he
            will take over the running of his claims once more. I told John that I dreaded the plane trip
            on account of air sickness so he gave me two pills which I took then and there. Oh dear!
            How I wished later that I had not done so. We had an extremely bumpy trip and
            everyone on the plane was sick except for small George who loved every moment.
            Poor Ann had a dreadful time but coped very well and never complained. I did not
            actually puke until shortly before we landed at Broken Hill but felt dreadfully ill all the way.
            Kate remained rosy and cheerful almost to the end. She sat on my lap throughout the
            trip because, being under age, she travelled as baggage and was not entitled to a seat.
            Shortly before we reached Broken Hill a smartly dressed youngish man came up
            to me and said, “You look so poorly, please let me take the baby, I have children of my
            own and know how to handle them.” Kate made no protest and off they went to the
            back of the plane whilst I tried to relax and concentrate on not getting sick. However,
            within five minutes the man was back. Kate had been thoroughly sick all over his collar
            and jacket.

            I took Kate back on my lap and then was violently sick myself, so much so that
            when we touched down at Broken Hill I was unable to speak to the Immigration Officer.
            He was so kind. He sat beside me until I got my diaphragm under control and then
            drove me up to the hotel in his own car.

            We soon recovered of course and ate a hearty dinner. This morning after
            breakfast I sallied out to look for a Bank where I could exchange some money into
            Rhodesian and South African currency and for the Post Office so that I could telegraph
            to George and to you. What a picnic that trip was! It was a terribly hot day and there was
            no shade. By the time we had done our chores, the children were hot, and cross, and
            tired and so indeed was I. As I had no push chair for Kate I had to carry her and she is
            pretty heavy for eighteen months. George, who is still not strong, clung to my free arm
            whilst Ann complained bitterly that no one was helping her.

            Eventually Ann simply sat down on the pavement and declared that she could
            not go another step, whereupon George of course decided that he also had reached his
            limit and sat down too. Neither pleading no threats would move them so I had to resort
            to bribery and had to promise that when we reached the hotel they could have cool
            drinks and ice-cream. This promise got the children moving once more but I am determined that nothing will induce me to stir again until the taxi arrives to take us to the
            station.

            This letter will go by air and will reach you before we do. How I am longing for
            journeys end.

            With love to you all,
            Eleanor.

            Leaving home 10th February 1937,  George Gilman Rushby with Ann and Georgie (Mike) Rushby:

            George Rushby Ann and Georgie

            NOTE
            We had a very warm welcome to the family home at Plumstead Cape Town.
            After ten days with my family we moved to Hout Bay where Mrs Thomas lent us her
            delightful seaside cottage. She also provided us with two excellent maids so I had
            nothing to do but rest and play on the beach with the children.

            After a month at the sea George had fully recovered his health though not his
            former gay spirits. After another six months with my parents I set off for home with Kate,
            leaving Ann and George in my parent’s home under the care of my elder sister,
            Marjorie.

            One or two incidents during that visit remain clearly in my memory. Our children
            had never met elderly people and were astonished at the manifestations of age. One
            morning an elderly lady came around to collect church dues. She was thin and stooped
            and Ann surveyed her with awe. She turned to me with a puzzled expression and
            asked in her clear voice, “Mummy, why has that old lady got a moustache – oh and a
            beard?’ The old lady in question was very annoyed indeed and said, “What a rude little
            girl.” Ann could not understand this, she said, “But Mummy, I only said she had a
            moustache and a beard and she has.” So I explained as best I could that when people
            have defects of this kind they are hurt if anyone mentions them.

            A few days later a strange young woman came to tea. I had been told that she
            had a most disfiguring birthmark on her cheek and warned Ann that she must not
            comment on it. Alas! with the kindest intentions Ann once again caused me acute
            embarrassment. The young woman was hardly seated when Ann went up to her and
            gently patted the disfiguring mark saying sweetly, “Oh, I do like this horrible mark on your
            face.”

            I remember also the afternoon when Kate and George were christened. My
            mother had given George a white silk shirt for the occasion and he wore it with intense
            pride. Kate was baptised first without incident except that she was lost in admiration of a
            gold bracelet given her that day by her Godmother and exclaimed happily, “My
            bangle, look my bangle,” throughout the ceremony. When George’s turn came the
            clergyman held his head over the font and poured water on George’s forehead. Some
            splashed on his shirt and George protested angrily, “Mum, he has wet my shirt!” over
            and over again whilst I led him hurriedly outside.

            My last memory of all is at the railway station. The time had come for Kate and
            me to get into our compartment. My sisters stood on the platform with Ann and George.
            Ann was resigned to our going, George was not so, at the last moment Sylvia, my
            younger sister, took him off to see the engine. The whistle blew and I said good-bye to
            my gallant little Ann. “Mummy”, she said urgently to me, “Don’t forget to wave to
            George.”

            And so I waved good-bye to my children, never dreaming that a war would
            intervene and it would be eight long years before I saw them again.

            #6261
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              From Tanganyika with Love

              continued

              With thanks to Mike Rushby.

              Mchewe Estate. 11th July 1931.

              Dearest Family,

              You say that you would like to know more about our neighbours. Well there is
              not much to tell. Kath Wood is very good about coming over to see me. I admire her
              very much because she is so capable as well as being attractive. She speaks very
              fluent Ki-Swahili and I envy her the way she can carry on a long conversation with the
              natives. I am very slow in learning the language possibly because Lamek and the
              houseboy both speak basic English.

              I have very little to do with the Africans apart from the house servants, but I do
              run a sort of clinic for the wives and children of our employees. The children suffer chiefly
              from sore eyes and worms, and the older ones often have bad ulcers on their legs. All
              farmers keep a stock of drugs and bandages.

              George also does a bit of surgery and last month sewed up the sole of the foot
              of a boy who had trodden on the blade of a panga, a sort of sword the Africans use for
              hacking down bush. He made an excellent job of it. George tells me that the Africans
              have wonderful powers of recuperation. Once in his bachelor days, one of his men was
              disembowelled by an elephant. George washed his “guts” in a weak solution of
              pot.permang, put them back in the cavity and sewed up the torn flesh and he
              recovered.

              But to get back to the neighbours. We see less of Hicky Wood than of Kath.
              Hicky can be charming but is often moody as I believe Irishmen often are.
              Major Jones is now at home on his shamba, which he leaves from time to time
              for temporary jobs on the district roads. He walks across fairly regularly and we are
              always glad to see him for he is a great bearer of news. In this part of Africa there is no
              knocking or ringing of doorbells. Front doors are always left open and visitors always
              welcome. When a visitor approaches a house he shouts “Hodi”, and the owner of the
              house yells “Karibu”, which I believe means “Come near” or approach, and tea is
              produced in a matter of minutes no matter what hour of the day it is.
              The road that passes all our farms is the only road to the Gold Diggings and
              diggers often drop in on the Woods and Major Jones and bring news of the Goldfields.
              This news is sometimes about gold but quite often about whose wife is living with
              whom. This is a great country for gossip.

              Major Jones now has his brother Llewyllen living with him. I drove across with
              George to be introduced to him. Llewyllen’s health is poor and he looks much older than
              his years and very like the portrait of Trader Horn. He has the same emaciated features,
              burning eyes and long beard. He is proud of his Welsh tenor voice and often bursts into
              song.

              Both brothers are excellent conversationalists and George enjoys walking over
              sometimes on a Sunday for a bit of masculine company. The other day when George
              walked across to visit the Joneses, he found both brothers in the shamba and Llew in a
              great rage. They had been stooping to inspect a water furrow when Llew backed into a
              hornets nest. One furious hornet stung him on the seat and another on the back of his
              neck. Llew leapt forward and somehow his false teeth shot out into the furrow and were
              carried along by the water. When George arrived Llew had retrieved his teeth but
              George swears that, in the commotion, the heavy leather leggings, which Llew always
              wears, had swivelled around on his thin legs and were calves to the front.
              George has heard that Major Jones is to sell pert of his land to his Swedish brother-in-law, Max Coster, so we will soon have another couple in the neighbourhood.

              I’ve had a bit of a pantomime here on the farm. On the day we went to Tukuyu,
              all our washing was stolen from the clothes line and also our new charcoal iron. George
              reported the matter to the police and they sent out a plain clothes policeman. He wears
              the long white Arab gown called a Kanzu much in vogue here amongst the African elite
              but, alas for secrecy, huge black police boots protrude from beneath the Kanzu and, to
              add to this revealing clue, the askari springs to attention and salutes each time I pass by.
              Not much hope of finding out the identity of the thief I fear.

              George’s furrow was entirely successful and we now have water running behind
              the kitchen. Our drinking water we get from a lovely little spring on the farm. We boil and
              filter it for safety’s sake. I don’t think that is necessary. The furrow water is used for
              washing pots and pans and for bath water.

              Lots of love,
              Eleanor

              Mchewe Estate. 8th. August 1931

              Dearest Family,

              I think it is about time I told you that we are going to have a baby. We are both
              thrilled about it. I have not seen a Doctor but feel very well and you are not to worry. I
              looked it up in my handbook for wives and reckon that the baby is due about February
              8th. next year.

              The announcement came from George, not me! I had been feeling queasy for
              days and was waiting for the right moment to tell George. You know. Soft lights and
              music etc. However when I was listlessly poking my food around one lunch time
              George enquired calmly, “When are you going to tell me about the baby?” Not at all
              according to the book! The problem is where to have the baby. February is a very wet
              month and the nearest Doctor is over 50 miles away at Tukuyu. I cannot go to stay at
              Tukuyu because there is no European accommodation at the hospital, no hotel and no
              friend with whom I could stay.

              George thinks I should go South to you but Capetown is so very far away and I
              love my little home here. Also George says he could not come all the way down with
              me as he simply must stay here and get the farm on its feet. He would drive me as far
              as the railway in Northern Rhodesia. It is a difficult decision to take. Write and tell me what
              you think.

              The days tick by quietly here. The servants are very willing but have to be
              supervised and even then a crisis can occur. Last Saturday I was feeling squeamish and
              decided not to have lunch. I lay reading on the couch whilst George sat down to a
              solitary curry lunch. Suddenly he gave an exclamation and pushed back his chair. I
              jumped up to see what was wrong and there, on his plate, gleaming in the curry gravy
              were small bits of broken glass. I hurried to the kitchen to confront Lamek with the plate.
              He explained that he had dropped the new and expensive bottle of curry powder on
              the brick floor of the kitchen. He did not tell me as he thought I would make a “shauri” so
              he simply scooped up the curry powder, removed the larger pieces of glass and used
              part of the powder for seasoning the lunch.

              The weather is getting warmer now. It was very cold in June and July and we had
              fires in the daytime as well as at night. Now that much of the land has been cleared we
              are able to go for pleasant walks in the weekends. My favourite spot is a waterfall on the
              Mchewe River just on the boundary of our land. There is a delightful little pool below the
              waterfall and one day George intends to stock it with trout.

              Now that there are more Europeans around to buy meat the natives find it worth
              their while to kill an occasional beast. Every now and again a native arrives with a large
              bowl of freshly killed beef for sale. One has no way of knowing whether the animal was
              healthy and the meat is often still warm and very bloody. I hated handling it at first but am
              becoming accustomed to it now and have even started a brine tub. There is no other
              way of keeping meat here and it can only be kept in its raw state for a few hours before
              going bad. One of the delicacies is the hump which all African cattle have. When corned
              it is like the best brisket.

              See what a housewife I am becoming.
              With much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. Sept.6th. 1931

              Dearest Family,

              I have grown to love the life here and am sad to think I shall be leaving
              Tanganyika soon for several months. Yes I am coming down to have the baby in the
              bosom of the family. George thinks it best and so does the doctor. I didn’t mention it
              before but I have never recovered fully from the effects of that bad bout of malaria and
              so I have been persuaded to leave George and our home and go to the Cape, in the
              hope that I shall come back here as fit as when I first arrived in the country plus a really
              healthy and bouncing baby. I am torn two ways, I long to see you all – but how I would
              love to stay on here.

              George will drive me down to Northern Rhodesia in early October to catch a
              South bound train. I’ll telegraph the date of departure when I know it myself. The road is
              very, very bad and the car has been giving a good deal of trouble so, though the baby
              is not due until early February, George thinks it best to get the journey over soon as
              possible, for the rains break in November and the the roads will then be impassable. It
              may take us five or six days to reach Broken Hill as we will take it slowly. I am looking
              forward to the drive through new country and to camping out at night.
              Our days pass quietly by. George is out on the shamba most of the day. He
              goes out before breakfast on weekdays and spends most of the day working with the
              men – not only supervising but actually working with his hands and beating the labourers
              at their own jobs. He comes to the house for meals and tea breaks. I potter around the
              house and garden, sew, mend and read. Lamek continues to be a treasure. he turns out
              some surprising dishes. One of his specialities is stuffed chicken. He carefully skins the
              chicken removing all bones. He then minces all the chicken meat and adds minced onion
              and potatoes. He then stuffs the chicken skin with the minced meat and carefully sews it
              together again. The resulting dish is very filling because the boned chicken is twice the
              size of a normal one. It lies on its back as round as a football with bloated legs in the air.
              Rather repulsive to look at but Lamek is most proud of his accomplishment.
              The other day he produced another of his masterpieces – a cooked tortoise. It
              was served on a dish covered with parsley and crouched there sans shell but, only too
              obviously, a tortoise. I took one look and fled with heaving diaphragm, but George said
              it tasted quite good. He tells me that he has had queerer dishes produced by former
              cooks. He says that once in his hunting days his cook served up a skinned baby
              monkey with its hands folded on its breast. He says it would take a cannibal to eat that
              dish.

              And now for something sad. Poor old Llew died quite suddenly and it was a sad
              shock to this tiny community. We went across to the funeral and it was a very simple and
              dignified affair. Llew was buried on Joni’s farm in a grave dug by the farm boys. The
              body was wrapped in a blanket and bound to some boards and lowered into the
              ground. There was no service. The men just said “Good-bye Llew.” and “Sleep well
              Llew”, and things like that. Then Joni and his brother-in-law Max, and George shovelled
              soil over the body after which the grave was filled in by Joni’s shamba boys. It was a
              lovely bright afternoon and I thought how simple and sensible a funeral it was.
              I hope you will be glad to have me home. I bet Dad will be holding thumbs that
              the baby will be a girl.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Note
              “There are no letters to my family during the period of Sept. 1931 to June 1932
              because during these months I was living with my parents and sister in a suburb of
              Cape Town. I had hoped to return to Tanganyika by air with my baby soon after her
              birth in Feb.1932 but the doctor would not permit this.

              A month before my baby was born, a company called Imperial Airways, had
              started the first passenger service between South Africa and England. One of the night
              stops was at Mbeya near my husband’s coffee farm, and it was my intention to take the
              train to Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia and to fly from there to Mbeya with my month
              old baby. In those days however, commercial flying was still a novelty and the doctor
              was not sure that flying at a high altitude might not have an adverse effect upon a young
              baby.

              He strongly advised me to wait until the baby was four months old and I did this
              though the long wait was very trying to my husband alone on our farm in Tanganyika,
              and to me, cherished though I was in my old home.

              My story, covering those nine long months is soon told. My husband drove me
              down from Mbeya to Broken Hill in NorthernRhodesia. The journey was tedious as the
              weather was very hot and dry and the road sandy and rutted, very different from the
              Great North road as it is today. The wooden wheel spokes of the car became so dry
              that they rattled and George had to bind wet rags around them. We had several
              punctures and with one thing and another I was lucky to catch the train.
              My parents were at Cape Town station to welcome me and I stayed
              comfortably with them, living very quietly, until my baby was born. She arrived exactly
              on the appointed day, Feb.8th.

              I wrote to my husband “Our Charmian Ann is a darling baby. She is very fair and
              rather pale and has the most exquisite hands, with long tapering fingers. Daddy
              absolutely dotes on her and so would you, if you were here. I can’t bear to think that you
              are so terribly far away. Although Ann was born exactly on the day, I was taken quite by
              surprise. It was awfully hot on the night before, and before going to bed I had a fancy for
              some water melon. The result was that when I woke in the early morning with labour
              pains and vomiting I thought it was just an attack of indigestion due to eating too much
              melon. The result was that I did not wake Marjorie until the pains were pretty frequent.
              She called our next door neighbour who, in his pyjamas, drove me to the nursing home
              at breakneck speed. The Matron was very peeved that I had left things so late but all
              went well and by nine o’clock, Mother, positively twittering with delight, was allowed to
              see me and her first granddaughter . She told me that poor Dad was in such a state of
              nerves that he was sick amongst the grapevines. He says that he could not bear to go
              through such an anxious time again, — so we will have to have our next eleven in
              Tanganyika!”

              The next four months passed rapidly as my time was taken up by the demands
              of my new baby. Dr. Trudy King’s method of rearing babies was then the vogue and I
              stuck fanatically to all the rules he laid down, to the intense exasperation of my parents
              who longed to cuddle the child.

              As the time of departure drew near my parents became more and more reluctant
              to allow me to face the journey alone with their adored grandchild, so my brother,
              Graham, very generously offered to escort us on the train to Broken Hill where he could
              put us on the plane for Mbeya.

              Eleanor Rushby

               

              Mchewe Estate. June 15th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              You’ll be glad to know that we arrived quite safe and sound and very, very
              happy to be home.The train Journey was uneventful. Ann slept nearly all the way.
              Graham was very kind and saw to everything. He even sat with the baby whilst I went
              to meals in the dining car.

              We were met at Broken Hill by the Thoms who had arranged accommodation for
              us at the hotel for the night. They also drove us to the aerodrome in the morning where
              the Airways agent told us that Ann is the first baby to travel by air on this section of the
              Cape to England route. The plane trip was very bumpy indeed especially between
              Broken Hill and Mpika. Everyone was ill including poor little Ann who sicked up her milk
              all over the front of my new coat. I arrived at Mbeya looking a sorry caricature of Radiant
              Motherhood. I must have been pale green and the baby was snow white. Under the
              circumstances it was a good thing that George did not meet us. We were met instead
              by Ken Menzies, the owner of the Mbeya Hotel where we spent the night. Ken was
              most fatherly and kind and a good nights rest restored Ann and me to our usual robust
              health.

              Mbeya has greatly changed. The hotel is now finished and can accommodate
              fifty guests. It consists of a large main building housing a large bar and dining room and
              offices and a number of small cottage bedrooms. It even has electric light. There are
              several buildings out at the aerodrome and private houses going up in Mbeya.
              After breakfast Ken Menzies drove us out to the farm where we had a warm
              welcome from George, who looks well but rather thin. The house was spotless and the
              new cook, Abel, had made light scones for tea. George had prepared all sorts of lovely
              surprises. There is a new reed ceiling in the living room and a new dresser gay with
              willow pattern plates which he had ordered from England. There is also a writing table
              and a square table by the door for visitors hats. More personal is a lovely model ship
              which George assembled from one of those Hobbie’s kits. It puts the finishing touch to
              the rather old world air of our living room.

              In the bedroom there is a large double bed which George made himself. It has
              strips of old car tyres nailed to a frame which makes a fine springy mattress and on top
              of this is a thick mattress of kapok.In the kitchen there is a good wood stove which
              George salvaged from a Mission dump. It looks a bit battered but works very well. The
              new cook is excellent. The only blight is that he will wear rubber soled tennis shoes and
              they smell awful. I daren’t hurt his feelings by pointing this out though. Opposite the
              kitchen is a new laundry building containing a forty gallon hot water drum and a sink for
              washing up. Lovely!

              George has been working very hard. He now has forty acres of coffee seedlings
              planted out and has also found time to plant a rose garden and fruit trees. There are
              orange and peach trees, tree tomatoes, paw paws, guavas and berries. He absolutely
              adores Ann who has been very good and does not seem at all unsettled by the long
              journey.

              It is absolutely heavenly to be back and I shall be happier than ever now that I
              have a baby to play with during the long hours when George is busy on the farm,
              Thank you for all your love and care during the many months I was with you. Ann
              sends a special bubble for granddad.

              Your very loving,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate Mbeya July 18th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              Ann at five months is enchanting. She is a very good baby, smiles readily and is
              gaining weight steadily. She doesn’t sleep much during the day but that does not
              matter, because, apart from washing her little things, I have nothing to do but attend to
              her. She sleeps very well at night which is a blessing as George has to get up very
              early to start work on the shamba and needs a good nights rest.
              My nights are not so good, because we are having a plague of rats which frisk
              around in the bedroom at night. Great big ones that come up out of the long grass in the
              gorge beside the house and make cosy homes on our reed ceiling and in the thatch of
              the roof.

              We always have a night light burning so that, if necessary, I can attend to Ann
              with a minimum of fuss, and the things I see in that dim light! There are gaps between
              the reeds and one night I heard, plop! and there, before my horrified gaze, lay a newly
              born hairless baby rat on the floor by the bed, plop, plop! and there lay two more.
              Quite dead, poor things – but what a careless mother.

              I have also seen rats scampering around on the tops of the mosquito nets and
              sometimes we have them on our bed. They have a lovely game. They swarm down
              the cord from which the mosquito net is suspended, leap onto the bed and onto the
              floor. We do not have our net down now the cold season is here and there are few
              mosquitoes.

              Last week a rat crept under Ann’s net which hung to the floor and bit her little
              finger, so now I tuck the net in under the mattress though it makes it difficult for me to
              attend to her at night. We shall have to get a cat somewhere. Ann’s pram has not yet
              arrived so George carries her when we go walking – to her great content.
              The native women around here are most interested in Ann. They come to see
              her, bearing small gifts, and usually bring a child or two with them. They admire my child
              and I admire theirs and there is an exchange of gifts. They produce a couple of eggs or
              a few bananas or perhaps a skinny fowl and I hand over sugar, salt or soap as they
              value these commodities. The most lavish gift went to the wife of Thomas our headman,
              who produced twin daughters in the same week as I had Ann.

              Our neighbours have all been across to welcome me back and to admire the
              baby. These include Marion Coster who came out to join her husband whilst I was in
              South Africa. The two Hickson-Wood children came over on a fat old white donkey.
              They made a pretty picture sitting astride, one behind the other – Maureen with her arms
              around small Michael’s waist. A native toto led the donkey and the children’ s ayah
              walked beside it.

              It is quite cold here now but the sun is bright and the air dry. The whole
              countryside is beautifully green and we are a very happy little family.

              Lots and lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate August 11th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              George has been very unwell for the past week. He had a nasty gash on his
              knee which went septic. He had a swelling in the groin and a high temperature and could
              not sleep at night for the pain in his leg. Ann was very wakeful too during the same
              period, I think she is teething. I luckily have kept fit though rather harassed. Yesterday the
              leg looked so inflamed that George decided to open up the wound himself. he made
              quite a big cut in exactly the right place. You should have seen the blackish puss
              pouring out.

              After he had thoroughly cleaned the wound George sewed it up himself. he has
              the proper surgical needles and gut. He held the cut together with his left hand and
              pushed the needle through the flesh with his right. I pulled the needle out and passed it
              to George for the next stitch. I doubt whether a surgeon could have made a neater job
              of it. He is still confined to the couch but today his temperature is normal. Some
              husband!

              The previous week was hectic in another way. We had a visit from lions! George
              and I were having supper about 8.30 on Tuesday night when the back verandah was
              suddenly invaded by women and children from the servants quarters behind the kitchen.
              They were all yelling “Simba, Simba.” – simba means lions. The door opened suddenly
              and the houseboy rushed in to say that there were lions at the huts. George got up
              swiftly, fetched gun and ammunition from the bedroom and with the houseboy carrying
              the lamp, went off to investigate. I remained at the table, carrying on with my supper as I
              felt a pioneer’s wife should! Suddenly something big leapt through the open window
              behind me. You can imagine what I thought! I know now that it is quite true to say one’s
              hair rises when one is scared. However it was only Kelly, our huge Irish wolfhound,
              taking cover.

              George returned quite soon to say that apparently the commotion made by the
              women and children had frightened the lions off. He found their tracks in the soft earth
              round the huts and a bag of maize that had been playfully torn open but the lions had
              moved on.

              Next day we heard that they had moved to Hickson-Wood’s shamba. Hicky
              came across to say that the lions had jumped over the wall of his cattle boma and killed
              both his white Muskat riding donkeys.
              He and a friend sat up all next night over the remains but the lions did not return to
              the kill.

              Apart from the little set back last week, Ann is blooming. She has a cap of very
              fine fair hair and clear blue eyes under straight brow. She also has lovely dimples in both
              cheeks. We are very proud of her.

              Our neighbours are picking coffee but the crops are small and the price is low. I
              am amazed that they are so optimistic about the future. No one in these parts ever
              seems to grouse though all are living on capital. They all say “Well if the worst happens
              we can always go up to the Lupa Diggings.”

              Don’t worry about us, we have enough to tide us over for some time yet.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 28th Sept. 1932

              Dearest Family,

              News! News! I’m going to have another baby. George and I are delighted and I
              hope it will be a boy this time. I shall be able to have him at Mbeya because things are
              rapidly changing here. Several German families have moved to Mbeya including a
              German doctor who means to build a hospital there. I expect he will make a very good
              living because there must now be some hundreds of Europeans within a hundred miles
              radius of Mbeya. The Europeans are mostly British or German but there are also
              Greeks and, I believe, several other nationalities are represented on the Lupa Diggings.
              Ann is blooming and developing according to the Book except that she has no
              teeth yet! Kath Hickson-Wood has given her a very nice high chair and now she has
              breakfast and lunch at the table with us. Everything within reach goes on the floor to her
              amusement and my exasperation!

              You ask whether we have any Church of England missionaries in our part. No we
              haven’t though there are Lutheran and Roman Catholic Missions. I have never even
              heard of a visiting Church of England Clergyman to these parts though there are babies
              in plenty who have not been baptised. Jolly good thing I had Ann Christened down
              there.

              The R.C. priests in this area are called White Fathers. They all have beards and
              wear white cassocks and sun helmets. One, called Father Keiling, calls around frequently.
              Though none of us in this area is Catholic we take it in turn to put him up for the night. The
              Catholic Fathers in their turn are most hospitable to travellers regardless of their beliefs.
              Rather a sad thing has happened. Lucas our old chicken-boy is dead. I shall miss
              his toothy smile. George went to the funeral and fired two farewell shots from his rifle
              over the grave – a gesture much appreciated by the locals. Lucas in his day was a good
              hunter.

              Several of the locals own muzzle loading guns but the majority hunt with dogs
              and spears. The dogs wear bells which make an attractive jingle but I cannot bear the
              idea of small antelope being run down until they are exhausted before being clubbed of
              stabbed to death. We seldom eat venison as George does not care to shoot buck.
              Recently though, he shot an eland and Abel rendered down the fat which is excellent for
              cooking and very like beef fat.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. P.O.Mbeya 21st November 1932

              Dearest Family,

              George has gone off to the Lupa for a week with John Molteno. John came up
              here with the idea of buying a coffee farm but he has changed his mind and now thinks of
              staking some claims on the diggings and also setting up as a gold buyer.

              Did I tell you about his arrival here? John and George did some elephant hunting
              together in French Equatorial Africa and when John heard that George had married and
              settled in Tanganyika, he also decided to come up here. He drove up from Cape Town
              in a Baby Austin and arrived just as our labourers were going home for the day. The little
              car stopped half way up our hill and John got out to investigate. You should have heard
              the astonished exclamations when John got out – all 6 ft 5 ins. of him! He towered over
              the little car and even to me it seemed impossible for him to have made the long
              journey in so tiny a car.

              Kath Wood has been over several times lately. She is slim and looks so right in
              the shirt and corduroy slacks she almost always wears. She was here yesterday when
              the shamba boy, digging in the front garden, unearthed a large earthenware cooking pot,
              sealed at the top. I was greatly excited and had an instant mental image of fabulous
              wealth. We made the boy bring the pot carefully on to the verandah and opened it in
              happy anticipation. What do you think was inside? Nothing but a grinning skull! Such a
              treat for a pregnant female.

              We have a tree growing here that had lovely straight branches covered by a
              smooth bark. I got the garden boy to cut several of these branches of a uniform size,
              peeled off the bark and have made Ann a playpen with the poles which are much like
              broom sticks. Now I can leave her unattended when I do my chores. The other morning
              after breakfast I put Ann in her playpen on the verandah and gave her a piece of toast
              and honey to keep her quiet whilst I laundered a few of her things. When I looked out a
              little later I was horrified to see a number of bees buzzing around her head whilst she
              placidly concentrated on her toast. I made a rapid foray and rescued her but I still don’t
              know whether that was the thing to do.

              We all send our love,
              Eleanor.

              Mbeya Hospital. April 25th. 1933

              Dearest Family,

              Here I am, installed at the very new hospital, built by Dr Eckhardt, awaiting the
              arrival of the new baby. George has gone back to the farm on foot but will walk in again
              to spend the weekend with us. Ann is with me and enjoys the novelty of playing with
              other children. The Eckhardts have two, a pretty little girl of two and a half and a very fair
              roly poly boy of Ann’s age. Ann at fourteen months is very active. She is quite a little girl
              now with lovely dimples. She walks well but is backward in teething.

              George, Ann and I had a couple of days together at the hotel before I moved in
              here and several of the local women visited me and have promised to visit me in
              hospital. The trip from farm to town was very entertaining if not very comfortable. There
              is ten miles of very rough road between our farm and Utengule Mission and beyond the
              Mission there is a fair thirteen or fourteen mile road to Mbeya.

              As we have no car now the doctor’s wife offered to drive us from the Mission to
              Mbeya but she would not risk her car on the road between the Mission and our farm.
              The upshot was that I rode in the Hickson-Woods machila for that ten mile stretch. The
              machila is a canopied hammock, slung from a bamboo pole, in which I reclined, not too
              comfortably in my unwieldy state, with Ann beside me or sometime straddling me. Four
              of our farm boys carried the machila on their shoulders, two fore and two aft. The relief
              bearers walked on either side. There must have been a dozen in all and they sang a sort
              of sea shanty song as they walked. One man would sing a verse and the others took up
              the chorus. They often improvise as they go. They moaned about my weight (at least
              George said so! I don’t follow Ki-Swahili well yet) and expressed the hope that I would
              have a son and that George would reward them handsomely.

              George and Kelly, the dog, followed close behind the machila and behind
              George came Abel our cook and his wife and small daughter Annalie, all in their best
              attire. The cook wore a palm beach suit, large Terai hat and sunglasses and two colour
              shoes and quite lent a tone to the proceedings! Right at the back came the rag tag and
              bobtail who joined the procession just for fun.

              Mrs Eckhardt was already awaiting us at the Mission when we arrived and we had
              an uneventful trip to the Mbeya Hotel.

              During my last week at the farm I felt very tired and engaged the cook’s small
              daughter, Annalie, to amuse Ann for an hour after lunch so that I could have a rest. They
              played in the small verandah room which adjoins our bedroom and where I keep all my
              sewing materials. One afternoon I was startled by a scream from Ann. I rushed to the
              room and found Ann with blood steaming from her cheek. Annalie knelt beside her,
              looking startled and frightened, with my embroidery scissors in her hand. She had cut off
              half of the long curling golden lashes on one of Ann’s eyelids and, in trying to finish the
              job, had cut off a triangular flap of skin off Ann’s cheek bone.

              I called Abel, the cook, and demanded that he should chastise his daughter there and
              then and I soon heard loud shrieks from behind the kitchen. He spanked her with a
              bamboo switch but I am sure not as well as she deserved. Africans are very tolerant
              towards their children though I have seen husbands and wives fighting furiously.
              I feel very well but long to have the confinement over.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mbeya Hospital. 2nd May 1933.

              Dearest Family,

              Little George arrived at 7.30 pm on Saturday evening 29 th. April. George was
              with me at the time as he had walked in from the farm for news, and what a wonderful bit
              of luck that was. The doctor was away on a case on the Diggings and I was bathing Ann
              with George looking on, when the pains started. George dried Ann and gave her
              supper and put her to bed. Afterwards he sat on the steps outside my room and a
              great comfort it was to know that he was there.

              The confinement was short but pretty hectic. The Doctor returned to the Hospital
              just in time to deliver the baby. He is a grand little boy, beautifully proportioned. The
              doctor says he has never seen a better formed baby. He is however rather funny
              looking just now as his head is, very temporarily, egg shaped. He has a shock of black
              silky hair like a gollywog and believe it or not, he has a slight black moustache.
              George came in, looked at the baby, looked at me, and we both burst out
              laughing. The doctor was shocked and said so. He has no sense of humour and couldn’t
              understand that we, though bursting with pride in our son, could never the less laugh at
              him.

              Friends in Mbeya have sent me the most gorgeous flowers and my room is
              transformed with delphiniums, roses and carnations. The room would be very austere
              without the flowers. Curtains, bedspread and enamelware, walls and ceiling are all
              snowy white.

              George hired a car and took Ann home next day. I have little George for
              company during the day but he is removed at night. I am longing to get him home and
              away from the German nurse who feeds him on black tea when he cries. She insists that
              tea is a medicine and good for him.

              Much love from a proud mother of two.
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate 12May 1933

              Dearest Family,

              We are all together at home again and how lovely it feels. Even the house
              servants seem pleased. The boy had decorated the lounge with sprays of
              bougainvillaea and Abel had backed one of his good sponge cakes.

              Ann looked fat and rosy but at first was only moderately interested in me and the
              new baby but she soon thawed. George is good with her and will continue to dress Ann
              in the mornings and put her to bed until I am satisfied with Georgie.

              He, poor mite, has a nasty rash on face and neck. I am sure it is just due to that
              tea the nurse used to give him at night. He has lost his moustache and is fast loosing his
              wild black hair and emerging as quite a handsome babe. He is a very masculine looking
              infant with much more strongly marked eyebrows and a larger nose that Ann had. He is
              very good and lies quietly in his basket even when awake.

              George has been making a hatching box for brown trout ova and has set it up in
              a small clear stream fed by a spring in readiness for the ova which is expected from
              South Africa by next weeks plane. Some keen fishermen from Mbeya and the District
              have clubbed together to buy the ova. The fingerlings are later to be transferred to
              streams in Mbeya and Tukuyu Districts.

              I shall now have my hands full with the two babies and will not have much time for the
              garden, or I fear, for writing very long letters. Remember though, that no matter how
              large my family becomes, I shall always love you as much as ever.

              Your affectionate,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 14th June 1933

              Dearest Family,

              The four of us are all well but alas we have lost our dear Kelly. He was rather a
              silly dog really, although he grew so big he retained all his puppy ways but we were all
              very fond of him, especially George because Kelly attached himself to George whilst I
              was away having Ann and from that time on he was George’s shadow. I think he had
              some form of biliary fever. He died stretched out on the living room couch late last night,
              with George sitting beside him so that he would not feel alone.

              The children are growing fast. Georgie is a darling. He now has a fluff of pale
              brown hair and his eyes are large and dark brown. Ann is very plump and fair.
              We have had several visitors lately. Apart from neighbours, a car load of diggers
              arrived one night and John Molteno and his bride were here. She is a very attractive girl
              but, I should say, more suited to life in civilisation than in this back of beyond. She has
              gone out to the diggings with her husband and will have to walk a good stretch of the fifty
              or so miles.

              The diggers had to sleep in the living room on the couch and on hastily erected
              camp beds. They arrived late at night and left after breakfast next day. One had half a
              beard, the other side of his face had been forcibly shaved in the bar the night before.

              your affectionate,
              Eleanor

              Mchewe Estate. August 10 th. 1933

              Dearest Family,

              George is away on safari with two Indian Army officers. The money he will get for
              his services will be very welcome because this coffee growing is a slow business, and
              our capitol is rapidly melting away. The job of acting as White Hunter was unexpected
              or George would not have taken on the job of hatching the ova which duly arrived from
              South Africa.

              George and the District Commissioner, David Pollock, went to meet the plane
              by which the ova had been consigned but the pilot knew nothing about the package. It
              came to light in the mail bag with the parcels! However the ova came to no harm. David
              Pollock and George brought the parcel to the farm and carefully transferred the ova to
              the hatching box. It was interesting to watch the tiny fry hatch out – a process which took
              several days. Many died in the process and George removed the dead by sucking
              them up in a glass tube.

              When hatched, the tiny fry were fed on ant eggs collected by the boys. I had to
              take over the job of feeding and removing the dead when George left on safari. The fry
              have to be fed every four hours, like the baby, so each time I have fed Georgie. I hurry
              down to feed the trout.

              The children are very good but keep me busy. Ann can now say several words
              and understands more. She adores Georgie. I long to show them off to you.

              Very much love
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. October 27th 1933

              Dear Family,

              All just over flu. George and Ann were very poorly. I did not fare so badly and
              Georgie came off best. He is on a bottle now.

              There was some excitement here last Wednesday morning. At 6.30 am. I called
              for boiling water to make Georgie’s food. No water arrived but muffled shouting and the
              sound of blows came from the kitchen. I went to investigate and found a fierce fight in
              progress between the house boy and the kitchen boy. In my efforts to make them stop
              fighting I went too close and got a sharp bang on the mouth with the edge of an
              enamelled plate the kitchen boy was using as a weapon. My teeth cut my lip inside and
              the plate cut it outside and blood flowed from mouth to chin. The boys were petrified.
              By the time I had fed Georgie the lip was stiff and swollen. George went in wrath
              to the kitchen and by breakfast time both house boy and kitchen boy had swollen faces
              too. Since then I have a kettle of boiling water to hand almost before the words are out
              of my mouth. I must say that the fight was because the house boy had clouted the
              kitchen boy for keeping me waiting! In this land of piece work it is the job of the kitchen
              boy to light the fire and boil the kettle but the houseboy’s job to carry the kettle to me.
              I have seen little of Kath Wood or Marion Coster for the past two months. Major
              Jones is the neighbour who calls most regularly. He has a wireless set and calls on all of
              us to keep us up to date with world as well as local news. He often brings oranges for
              Ann who adores him. He is a very nice person but no oil painting and makes no effort to
              entertain Ann but she thinks he is fine. Perhaps his monocle appeals to her.

              George has bought a six foot long galvanised bath which is a great improvement
              on the smaller oval one we have used until now. The smaller one had grown battered
              from much use and leaks like a sieve. Fortunately our bathroom has a cement floor,
              because one had to fill the bath to the brim and then bath extremely quickly to avoid
              being left high and dry.

              Lots and lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 1st December 1933

              Dearest Family,

              Ann has not been well. We think she has had malaria. She has grown a good
              deal lately and looks much thinner and rather pale. Georgie is thriving and has such
              sparkling brown eyes and a ready smile. He and Ann make a charming pair, one so fair
              and the other dark.

              The Moltenos’ spent a few days here and took Georgie and me to Mbeya so
              that Georgie could be vaccinated. However it was an unsatisfactory trip because the
              doctor had no vaccine.

              George went to the Lupa with the Moltenos and returned to the farm in their Baby
              Austin which they have lent to us for a week. This was to enable me to go to Mbeya to
              have a couple of teeth filled by a visiting dentist.

              We went to Mbeya in the car on Saturday. It was quite a squash with the four of
              us on the front seat of the tiny car. Once George grabbed the babies foot instead of the
              gear knob! We had Georgie vaccinated at the hospital and then went to the hotel where
              the dentist was installed. Mr Dare, the dentist, had few instruments and they were very
              tarnished. I sat uncomfortably on a kitchen chair whilst he tinkered with my teeth. He filled
              three but two of the fillings came out that night. This meant another trip to Mbeya in the
              Baby Austin but this time they seem all right.

              The weather is very hot and dry and the garden a mess. We are having trouble
              with the young coffee trees too. Cut worms are killing off seedlings in the nursery and
              there is a borer beetle in the planted out coffee.

              George bought a large grey donkey from some wandering Masai and we hope
              the children will enjoy riding it later on.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 14th February 1934.

              Dearest Family,

              You will be sorry to hear that little Ann has been very ill, indeed we were terribly
              afraid that we were going to lose her. She enjoyed her birthday on the 8th. All the toys
              you, and her English granny, sent were unwrapped with such delight. However next
              day she seemed listless and a bit feverish so I tucked her up in bed after lunch. I dosed
              her with quinine and aspirin and she slept fitfully. At about eleven o’clock I was
              awakened by a strange little cry. I turned up the night light and was horrified to see that
              Ann was in a convulsion. I awakened George who, as always in an emergency, was
              perfectly calm and practical. He filled the small bath with very warm water and emersed
              Ann in it, placing a cold wet cloth on her head. We then wrapped her in blankets and
              gave her an enema and she settled down to sleep. A few hours later we had the same
              thing over again.

              At first light we sent a runner to Mbeya to fetch the doctor but waited all day in
              vain and in the evening the runner returned to say that the doctor had gone to a case on
              the diggings. Ann had been feverish all day with two or three convulsions. Neither
              George or I wished to leave the bedroom, but there was Georgie to consider, and in
              the afternoon I took him out in the garden for a while whilst George sat with Ann.
              That night we both sat up all night and again Ann had those wretched attacks of
              convulsions. George and I were worn out with anxiety by the time the doctor arrived the
              next afternoon. Ann had not been able to keep down any quinine and had had only
              small sips of water since the onset of the attack.

              The doctor at once diagnosed the trouble as malaria aggravated by teething.
              George held Ann whilst the Doctor gave her an injection. At the first attempt the needle
              bent into a bow, George was furious! The second attempt worked and after a few hours
              Ann’s temperature dropped and though she was ill for two days afterwards she is now
              up and about. She has also cut the last of her baby teeth, thank God. She looks thin and
              white, but should soon pick up. It has all been a great strain to both of us. Georgie
              behaved like an angel throughout. He played happily in his cot and did not seem to
              sense any tension as people say, babies do. Our baby was cheerful and not at all
              subdued.

              This is the rainy season and it is a good thing that some work has been done on
              our road or the doctor might not have got through.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 1st October 1934

              Dearest Family,

              We are all well now, thank goodness, but last week Georgie gave us such a
              fright. I was sitting on the verandah, busy with some sewing and not watching Ann and
              Georgie, who were trying to reach a bunch of bananas which hung on a rope from a
              beam of the verandah. Suddenly I heard a crash, Georgie had fallen backward over the
              edge of the verandah and hit the back of his head on the edge of the brick furrow which
              carries away the rainwater. He lay flat on his back with his arms spread out and did not
              move or cry. When I picked him up he gave a little whimper, I carried him to his cot and
              bathed his face and soon he began sitting up and appeared quite normal. The trouble
              began after he had vomited up his lunch. He began to whimper and bang his head
              against the cot.

              George and I were very worried because we have no transport so we could not
              take Georgie to the doctor and we could not bear to go through again what we had gone
              through with Ann earlier in the year. Then, in the late afternoon, a miracle happened. Two
              men George hardly knew, and complete strangers to me, called in on their way from the
              diggings to Mbeya and they kindly drove Georgie and me to the hospital. The Doctor
              allowed me to stay with Georgie and we spent five days there. Luckily he responded to
              treatment and is now as alive as ever. Children do put years on one!

              There is nothing much else to report. We have a new vegetable garden which is
              doing well but the earth here is strange. Gardens seem to do well for two years but by
              that time the soil is exhausted and one must move the garden somewhere else. The
              coffee looks well but it will be another year before we can expect even a few bags of
              coffee and prices are still low. Anyway by next year George should have some good
              return for all his hard work.

              Lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. November 4th 1934

              Dearest Family,

              George is home from his White Hunting safari looking very sunburnt and well.
              The elderly American, who was his client this time, called in here at the farm to meet me
              and the children. It is amazing what spirit these old lads have! This one looked as though
              he should be thinking in terms of slippers and an armchair but no, he thinks in terms of
              high powered rifles with telescopic sights.

              It is lovely being together again and the children are delighted to have their Dad
              home. Things are always exciting when George is around. The day after his return
              George said at breakfast, “We can’t go on like this. You and the kids never get off the
              shamba. We’ll simply have to get a car.” You should have heard the excitement. “Get a
              car Daddy?’” cried Ann jumping in her chair so that her plaits bounced. “Get a car
              Daddy?” echoed Georgie his brown eyes sparkling. “A car,” said I startled, “However
              can we afford one?”

              “Well,” said George, “on my way back from Safari I heard that a car is to be sold
              this week at the Tukuyu Court, diseased estate or bankruptcy or something, I might get it
              cheap and it is an A.C.” The name meant nothing to me, but George explained that an
              A.C. is first cousin to a Rolls Royce.

              So off he went to the sale and next day the children and I listened all afternoon for
              the sound of an approaching car. We had many false alarms but, towards evening we
              heard what appeared to be the roar of an aeroplane engine. It was the A.C. roaring her
              way up our steep hill with a long plume of steam waving gaily above her radiator.
              Out jumped my beaming husband and in no time at all, he was showing off her
              points to an admiring family. Her lines are faultless and seats though worn are most
              comfortable. She has a most elegant air so what does it matter that the radiator leaks like
              a sieve, her exhaust pipe has broken off, her tyres are worn almost to the canvas and
              she has no windscreen. She goes, and she cost only five pounds.

              Next afternoon George, the kids and I piled into the car and drove along the road
              on lookout for guinea fowl. All went well on the outward journey but on the homeward
              one the poor A.C. simply gasped and died. So I carried the shot gun and George
              carried both children and we trailed sadly home. This morning George went with a bunch
              of farmhands and brought her home. Truly temperamental, she came home literally
              under her own steam.

              George now plans to get a second hand engine and radiator for her but it won’t
              be an A.C. engine. I think she is the only one of her kind in the country.
              I am delighted to hear, dad, that you are sending a bridle for Joseph for
              Christmas. I am busy making a saddle out of an old piece of tent canvas stuffed with
              kapok, some webbing and some old rug straps. A car and a riding donkey! We’re
              definitely carriage folk now.

              Lots of love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 28th December 1934

              Dearest Family,

              Thank you for the wonderful Christmas parcel. My frock is a splendid fit. George
              declares that no one can knit socks like Mummy and the children love their toys and new
              clothes.

              Joseph, the donkey, took his bit with an air of bored resignation and Ann now
              rides proudly on his back. Joseph is a big strong animal with the looks and disposition of
              a mule. he will not go at all unless a native ‘toto’ walks before him and when he does go
              he wears a pained expression as though he were carrying fourteen stone instead of
              Ann’s fly weight. I walk beside the donkey carrying Georgie and our cat, ‘Skinny Winnie’,
              follows behind. Quite a cavalcade. The other day I got so exasperated with Joseph that
              I took Ann off and I got on. Joseph tottered a few paces and sat down! to the huge
              delight of our farm labourers who were going home from work. Anyway, one good thing,
              the donkey is so lazy that there is little chance of him bolting with Ann.

              The Moltenos spent Christmas with us and left for the Lupa Diggings yesterday.
              They arrived on the 22nd. with gifts for the children and chocolates and beer. That very
              afternoon George and John Molteno left for Ivuna, near Lake Ruckwa, to shoot some
              guinea fowl and perhaps a goose for our Christmas dinner. We expected the menfolk
              back on Christmas Eve and Anne and I spent a busy day making mince pies and
              sausage rolls. Why I don’t know, because I am sure Abel could have made them better.
              We decorated the Christmas tree and sat up very late but no husbands turned up.
              Christmas day passed but still no husbands came. Anne, like me, is expecting a baby
              and we both felt pretty forlorn and cross. Anne was certain that they had been caught up
              in a party somewhere and had forgotten all about us and I must say when Boxing Day
              went by and still George and John did not show up I felt ready to agree with her.
              They turned up towards evening and explained that on the homeward trip the car
              had bogged down in the mud and that they had spent a miserable Christmas. Anne
              refused to believe their story so George, to prove their case, got the game bag and
              tipped the contents on to the dining room table. Out fell several guinea fowl, long past
              being edible, followed by a large goose so high that it was green and blue where all the
              feathers had rotted off.

              The stench was too much for two pregnant girls. I shot out of the front door
              closely followed by Anne and we were both sick in the garden.

              I could not face food that evening but Anne is made of stronger stuff and ate her
              belated Christmas dinner with relish.

              I am looking forward enormously to having Marjorie here with us. She will be able
              to carry back to you an eyewitness account of our home and way of life.

              Much love to you all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 5th January 1935

              Dearest Family,

              You cannot imagine how lovely it is to have Marjorie here. She came just in time
              because I have had pernicious vomiting and have lost a great deal of weight and she
              took charge of the children and made me spend three days in hospital having treatment.
              George took me to the hospital on the afternoon of New Years Eve and decided
              to spend the night at the hotel and join in the New Years Eve celebrations. I had several
              visitors at the hospital that evening and George actually managed to get some imported
              grapes for me. He returned to the farm next morning and fetched me from the hospital
              four days later. Of course the old A.C. just had to play up. About half way home the
              back axle gave in and we had to send a passing native some miles back to a place
              called Mbalizi to hire a lorry from a Greek trader to tow us home to the farm.
              The children looked well and were full of beans. I think Marjorie was thankful to
              hand them over to me. She is delighted with Ann’s motherly little ways but Georgie she
              calls “a really wild child”. He isn’t, just has such an astonishing amount of energy and is
              always up to mischief. Marjorie brought us all lovely presents. I am so thrilled with my
              sewing machine. It may be an old model but it sews marvellously. We now have an
              Alsatian pup as well as Joseph the donkey and the two cats.

              Marjorie had a midnight encounter with Joseph which gave her quite a shock but
              we had a good laugh about it next day. Some months ago George replaced our wattle
              and daub outside pit lavatory by a substantial brick one, so large that Joseph is being
              temporarily stabled in it at night. We neglected to warn Marj about this and one night,
              storm lamp in hand, she opened the door and Joseph walked out braying his thanks.
              I am afraid Marjorie is having a quiet time, a shame when the journey from Cape
              Town is so expensive. The doctor has told me to rest as much as I can, so it is
              impossible for us to take Marj on sight seeing trips.

              I hate to think that she will be leaving in ten days time.

              Much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 18th February 1935

              Dearest Family,

              You must be able to visualise our life here quite well now that Marj is back and
              has no doubt filled in all the details I forget to mention in my letters. What a journey we
              had in the A.C. when we took her to the plane. George, the children and I sat in front and
              Marj sat behind with numerous four gallon tins of water for the insatiable radiator. It was
              raining and the canvas hood was up but part of the side flaps are missing and as there is
              no glass in the windscreen the rain blew in on us. George got fed up with constantly
              removing the hot radiator cap so simply stuffed a bit of rag in instead. When enough
              steam had built up in the radiator behind the rag it blew out and we started all over again.
              The car still roars like an aeroplane engine and yet has little power so that George sent
              gangs of boys to the steep hills between the farm and the Mission to give us a push if
              necessary. Fortunately this time it was not, and the boys cheered us on our way. We
              needed their help on the homeward journey however.

              George has now bought an old Chev engine which he means to install before I
              have to go to hospital to have my new baby. It will be quite an engineering feet as
              George has few tools.

              I am sorry to say that I am still not well, something to do with kidneys or bladder.
              George bought me some pills from one of the several small shops which have opened
              in Mbeya and Ann is most interested in the result. She said seriously to Kath Wood,
              “Oh my Mummy is a very clever Mummy. She can do blue wee and green wee as well
              as yellow wee.” I simply can no longer manage the children without help and have
              engaged the cook’s wife, Janey, to help. The children are by no means thrilled. I plead in
              vain that I am not well enough to go for walks. Ann says firmly, “Ann doesn’t want to go
              for a walk. Ann will look after you.” Funny, though she speaks well for a three year old,
              she never uses the first person. Georgie say he would much rather walk with
              Keshokutwa, the kitchen boy. His name by the way, means day-after-tomorrow and it
              suits him down to the ground, Kath Wood walks over sometimes with offers of help and Ann will gladly go walking with her but Georgie won’t. He on the other hand will walk with Anne Molteno
              and Ann won’t. They are obstinate kids. Ann has developed a very fertile imagination.
              She has probably been looking at too many of those nice women’s magazines you
              sent. A few days ago she said, “You are sick Mummy, but Ann’s got another Mummy.
              She’s not sick, and my other mummy (very smugly) has lovely golden hair”. This
              morning’ not ten minutes after I had dressed her, she came in with her frock wet and
              muddy. I said in exasperation, “Oh Ann, you are naughty.” To which she instantly
              returned, “My other Mummy doesn’t think I am naughty. She thinks I am very nice.” It
              strikes me I shall have to get better soon so that I can be gay once more and compete
              with that phantom golden haired paragon.

              We had a very heavy storm over the farm last week. There was heavy rain with
              hail which stripped some of the coffee trees and the Mchewe River flooded and the
              water swept through the lower part of the shamba. After the water had receded George
              picked up a fine young trout which had been stranded. This was one of some he had
              put into the river when Georgie was a few months old.

              The trials of a coffee farmer are legion. We now have a plague of snails. They
              ring bark the young trees and leave trails of slime on the glossy leaves. All the ring
              barked trees will have to be cut right back and this is heartbreaking as they are bearing
              berries for the first time. The snails are collected by native children, piled upon the
              ground and bashed to a pulp which gives off a sickening stench. I am sorry for the local
              Africans. Locusts ate up their maize and now they are losing their bean crop to the snails.

              Lots of love, Eleanor

              #6260
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                From Tanganyika with Love

                With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                • “The letters of Eleanor Dunbar Leslie to her parents and her sister in South Africa
                  concerning her life with George Gilman Rushby of Tanganyika, and the trials and
                  joys of bringing up a family in pioneering conditions.

                These letters were transcribed from copies of letters typed by Eleanor Rushby from
                the originals which were in the estate of Marjorie Leslie, Eleanor’s sister. Eleanor
                kept no diary of her life in Tanganyika, so these letters were the living record of an
                important part of her life.

                Prelude
                Having walked across Africa from the East coast to Ubangi Shauri Chad
                in French Equatorial Africa, hunting elephant all the way, George Rushby
                made his way down the Congo to Leopoldville. He then caught a ship to
                Europe and had a holiday in Brussels and Paris before visiting his family
                in England. He developed blackwater fever and was extremely ill for a
                while. When he recovered he went to London to arrange his return to
                Africa.

                Whilst staying at the Overseas Club he met Eileen Graham who had come
                to England from Cape Town to study music. On hearing that George was
                sailing for Cape Town she arranged to introduce him to her friend
                Eleanor Dunbar Leslie. “You’ll need someone lively to show you around,”
                she said. “She’s as smart as paint, a keen mountaineer, a very good school
                teacher, and she’s attractive. You can’t miss her, because her father is a
                well known Cape Town Magistrate. And,” she added “I’ve already written
                and told her what ship you are arriving on.”

                Eleanor duly met the ship. She and George immediately fell in love.
                Within thirty six hours he had proposed marriage and was accepted
                despite the misgivings of her parents. As she was under contract to her
                High School, she remained in South Africa for several months whilst
                George headed for Tanganyika looking for a farm where he could build
                their home.

                These details are a summary of chapter thirteen of the Biography of
                George Gilman Rushby ‘The Hunter is Death “ by T.V.Bulpin.

                 

                Dearest Marj,
                Terrifically exciting news! I’ve just become engaged to an Englishman whom I
                met last Monday. The result is a family upheaval which you will have no difficulty in
                imagining!!

                The Aunts think it all highly romantic and cry in delight “Now isn’t that just like our
                El!” Mummy says she doesn’t know what to think, that anyway I was always a harum
                scarum and she rather expected something like this to happen. However I know that
                she thinks George highly attractive. “Such a nice smile and gentle manner, and such
                good hands“ she murmurs appreciatively. “But WHY AN ELEPHANT HUNTER?” she
                ends in a wail, as though elephant hunting was an unmentionable profession.
                Anyway I don’t think so. Anyone can marry a bank clerk or a lawyer or even a
                millionaire – but whoever heard of anyone marrying anyone as exciting as an elephant
                hunter? I’m thrilled to bits.

                Daddy also takes a dim view of George’s profession, and of George himself as
                a husband for me. He says that I am so impulsive and have such wild enthusiasms that I
                need someone conservative and steady to give me some serenity and some ballast.
                Dad says George is a handsome fellow and a good enough chap he is sure, but
                he is obviously a man of the world and hints darkly at a possible PAST. George says
                he has nothing of the kind and anyway I’m the first girl he has asked to marry him. I don’t
                care anyway, I’d gladly marry him tomorrow, but Dad has other ideas.

                He sat in his armchair to deliver his verdict, wearing the same look he must wear
                on the bench. If we marry, and he doesn’t think it would be a good thing, George must
                buy a comfortable house for me in Central Africa where I can stay safely when he goes
                hunting. I interrupted to say “But I’m going too”, but dad snubbed me saying that in no
                time at all I’ll have a family and one can’t go dragging babies around in the African Bush.”
                George takes his lectures with surprising calm. He says he can see Dad’s point of
                view much better than I can. He told the parents today that he plans to buy a small
                coffee farm in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika and will build a cosy cottage which
                will be a proper home for both of us, and that he will only hunt occasionally to keep the
                pot boiling.

                Mummy, of course, just had to spill the beans. She said to George, “I suppose
                you know that Eleanor knows very little about house keeping and can’t cook at all.” a fact
                that I was keeping a dark secret. But George just said, “Oh she won’t have to work. The
                boys do all that sort of thing. She can lie on a couch all day and read if she likes.” Well
                you always did say that I was a “Lily of the field,” and what a good thing! If I were one of
                those terribly capable women I’d probably die of frustration because it seems that
                African house boys feel that they have lost face if their Memsahibs do anything but the
                most gracious chores.

                George is absolutely marvellous. He is strong and gentle and awfully good
                looking too. He is about 5 ft 10 ins tall and very broad. He wears his curly brown hair cut
                very short and has a close clipped moustache. He has strongly marked eyebrows and
                very striking blue eyes which sometimes turn grey or green. His teeth are strong and
                even and he has a quiet voice.

                I expect all this sounds too good to be true, but come home quickly and see for
                yourself. George is off to East Africa in three weeks time to buy our farm. I shall follow as
                soon as he has bought it and we will be married in Dar es Salaam.

                Dad has taken George for a walk “to get to know him” and that’s why I have time
                to write such a long screed. They should be back any minute now and I must fly and
                apply a bit of glamour.

                Much love my dear,
                your jubilant
                Eleanor

                S.S.Timavo. Durban. 28th.October. 1930.

                Dearest Family,
                Thank you for the lovely send off. I do wish you were all on board with me and
                could come and dance with me at my wedding. We are having a very comfortable
                voyage. There were only four of the passengers as far as Durban, all of them women,
                but I believe we are taking on more here. I have a most comfortable deck cabin to
                myself and the use of a sumptuous bathroom. No one is interested in deck games and I
                am having a lazy time, just sunbathing and reading.

                I sit at the Captain’s table and the meals are delicious – beautifully served. The
                butter for instance, is moulded into sprays of roses, most exquisitely done, and as for
                the ice-cream, I’ve never tasted anything like them.

                The meals are continental type and we have hors d’oeuvre in a great variety
                served on large round trays. The Italians souse theirs with oil, Ugh! We also of course
                get lots of spaghetti which I have some difficulty in eating. However this presents no
                problem to the Chief Engineer who sits opposite to me. He simply rolls it around his
                fork and somehow the spaghetti flows effortlessly from fork to mouth exactly like an
                ascending escalator. Wine is served at lunch and dinner – very mild and pleasant stuff.
                Of the women passengers the one i liked best was a young German widow
                from South west Africa who left the ship at East London to marry a man she had never
                met. She told me he owned a drapers shop and she was very happy at the prospect
                of starting a new life, as her previous marriage had ended tragically with the death of her
                husband and only child in an accident.

                I was most interested to see the bridegroom and stood at the rail beside the gay
                young widow when we docked at East London. I picked him out, without any difficulty,
                from the small group on the quay. He was a tall thin man in a smart grey suit and with a
                grey hat perched primly on his head. You can always tell from hats can’t you? I wasn’t
                surprised to see, when this German raised his head, that he looked just like the Kaiser’s
                “Little Willie”. Long thin nose and cold grey eyes and no smile of welcome on his tight
                mouth for the cheery little body beside me. I quite expected him to jerk his thumb and
                stalk off, expecting her to trot at his heel.

                However she went off blithely enough. Next day before the ship sailed, she
                was back and I saw her talking to the Captain. She began to cry and soon after the
                Captain patted her on the shoulder and escorted her to the gangway. Later the Captain
                told me that the girl had come to ask him to allow her to work her passage back to
                Germany where she had some relations. She had married the man the day before but
                she disliked him because he had deceived her by pretending that he owned a shop
                whereas he was only a window dresser. Bad show for both.

                The Captain and the Chief Engineer are the only officers who mix socially with
                the passengers. The captain seems rather a melancholy type with, I should say, no
                sense of humour. He speaks fair English with an American accent. He tells me that he
                was on the San Francisco run during Prohibition years in America and saw many Film
                Stars chiefly “under the influence” as they used to flock on board to drink. The Chief
                Engineer is big and fat and cheerful. His English is anything but fluent but he makes up
                for it in mime.

                I visited the relations and friends at Port Elizabeth and East London, and here at
                Durban. I stayed with the Trotters and Swans and enjoyed myself very much at both
                places. I have collected numerous wedding presents, china and cutlery, coffee
                percolator and ornaments, and where I shall pack all these things I don’t know. Everyone has been terribly kind and I feel extremely well and happy.

                At the start of the voyage I had a bit of bad luck. You will remember that a
                perfectly foul South Easter was blowing. Some men were busy working on a deck
                engine and I stopped to watch and a tiny fragment of steel blew into my eye. There is
                no doctor on board so the stewardess put some oil into the eye and bandaged it up.
                The eye grew more and more painful and inflamed and when when we reached Port
                Elizabeth the Captain asked the Port Doctor to look at it. The Doctor said it was a job for
                an eye specialist and telephoned from the ship to make an appointment. Luckily for me,
                Vincent Tofts turned up at the ship just then and took me off to the specialist and waited
                whilst he extracted the fragment with a giant magnet. The specialist said that I was very
                lucky as the thing just missed the pupil of my eye so my sight will not be affected. I was
                temporarily blinded by the Belladona the eye-man put in my eye so he fitted me with a
                pair of black goggles and Vincent escorted me back to the ship. Don’t worry the eye is
                now as good as ever and George will not have to take a one-eyed bride for better or
                worse.

                I have one worry and that is that the ship is going to be very much overdue by
                the time we reach Dar es Salaam. She is taking on a big wool cargo and we were held
                up for three days in East london and have been here in Durban for five days.
                Today is the ninth Anniversary of the Fascist Movement and the ship was
                dressed with bunting and flags. I must now go and dress for the gala dinner.

                Bless you all,
                Eleanor.

                S.S.Timavo. 6th. November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                Nearly there now. We called in at Lourenco Marques, Beira, Mozambique and
                Port Amelia. I was the only one of the original passengers left after Durban but there we
                took on a Mrs Croxford and her mother and two men passengers. Mrs C must have
                something, certainly not looks. She has a flat figure, heavily mascared eyes and crooked
                mouth thickly coated with lipstick. But her rather sweet old mother-black-pearls-type tells
                me they are worn out travelling around the world trying to shake off an admirer who
                pursues Mrs C everywhere.

                The one male passenger is very quiet and pleasant. The old lady tells me that he
                has recently lost his wife. The other passenger is a horribly bumptious type.
                I had my hair beautifully shingled at Lourenco Marques, but what an experience it
                was. Before we docked I asked the Captain whether he knew of a hairdresser, but he
                said he did not and would have to ask the agent when he came aboard. The agent was
                a very suave Asian. He said “Sure he did” and offered to take me in his car. I rather
                doubtfully agreed — such a swarthy gentleman — and was driven, not to a hairdressing
                establishment, but to his office. Then he spoke to someone on the telephone and in no
                time at all a most dago-y type arrived carrying a little black bag. He was all patent
                leather, hair, and flashing smile, and greeted me like an old and valued friend.
                Before I had collected my scattered wits tthe Agent had flung open a door and
                ushered me through, and I found myself seated before an ornate mirror in what was only
                too obviously a bedroom. It was a bedroom with a difference though. The unmade bed
                had no legs but hung from the ceiling on brass chains.

                The agent beamingly shut the door behind him and I was left with my imagination
                and the afore mentioned oily hairdresser. He however was very business like. Before I
                could say knife he had shingled my hair with a cut throat razor and then, before I could
                protest, had smothered my neck in stinking pink powder applied with an enormous and
                filthy swansdown powder puff. He held up a mirror for me to admire his handiwork but I
                was aware only of the enormous bed reflected in it, and hurriedly murmuring “very nice,
                very nice” I made my escape to the outer office where, to my relief, I found the Chief
                Engineer who escorted me back to the ship.

                In the afternoon Mrs Coxford and the old lady and I hired a taxi and went to the
                Polana Hotel for tea. Very swish but I like our Cape Peninsula beaches better.
                At Lorenco Marques we took on more passengers. The Governor of
                Portuguese Nyasaland and his wife and baby son. He was a large middle aged man,
                very friendly and unassuming and spoke perfect English. His wife was German and
                exquisite, as fragile looking and with the delicate colouring of a Dresden figurine. She
                looked about 18 but she told me she was 28 and showed me photographs of two
                other sons – hefty youngsters, whom she had left behind in Portugal and was missing
                very much.

                It was frightfully hot at Beira and as I had no money left I did not go up to the
                town, but Mrs Croxford and I spent a pleasant hour on the beach under the Casurina
                trees.

                The Governor and his wife left the ship at Mozambique. He looked very
                imposing in his starched uniform and she more Dresden Sheperdish than ever in a
                flowered frock. There was a guard of honour and all the trimmings. They bade me a warm farewell and invited George and me to stay at any time.

                The German ship “Watussi” was anchored in the Bay and I decided to visit her
                and try and have my hair washed and set. I had no sooner stepped on board when a
                lady came up to me and said “Surely you are Beeba Leslie.” It was Mrs Egan and she
                had Molly with her. Considering Mrs Egan had not seen me since I was five I think it was
                jolly clever of her to recognise me. Molly is charming and was most friendly. She fixed
                things with the hairdresser and sat with me until the job was done. Afterwards I had tea
                with them.

                Port Amelia was our last stop. In fact the only person to go ashore was Mr
                Taylor, the unpleasant man, and he returned at sunset very drunk indeed.
                We reached Port Amelia on the 3rd – my birthday. The boat had anchored by
                the time I was dressed and when I went on deck I saw several row boats cluttered
                around the gangway and in them were natives with cages of wild birds for sale. Such tiny
                crowded cages. I was furious, you know me. I bought three cages, carried them out on
                to the open deck and released the birds. I expected them to fly to the land but they flew
                straight up into the rigging.

                The quiet male passenger wandered up and asked me what I was doing. I said
                “I’m giving myself a birthday treat, I hate to see caged birds.” So next thing there he
                was buying birds which he presented to me with “Happy Birthday.” I gladly set those
                birds free too and they joined the others in the rigging.

                Then a grinning steward came up with three more cages. “For the lady with
                compliments of the Captain.” They lost no time in joining their friends.
                It had given me so much pleasure to free the birds that I was only a little
                discouraged when the quiet man said thoughtfully “This should encourage those bird
                catchers you know, they are sold out. When evening came and we were due to sail I
                was sure those birds would fly home, but no, they are still there and they will probably
                remain until we dock at Dar es Salaam.

                During the morning the Captain came up and asked me what my Christian name
                is. He looked as grave as ever and I couldn’t think why it should interest him but said “the
                name is Eleanor.” That night at dinner there was a large iced cake in the centre of the
                table with “HELENA” in a delicate wreath of pink icing roses on the top. We had
                champagne and everyone congratulated me and wished me good luck in my marriage.
                A very nice gesture don’t you think. The unpleasant character had not put in an
                appearance at dinner which made the party all the nicer

                I sat up rather late in the lounge reading a book and by the time I went to bed
                there was not a soul around. I bathed and changed into my nighty,walked into my cabin,
                shed my dressing gown, and pottered around. When I was ready for bed I put out my
                hand to draw the curtains back and a hand grasped my wrist. It was that wretched
                creature outside my window on the deck, still very drunk. Luckily I was wearing that
                heavy lilac silk nighty. I was livid. “Let go at once”, I said, but he only grinned stupidly.
                “I’m not hurting you” he said, “only looking”. “I’ll ring for the steward” said I, and by
                stretching I managed to press the bell with my free hand. I rang and rang but no one
                came and he just giggled. Then I said furiously, “Remember this name, George
                Rushby, he is a fine boxer and he hates specimens like you. When he meets me at Dar
                es Salaam I shall tell him about this and I bet you will be sorry.” However he still held on
                so I turned and knocked hard on the adjoining wall which divided my cabin from Mrs
                Croxfords. Soon Mrs Croxford and the old lady appeared in dressing gowns . This
                seemed to amuse the drunk even more though he let go my wrist. So whilst the old
                lady stayed with me, Mrs C fetched the quiet passenger who soon hustled him off. He has kept out of my way ever since. However I still mean to tell George because I feel
                the fellow got off far too lightly. I reported the matter to the Captain but he just remarked
                that he always knew the man was low class because he never wears a jacket to meals.
                This is my last night on board and we again had free champagne and I was given
                some tooled leather work by the Captain and a pair of good paste earrings by the old
                lady. I have invited them and Mrs Croxford, the Chief Engineer, and the quiet
                passenger to the wedding.

                This may be my last night as Eleanor Leslie and I have spent this long while
                writing to you just as a little token of my affection and gratitude for all the years of your
                love and care. I shall post this letter on the ship and must turn now and get some beauty
                sleep. We have been told that we shall be in Dar es Salaam by 9 am. I am so excited
                that I shall not sleep.

                Very much love, and just for fun I’ll sign my full name for the last time.
                with my “bes respeks”,

                Eleanor Leslie.

                Eleanor and George Rushby:

                Eleanor and George Rushby

                Splendid Hotel, Dar es Salaam 11th November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                I’m writing this in the bedroom whilst George is out buying a tin trunk in which to
                pack all our wedding presents. I expect he will be gone a long time because he has
                gone out with Hicky Wood and, though our wedding was four days ago, it’s still an
                excuse for a party. People are all very cheery and friendly here.
                I am wearing only pants and slip but am still hot. One swelters here in the
                mornings, but a fresh sea breeze blows in the late afternoons and then Dar es Salaam is
                heavenly.

                We arrived in Dar es Salaam harbour very early on Friday morning (7 th Nov).
                The previous night the Captain had said we might not reach Dar. until 9 am, and certainly
                no one would be allowed on board before 8 am. So I dawdled on the deck in my
                dressing gown and watched the green coastline and the islands slipping by. I stood on
                the deck outside my cabin and was not aware that I was looking out at the wrong side of
                the landlocked harbour. Quite unknown to me George and some friends, the Hickson
                Woods, were standing on the Gymkhana Beach on the opposite side of the channel
                anxiously scanning the ship for a sign of me. George says he had a horrible idea I had
                missed the ship. Blissfully unconscious of his anxiety I wandered into the bathroom
                prepared for a good soak. The anchor went down when I was in the bath and suddenly
                there was a sharp wrap on the door and I heard Mrs Croxford say “There’s a man in a
                boat outside. He is looking out for someone and I’m sure it’s your George. I flung on
                some clothes and rushed on deck with tousled hair and bare feet and it was George.
                We had a marvellous reunion. George was wearing shorts and bush shirt and
                looked just like the strong silent types one reads about in novels. I finished dressing then
                George helped me bundle all the wedding presents I had collected en route into my
                travelling rug and we went into the bar lounge to join the Hickson Woods. They are the
                couple from whom George bought the land which is to be our coffee farm Hicky-Wood
                was laughing when we joined them. he said he had called a chap to bring a couple of
                beers thinking he was the steward but it turned out to be the Captain. He does wear
                such a very plain uniform that I suppose it was easy to make the mistake, but Hicky
                says he was not amused.

                Anyway as the H-W’s are to be our neighbours I’d better describe them. Kath
                Wood is very attractive, dark Irish, with curly black hair and big brown eyes. She was
                married before to Viv Lumb a great friend of George’s who died some years ago of
                blackwater fever. They had one little girl, Maureen, and Kath and Hicky have a small son
                of three called Michael. Hicky is slightly below average height and very neat and dapper
                though well built. He is a great one for a party and good fun but George says he can be
                bad tempered.

                Anyway we all filed off the ship and Hicky and Cath went on to the hotel whilst
                George and I went through customs. Passing the customs was easy. Everyone
                seemed to know George and that it was his wedding day and I just sailed through,
                except for the little matter of the rug coming undone when George and I had to scramble
                on the floor for candlesticks and fruit knives and a wooden nut bowl.
                Outside the customs shed we were mobbed by a crowd of jabbering Africans
                offering their services as porters, and soon my luggage was piled in one rickshaw whilst
                George and I climbed into another and we were born smoothly away on rubber shod
                wheels to the Splendid Hotel. The motion was pleasing enough but it seemed weird to
                be pulled along by one human being whilst another pushed behind.  We turned up a street called Acacia Avenue which, as its name implies, is lined
                with flamboyant acacia trees now in the full glory of scarlet and gold. The rickshaw
                stopped before the Splendid Hotel and I was taken upstairs into a pleasant room which
                had its own private balcony overlooking the busy street.

                Here George broke the news that we were to be married in less than an hours
                time. He would have to dash off and change and then go straight to the church. I would
                be quite all right, Kath would be looking in and friends would fetch me.
                I started to dress and soon there was a tap at the door and Mrs Hickson-Wood
                came in with my bouquet. It was a lovely bunch of carnations and frangipani with lots of
                asparagus fern and it went well with my primrose yellow frock. She admired my frock
                and Leghorn hat and told me that her little girl Maureen was to be my flower girl. Then
                she too left for the church.

                I was fully dressed when there was another knock on the door and I opened it to
                be confronted by a Police Officer in a starched white uniform. I’m McCallum”, he said,
                “I’ve come to drive you to the church.” Downstairs he introduced me to a big man in a
                tussore silk suit. “This is Dr Shicore”, said McCallum, “He is going to give you away.”
                Honestly, I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland. Wouldn’t have been at all surprised if
                the White Rabbit had popped up and said he was going to be my page.

                I walked out of the hotel and across the pavement in a dream and there, by the
                curb, was a big dark blue police car decorated with white ribbons and with a tall African
                Police Ascari holding the door open for me. I had hardly time to wonder what next when
                the car drew up before a tall German looking church. It was in fact the Lutheran Church in
                the days when Tanganyika was German East Africa.

                Mrs Hickson-Wood, very smart in mushroom coloured georgette and lace, and
                her small daughter were waiting in the porch, so in we went. I was glad to notice my
                friends from the boat sitting behind George’s friends who were all complete strangers to
                me. The aisle seemed very long but at last I reached George waiting in the chancel with
                Hicky-Wood, looking unfamiliar in a smart tussore suit. However this feeling of unreality
                passed when he turned his head and smiled at me.

                In the vestry after the ceremony I was kissed affectionately by several complete
                strangers and I felt happy and accepted by George’s friends. Outside the church,
                standing apart from the rest of the guests, the Italian Captain and Chief Engineer were
                waiting. They came up and kissed my hand, and murmured felicitations, but regretted
                they could not spare the time to come to the reception. Really it was just as well
                because they would not have fitted in at all well.

                Dr Shircore is the Director of Medical Services and he had very kindly lent his
                large house for the reception. It was quite a party. The guests were mainly men with a
                small sprinkling of wives. Champagne corks popped and there was an enormous cake
                and soon voices were raised in song. The chief one was ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’
                and I shall remember it for ever.

                The party was still in full swing when George and I left. The old lady from the ship
                enjoyed it hugely. She came in an all black outfit with a corsage of artificial Lily-of-the-
                Valley. Later I saw one of the men wearing the corsage in his buttonhole and the old
                lady was wearing a carnation.

                When George and I got back to the hotel,I found that my luggage had been
                moved to George’s room by his cook Lamek, who was squatting on his haunches and
                clapped his hands in greeting. My dears, you should see Lamek – exactly like a
                chimpanzee – receding forehead, wide flat nose, and long lip, and such splayed feet. It was quite a strain not to laugh, especially when he produced a gift for me. I have not yet
                discovered where he acquired it. It was a faded mauve straw toque of the kind worn by
                Queen Mary. I asked George to tell Lamek that I was touched by his generosity but felt
                that I could not accept his gift. He did not mind at all especially as George gave him a
                generous tip there and then.

                I changed into a cotton frock and shady straw hat and George changed into shorts
                and bush shirt once more. We then sneaked into the dining room for lunch avoiding our
                wedding guests who were carrying on the party in the lounge.

                After lunch we rejoined them and they all came down to the jetty to wave goodbye
                as we set out by motor launch for Honeymoon Island. I enjoyed the launch trip very
                much. The sea was calm and very blue and the palm fringed beaches of Dar es Salaam
                are as romantic as any bride could wish. There are small coral islands dotted around the
                Bay of which Honeymoon Island is the loveliest. I believe at one time it bore the less
                romantic name of Quarantine Island. Near the Island, in the shallows, the sea is brilliant
                green and I saw two pink jellyfish drifting by.

                There is no jetty on the island so the boat was stopped in shallow water and
                George carried me ashore. I was enchanted with the Island and in no hurry to go to the
                bungalow, so George and I took our bathing costumes from our suitcases and sent the
                luggage up to the house together with a box of provisions.

                We bathed and lazed on the beach and suddenly it was sunset and it began to
                get dark. We walked up the beach to the bungalow and began to unpack the stores,
                tea, sugar, condensed milk, bread and butter, sardines and a large tin of ham. There
                were also cups and saucers and plates and cutlery.

                We decided to have an early meal and George called out to the caretaker, “Boy
                letta chai”. Thereupon the ‘boy’ materialised and jabbered to George in Ki-Swaheli. It
                appeared he had no utensil in which to boil water. George, ever resourceful, removed
                the ham from the tin and gave him that. We had our tea all right but next day the ham
                was bad.

                Then came bed time. I took a hurricane lamp in one hand and my suitcase in the
                other and wandered into the bedroom whilst George vanished into the bathroom. To
                my astonishment I saw two perfectly bare iron bedsteads – no mattress or pillows. We
                had brought sheets and mosquito nets but, believe me, they are a poor substitute for a
                mattress.

                Anyway I arrayed myself in my pale yellow satin nightie and sat gingerly down
                on the iron edge of the bed to await my groom who eventually appeared in a
                handsome suit of silk pyjamas. His expression, as he took in the situation, was too much
                for me and I burst out laughing and so did he.

                Somewhere in the small hours I woke up. The breeze had dropped and the
                room was unbearably stuffy. I felt as dry as a bone. The lamp had been turned very
                low and had gone out, but I remembered seeing a water tank in the yard and I decided
                to go out in the dark and drink from the tap. In the dark I could not find my slippers so I
                slipped my feet into George’s shoes, picked up his matches and groped my way out
                of the room. I found the tank all right and with one hand on the tap and one cupped for
                water I stooped to drink. Just then I heard a scratchy noise and sensed movements
                around my feet. I struck a match and oh horrors! found that the damp spot on which I was
                standing was alive with white crabs. In my hurry to escape I took a clumsy step, put
                George’s big toe on the hem of my nightie and down I went on top of the crabs. I need
                hardly say that George was awakened by an appalling shriek and came rushing to my
                aid like a knight of old.  Anyway, alarms and excursions not withstanding, we had a wonderful weekend on the island and I was sorry to return to the heat of Dar es Salaam, though the evenings
                here are lovely and it is heavenly driving along the coast road by car or in a rickshaw.
                I was surprised to find so many Indians here. Most of the shops, large and small,
                seem to be owned by Indians and the place teems with them. The women wear
                colourful saris and their hair in long black plaits reaching to their waists. Many wear baggy
                trousers of silk or satin. They give a carnival air to the sea front towards sunset.
                This long letter has been written in instalments throughout the day. My first break
                was when I heard the sound of a band and rushed to the balcony in time to see The
                Kings African Rifles band and Askaris march down the Avenue on their way to an
                Armistice Memorial Service. They looked magnificent.

                I must end on a note of most primitive pride. George returned from his shopping
                expedition and beamingly informed me that he had thrashed the man who annoyed me
                on the ship. I felt extremely delighted and pressed for details. George told me that
                when he went out shopping he noticed to his surprise that the ‘Timavo” was still in the
                harbour. He went across to the Agents office and there saw a man who answered to the
                description I had given. George said to him “Is your name Taylor?”, and when he said
                “yes”, George said “Well my name is George Rushby”, whereupon he hit Taylor on the
                jaw so that he sailed over the counter and down the other side. Very satisfactory, I feel.
                With much love to all.

                Your cave woman
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 22 November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                Well here we are at our Country Seat, Mchewe Estate. (pronounced
                Mn,-che’-we) but I will start at the beginning of our journey and describe the farm later.
                We left the hotel at Dar es Salaam for the station in a taxi crowded with baggage
                and at the last moment Keith Wood ran out with the unwrapped bottom layer of our
                wedding cake. It remained in its naked state from there to here travelling for two days in
                the train on the luggage rack, four days in the car on my knee, reposing at night on the
                roof of the car exposed to the winds of Heaven, and now rests beside me in the tent
                looking like an old old tombstone. We have no tin large enough to hold it and one
                simply can’t throw away ones wedding cake so, as George does not eat cake, I can see
                myself eating wedding cake for tea for months to come, ants permitting.

                We travelled up by train from Dar to Dodoma, first through the lush vegetation of
                the coastal belt to Morogoro, then through sisal plantations now very overgrown with
                weeds owing to the slump in prices, and then on to the arid area around Dodoma. This
                part of the country is very dry at this time of the year and not unlike parts of our Karoo.
                The train journey was comfortable enough but slow as the engines here are fed with
                wood and not coal as in South Africa.

                Dodoma is the nearest point on the railway to Mbeya so we left the train there to
                continue our journey by road. We arrived at the one and only hotel in the early hours and
                whilst someone went to rout out the night watchman the rest of us sat on the dismal
                verandah amongst a litter of broken glass. Some bright spark remarked on the obvious –
                that there had been a party the night before.

                When we were shown to a room I thought I rather preferred the verandah,
                because the beds had not yet been made up and there was a bucket of vomit beside
                the old fashioned washstand. However George soon got the boys to clean up the
                room and I fell asleep to be awakened by George with an invitation to come and see
                our car before breakfast.

                Yes, we have our own car. It is a Chev, with what is called a box body. That
                means that sides, roof and doors are made by a local Indian carpenter. There is just the
                one front seat with a kapok mattress on it. The tools are kept in a sort of cupboard fixed
                to the side so there is a big space for carrying “safari kit” behind the cab seat.
                Lamek, who had travelled up on the same train, appeared after breakfast, and
                helped George to pack all our luggage into the back of the car. Besides our suitcases
                there was a huge bedroll, kitchen utensils and a box of provisions, tins of petrol and
                water and all Lamek’s bits and pieces which included three chickens in a wicker cage and
                an enormous bunch of bananas about 3 ft long.

                When all theses things were packed there remained only a small space between
                goods and ceiling and into this Lamek squeezed. He lay on his back with his horny feet a
                mere inch or so from the back of my head. In this way we travelled 400 miles over
                bumpy earth roads and crude pole bridges, but whenever we stopped for a meal
                Lamek wriggled out and, like Aladdin’s genie, produced good meals in no time at all.
                In the afternoon we reached a large river called the Ruaha. Workmen were busy
                building a large bridge across it but it is not yet ready so we crossed by a ford below
                the bridge. George told me that the river was full of crocodiles but though I looked hard, I
                did not see any. This is also elephant country but I did not see any of those either, only
                piles of droppings on the road. I must tell you that the natives around these parts are called Wahehe and the river is Ruaha – enough to make a cat laugh. We saw some Wahehe out hunting with spears
                and bows and arrows. They live in long low houses with the tiniest shuttered windows
                and rounded roofs covered with earth.

                Near the river we also saw a few Masai herding cattle. They are rather terrifying to
                look at – tall, angular, and very aloof. They wear nothing but a blanket knotted on one
                shoulder, concealing nothing, and all carried one or two spears.
                The road climbs steeply on the far side of the Ruaha and one has the most
                tremendous views over the plains. We spent our first night up there in the high country.
                Everything was taken out of the car, the bed roll opened up and George and I slept
                comfortably in the back of the car whilst Lamek, rolled in a blanket, slept soundly by a
                small fire nearby. Next morning we reached our first township, Iringa, and put up at the
                Colonist Hotel. We had a comfortable room in the annex overlooking the golf course.
                our room had its own little dressing room which was also the bathroom because, when
                ordered to do so, the room boy carried in an oval galvanised bath and filled it with hot
                water which he carried in a four gallon petrol tin.

                When we crossed to the main building for lunch, George was immediately hailed
                by several men who wanted to meet the bride. I was paid some handsome
                compliments but was not sure whether they were sincere or the result of a nice alcoholic
                glow. Anyhow every one was very friendly.

                After lunch I went back to the bedroom leaving George chatting away. I waited and
                waited – no George. I got awfully tired of waiting and thought I’d give him a fright so I
                walked out onto the deserted golf course and hid behind some large boulders. Soon I
                saw George returning to the room and the boy followed with a tea tray. Ah, now the hue
                and cry will start, thought I, but no, no George appeared nor could I hear any despairing
                cry. When sunset came I trailed crossly back to our hotel room where George lay
                innocently asleep on his bed, hands folded on his chest like a crusader on his tomb. In a
                moment he opened his eyes, smiled sleepily and said kindly, “Did you have a nice walk
                my love?” So of course I couldn’t play the neglected wife as he obviously didn’t think
                me one and we had a very pleasant dinner and party in the hotel that evening.
                Next day we continued our journey but turned aside to visit the farm of a sprightly
                old man named St.Leger Seaton whom George had known for many years, so it was
                after dark before George decided that we had covered our quota of miles for the day.
                Whilst he and Lamek unpacked I wandered off to a stream to cool my hot feet which had
                baked all day on the floor boards of the car. In the rather dim moonlight I sat down on the
                grassy bank and gratefully dabbled my feet in the cold water. A few minutes later I
                started up with a shriek – I had the sensation of red hot pins being dug into all my most
                sensitive parts. I started clawing my clothes off and, by the time George came to the
                rescue with the lamp, I was practically in the nude. “Only Siafu ants,” said George calmly.
                Take off all your clothes and get right in the water.” So I had a bathe whilst George
                picked the ants off my clothes by the light of the lamp turned very low for modesty’s
                sake. Siafu ants are beastly things. They are black ants with outsized heads and
                pinchers. I shall be very, very careful where I sit in future.

                The next day was even hotter. There was no great variety in the scenery. Most
                of the country was covered by a tree called Miombo, which is very ordinary when the
                foliage is a mature deep green, but when in new leaf the trees look absolutely beautiful
                as the leaves,surprisingly, are soft pastel shades of red and yellow.

                Once again we turned aside from the main road to visit one of George’s friends.
                This man Major Hugh Jones MC, has a farm only a few miles from ours but just now he is supervising the making of an airstrip. Major Jones is quite a character. He is below
                average height and skinny with an almost bald head and one nearly blind eye into which
                he screws a monocle. He is a cultured person and will, I am sure, make an interesting
                neighbour. George and Major Jones’ friends call him ‘Joni’ but he is generally known in
                this country as ‘Ropesoles’ – as he is partial to that type of footwear.
                We passed through Mbeya township after dark so I have no idea what the place
                is like. The last 100 miles of our journey was very dusty and the last 15 miles extremely
                bumpy. The road is used so little that in some places we had to plow our way through
                long grass and I was delighted when at last George turned into a side road and said
                “This is our place.” We drove along the bank of the Mchewe River, then up a hill and
                stopped at a tent which was pitched beside the half built walls of our new home. We
                were expected so there was hot water for baths and after a supper of tinned food and
                good hot tea, I climbed thankfully into bed.

                Next morning I was awakened by the chattering of the African workmen and was
                soon out to inspect the new surroundings. Our farm was once part of Hickson Wood’s
                land and is separated from theirs by a river. Our houses cannot be more than a few
                hundred yards apart as the crow flies but as both are built on the slopes of a long range
                of high hills, and one can only cross the river at the foot of the slopes, it will be quite a
                safari to go visiting on foot . Most of our land is covered with shoulder high grass but it
                has been partly cleared of trees and scrub. Down by the river George has made a long
                coffee nursery and a large vegetable garden but both coffee and vegetable seedlings
                are too small to be of use.

                George has spared all the trees that will make good shade for the coffee later on.
                There are several huge wild fig trees as big as oaks but with smooth silvery-green trunks
                and branches and there are lots of acacia thorn trees with flat tops like Japanese sun
                shades. I’ve seen lovely birds in the fig trees, Louries with bright plumage and crested
                heads, and Blue Rollers, and in the grasslands there are widow birds with incredibly long
                black tail feathers.

                There are monkeys too and horrible but fascinating tree lizards with blue bodies
                and orange heads. There are so many, many things to tell you but they must wait for
                another time as James, the house boy, has been to say “Bafu tiari” and if I don’t go at
                once, the bath will be cold.

                I am very very happy and terribly interested in this new life so please don’t
                worry about me.

                Much love to you all,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 29th. November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                I’ve lots of time to write letters just now because George is busy supervising the
                building of the house from early morning to late afternoon – with a break for lunch of
                course.

                On our second day here our tent was moved from the house site to a small
                clearing further down the slope of our hill. Next to it the labourers built a ‘banda’ , which is
                a three sided grass hut with thatched roof – much cooler than the tent in this weather.
                There is also a little grass lav. so you see we have every convenience. I spend most of
                my day in the banda reading or writing letters. Occasionally I wander up to the house site
                and watch the building, but mostly I just sit.

                I did try exploring once. I wandered down a narrow path towards the river. I
                thought I might paddle and explore the river a little but I came round a bend and there,
                facing me, was a crocodile. At least for a moment I thought it was and my adrenaline
                glands got very busy indeed. But it was only an enormous monitor lizard, four or five
                feet long. It must have been as scared as I was because it turned and rushed off through
                the grass. I turned and walked hastily back to the camp and as I passed the house site I
                saw some boys killing a large puff adder. Now I do my walking in the evenings with
                George. Nothing alarming ever seems to happen when he is around.

                It is interesting to watch the boys making bricks for the house. They make a pile
                of mud which they trample with their feet until it is the right consistency. Then they fill
                wooden moulds with the clayey mud, and press it down well and turn out beautiful shiny,
                dark brown bricks which are laid out in rows and covered with grass to bake slowly in the
                sun.

                Most of the materials for the building are right here at hand. The walls will be sun
                dried bricks and there is a white clay which will make a good whitewash for the inside
                walls. The chimney and walls will be of burnt brick and tiles and George is now busy
                building a kiln for this purpose. Poles for the roof are being cut in the hills behind the
                house and every day women come along with large bundles of thatching grass on their
                heads. Our windows are modern steel casement ones and the doors have been made
                at a mission in the district. George does some of the bricklaying himself. The other
                bricklayer is an African from Northern Rhodesia called Pedro. It makes me perspire just
                to look at Pedro who wears an overcoat all day in the very hot sun.
                Lamek continues to please. He turns out excellent meals, chicken soup followed
                by roast chicken, vegetables from the Hickson-Woods garden and a steamed pudding
                or fruit to wind up the meal. I enjoy the chicken but George is fed up with it and longs for
                good red meat. The chickens are only about as large as a partridge but then they cost
                only sixpence each.

                I had my first visit to Mbeya two days ago. I put on my very best trousseau frock
                for the occasion- that yellow striped silk one – and wore my wedding hat. George didn’t
                comment, but I saw later that I was dreadfully overdressed.
                Mbeya at the moment is a very small settlement consisting of a bundle of small
                Indian shops – Dukas they call them, which stock European tinned foods and native soft
                goods which seem to be mainly of Japanese origin. There is a one storied Government
                office called the Boma and two attractive gabled houses of burnt brick which house the
                District Officer and his Assistant. Both these houses have lovely gardens but i saw them
                only from the outside as we did not call. After buying our stores George said “Lets go to the pub, I want you to meet Mrs Menzies.” Well the pub turned out to be just three or four grass rondavels on a bare
                plot. The proprietor, Ken Menzies, came out to welcome us. I took to him at once
                because he has the same bush sandy eyebrows as you have Dad. He told me that
                unfortunately his wife is away at the coast, and then he ushered me through the door
                saying “Here’s George with his bride.” then followed the Iringa welcome all over again,
                only more so, because the room was full of diggers from the Lupa Goldfields about fifty
                miles away.

                Champagne corks popped as I shook hands all around and George was
                clapped on the back. I could see he was a favourite with everyone and I tried not to be
                gauche and let him down. These men were all most kind and most appeared to be men
                of more than average education. However several were unshaven and looked as
                though they had slept in their clothes as I suppose they had. When they have a little luck
                on the diggings they come in here to Menzies pub and spend the lot. George says
                they bring their gold dust and small nuggets in tobacco tins or Kruschen salts jars and
                hand them over to Ken Menzies saying “Tell me when I’ve spent the lot.” Ken then
                weighs the gold and estimates its value and does exactly what the digger wants.
                However the Diggers get good value for their money because besides the drink
                they get companionship and good food and nursing if they need it. Mrs Menzies is a
                trained nurse and most kind and capable from what I was told. There is no doctor or
                hospital here so her experience as a nursing sister is invaluable.
                We had lunch at the Hotel and afterwards I poured tea as I was the only female
                present. Once the shyness had worn off I rather enjoyed myself.

                Now to end off I must tell you a funny story of how I found out that George likes
                his women to be feminine. You will remember those dashing black silk pyjamas Aunt
                Mary gave me, with flowered “happy coat” to match. Well last night I thought I’d give
                George a treat and when the boy called me for my bath I left George in the ‘banda’
                reading the London Times. After my bath I put on my Japanese pyjamas and coat,
                peered into the shaving mirror which hangs from the tent pole and brushed my hair until it
                shone. I must confess that with my fringe and shingled hair I thought I made quite a
                glamourous Japanese girl. I walked coyly across to the ‘banda’. Alas no compliment.
                George just glanced up from the Times and went on reading.
                He was away rather a long time when it came to his turn to bath. I glanced up
                when he came back and had a slight concussion. George, if you please, was arrayed in
                my very best pale yellow satin nightie. The one with the lace and ribbon sash and little
                bows on the shoulder. I knew exactly what he meant to convey. I was not to wear the
                trousers in the family. I seethed inwardly, but pretending not to notice, I said calmly “shall
                I call for food?” In this garb George sat down to dinner and it says a great deal for African
                phlegm that the boy did not drop the dishes.

                We conversed politely about this and that, and then, as usual, George went off
                to bed. I appeared to be engrossed in my book and did not stir. When I went to the
                tent some time later George lay fast asleep still in my nightie, though all I could see of it
                was the little ribbon bows looking farcically out of place on his broad shoulders.
                This morning neither of us mentioned the incident, George was up and dressed
                by the time I woke up but I have been smiling all day to think what a ridiculous picture
                we made at dinner. So farewell to pyjamas and hey for ribbons and bows.

                Your loving
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. Mbeya. 8th December 1930

                Dearest Family,

                A mere shadow of her former buxom self lifts a languid pen to write to you. I’m
                convalescing after my first and I hope my last attack of malaria. It was a beastly
                experience but all is now well and I am eating like a horse and will soon regain my
                bounce.

                I took ill on the evening of the day I wrote my last letter to you. It started with a
                splitting headache and fits of shivering. The symptoms were all too familiar to George
                who got me into bed and filled me up with quinine. He then piled on all the available
                blankets and packed me in hot water bottles. I thought I’d explode and said so and
                George said just to lie still and I’d soon break into a good sweat. However nothing of the
                kind happened and next day my temperature was 105 degrees. Instead of feeling
                miserable as I had done at the onset, I now felt very merry and most chatty. George
                now tells me I sang the most bawdy songs but I hardly think it likely. Do you?
                You cannot imagine how tenderly George nursed me, not only that day but
                throughout the whole eight days I was ill. As we do not employ any African house
                women, and there are no white women in the neighbourhood at present to whom we
                could appeal for help, George had to do everything for me. It was unbearably hot in the
                tent so George decided to move me across to the Hickson-Woods vacant house. They
                have not yet returned from the coast.

                George decided I was too weak to make the trip in the car so he sent a
                messenger over to the Woods’ house for their Machila. A Machila is a canopied canvas
                hammock slung from a bamboo pole and carried by four bearers. The Machila duly
                arrived and I attempted to walk to it, clinging to George’s arm, but collapsed in a faint so
                the trip was postponed to the next morning when I felt rather better. Being carried by
                Machila is quite pleasant but I was in no shape to enjoy anything and got thankfully into
                bed in the Hickson-Woods large, cool and rather dark bedroom. My condition did not
                improve and George decided to send a runner for the Government Doctor at Tukuyu
                about 60 miles away. Two days later Dr Theis arrived by car and gave me two
                injections of quinine which reduced the fever. However I still felt very weak and had to
                spend a further four days in bed.

                We have now decided to stay on here until the Hickson-Woods return by which
                time our own house should be ready. George goes off each morning and does not
                return until late afternoon. However don’t think “poor Eleanor” because I am very
                comfortable here and there are lots of books to read and the days seem to pass very
                quickly.

                The Hickson-Wood’s house was built by Major Jones and I believe the one on
                his shamba is just like it. It is a square red brick building with a wide verandah all around
                and, rather astonishingly, a conical thatched roof. There is a beautiful view from the front
                of the house and a nice flower garden. The coffee shamba is lower down on the hill.
                Mrs Wood’s first husband, George’s friend Vi Lumb, is buried in the flower
                garden. He died of blackwater fever about five years ago. I’m told that before her
                second marriage Kath lived here alone with her little daughter, Maureen, and ran the farm
                entirely on her own. She must be quite a person. I bet she didn’t go and get malaria
                within a few weeks of her marriage.

                The native tribe around here are called Wasafwa. They are pretty primitive but
                seem amiable people. Most of the men, when they start work, wear nothing but some
                kind of sheet of unbleached calico wrapped round their waists and hanging to mid calf. As soon as they have drawn their wages they go off to a duka and buy a pair of khaki
                shorts for five or six shillings. Their women folk wear very short beaded skirts. I think the
                base is goat skin but have never got close enough for a good look. They are very shy.
                I hear from George that they have started on the roof of our house but I have not
                seen it myself since the day I was carried here by Machila. My letters by the way go to
                the Post Office by runner. George’s farm labourers take it in turn to act in this capacity.
                The mail bag is given to them on Friday afternoon and by Saturday evening they are
                back with our very welcome mail.

                Very much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mbeya 23rd December 1930

                Dearest Family,

                George drove to Mbeya for stores last week and met Col. Sherwood-Kelly VC.
                who has been sent by the Government to Mbeya as Game Ranger. His job will be to
                protect native crops from raiding elephants and hippo etc., and to protect game from
                poachers. He has had no training for this so he has asked George to go with him on his
                first elephant safari to show him the ropes.

                George likes Col. Kelly and was quite willing to go on safari but not willing to
                leave me alone on the farm as I am still rather shaky after malaria. So it was arranged that
                I should go to Mbeya and stay with Mrs Harmer, the wife of the newly appointed Lands
                and Mines Officer, whose husband was away on safari.

                So here I am in Mbeya staying in the Harmers temporary wattle and daub
                house. Unfortunately I had a relapse of the malaria and stayed in bed for three days with
                a temperature. Poor Mrs Harmer had her hands full because in the room next to mine
                she was nursing a digger with blackwater fever. I could hear his delirious babble through
                the thin wall – very distressing. He died poor fellow , and leaves a wife and seven
                children.

                I feel better than I have done for weeks and this afternoon I walked down to the
                store. There are great signs of activity and people say that Mbeya will grow rapidly now
                owing to the boom on the gold fields and also to the fact that a large aerodrome is to be
                built here. Mbeya is to be a night stop on the proposed air service between England
                and South Africa. I seem to be the last of the pioneers. If all these schemes come about
                Mbeya will become quite suburban.

                26th December 1930

                George, Col. Kelly and Mr Harmer all returned to Mbeya on Christmas Eve and
                it was decided that we should stay and have midday Christmas dinner with the
                Harmers. Col. Kelly and the Assistant District Commissioner came too and it was quite a
                festive occasion, We left Mbeya in the early afternoon and had our evening meal here at
                Hickson-Wood’s farm. I wore my wedding dress.

                I went across to our house in the car this morning. George usually walks across to
                save petrol which is very expensive here. He takes a short cut and wades through the
                river. The distance by road is very much longer than the short cut. The men are now
                thatching the roof of our cottage and it looks charming. It consists of a very large living
                room-dinning room with a large inglenook fireplace at one end. The bedroom is a large
                square room with a smaller verandah room adjoining it. There is a wide verandah in the
                front, from which one has a glorious view over a wide valley to the Livingstone
                Mountains on the horizon. Bathroom and storeroom are on the back verandah and the
                kitchen is some distance behind the house to minimise the risk of fire.

                You can imagine how much I am looking forward to moving in. We have some
                furniture which was made by an Indian carpenter at Iringa, refrectory dining table and
                chairs, some small tables and two armchairs and two cupboards and a meatsafe. Other
                things like bookshelves and extra cupboards we will have to make ourselves. George
                has also bought a portable gramophone and records which will be a boon.
                We also have an Irish wolfhound puppy, a skinny little chap with enormous feet
                who keeps me company all day whilst George is across at our farm working on the
                house.

                Lots and lots of love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 8th Jan 1931

                Dearest Family,

                Alas, I have lost my little companion. The Doctor called in here on Boxing night
                and ran over and killed Paddy, our pup. It was not his fault but I was very distressed
                about it and George has promised to try and get another pup from the same litter.
                The Hickson-Woods returned home on the 29th December so we decided to
                move across to our nearly finished house on the 1st January. Hicky Wood decided that
                we needed something special to mark the occasion so he went off and killed a sucking
                pig behind the kitchen. The piglet’s screams were terrible and I felt that I would not be
                able to touch any dinner. Lamek cooked and served sucking pig up in the traditional way
                but it was high and quite literally, it stank. Our first meal in our own home was not a
                success.

                However next day all was forgotten and I had something useful to do. George
                hung doors and I held the tools and I also planted rose cuttings I had brought from
                Mbeya and sowed several boxes with seeds.

                Dad asked me about the other farms in the area. I haven’t visited any but there
                are five besides ours. One belongs to the Lutheran Mission at Utengule, a few miles
                from here. The others all belong to British owners. Nearest to Mbeya, at the foot of a
                very high peak which gives Mbeya its name, are two farms, one belonging to a South
                African mining engineer named Griffiths, the other to I.G.Stewart who was an officer in the
                Kings African Rifles. Stewart has a young woman called Queenie living with him. We are
                some miles further along the range of hills and are some 23 miles from Mbeya by road.
                The Mchewe River divides our land from the Hickson-Woods and beyond their farm is
                Major Jones.

                All these people have been away from their farms for some time but have now
                returned so we will have some neighbours in future. However although the houses are
                not far apart as the crow flies, they are all built high in the foothills and it is impossible to
                connect the houses because of the rivers and gorges in between. One has to drive right
                down to the main road and then up again so I do not suppose we will go visiting very
                often as the roads are very bumpy and eroded and petrol is so expensive that we all
                save it for occasional trips to Mbeya.

                The rains are on and George has started to plant out some coffee seedlings. The
                rains here are strange. One can hear the rain coming as it moves like a curtain along the
                range of hills. It comes suddenly, pours for a little while and passes on and the sun
                shines again.

                I do like it here and I wish you could see or dear little home.

                Your loving,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 1st April 1931

                Dearest Family,

                Everything is now running very smoothly in our home. Lamek continues to
                produce palatable meals and makes wonderful bread which he bakes in a four gallon
                petrol tin as we have no stove yet. He puts wood coals on the brick floor of the kitchen,
                lays the tin lengh-wise on the coals and heaps more on top. The bread tins are then put
                in the petrol tin, which has one end cut away, and the open end is covered by a flat
                piece of tin held in place by a brick. Cakes are also backed in this make-shift oven and I
                have never known Lamek to have a failure yet.

                Lamek has a helper, known as the ‘mpishi boy’ , who does most of the hard
                work, cleans pots and pans and chops the firewood etc. Another of the mpishi boy’s
                chores is to kill the two chickens we eat each day. The chickens run wild during the day
                but are herded into a small chicken house at night. One of the kitchen boy’s first duties is
                to let the chickens out first thing in the early morning. Some time after breakfast it dawns
                on Lamek that he will need a chicken for lunch. he informs the kitchen boy who selects a
                chicken and starts to chase it in which he is enthusiastically joined by our new Irish
                wolfhound pup, Kelly. Together they race after the frantic fowl, over the flower beds and
                around the house until finally the chicken collapses from sheer exhaustion. The kitchen
                boy then hands it over to Lamek who murders it with the kitchen knife and then pops the
                corpse into boiling water so the feathers can be stripped off with ease.

                I pointed out in vain, that it would be far simpler if the doomed chickens were kept
                in the chicken house in the mornings when the others were let out and also that the correct
                way to pluck chickens is when they are dry. Lamek just smiled kindly and said that that
                may be so in Europe but that his way is the African way and none of his previous
                Memsahibs has complained.

                My houseboy, named James, is clean and capable in the house and also a
                good ‘dhobi’ or washboy. He takes the washing down to the river and probably
                pounds it with stones, but I prefer not to look. The ironing is done with a charcoal iron
                only we have no charcoal and he uses bits of wood from the kitchen fire but so far there
                has not been a mishap.

                It gets dark here soon after sunset and then George lights the oil lamps and we
                have tea and toast in front of the log fire which burns brightly in our inglenook. This is my
                favourite hour of the day. Later George goes for his bath. I have mine in the mornings
                and we have dinner at half past eight. Then we talk a bit and read a bit and sometimes
                play the gramophone. I expect it all sounds pretty unexciting but it doesn’t seem so to
                me.

                Very much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 20th April 1931

                Dearest Family,

                It is still raining here and the countryside looks very lush and green, very different
                from the Mbeya district I first knew, when plains and hills were covered in long brown
                grass – very course stuff that grows shoulder high.

                Most of the labourers are hill men and one can see little patches of cultivation in
                the hills. Others live in small villages near by, each consisting of a cluster of thatched huts
                and a few maize fields and perhaps a patch of bananas. We do not have labour lines on
                the farm because our men all live within easy walking distance. Each worker has a labour
                card with thirty little squares on it. One of these squares is crossed off for each days work
                and when all thirty are marked in this way the labourer draws his pay and hies himself off
                to the nearest small store and blows the lot. The card system is necessary because
                these Africans are by no means slaves to work. They work only when they feel like it or
                when someone in the family requires a new garment, or when they need a few shillings
                to pay their annual tax. Their fields, chickens and goats provide them with the food they
                need but they draw rations of maize meal beans and salt. Only our headman is on a
                salary. His name is Thomas and he looks exactly like the statues of Julius Caesar, the
                same bald head and muscular neck and sardonic expression. He comes from Northern
                Rhodesia and is more intelligent than the locals.

                We still live mainly on chickens. We have a boy whose job it is to scour the
                countryside for reasonable fat ones. His name is Lucas and he is quite a character. He
                has such long horse teeth that he does not seem able to close his mouth and wears a
                perpetual amiable smile. He brings his chickens in beehive shaped wicker baskets
                which are suspended on a pole which Lucas carries on his shoulder.

                We buy our groceries in bulk from Mbeya, our vegetables come from our
                garden by the river and our butter from Kath Wood. Our fresh milk we buy from the
                natives. It is brought each morning by three little totos each carrying one bottle on his
                shaven head. Did I tell you that the local Wasafwa file their teeth to points. These kids
                grin at one with their little sharks teeth – quite an “all-ready-to-eat-you-with-my-dear” look.
                A few nights ago a message arrived from Kath Wood to say that Queenie
                Stewart was very ill and would George drive her across to the Doctor at Tukuyu. I
                wanted George to wait until morning because it was pouring with rain, and the mountain
                road to Tukuyu is tricky even in dry weather, but he said it is dangerous to delay with any
                kind of fever in Africa and he would have to start at once. So off he drove in the rain and I
                did not see him again until the following night.

                George said that it had been a nightmare trip. Queenie had a high temperature
                and it was lucky that Kath was able to go to attend to her. George needed all his
                attention on the road which was officially closed to traffic, and very slippery, and in some
                places badly eroded. In some places the decking of bridges had been removed and
                George had to get out in the rain and replace it. As he had nothing with which to fasten
                the decking to the runners it was a dangerous undertaking to cross the bridges especially
                as the rivers are now in flood and flowing strongly. However they reached Tukuyu safely
                and it was just as well they went because the Doctor diagnosed Queenies illness as
                Spirillium Tick Fever which is a very nasty illness indeed.

                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 20th May 1931

                Dear Family,

                I’m feeling fit and very happy though a bit lonely sometimes because George
                spends much of his time away in the hills cutting a furrow miles long to bring water to the
                house and to the upper part of the shamba so that he will be able to irrigate the coffee
                during the dry season.

                It will be quite an engineering feat when it is done as George only has makeshift
                surveying instruments. He has mounted an ordinary cheap spirit level on an old camera
                tripod and has tacked two gramophone needles into the spirit level to give him a line.
                The other day part of a bank gave way and practically buried two of George’s labourers
                but they were quickly rescued and no harm was done. However he will not let them
                work unless he is there to supervise.

                I keep busy so that the days pass quickly enough. I am delighted with the
                material you sent me for curtains and loose covers and have hired a hand sewing
                machine from Pedro-of-the-overcoat and am rattling away all day. The machine is an
                ancient German one and when I say rattle, I mean rattle. It is a most cumbersome, heavy
                affair of I should say, the same vintage as George Stevenson’s Rocket locomotive.
                Anyway it sews and I am pleased with my efforts. We made a couch ourselves out of a
                native bed, a mattress and some planks but all this is hidden under the chintz cover and
                it looks quite the genuine bought article. I have some diversions too. Small black faced
                monkeys sit in the trees outside our bedroom window and they are most entertaining to
                watch. They are very mischievous though. When I went out into the garden this morning
                before breakfast I found that the monkeys had pulled up all my carnations. There they
                lay, roots in the air and whether they will take again I don’t know.

                I like the monkeys but hate the big mountain baboons that come and hang
                around our chicken house. I am terrified that they will tear our pup into bits because he is
                a plucky young thing and will rush out to bark at the baboons.

                George usually returns for the weekends but last time he did not because he had
                a touch of malaria. He sent a boy down for the mail and some fresh bread. Old Lucas
                arrived with chickens just as the messenger was setting off with mail and bread in a
                haversack on his back. I thought it might be a good idea to send a chicken to George so
                I selected a spry young rooster which I handed to the messenger. He, however,
                complained that he needed both hands for climbing. I then had one of my bright ideas
                and, putting a layer of newspaper over the bread, I tucked the rooster into the haversack
                and buckled down the flap so only his head protruded.

                I thought no more about it until two days later when the messenger again
                appeared for fresh bread. He brought a rather terse note from George saying that the
                previous bread was uneatable as the rooster had eaten some of it and messed on the
                rest. Ah me!

                The previous weekend the Hickson-Woods, Stewarts and ourselves, went
                across to Tukuyu to attend a dance at the club there. the dance was very pleasant. All
                the men wore dinner jackets and the ladies wore long frocks. As there were about
                twenty men and only seven ladies we women danced every dance whilst the surplus
                men got into a huddle around the bar. George and I spent the night with the Agricultural
                Officer, Mr Eustace, and I met his fiancee, Lillian Austin from South Africa, to whom I took
                a great liking. She is Governess to the children of Major Masters who has a farm in the
                Tukuyu district.

                On the Sunday morning we had a look at the township. The Boma was an old German one and was once fortified as the Africans in this district are a very warlike tribe.
                They are fine looking people. The men wear sort of togas and bands of cloth around
                their heads and look like Roman Senators, but the women go naked except for a belt
                from which two broad straps hang down, one in front and another behind. Not a graceful
                garb I assure you.

                We also spent a pleasant hour in the Botanical Gardens, laid out during the last
                war by the District Commissioner, Major Wells, with German prisoner of war labour.
                There are beautiful lawns and beds of roses and other flowers and shady palm lined
                walks and banana groves. The gardens are terraced with flights of brick steps connecting
                the different levels and there is a large artificial pond with little islands in it. I believe Major
                Wells designed the lake to resemble in miniature, the Lakes of Killarney.
                I enjoyed the trip very much. We got home at 8 pm to find the front door locked
                and the kitchen boy fast asleep on my newly covered couch! I hastily retreated to the
                bedroom whilst George handled the situation.

                Eleanor.

                #6254
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  The Gladstone Connection

                  My grandmother had said that we were distantly related to Gladstone the prime minister. Apparently Grandma’s mothers aunt had a neice that was related to him, or some combination of aunts and nieces on the Gretton side. I had not yet explored all the potential great grandmothers aunt’s nieces looking for this Gladstone connection, but I accidentally found a Gladstone on the tree on the Gretton side.

                  I was wandering around randomly looking at the hints for other people that had my grandparents in their trees to see who they were and how they were connected, and noted a couple of photos of Orgills. Richard Gretton, grandma’s mother Florence Nightingale Gretton’s father,  married Sarah Orgill. Sarah’s brother John Orgill married Elizabeth Mary Gladstone. It was the photographs that caught my eye, but then I saw the Gladstone name, and that she was born in Liverpool. Her father was William Gladstone born 1809 in Liverpool, just like the prime minister. And his father was John Gladstone, just like the prime minister.

                  But the William Gladstone in our family tree was a millwright, who emigrated to Australia with his wife and two children rather late in life at the age of 54, in 1863. He died three years later when he was thrown out of a cart in 1866. This was clearly not William Gladstone the prime minister.

                  John Orgill emigrated to Australia in 1865, and married Elizabeth Mary Gladstone in Victoria in 1870. Their first child was born in December that year, in Dandenong. Their three sons all have the middle name Gladstone.

                  John Orgill 1835-1911 (Florence Nightingale Gretton’s mothers brother)

                  John Orgill

                  Elizabeth Mary Gladstone 1845-1926

                  Elizabeth Mary Gladstone

                   

                  I did not think that the link to Gladstone the prime minister was true, until I found an article in the Australian newspapers while researching the family of John Orgill for the Australia chapter.

                  In the Letters to the Editor in The Argus, a Melbourne newspaper, dated 8 November 1921:

                  Gladstone

                   

                  THE GLADSTONE FAMILY.
                  TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS.
                  Sir,—I notice to-day a reference to the
                  death of Mr. Robert Gladstone, late of
                  Wooltonvale. Liverpool, who, together
                  with estate in England valued at £143,079,
                  is reported to have left to his children
                  (five sons and seven daughters) estate
                  valued at £4,300 in Victoria. It may be
                  of interest to some of your readers to
                  know that this Robert Gladstone was a
                  son of the Gladstone family to which
                  the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the
                  famous Prime Minister, belonged, some
                  members of which are now resident in Aus-
                  tralia. Robert Gladstone’s father (W. E.
                  Gladstone’s cousin), Stuart Gladstone, of
                  Liverpool, owned at one time the estates
                  of Noorat and Glenormiston, in Victoria,
                  to which he sent Neil Black as manager.
                  Mr. Black, who afterwards acquired the
                  property, called one of his sons “Stuart
                  Gladstone” after his employer. A nephew
                  of Stuart Gladstone (and cousin of
                  Robert Gladstone, of Wooltonvale), Robert
                  Cottingham, by name “Bobbie” came out
                  to Australia to farm at Noorat, but was
                  killed in a horse accident when only 21,
                  and was the first to be buried in the new
                  cemetery at Noorat. A brother, of “Bob-
                  bie,” “Fred” by name, was well known
                  in the early eighties as an overland
                  drover, taking stock for C. B. Fisher to
                  the far north. Later on he married and
                  settled in Melbourne, but left during the
                  depressing time following the bursting of
                  the boom, to return to Queensland, where,
                  in all probability, he still resides. A sister
                  of “Bobbie” and “Fred” still lives in the
                  neighbourhood of Melbourne. Their
                  father, Montgomery Gladstone, who was in
                  the diplomatic service, and travelled about
                  a great deal, was a brother of Stuart Glad-
                  stone, the owner of Noorat, and a full
                  cousin of William Ewart Gladstone, his
                  father, Robert, being a brother of W. E.
                  Gladstone’s father, Sir John, of Liverpool.
                  The wife of Robert Gladstone, of Woolton-
                  vale, Ella Gladstone by name, was also
                  his second cousin, being the daughter of
                  Robertson Gladstone, of Courthaize, near
                  Liverpool, W. E. Gladstone’s older
                  brother.
                  A cousin of Sir John Gladstone
                  (W. E. G.’s father), also called John, was
                  a foundry owner in Castledouglas, and the
                  inventor of the first suspension bridge, a
                  model of which was made use of in the
                  erection of the Menai Bridge connecting
                  Anglesea with the mainland, and was after-
                  wards presented to the Liverpool Stock
                  Exchange by the inventor’s cousin, Sir
                  John. One of the sons of this inventive
                  engineer, William by name, left England
                  in 1863 with his wife and son and daugh-
                  ter, intending to settle in New Zealand,
                  but owing to the unrest caused there by
                  the Maori war, he came instead to Vic-
                  toria, and bought land near Dandenong.
                  Three years later he was killed in a horse
                  accident, but his name is perpetuated in
                  the name “Gladstone road” in Dandenong.
                  His daughter afterwards married, and lived
                  for many years in Gladstone House, Dande-
                  nong, but is now widowed and settled in
                  Gippsland. Her three sons and four daugh-
                  ters are all married and perpetuating the
                  Gladstone family in different parts of Aus-
                  tralia. William’s son (also called Wil-
                  liam), who came out with his father,
                  mother, and sister in 1863 still lives in the
                  Fix this textneighbourhood of Melbourne, with his son
                  and grandson. An aunt of Sir John Glad-
                  stone (W. E. G.’s father), Christina Glad-
                  stone by name, married a Mr. Somerville,
                  of Biggar. One of her great-grandchildren
                  is Professor W. P. Paterson, of Edinburgh
                  University, another is a professor in the
                  West Australian University, and a third
                  resides in Melbourne. Yours. &c.

                  Melbourne, Nov.7, FAMILY TREE

                   

                  According to the Old Dandenong website:

                  Elizabeth Mary Orgill (nee Gladstone) operated Gladstone House until at least 1911, along with another hydropathic hospital (Birthwood) on Cheltenham road. She was the daughter of William Gladstone (Nephew of William Ewart Gladstone, UK prime minister in 1874).”

                  The story of the Orgill’s continues in the chapter on Australia.

                  #6252
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    The USA Housley’s

                    This chapter is copied from Barbara Housley’s Narrative on Historic Letters, with thanks to her brother Howard Housley for sharing it with me.  Interesting to note that Housley descendants  (on the Marshall paternal side) and Gretton descendants (on the Warren maternal side) were both living in Trenton, New Jersey at the same time.

                    GEORGE HOUSLEY 1824-1877

                    George emigrated to the United states in 1851, arriving in July. The solicitor Abraham John Flint referred in a letter to a 15-pound advance which was made to George on June 9, 1851. This certainly was connected to his journey. George settled along the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The letters from the solicitor were addressed to: Lahaska Post Office, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. George married Sarah Ann Hill on May 6, 1854 in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The service was performed by Attorney James Gilkyson.

                    Doylestown

                    In her first letter (February 1854), Anne (George’s sister in Smalley, Derbyshire) wrote: “We want to know who and what is this Miss Hill you name in your letter. What age is she? Send us all the particulars but I would advise you not to get married until you have sufficient to make a comfortable home.”

                    Upon learning of George’s marriage, Anne wrote: “I hope dear brother you may be happy with your wife….I hope you will be as a son to her parents. Mother unites with me in kind love to you both and to your father and mother with best wishes for your health and happiness.”  In 1872 (December) Joseph (George’s brother) wrote: “I am sorry to hear that sister’s father is so ill. It is what we must all come to some time and hope we shall meet where there is no more trouble.”

                    Emma (George’s sister) wrote in 1855, “We write in love to your wife and yourself and you must write soon and tell us whether there is a little nephew or niece and what you call them.” In June of 1856, Emma wrote: “We want to see dear Sarah Ann and the dear little boy. We were much pleased with the “bit of news” you sent.” The bit of news was the birth of John Eley Housley, January 11, 1855. Emma concluded her letter “Give our very kindest love to dear sister and dearest Johnnie.”

                    According to his obituary, John Eley was born at Wrightstown and “removed” to Lumberville at the age of 19. John was married first to Lucy Wilson with whom he had three sons: George Wilson (1883), Howard (1893) and Raymond (1895); and then to Elizabeth Kilmer with whom he had one son Albert Kilmer (1907). John Eley Housley died November 20, 1926 at the age of 71. For many years he had worked for John R. Johnson who owned a store. According to his son Albert, John was responsible for caring for Johnson’s horses. One named Rex was considered to be quite wild, but was docile in John’s hands. When John would take orders, he would leave the wagon at the first house and walk along the backs of the houses so that he would have access to the kitchens. When he reached the seventh house he would climb back over the fence to the road and whistle for the horses who would come to meet him. John could not attend church on Sunday mornings because he was working with the horses and occasionally Albert could convince his mother that he was needed also. According to Albert, John was regular in attendance at church on Sunday evenings.

                    John was a member of the Carversville Lodge 261 IOOF and the Carversville Lodge Knights of Pythias. Internment was in the Carversville cemetery; not, however, in the plot owned by his father. In addition to his sons, he was survived by his second wife Elizabeth who lived to be 80 and three grandchildren: George’s sons, Kenneth Worman and Morris Wilson and Raymond’s daughter Miriam Louise. George had married Katie Worman about the time John Eley married Elizabeth Kilmer. Howard’s first wife Mary Brink and daughter Florence had died and he remarried Elsa Heed who also lived into her eighties. Raymond’s wife was Fanny Culver.

                    Two more sons followed: Joseph Sackett, who was known as Sackett, September 12, 1856 and Edwin or Edward Rose, November 11, 1858. Joseph Sackett Housley married Anna Hubbs of Plumsteadville on January 17, 1880. They had one son Nelson DeC. who in turn had two daughters, Eleanor Mary and Ruth Anna, and lived on Bert Avenue in Trenton N.J. near St. Francis Hospital. Nelson, who was an engineer and built the first cement road in New Jersey, died at the age of 51. His daughters were both single at the time of his death. However, when his widow, the former Eva M. Edwards, died some years later, her survivors included daughters, Mrs. Herbert D. VanSciver and Mrs. James J. McCarrell and four grandchildren. One of the daughters (the younger) was quite crippled in later years and would come to visit her great-aunt Elizabeth (John’s widow) in a chauffeur driven car. Sackett died in 1929 at the age of 70. He was a member of the Warrington Lodge IOOF of Jamison PA, the Uncas tribe and the Uncas Hayloft 102 ORM of Trenton, New Jersey. The interment was in Greenwood cemetery where he had been caretaker since his retirement from one of the oldest manufacturing plants in Trenton (made milk separators for one thing). Sackett also was the caretaker for two other cemeteries one located near the Clinton Street station and the other called Riverside.

                    Ed’s wife was named Lydia. They had two daughters, Mary and Margaret and a third child who died in infancy. Mary had seven children–one was named for his grandfather–and settled in lower Bucks county. Margaret never married. She worked for Woolworths in Flemington, N. J. and then was made manager in Somerville, N.J., where she lived until her death. Ed survived both of his brothers, and at the time of Sackett’s death was living in Flemington, New Jersey where he had worked as a grocery clerk.

                    In September 1872, Joseph wrote, “I was very sorry to hear that John your oldest had met with such a sad accident but I hope he is got alright again by this time.” In the same letter, Joseph asked: “Now I want to know what sort of a town you are living in or village. How far is it from New York? Now send me all particulars if you please.”

                    In March 1873 Harriet asked Sarah Ann: “And will you please send me all the news at the place and what it is like for it seems to me that it is a wild place but you must tell me what it is like….” The question of whether she was referring to Bucks County, Pennsylvania or some other place is raised in Joseph’s letter of the same week.

                    On March 17, 1873, Joseph wrote: “I was surprised to hear that you had gone so far away west. Now dear brother what ever are you doing there so far away from home and family–looking out for something better I suppose.” The solicitor wrote on May 23, 1874: “Lately I have not written because I was not certain of your address and because I doubted I had much interesting news to tell you.” Later, Joseph wrote concerning the problems settling the estate, “You see dear brother there is only me here on our side and I cannot do much. I wish you were here to help me a bit and if you think of going for another summer trip this turn you might as well run over here.”

                    Apparently, George had indicated he might return to England for a visit in 1856. Emma wrote concerning the portrait of their mother which had been sent to George: “I hope you like mother’s portrait. I did not see it but I suppose it was not quite perfect about the eyes….Joseph and I intend having ours taken for you when you come over….Do come over before very long.”

                    In March 1873, Joseph wrote: “You ask me what I think of you coming to England. I think as you have given the trustee power to sign for you I think you could do no good but I should like to see you once again for all that. I can’t say whether there would be anything amiss if you did come as you say it would be throwing good money after bad.”

                    On June 10, 1875, the solicitor wrote: “I have been expecting to hear from you for some time past. Please let me hear what you are doing and where you are living and how I must send you your money.” George’s big news at that time was that on May 3, 1875, he had become a naturalized citizen “renouncing and abjuring all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince, potentate, state and sovereignity whatsoever, and particularly to Victoria Queen of Great Britain of whom he was before a subject.”

                    Another matter which George took care of during the years the estate was being settled was the purchase of a cemetery plot! On March 24, 1873, George purchased plot 67 section 19 division 2 in the Carversville (Bucks County PA) Cemetery (incorporated 1859). The plot cost $15.00, and was located at the very edge of the cemetery. It was in this cemetery, in 1991, while attending the funeral of Sarah Lord Housley, wife of Albert Kilmer Housley, that sixteen month old Laura Ann visited the graves of her great-great-great grandparents, George and Sarah Ann Hill Housley.

                    George died on August 13, 1877 and was buried three days later. The text for the funeral sermon was Proverbs 27:1: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”

                    #6247
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      Warren Brothers Boiler Makers

                      Samuel Warren, my great grandfather, and husband of Florence Nightingale Gretton, worked with the family company of boiler makers in Newhall in his early years.  He developed an interest in motor cars, and left the family business to start up on his own. By all accounts, he made some bad decisions and borrowed a substantial amount of money from his sister. It was because of this disastrous state of affairs that the impoverished family moved from Swadlincote/Newhall to Stourbridge.

                      1914:  Tram no 10 on Union Road going towards High Street Newhall. On the left Henry Harvey Engineer, on the right Warren Bros Boiler Manufacturers & Engineers:

                      Warren Bros Newhall

                       

                      I found a newspaper article in the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal dated the 2nd October 1915 about a Samuel Warren of Warren Brothers Boilermakers, but it was about my great grandfathers uncle, also called Samuel.

                      DEATH OF MR. SAMUEL WARREN, OF NEWHALL. Samuel Warren, of Rose Villa, Newhall, passed away on Saturday evening at the age of 85.. Of somewhat retiring disposition, he took little or no active part in public affairs, but for many years was trustee of the loyal British Oak Lodge of the M.U. of Oddfellows, and in many other ways served His community when opportunity permitted. He was member of the firm of Warren Bros., of the Boiler Works, Newhall. This thriving business was established by the late Mr. Benjamin Bridge, over 60 years ago, and on his death it was taken over by his four nephews. Mr. William Warren died several years ago, and with the demise Mr. Samuel Warren, two brothers remain, Messrs. Henry and Benjamin Warren. He leaves widow, six daughters, and three sons to mourn his loss. 

                      Samuel Warren

                       

                      This was the first I’d heard of Benjamin Bridge.  William Warren mentioned in the article as having died previously was Samuel’s father, my great great grandfather. William’s brother Henry was the father of Ben Warren, the footballer.

                      But who was Benjamin Bridge?

                      Samuel’s father was William Warren 1835-1881. He had a brother called Samuel, mentioned above, and William’s father was also named Samuel.  Samuel Warren 1800-1882 married Elizabeth Bridge 1813-1872. Benjamin Bridge 1811-1898 was Elizabeth’s brother.

                      Burton Chronicle 28 July 1898:

                      Benjamin Bridge

                      Benjamin and his wife Jane had no children. According to the obituary in the newspaper, the couple were fondly remembered for their annual tea’s for the widows of the town. Benjamin Bridge’s house was known as “the preachers house”. He was superintendent of Newhall Sunday School and member of Swadlincote’s board of health. And apparently very fond of a tall white hat!

                      On the 1881 census, Benjamin Bridge and his wife live near to the Warren family in Newhall.  The Warren’s live in the “boiler yard” and the family living in between the Bridge’s and the Warren’s include an apprentice boiler maker, so we can assume these were houses incorporated in the boiler works property. Benjamin is a 72 year old retired boiler maker.  Elizabeth Warren is a widow (William died in 1881), two of her sons are boiler makers, and Samuel, my great grandfather, is on the next page of the census, at seven years old.

                      Bridge Warren Census 1881

                       

                      Warren Brothers made boilers for the Burton breweries, including Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton.

                      This receipt from Warrens Boiler yard for a new boiler in 1885 was purchased off Ebay by Colin Smith. He gave it to one of the grandsons of Robert Adolphus Warren, to keep in the Warren family. It is in his safe at home, and he promised Colin that it will stay in the family forever.

                      Warren Bros Receipt

                      #6246
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Florence Nightingale Gretton

                        1881-1927

                        Florence’s father was Richard Gretton, a baker in Swadlincote, Derbyshire. When Richard married Sarah Orgill in 1861, they lived with her mother, a widow, in Measham, Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire. On the 1861 census Sarah’s mother, Elizabeth, is a farmer of two acres.

                        (Swadlincote and Ashby de la Zouch are on the Derbyshire Leicestershire border and not far from each other. Swadlincote is near to Burton upon Trent which is sometimes in Staffordshire, sometimes in Derbyshire. Newhall, Church Gresley, and Swadlincote are all very close to each other or districts in the same town.)

                        Ten years later in 1871 Richard and Sarah have their own place in Swadlincote, he is a baker, and they have four children. A fourteen year old apprentice or servant is living with them.

                        In the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Gazette on 28 February 1880, it was reported that Richard Gretton, baker, of Swadlincote, was charged by Captain Bandys with carrying bread in a cart for sale, the said cart not being provided with scales and weights, according to the requirements of the Act, on the 17th January last.—Defendant pleaded guilty, but urged in extenuation of the offence that in the hurry he had forgotten to put the scales in the cart before his son started.—The Bench took this view of the case, regarding it as an oversight, and fined him one shilling only and costs.  This was not his only offence.

                        In 1883, he was fined twenty shillings, and ten shillings and sixpence costs.

                        Richard Gretton

                        By 1881 they have 4 more children, and Florence Nightingale is the youngest at four months. Richard is 48 by now, and Sarah is 44. Florence’s older brother William is a blacksmith.

                        Interestingly on the same census page, two doors down Thomas and Selina Warren live at the Stanhope Arms.  Richards son John Gretton lives at the pub, a 13 year old servant. Incidentally, I noticed on Thomas and Selena’s marriage register that Richard and Sarah Gretton were the witnesses at the wedding.

                        Ten years later in 1891, Florence Nightingale and her sister Clara are living with Selina Warren, widow, retired innkeeper, one door down from the Stanhope Arms. Florence is ten, Clara twelve and they are scholars.
                        Richard and Sarah are still living three doors up on the other side of the Stanhope Arms, with three of their sons. But the two girls lived up the road with the Warren widow!

                        The Stanhope Arms, Swadlincote: it’s possible that the shop with the awning was Richard Gretton’s bakers shop (although not at the time of this later photo).

                        Stanhope Arms

                         

                        Richard died in 1898, a year before Florence married Samuel Warren.

                        Sarah is a widowed 60 year old baker on the 1901 census. Her son 26 year old son Alf, also a baker,  lives at the same address, as does her 22 year old daughter Clara who is a district nurse.

                        Clara Gretton and family, photo found online:

                        Clara Gretton

                         

                        In 1901 Florence Nightingale (who we don’t have a photograph of!) is now married and is Florrie Warren on the census, and she, her husband Samuel, and their one year old daughter Hildred are visitors at the address of  Elizabeth (Staley)Warren, 60 year old widow and Samuel’s mother, and Samuel’s 36 year old brother William. Samuel and William are engineers.

                        Samuel and Florrie had ten children between 1900 and 1925 (and all but two of them used their middle name and not first name: my mother and I had no idea until I found all the records.  My grandmother Florence Noreen was known as Nora, which we knew of course, uncle Jack was actually Douglas John, and so on).

                        Hildred, Clara, Billy, and Nora were born in Swadlincote. Sometime between my grandmother’s birth in 1907 and Kay’s birth in 1911, the family moved to Oldswinford, in Stourbridge. Later they moved to Market Street.

                        1911 census, Oldswinford, Stourbridge:

                        Oldswinford 1911

                         

                        Oddly, nobody knew when Florrie Warren died. My mothers cousin Ian Warren researched the Warren family some years ago, while my grandmother was still alive. She contributed family stories and information, but couldn’t remember if her mother died in 1929 or 1927.  A recent search of records confirmed that it was the 12th November 1927.

                        She was 46 years old. We were curious to know how she died, so my mother ordered a paper copy of her death certificate. It said she died at 31 Market Street, Stourbridge at the age of 47. Clara May Warren, her daughter, was in attendance. Her husband Samuel Warren was a motor mechanic. The Post mortem was by Percival Evans, coroner for Worcestershire, who clarified the cause of death as vascular disease of the heart. There was no inquest. The death was registered on 15 Nov 1927.

                        I looked for a photo of 31 Market Street in Stourbridge, and was astonished to see that it was the house next door to one I lived in breifly in the 1980s.  We didn’t know that the Warren’s lived in Market Street until we started searching the records.

                        Market Street, Stourbridge. I lived in the one on the corner on the far right, my great grandmother died in the one next door.

                        Market Street

                         

                        I found some hitherto unknown emigrants in the family. Florence Nightingale Grettons eldest brother William 1861-1940 stayed in Swadlincote. John Orgill Gretton born in 1868 moved to Trenton New Jersey USA in 1888, married in 1892 and died in 1949 in USA. Michael Thomas born in 1870 married in New York in 1893 and died in Trenton in 1940. Alfred born 1875 stayed in Swadlincote. Charles Herbert born 1876 married locally and then moved to Australia in 1912, and died in Victoria in 1954. Clara Elizabeth was a district nurse, married locally and died at the age of 99.

                        #6222
                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          George Gilman Rushby: The Cousin Who Went To Africa

                          The portrait of the woman has “mother of Catherine Housley, Smalley” written on the back, and one of the family photographs has “Francis Purdy” written on the back. My first internet search was “Catherine Housley Smalley Francis Purdy”. Easily found was the family tree of George (Mike) Rushby, on one of the genealogy websites. It seemed that it must be our family, but the African lion hunter seemed unlikely until my mother recalled her father had said that he had a cousin who went to Africa. I also noticed that the lion hunter’s middle name was Gilman ~ the name that Catherine Housley’s daughter ~ my great grandmother, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy ~ adopted, from her aunt and uncle who brought her up.

                          I tried to contact George (Mike) Rushby via the ancestry website, but got no reply. I searched for his name on Facebook and found a photo of a wildfire in a place called Wardell, in Australia, and he was credited with taking the photograph. A comment on the photo, which was a few years old, got no response, so I found a Wardell Community group on Facebook, and joined it. A very small place, population some 700 or so, and I had an immediate response on the group to my question. They knew Mike, exchanged messages, and we were able to start emailing. I was in the chair at the dentist having an exceptionally long canine root canal at the time that I got the message with his email address, and at that moment the song Down in Africa started playing.

                          Mike said it was clever of me to track him down which amused me, coming from the son of an elephant and lion hunter.  He didn’t know why his father’s middle name was Gilman, and was not aware that Catherine Housley’s sister married a Gilman.

                          Mike Rushby kindly gave me permission to include his family history research in my book.  This is the story of my grandfather George Marshall’s cousin.  A detailed account of George Gilman Rushby’s years in Africa can be found in another chapter called From Tanganyika With Love; the letters Eleanor wrote to her family.

                          George Gilman Rushby:

                          George Gilman Rushby

                           

                          The story of George Gilman Rushby 1900-1969, as told by his son Mike:

                          George Gilman Rushby:
                          Elephant hunter,poacher, prospector, farmer, forestry officer, game ranger, husband to Eleanor, and father of 6 children who now live around the world.

                          George Gilman Rushby was born in Nottingham on 28 Feb 1900 the son of Catherine Purdy and John Henry Payling Rushby. But John Henry died when his son was only one and a half years old, and George shunned his drunken bullying stepfather Frank Freer and was brought up by Gypsies who taught him how to fight and took him on regular poaching trips. His love of adventure and his ability to hunt were nurtured at an early stage of his life.
                          The family moved to Eastwood, where his mother Catherine owned and managed The Three Tuns Inn, but when his stepfather died in mysterious circumstances, his mother married a wealthy bookmaker named Gregory Simpson. He could afford to send George to Worksop College and to Rugby School. This was excellent schooling for George, but the boarding school environment, and the lack of a stable home life, contributed to his desire to go out in the world and do his own thing. When he finished school his first job was as a trainee electrician with Oaks & Co at Pye Bridge. He also worked part time as a motor cycle mechanic and as a professional boxer to raise the money for a voyage to South Africa.

                          In May 1920 George arrived in Durban destitute and, like many others, living on the beach and dependant upon the Salvation Army for a daily meal. However he soon got work as an electrical mechanic, and after a couple of months had earned enough money to make the next move North. He went to Lourenco Marques where he was appointed shift engineer for the town’s power station. However he was still restless and left the comfort of Lourenco Marques for Beira in August 1921.

                          Beira was the start point of the new railway being built from the coast to Nyasaland. George became a professional hunter providing essential meat for the gangs of construction workers building the railway. He was a self employed contractor with his own support crew of African men and began to build up a satisfactory business. However, following an incident where he had to shoot and kill a man who attacked him with a spear in middle of the night whilst he was sleeping, George left the lower Zambezi and took a paddle steamer to Nyasaland (Malawi). On his arrival in Karongo he was encouraged to shoot elephant which had reached plague proportions in the area – wrecking African homes and crops, and threatening the lives of those who opposed them.

                          His next move was to travel by canoe the five hundred kilometre length of Lake Nyasa to Tanganyika, where he hunted for a while in the Lake Rukwa area, before walking through Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to the Congo. Hunting his way he overachieved his quota of ivory resulting in his being charged with trespass, the confiscation of his rifles, and a fine of one thousand francs. He hunted his way through the Congo to Leopoldville then on to the Portuguese enclave, near the mouth of the mighty river, where he worked as a barman in a rough and tough bar until he received a message that his old friend Lumb had found gold at Lupa near Chunya. George set sail on the next boat for Antwerp in Belgium, then crossed to England and spent a few weeks with his family in Jacksdale before returning by sea to Dar es Salaam. Arriving at the gold fields he pegged his claim and almost immediately went down with blackwater fever – an illness that used to kill three out of four within a week.

                          When he recovered from his fever, George exchanged his gold lease for a double barrelled .577 elephant rifle and took out a special elephant control licence with the Tanganyika Government. He then headed for the Congo again and poached elephant in Northern Rhodesia from a base in the Congo. He was known by the Africans as “iNyathi”, or the Buffalo, because he was the most dangerous in the long grass. After a profitable hunting expedition in his favourite hunting ground of the Kilombera River he returned to the Congo via Dar es Salaam and Mombassa. He was after the Kabalo district elephant, but hunting was restricted, so he set up his base in The Central African Republic at a place called Obo on the Congo tributary named the M’bomu River. From there he could make poaching raids into the Congo and the Upper Nile regions of the Sudan. He hunted there for two and a half years. He seldom came across other Europeans; hunters kept their own districts and guarded their own territories. But they respected one another and he made good and lasting friendships with members of that small select band of adventurers.

                          Leaving for Europe via the Congo, George enjoyed a short holiday in Jacksdale with his mother. On his return trip to East Africa he met his future bride in Cape Town. She was 24 year old Eleanor Dunbar Leslie; a high school teacher and daughter of a magistrate who spent her spare time mountaineering, racing ocean yachts, and riding horses. After a whirlwind romance, they were betrothed within 36 hours.

                          On 25 July 1930 George landed back in Dar es Salaam. He went directly to the Mbeya district to find a home. For one hundred pounds he purchased the Waizneker’s farm on the banks of the Mntshewe Stream. Eleanor, who had been delayed due to her contract as a teacher, followed in November. Her ship docked in Dar es Salaam on 7 Nov 1930, and they were married that day. At Mchewe Estate, their newly acquired farm, they lived in a tent whilst George with some help built their first home – a lovely mud-brick cottage with a thatched roof. George and Eleanor set about developing a coffee plantation out of a bush block. It was a very happy time for them. There was no electricity, no radio, and no telephone. Newspapers came from London every two months. There were a couple of neighbours within twenty miles, but visitors were seldom seen. The farm was a haven for wild life including snakes, monkeys and leopards. Eleanor had to go South all the way to Capetown for the birth of her first child Ann, but with the onset of civilisation, their first son George was born at a new German Mission hospital that had opened in Mbeya.

                          Occasionally George had to leave the farm in Eleanor’s care whilst he went off hunting to make his living. Having run the coffee plantation for five years with considerable establishment costs and as yet no return, George reluctantly started taking paying clients on hunting safaris as a “white hunter”. This was an occupation George didn’t enjoy. but it brought him an income in the days when social security didn’t exist. Taking wealthy clients on hunting trips to kill animals for trophies and for pleasure didn’t amuse George who hunted for a business and for a way of life. When one of George’s trackers was killed by a leopard that had been wounded by a careless client, George was particularly upset.
                          The coffee plantation was approaching the time of its first harvest when it was suddenly attacked by plagues of borer beetles and ring barking snails. At the same time severe hail storms shredded the crop. The pressure of the need for an income forced George back to the Lupa gold fields. He was unlucky in his gold discoveries, but luck came in a different form when he was offered a job with the Forestry Department. The offer had been made in recognition of his initiation and management of Tanganyika’s rainbow trout project. George spent most of his short time with the Forestry Department encouraging the indigenous people to conserve their native forests.

                          In November 1938 he transferred to the Game Department as Ranger for the Eastern Province of Tanganyika, and over several years was based at Nzasa near Dar es Salaam, at the old German town of Morogoro, and at lovely Lyamungu on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Then the call came for him to be transferred to Mbeya in the Southern Province for there was a serious problem in the Njombe district, and George was selected by the Department as the only man who could possibly fix the problem.

                          Over a period of several years, people were being attacked and killed by marauding man-eating lions. In the Wagingombe area alone 230 people were listed as having been killed. In the Njombe district, which covered an area about 200 km by 300 km some 1500 people had been killed. Not only was the rural population being decimated, but the morale of the survivors was so low, that many of them believed that the lions were not real. Many thought that evil witch doctors were controlling the lions, or that lion-men were changing form to kill their enemies. Indeed some wichdoctors took advantage of the disarray to settle scores and to kill for reward.

                          By hunting down and killing the man-eaters, and by showing the flesh and blood to the doubting tribes people, George was able to instil some confidence into the villagers. However the Africans attributed the return of peace and safety, not to the efforts of George Rushby, but to the reinstallation of their deposed chief Matamula Mangera who had previously been stood down for corruption. It was Matamula , in their eyes, who had called off the lions.

                          Soon after this adventure, George was appointed Deputy Game Warden for Tanganyika, and was based in Arusha. He retired in 1956 to the Njombe district where he developed a coffee plantation, and was one of the first in Tanganyika to plant tea as a major crop. However he sensed a swing in the political fortunes of his beloved Tanganyika, and so sold the plantation and settled in a cottage high on a hill overlooking the Navel Base at Simonstown in the Cape. It was whilst he was there that TV Bulpin wrote his biography “The Hunter is Death” and George wrote his book “No More The Tusker”. He died in the Cape, and his youngest son Henry scattered his ashes at the Southern most tip of Africa where the currents of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet .

                          George Gilman Rushby:

                          #6026

                          Dear Jorid Whale,

                          My hands are shaking while I type this on the keyboard.

                          I’m not sure which of last night’s dreams is the bizarrest. Bizarre in a fantastic way, although for certain people it might be called grotesque. I’m certain it has something to do with that book I ordered online last week. I don’t usually read books and certainly not like this one. But the confinement, it makes you consider making things out of your ordinary.

                          It’s called The Enchanted Forest of Changes, by a Chinese artist Níngméng (柠檬). They say his artist name means lemon, but that some of his friends call him Níng mèng 凝梦 (curdle dreams), which to my ears sound exactly the same except a little bit angrier. I found out about him on a forum about creepy dolls abandoned in forests all around the world. Yeah exactly, the confinement effect again. Apparently it started with a few dolls in a forest in Michigan, and then suddenly people started to find them everywhere. I wonder if some people are really into the confinement thing or if it’s just me using that as a reason to stay home.

                          Anyway, someone on that forum posted one of the picture of that book and it caught my eye. So much so that I dreamt of it the following night. So I bought the book and it’s mostly ink drawings, but they seem to speak directly to some part of you that you were not even aware you had. I almost hear whispers when I look at the drawings. And then I have those dreams.

                          Last night I dreamt of a cat that had been raised as a boy. He even had the shape of one, but shorter maybe. He had learned to talk and use his paws as hands, his claws had grown into fingers, had lost most of his fur and he was wearing clothes. If I was amazed by such a feat, it kinda seemed normal for the people I met in that dream. It just took a lot of efforts, love and dedication to raise this kind of children.

                          And Whale, I feel tingling in my arms. This morning you showed me the picture of a kitten! That’s not a mere coincidence. I’m feeling so excited, my hands are too slow to type what I want to write. I fear I’m going to forget an important detail.

                          About the second dream. The world was in shock, there was this giant… thing that looked like a pistil and that had grown during the night in some arid area. It was taller than the tallest human made tower. Its extremity was cone shaped, and I confess that the whole thing looked like some kind of dick to me.

                          Plants and trees had followed in the following days as if the pistil had changed the climatic conditions (autocorrect wanted to write climactic, is that you playing around?).

                          The pistil was protected by some kind of field and it couldn’t be approached by everyone. Governments had tried, pharmaceutical companies had tried. People who wanted to make gold out of it, they were all rejected. But for some reason some people could approach. Anyone, not just the pure of hearts or the noble ones. Actually a whole bunch of weirdoes started to take their chances. Some were allowed in and some where not. Nobody knew what was the deciding factor.

                          A friend of mine that I have not seen in years during my waking life, she came back and asked me to come with her. So we went and were allowed in. My recall of the events after that is fuzzy. But I get the strange impression that I will spend more time in there later on.

                          [Edited in the afternoon]

                          I don’t believe it! It’s on the news everywhere. It has even replaced the news about the virus and the confinement.

                          Giant pistils have appeared around the world, but it seems only people who had been infected can see them.

                          Crazy rumours run on the internet. Giant mass hallucination caused by the virus. Some people say it’s alien technology, spores engineered to control our brains.

                          There is one not so far from where I live. Should I wait for Kady to call me?

                          #4761

                          Barbara’s office was dead silent apart from the regular bips of the machines. The whiteness of the painted walls made it feel like a psych ward. She shivered away the memories that were trying to catch her attention.

                          It’s been two hours since the Doctor had locked himself up in his rage-release room, a spacious soundproofed room with padded walls. Not even a small window to look inside and check if his anger had subsided. Barbara clearly preferred the trauma of the shouts and cries and the broken plates that were hidden here and there for him to use when he needed most. But when he started his therapy with the AI psych module, the damn bot suggested he built that room in order to release his rage in a more intimate framework.
                          Now the plates collected dust and the sessions in the room tended to last longer and longer.

                          Today’s burst of rage had been triggered by the unexpected gathering of the guests at the Inn. The Doctor was drinking his columbian cocoa, a blend of melted dark chocolate with cheddar cheese, when the old hag in that bloody gabardine started her speech. The camera hidden in the eye of the fish by their agent, gave them a fisheye view of the room. It was very practical and they could see everything. The AI engineer module could recreate a 3D view of the room and anticipate the moves of all the attendees.

                          When that girl with the fishnet handed out the keys for all to see and the other girl got the doll out, the Doctor had his attention hyper-focused. He wanted to see it all.
                          Except there had been a glitch and images of granola cookies superimposed on the items.

                          “Send the magpies to retrieve the items,” he said, nervousness making his voice louder.
                          “Ahem,” had answered Barbara.
                          “What?” The Doctor turned towards her. His eye twitched when he expected the worst, and it had been twitching fast.
                          She had been trying to hide the fact that the magpies had been distracted lately, as she had clearly been herself since she had found that goldminer game on facebush.
                          No need to delay the inevitable, she had thought. “The magpies are not in the immediate vicinity of the Inn.” In fact, just as their imprinting mother was busy digging digital gold during her work time, the magpies had found a new vein of gold while going to the Inn and Barbara had thought it could be a nice addition to her meager salary… to make ends meet at the end of the month.

                          It obviously wasn’t the right time to do so. And she was worried about the Doctor now.

                          To trump her anxiety, she was surfing the internet. Too guilty to play the gold miner, she was looking around for solutions to her boss’s stress. The variety and abundance of advertisement was deafening her eyes, and somewhere in a gold mine she was sure the magpies were going berserk too. She had to find a solution quickly.

                          Barbara hesitated to ask the AI. But there were obviously too many solutions to choose from. Her phone buzzed. It was her mother.
                          “I finally found the white jade masks. Bought one for you 2. It helps chase the mental stress away. You clearly need it.” Her mother had joined a picture of her wearing the mask on top of a beauty mask which gave her the look of a mummy. Her mother was too much into the woowoo stuffs and Barbara was about to send her a polite but firm no she didn’t want the mask. But the door of the rage-room opened and the Doctor went out. He had such a blissful look on his face. It was unnatural. Barbara had been suspecting the AI to brainwash the Doctor with subliminal messages during those therapy sessions. Maybe it also happened in the rage-room. The AI was using tech to control the Doctor. Barbara would use some other means to win him back.

                          OK. SEND IT TO ME QUICK. she sent to her mother.

                          #4345
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            Finnley, go and tell Roberto to bring the ladder. I can’t possibly climb up through that trap door with those rickety steps, I want a proper ladder. And proper gardener to hold it steady. I wouldn’t trust any of you lot,” she said, glaring at them each in turn.

                            Finnley made a rude sign behind Elizabeth’s back, and clumped back down the stairs. Increasingly heated bickering between Liz and the Inspector ensued. Godfrey wandered off down the hallway tutting and shaking his head, and then darted into a spare bedroom and fell sound asleep on the bed.

                            Expecting a tongue lashing from Liz for being so long, Finnley was surprised that nobody noticed her return. She cleared her throat a few times trying to get their attention.

                            “Go and get yourself a spoonful of honey and stop making that ghastly croaking noise, Finnley!”

                            “The thing is, Liz,” replied the maid, “He’s gone.”

                            “Who?”

                            Exasperated, Finnley’s voice rose to an alarming falsetto. “The gardener! Roberto! He’s gone, and what’s more, he’s taken the sack with him!”

                            “Do get a grip, Finnley, he’s probably just taking the rubbish out. Now then, Walter, if you think I’ve forgiven you for that day when you….he’s taken what? What did you say?”

                            Elizabeth blanched, waving her arms around wildly as if she was drowning.

                            “I know a good gardener who’s looking for a job,” the Inspector said helpfully.

                            “You utter fool!” Elizabeth rounded on him. “My babies have been stolen and you talk about gardening! Never mind that German, or whatever it was you said you’re doing here, go and catch that thief!”

                            Raising an eyebrow, Finnley wondered if this was just another fiasco, or was it really a cleverly engineered plot?

                            #3791

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

                              Before he retired and made cave carving his hobby, Pádraig was an IT engineer. That was a few years back, and not long after, most of them became redundant with the rise of new generations of NI (near-intelligent) phones and computers. He’d happily taken an early retirement, so that he could enjoy a simple life and get to reacquaint with his daughter. He’d succeeded at least on the first objective.

                              It was twilight when he’d left his cave, and looking at the horizon, he’d noticed strange shimmering, and a lone bird of prey circling the area in the direction of the restricted area of the desert.
                              It’d given him an idea.
                              He still had the old drone in his garage, from the time when they were all the furor. You could buy them on online stores very easily back then, even print them in your house. But then, some do-gooders became concerned, about privacy, security or all that bullshit, and they were banned. Actually, the only ones still flying where from the army, and they would tear down any unidentified hobbyist’s drone, and likely give them some jail time if they had the chance.

                              It was exciting to do something on the fringe of what was authorized. Pádraig couldn’t wait to see if he could make his old drone fly over the area, check what happened there.

                              He was a bit lost in his thoughts when the dog’s barking made him notice the white car parked in front of his aluminium trailer, which had triggered all his spotlights.
                              He had a moment of panic before he realized that the car wasn’t from the men in black or aliens, but worse. It was Imelda, his do-gooder of a daughter.

                              #3215

                              So this is 2222, thought Sadie, relaxing back in the warm sand. Not bad so far! I wonder where we are. Further along the beach she could hear the sound of laughter and bickering as the boys and Sanso practised their moves for the upcoming show—the details of which were still under wraps. Linda Paul, now she had sobered up, seemed to have forgotten her strange request for Sadie to take on a drag queen identity. ”Thank Flove!” Sanso, however, with unexpected enthusiasm had taken on the non de plume “Miss Titters” and insisted that he was going to join the 3 divas on stage for their closing number.

                              “Miss Titters! A bit childish,” Sadie rolled her eyes, then noticing that it did not feel good to be judgemental, chastised herself. That didn’t feel good either so she chastised herself for chastising herself. Fortunately at that moment a Juicy Lemon came through on her e-zapper interrupting her rampage of chastisement with perfect synchronicity.

                              Oh just release that little bird

                              ***

                              Irina perched on the edge of her antique Rocchetti sofa—a beautiful piece of furniture over 200 years old, made from faux fur and crafted in the shape of a cartoon bull—and looked critically at the hologram of her mermaid outfit rotating in the centre of the room.

                              “What do you think, Mr R?”

                              ”It is an exquisite piece of design engineering, Ma’am. The organ you see in the chest cavity can operate as a lung or a gill enabling you breathe as a human or to extract oxygen from the water. The circulatory system has been engineered to withstand different water pressures. The skeletal system is light and pliable and designed for speed and agility under the water. The eyes have been designed to ensure you will be able to correctly focus both above and under water. The intricate design of the ears means that you will be able to hear as a human above water or use sonar communication under water.”

                              ”Yes, yes, most interesting, Mr R. But do you think my bum looks fat in that tail?”

                              ”Not at all, Ma’am. Your figure is beautifully proportioned and the tail only accentuates your womanly curves.”

                              ”I think that shade of pink is much better. What do you think, Mr R?”

                              ”The carmine pink suits the undertones of your skin most favourably, ma’am. It is preferable to the cerise pink you chose earlier. Although that was an excellent choice too, of course”.

                              ”Wonderful! Print it out then, Mr R. And print out your Octopus suit at the same time. I feel an unusual emotion which may even be excitement. Hawaii, here we come”

                              #658
                              EricEric
                              Keymaster

                                The new shop was splendiferous. It had all people could imagine about pets and stuff, pets most people wouldn’t have imagined existed. There was even a whole division for the pets health, with permanent vets…

                                The “Rent’a Pet Shop, Boy!” was taking a whole building, with no less than thirteen storeys, and when Sidonie entered the huge hall at the ground floor, which was slightly above the waters’ level, she was awed by the quantity of animals which where stored in the facility.
                                She didn’t know what she wanted for a start and now she was beginning to feel lost.

                                A beautiful tall black woman, with short hair and wearing an ample avocado-coloured boubou and carrying a little dog close to her chest passed by her and Sidonie could hear her muttering apparently incoherent bits to herself
                                Come on Chumpy, the doctor said it will be alright after that surgery, here, here little thing, breathe, breathe and say YES… Oh Lordy, I’m gonna be late, and Sam will be bugged if I make him wait in his friend’s flying car…

                                Sidonie was mesmerized by the woman, who suddenly turned to face her and said winkingly “I’d rather not go for a squawking parrot if I were you, they can’t keep quiet… and not a magpie either… Al said this new breeds of nine-tailed foxes are great, but I can’t really get used to anything else but dogs… Oh, I must go, need to have the last alterations done on my wedding gown… How can they expect that I remember all of this!

                                And the woman went running out of the shop…

                                Sidonie was baffled… A nine-tailed fox… Why not, sounded like a nice idea. At least, she could start by renting it, and if it was a nice companion and Tonio was OK with it, she would adopt it…

                                She asked a vendor where was the fox section. The vendor took a very professional look to ask her if she meant the new genetically engineered breed of foxes, or the classical breeds, desert, arctic or continental…
                                Sidonie was lost for a moment, then remember the lady had said they were new breeds, so she asked for the new ones in an intimidated voice.

                                Upstairs, thirteenth floor, on your right after the jump said the vendor and beware of the shrimpigators

                              Viewing 19 results - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)