Genealogical Society of South Africa
Durban and Coastal Branch
Volume 23 Issue 1/2007
New Members
We would like to extend a very warm welcome to our new member, David Honour, and wish him lots of success in his research and a fruitful association with the Society.
***
Message from the
Treasurer
Members are reminded that our membership fee for
2007 remains at R100. Please note that
subscriptions may be deposited in ANY branch of Nedbank in South Africa – our
banking details are :
Account Name : The
Genealogical Society of South Africa
Bank : Nedbank
Account No. : 2144
092 346 (Durban North)
NB : Members banking via
INTERNET must quote the Code No. 114405 as well as our account number. Please notify the treasurer of your renewal
either by post, telephone (evenings) or by e-mail.
We would like to remind members of our local
branch, who are familiar with the internet, that they are entitled to RENEW
their membership of the GSSA in the electronic (virtual) branch, i.e.
eGSSA. If members decide to avail
themselves of this option, the membership will then be. Please remember to select “Durban and
Coastal” as your land-based branch. By
registering on eGSSA you will have the best of both worlds, the facilities on
offer at the FHC in Durban, as well as all the resources based in the internet
branch. For more information on this option, please contact one of the
committee members.
***
Annual General Meeting
Held on 20 January 2007
The
branch AGM was held on Saturday 20 January at the Family History Centre and was
well attended.
The Chairman, Jaq Benadie, thanked Jenny Harries
and the FHC for their generosity in allowing our society the use of the Centre
for our meetings and also for the use of their valuable resources. He also thanked the FHC Resources Indexing
Project Working Group who had done great work this past year indexing the
resources at the Centre – well done!
A
report was made on the events of 2006 and the forthcoming National AGM. Further, Jaq encouraged members to
communicate their preferences to the committee regarding speakers and visits
for 2007, and reiterated that the committee was there to serve the needs of its
members.
The
Chairman thanked Dawn van Niekerk who had resigned as librarian, for her
dedication and help during 2006. The position of librarian has now been
filled by Mr Paul Bower.
Jaq ended the meeting by thanking members for their
contribution to the discussions held at the conclusion of the meeting, and
wished everyone a successful 2007.
***
Diary Dates
10 February
Speaker : Mr
David Honour
We are very pleased to introduce our new
member, Mr David Honour, who will be our speaker for February.
Dave is a member of the
Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society in England and has managed to trace his
ancestors back to 1522! He has also
completed a short article for the BGS magazine about emigration to South Africa
and had included in that article a list of 1820 Buckinghamshire families who
emigrated to South Africa. He will be
sharing his experiences on how he traced his ancestry back to 1522.
Saturday, 24
February 2007
GSSA National
AGM
Our branch has been chosen
to host the 2007 GSSA National AGM on Saturday 24 February 2007. The last time the AGM was held in Durban was
12 years ago! This will take place at
the Pinedene Hotel in Pinetown and will be an all day affair (see details
attached).
The Annual General Meeting
will take place in the morning, with the Strategic Planning Workshop in the
afternoon. Representatives from the
various GSSA branches around the country will be attending as delegates,
however members are welcome to attend as observers.
There will be a dinner in
the evening which will include an Award Ceremony. The speaker for the evening will be Prof. Colin Jermy, who is
well-known to most of members through his lectures and speeches delivered over
the years. ALL members are most welcome
to attend what should be an enjoyable evening (see details attached). We would greatly appreciate your support at
this dinner as it will also give members a chance to get to know each other
better on a more social level. Kindly
let us know by latest Monday 19 February 2007 whether you would like to
attend so that the necessary arrangements can be made.
***
Bulletin Board
·
Family History Fair : Saturday 9 June 2007
After their first successful
Fair, the Family History Centre in Durban will be holding their second Family
History Fair on Saturday 9th June 2007, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints, 144 Silverton Road, Musgrave, from 9a.m. to 2 p.m. As at the previous Fair, there will be a
number of speakers and stalls (details to be announced later) and also the showing
of the 6 part series which appeared on the BBC of "Who Do You Think You
Are?”. Please keep your diaries open
for this most enjoyable event!
·
UK emigration shipping from 1890 - 1960 will be
online by the (British) Spring i.e. +/-April. Please note a sample is already available at www.findmypast.com.
·
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk have advised
that the Old Parish Registers will be online before the end of January
2007.
·
Your
assistance please!!! There is a possibility that visiting GSSA delegates to the AGM
will be arriving by plane and will require transport to and from the airport
and to and from their accommodation in the evening. Should any member be available to lend a helping hand, please
could you get in touch with one of the committee members who would greatly
appreciate your help.
·
Kindly
note that eGSSA are now able to photograph documents from the Bloemfontein,
Cape Town, Transvaal and Natal archives at a very reasonable cost.
·
Ancestry24
has announced that in the Pretoria Archives you can now search the Archives of
the Red Cross, 1899 -1902 (RK). The
Archives of the Red Cross of the Transvaal Republic contain registers of
Transvaal and Free State burghers on commando, classified according to
districts (RK27-69). There are series of reports, lists, registers and indexes
pertaining to burghers killed or wounded. Here one can also find the names of
the dead and wounded published in the Government Gazette. In addition, there are reports on prisoners
of war who died (A-Z) and excerpts from official English lists of deceased
prisoners of war.
·
www.old-maps.co.uk is a very useful
website when researching your ancestry in the UK. Besides allowing you to see an old and modern map of a place
(plus an aerial view, but not in Scotland!) it has the added benefit of giving
you the modern postcode.
***
Historical Sites in KwaZulu-Natal
Natal Herbarium and Medley Wood House
(St Thomas Road)
The Natal Herbarium was
designed by Walter Haygarth and built in 1902 for John Medley Wood (1827-1915),
the founder. It is a neoclassical-style
building with pediment and gables and a verandah portico. It currently houses 75 000
specimens. Wood farmed at Tongaat and
later moved to Inanda, where he started his collection of 50 000+
specimens while studying the flora of Natal and Zululand. Medley Wood House, earlier used as the
curator’s residence, is a redbrick building dating from 1889. It has a complex roof and central bay
window.
Quandrant House
(115 Victoria Embankment)
This building is aptly
named, not only because of the site it occupies, which is a quadrant in shape,
but also because of the quadrant – an instrument essential for navigation. In 1929 H. Live commissioned architect
Ritchie McKinley to design a building suitable for a naval training
school. It was used as such until
1950.
Ottawa House
(Inanda)
This well-known and
prominent mansion is linked to the growth of the South African sugar
industry. Ottawa Sugar Estate was
begun by Anthony Wilkinson, who came to Natal in 1856. He named his sugar estate “Ottawa” after the
Canadian girl that he married, who was born in Ottawa, Canada.
Old German Lutheran Church
Including Furniture and Accessories (Shepstone
Road, New Germany)
The German Lutheran Church
was erected in 1862 by the German immigrants who settled in New Germany under
the Reverend Jonas Bergthiel. It is
the oldest existing German church in KwaZulu-Natal, and the furniture and
fittings are of exceptional cultural historic importance. The church was restored by Stellenbosch
Farmers’ Winery, and opened on 19 March 1976.
Items of particular note include the altar, the pulpit, the baptismal
font, a chandelier, the organ, altar rails, pews, a hymn board, altar
candlesticks and the altar cloth.
To be continued…..
***
My Memories of Old Durban
– by Elizabeth Robb – Continued
(Kindly submitted by Doreen
Nicholson)
So the weary years went by, the years of hostility
ended and after months of waiting our men returned. How hard it was for some of the younger men to settle down at
first. They missed the excitement and
the companionship of their friends.
The
women who, though weary, and thankful that it was all over, felt an emptiness
and missed the comradeship and wonderful feeling of working together for a
common cause.
What
a feeling of hope we had for the future when the United Nations was launched,
but is it doing the work it was meant to do?
The world is in a very unsettled state.
The Creator has given us such a beautiful world to live in, but the
power-drunk nations, both big and small cannot settle their differences. I look at my two young grandsons, growing
up; the splendid youth of our country, and hope and pray that the horror of war
won’t happen a third time. Let the
heads of States fight each other for a change instead of millions of youth who
only want to get on with the job of living, instead of being sacrificed as gun
fodder. Before I get to the end of
memory lane, I must record a few more old land marks!
How
many remember the Emmanuel Cathedral at the corner of Grey and West
Street? The Indians were on the other
side of West Street, with their fruit and vegetable stalls where as children on
the way to school we would buy four bananas for one penny to eat for our lunch.
The
Indian Festival occurred once a year with their gaily decorated pagodas going
along Grey Street, only to be dumped in the Umgeni River. Twice in my lifetime I have seen that same
river in flood. Once as a child we had
sub-torrential rains. The schools were
closed for two or three days, much to our delight, and again during the First
World War when it rained so heavily, we simply wore our bathing suits under our
raincoats, when we went to see the damage.
Cattle and snakes were washed down to the sea and
out into the bay. Men volunteered to go
out to rescue the Indians in rowing boats, who had been washed down from their
low lying houses on the banks of the river.
The Railway Bridge to Zululand was washed away too. The only Road to Zululand and the North
Coast was along Umgeni Road over the bridge and past the old Road House until
the Athlone Bridge was built. The old
Riverside Hotel which was out of the Borough, was rebuilt and is now called
Athlone Hotel.
After
the building of the new bridge a company started erecting houses at Durban
North which hitherto was sugarcane fields and a fine suburb it is today with a
splendid shopping centre and a good bus service.
To be continued…..
***
Diary Dates : 2007
10 February Speaker, Mr David Honour
24 February GSSA National AGM and Dinner,
Pinetown
10 March Personal Research
14 April “Sharing” Workshop
12 May Personal Research
9 June Family History Fair
14 July Speaker
11 August PMB Archives Visit / Personal
Research
8 September Personal Research
13 October Speaker / Activity
10 November Personal Research
8 December Ancestral Tea
***
Committee Members 2007 - 2008
Chairman
Jacques Benadie, P.O.Box 2337 Pinetown, 3600.
Phone: 031-708-3746 E-Mail: jaqb@telkomsa.net
Treasurer/Membership
Shirley Richardson
Phone:
031-266 1753 E-Mail : therichardsons@telkomsa.net
Secretary/Newsletter
Judy Letard, P O Box 1000, Mount Edgecombe
4300
Phone: 031-508 7304 Cell: 072-146-7922
E-Mail: kdee@mweb.co.za
Librarian
Paul Bower, P O
Box 1156, Hillcrest 3650
Phone : 031-765
6512 Cell: 082 973 0221
E-Mail: anzan@mweb.co.za
Octogenarian
Annelise Peters - Ph: 031-208-2910
(Note : The committee welcomes Paul Bower who
replaces Dawn van Niekerk as the new librarian)
Our Venue for Meetings
Family History Centre,
Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints,
144 Silverton Road.
Entrance in Montgomery
Road
Phone: (031) 202 3024
Our meetings are held at 2.30 on the 2nd Saturday of every
month. In August, for any members who
are interested, we have an arrangement to go to the Pietermaritzburg Archives
between 8.30am and 12.00pm. Our AGM is
held on the 3rd Saturday in January.
For the record, the F.H.C.
is also open at the following times:
Tuesday 10 am – 12 noon.
Wednesday 1 pm – 4 pm
Thursday 9 am – 12 noon and 6.30 pm – 9 pm
Last Saturday of every month from 10 am – 4 pm
Or by appointment phone –
cell 083 661 4457
“Remember,
undocumented genealogy is mythology”