Tag Archives: Grahamstown

Out & About

Sanctity, Sights and Searches

The day started much the same as yesterday: coffee and rusks at 07:00, followed by a shower and a light breakfast before heading back to the Cory Library. However, this we only did at about 09:10, having deduced that it may provide us with the best chance of nabbing a parking. After two circuits of the tiny parking lot, we succeeded in claiming a spot directly opposite the entrance.

The Cory Library (don’t miss the succulents growing on the roof!)

“The Odour of Sanctity”
Today’s searches were centred on burial and confirmation records. We came up empty-handed from the burial records, although some entries provided fascinating insights into individuals who had passed on. Generally, the information recorded seems to be very basic, limited to the person’s name and age along with the date and place of burial. However, a rector of St Paul’s in Aliwal North during the early 1950s seemed to make a habit of recording something of the character of the deceased. He penned some beautiful, moving and vivid tributes, such as this one for a Jessie Allardice Morton: “A good and very devout soul, who died in the odour of sanctity…”

Perhaps there is a sense in which confirmation (in those denominations which practise it) represents the personal decision of an individual to cultivate that fragrance through faith in Christ. It was, therefore, a great joy to discover confirmation entries for each of the Nelson grand siblings in the records for the parish of King William’s Town!

Part-time Tourists
We wrapped up our research at the Cory shortly afterwards – a good deal earlier than yesterday. However, instead of heading straight back to Henri House, we ventured on up Lucas Avenue to the 1820 Settlers National Monument and meandered around the monuments outside, some of which are beautiful pieces of art. We were intrigued, too, by the circle of astronomical stones. The entrance to them was marked by two large standing stones, each with a plaque fixed to them. Fittingly, the opening verses from Psalm 19 were engraved on the right-hand plaque, while the left-hand one described what the stones mark: in addition to the points of the compass, they also indicate sunrise and sunset at the spring and autumn equinoxes, sunset at the summer and winter solstices, the appearance of the Pleiades at dawn in June as well as the appearance of Canopus in mid-May before dawn.

For a while, we just stood looking over Grahamstown spread out below us before returning to the car and heading back down the hill to hunt for Peppergrove Mall, an optometrist, postcards and stamps.

Grahamstown Panorama

Madame GPS guided us effortlessly to Peppergrove Mall although, with our “mall” conditioning of the vast, dazzling, multi-storey kind, we weren’t complete convinced at first. But, sure enough, there was a Pick n Pay tucked away in one of the single-storey face brick shops around the square parking lot. We managed to stock up on supplies for lunches and dinners and then found an optometrist just across the road who ended up being able to fix my Dad’s glasses.

Postcards proved to be surprisingly difficult to find, but we eventually tracked down a few of questionable quality in Postnet on the High Street. The next stop was the post office to buy stamps. Now you must understand that it has been ages since I last bought stamps, so this was a rather novel experience – an indication of the changes wrought in my own life by the digital age! I was fascinated by the work on the stamps themselves: brightly-coloured taxi hand signs by Susan Woolf. Somehow, just looking at them made me tear up just a little and caused my heart swell with pride. This captivating country of ours, with all her flaws, yet loaded with unique symbolism, culture, creativity and story does that to me – often.

The Close of the Day
We returned to Henri House for lunch, and dined royally on my Dad’s legendary Bacon & Mushroom Quiche, salads, cheese and biscuits, before enjoying an afternoon nap. My mother and I then wrote postcards while my father continued reading his book. A storm put paid to our plans for an evening braai, but our lunch menu stepped ably up to the plate again. Afterwards, we reviewed the photographs of our research over the last couple of days on the television, trying to piece together a little more of this immense puzzle.

I then reached out to the Eastern Cape genealogical community on RootsWeb for any information on the Toise River burial ground, before turning my attention to civil death records again, where I spent the rest of the evening still desperately searching for a trace of Grand Aunt Linda…

Out & About

To University and Beyond

Coffee and rusks at 07:00 provided enough fuel to get showered and presentable before a light breakfast of fruit and yoghurt, provided in our unit.

My father taking time out from his driving duties (appropriate reading material, given our travels)!

It was around 09:00 when we headed to the car and I coaxed Madame GPS into leading us to the Cory Library at Rhodes University, on the corner of Somerset Street and Lucas Avenue. She seemed to be having a slow start to the day, too, staying sullenly silent until the last moment, when she would suddenly become very annoyed and insist that we turn one way or the other. She led us to our destination, though: the Eden Grove building in which the library is housed on the ground floor. Unfortunately, she could do nothing to improve the parking situation, so I turned her off while we drove up and down Lucas Avenue and then sat and waited outside the library in the hope that someone would leave and we could pounce upon their parking. Our patience was rewarded at about 09:20 when a bunch of students, a good number of them barefoot, began to spill out the doors.

A Hard Day’s Work!
We parked and, armed with camera, laptop, notebooks and HB pencils, marched into the silence of the Cory Library. I had read about the genealogical research process at the Cory on their website and knew that we each had to register for a Reader’s Ticket, which we duly did at the reception desk. The very helpful young lady on duty then introduced us to the various resources available, but I already had a list prepared of Anglican Church registers for King William’s Town and Burgersdorp that I desperately wanted to get my hands on. She duly produced them and we started the arduous but fascinating process of searching them for glimpses of ancestors on my father’s side.

My mother hard at work.

In their stained, often fragile pages and ink script, we found ourselves transported back to the late 1840s. Somewhat surprisingly, in 1899, we found an entry for a marriage of one of the suspected Becker great grand siblings (Great Grandma’s sister). The Beckers were German, so I’d thought that marriages, particularly of the women, would likely have taken place in the bride’s church, probably a Lutheran or Baptist one, but clearly this was not always the case. Despite being buoyed by this discovery, we could find no trace of the marriage of Great Granddad George and Great Grandma Augustina Wilhelmina Nelson, or not in the Church of the Holy Trinity, King William’s Town, anyway.

However, in the 1920s, we found records of marriage and banns of marriage for some of the Nelson grand siblings, though not all of them. Besides the obvious details such as names, dates and places, these help to paint a picture of the movement and dispersion of the family, and can provide tantalising new leads.

My father and I recording some of our finds. I think my father was unanimously voted “researcher of the day”, coming away with the most finds. Used with permission by Shona Nelson.

Apart from that, though, the Nelsons remained stubbornly elusive. We scoured the index cards for early newspapers in the Eastern Cape, the Manuscript Catalogue and the Picture Catalog. We found surname matches and related surnames, but none that appeared to be connected to our tree. We noted them anyway and, just before 15:00, decided that we should call it a day.

Lip-Smacking “Lunner”
Hungry and more than a little parched (food and drink are not allowed in the library, for obvious reasons) we decided to reward ourselves with a meal at Saint’s Bistro on the High Street, and what a reward it was! Their paper menus double as funky placemats, from which we made our choices. My father decided on their Roast Pork Chops, served on apple mash, with crumbed mushrooms & apple cider & rosemary sauce. My mother ordered the Chicken Pesto Pasta: grilled chicken breast, zucchini, basil pesto & cream all tossed in your pasta of choice and topped with parmesan shavings. I eventually settled on the Chicken, Avo & Haloumi Sandwich, served on ciabatta with shoestring fries. All three dishes were absolutely superb. Perhaps our only disappointment was that they left absolutely no space to try the Amarula Crème Brûlée or Apple, Pear & Lime Cheesecake!

A Regroup & a Surprise Discovery
We returned to Henri House late in the afternoon, well fed and watered, so there was certainly no need for dinner. I reconciled our findings and what we still needed to look for at the Cory, before continuing the hunt for family death records. It was then that I discovered one for Leah Mary Lottie Wilkinson née Messenger. Now don’t go asking awkward questions about who she was because the truth is that I’m not absolutely sure, yet. I suspect that, like Minnie Florence, she was a great grand aunt, but I still need a few more pieces of evidence to prove it! Anyway, the death record revealed that her intended place of burial was the Toise River Burial Ground, which none of us had heard of. Google hadn’t really, either, although it was able to tell us that Toise or Toise River was 50 to 60 kilometres north of King William’s Town, where we were headed a few days hence. Hmm – another graveyard adventure in the offing, perhaps?

An Unexpected Visitor & Bedtime Blackout
A little before 21:00, while my mother was reading and I was still wading through Cape civil deaths, Thomas O’ Malley invited himself in. There was no asking, no waiting for an invitation, none of that. He is, you see, the cat of Henri House. His ginger and white form lazily padded around our doorframe and into the living area without any hesitation at all. Only when he was inside did he stop to look us up and down. He attempted to continue his inspection of our unit by meandering toward the second bedroom where my father was already sleeping. We didn’t think this would end well for either of them, but it took a good few minutes of intense negotiation to convince Mr O’ Malley, who eventually turned on his heel, nose in the air, and stalked sulkily out.

Shortly thereafter, we suddenly found ourselves plunged into darkness. Through the door and windows, we could only just see the surrounding houses as vague silhouettes against the silky night sky and concluded that a general power failure must be to blame. It seemed like an opportune time to call it a night after a full, blessed day of working side by side with one another, immersed in family and history…

Out & About

A Human Whirlwind and Other Discoveries (Part 2)

Part 1

Shrouded
To his credit, dear Mr Wessels shows no signs of accepting defeat just yet. I realise that the exercise book he has with him lists the graves in each plot by row number, so I suggest he look up some of the names we are seeing on the graves to check whether we are indeed in the correct place. Mmm – it seems as though we are in row 10. We move back one row and work our way slowly back up it, checking the names on the graves with those in his book. Now we seem to have passed the place where Aunt Minnie’s grave ought to be. We look around, surveying bits of broken headstones. Behind me, I notice a strip of white under a rampant daisy of sorts. It’s the edge of a grave, and a cactus stands guard at the foot of it. There is no sign of a headstone, just the flourishing mass of a creeping bush with shiny green leaves. I turn and look at it. Swallowing my fear of snakes, I start to push it back. Mr Wessels goes around to the other side of the grave and does the same. And there, underneath that leafy shroud, we discover Aunt Minnie’s headstone, just as my Mum joins us. For a moment, we just stand there, almost in disbelief. Then we thank Mr Wessels for taking time out from his busy day to help us. Reverently, sympathetically, he observes, “Sy was nog jonk, net ses-en-twintig,” then bids us farewell. In a few seconds, he’s gone, although we hear him chatting briefly to my Dad who’s waiting in the car.

My mother and I clear a little more of the vegetation away from the grave. Three simple blocks of white stone (marble?) are stacked on top of one another, each a little smaller than the one below. The top one seems to have had concrete roughly squished around it, presumably to keep it in place. While the job is not well done, I am grateful to the person who sought to preserve Aunt Minnie’s name on her grave. It is evident, too, that something is missing from the top block – ornamentation of some sort which has long since broken off. I never met Great Great Aunt Minnie. A few months ago, I didn’t even know I had a Great Great Aunt Minnie. Yet, standing there, I’m surprised by the emotions I’m feeling. There is a yearning to tend the grave of this lady I know so little about. There is sadness at the loss of a young life, young wife and young mother. Yet there is also a sense of joy and peace that we persevered in finding her resting place, that while she may be gone, she is indeed now not forgotten. Pensive, we return to the car, and then find our way back onto the N6, bound for Grahamstown.

A Jamestown Jewel
It’s a beautifully clear day and the scenery is stunning – mostly farmland. I’m again reading out snippets about the tiny towns on the route as we approach them. Less than an hour outside of Aliwal North, we drive through Jamestown, and then realise we’re about to pass the church I’ve just read about: the Kidwell Memorial Church. My mother and I squeak at the sight, and my father obligingly pulls over. It’s a small, attractive, stone structure, with something resembling a mini-steeple on top of it, which looks as though it may have melted and now leans to one side. The cleaning staff outside don’t have a key, but bush telegraph works a treat, and a few minutes later, somebody appears with one. It doesn’t, however, seem to help much, because it still sounds as though they have to break in to gain access! The petite foyer is illuminated by sunlight filtering through the stained glass windows. Sandwiched between the back wall of the sanctuary and the last wooden pew is an old organ – strong, silent and battle-scarred. More stained glass windows, each set of them different, line the side walls, and to the left and right of the pulpit, above the windows, are little sections of ornate pressed ceilings. It is a place full of character, a place of peace, but it’s suddenly becoming a little less peaceful, as a couple of curious locals have arrived on the scene, doubtless hearing about the “tourists” in town!

On the Road Again
Shortly after leaving Jamestown, we see a sign to Burgersdorp. We’re going to spend the last part of our holiday there, where Granny Iris was born, hence the relevance. A little while later, we see another sign, and then another, at which point my father and I exclaim almost simultaneously, “All roads lead to Burgersdorp!”

The landscape is still breathtaking, though it’s now starting to morph from farmland into mountain ranges, a reminder that we really do live in a country of incredible diversity and beauty. In Queenstown, boards advertising the Dew Drop Inn and the appropriately-named Number Two Piggeries remind us that there is no shortage of wit here, either! We decide to leave the N6 and take the R67 from Queenstown to Grahamstown. Whittlesea and Seymour make cameo appearances along this route, and it’s somewhere between Seymour and Fort Beaufort that we stop at a lay-by for a quick lunch of pies and cherry tomatoes and to stretch our legs.

Henri House
Just after 15:00, we see Grahamstown unrolling before us. Astonishingly, it looks as though we’re driving on the edge of a municipal rubbish dump rather than a hip, arty cultural hub. Rubbish is strewn about the streets and banked up against the curb, and I’m wondering what I’m about to subject my long-suffering parents to. Fortunately, by the time we make our way onto Hill Street, past the Cathedral, things become much more pleasant, and I relax a little.

Madame GPS expertly guides us to Henri House where we will spend the next three nights. I ring the gate bell and Chiara appears, a toddler on her hip and a little boy attached to her leg. We make our introductions and she disappears briefly. When she returns, the boy has detached himself and is tentatively walking toward me with the keys for our unit, delightfully explaining where we need to go and what we need to do. I double-check some of the instructions with Chiara, and then return to the car.

We unpack and get ourselves settled in, which includes checking the DStv channels for my father (“There’s rugby on tomorrow, you know!”). We discover that we can only get SABC, so my mother and I meander out into the garden to “call for help”. As we’re about to walk around to the front of the main house, the side gate opens and a gentleman pulls in on a scooter. He clearly sees we’re looking a little unsure and asks if he can help. His name is Andrew, and he’s just returned from work (teaching at a local school), but seems to be co-owner/manager of Henri House, so we relate our woeful tale and are amazed when he gets straight off his scooter and immediately comes to investigate. After fiddling with the remote, decoder and TV for a few minutes, he discerns that the problem will take a little longer to fix and says he will look into it tomorrow for us.

We do, though, discover that the TV has a USB port, so I download the photos we’ve taken over the last two days onto my laptop and then copy them onto a flash drive. We spend a wonderful evening reviewing our journey down in pictures, and put a brief plan of action together for the next couple of days. After a light supper, we decide to call it an early night. The time to curl up in bed and read before falling asleep is a holiday luxury I crave, so I take full advantage and am soon immersed in my book, in other places, in another time, until sleep eventually takes over and I drift off into dreams…