Durban and Coastal Branch

Durban & Coastal Branch

GSSA Helping_visitorsThe Durban and Coastal Branch presently has 37 members all enjoying doing research on their families. Some have made great progress and have even published the results of their research. Many are having fun doing voluntary work for the Society creating more and easily accessable research information.
They volunteer and help with: The transcription of the RSA 1984 Voter's roll;  The photographing of Gravestones; - The transcription of cemetery registers. Our Branch completed the Stellawood cemetery registers (114 000 entries) which is now available on CD.
Recently our members completed an index of all marriages registered in Natal from 1845 to 1955 (421 874 names) which will be available on the internet soon. We have monthly get togethers on the second Saturday of each month which are held at the Durban Family History Centre where we have access to the wealth of research information it houses.   We often invite speakers on related subjects to address us.  
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Durban Aflame, The burning of German Businesses - 1915

11 March 2017

Guest speaker : Donald Davies of SA Military History Society

Donald set the scene by introducing John Frederick Baumann who arrived in Durban in 1851 and established a business as a bread baker and grocery store. He and his nephew, John Michael Bauman BakingLeonard Baumann who was an apprentice baker in Germany joined him many years later (1880) after JML had established his own bakery in London. A great seller was the “Ships Biscuits” supplied to sailing vessels and various garrisons stationed about the country. (And who does not know of ‘Bakers' biscuits?). Baumann Baking Co. West Street, Durban 1895 (Courtesy of www.triton.co.za) The Baumann business was one of the German-owned businesses that were severely affected by the ‘Avenge the Lusitania' campaign (ironically, the Baumann sons were fighting on the British side). Latent animosity built up from 1899 (Boer War events) and continued during the course of ‘The Great War' in South Africa between the English and Afrikaans-speaking sectors, and the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915 perhaps sparked the flame. The Lusitania (passenger ship) was headed towards an English port and was hit by a torpedo from a German U-Boat and sank in the Irish Sea 18 minutes after the strike. There were 703 survivors from 1900 passengers and crew. Despite warnings by the Germans in April of that year they would attack in the sea vessels, and a published piece in USA on 1 May 1915, the Lusitania went on its journey. Aboard were a small number of shell casings, but not live ammunition. An official of the Cunard Line stated “no submarine will catch the Lusitania”. (A few potential passengers did not board for the journey as they took heed of the German Embassy warning, rather than the reassurances of the Cunard official).

 

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Feedback from our April & May Meetings

Our speaker, (and also member), Prof. Ken Knight, was most interesting. Now 94 years old, he had us all enthralled recounting his genealogy experiences. His interest was sparked 35 years ago while he was attending the Grahamstown Festival. He and his wife decided to go Prof Ken Knightinto Crahamstown Cathedral where they found a plaque which honoured a Capt. Arthur Knight. After taking a photo of the words, Ken spent time at the Cory Library from which he gained an amazing amount of information ... and, yes, he was descended from Arthur Knight!
So began his "journey". Prof stated that on the software package that he uses, he has 500 000 names on one of the versions, and 600 000 on the subsequent version - not all his family of course, but names of many other people he has researched.

Duncan 1"Sugar and Settlers - A History of the Natal South Coast 1850 -
1910"
Our guest speaker was Duncan Du Bois, the author of this book. He is an entertaining speaker who is a passionate historian. The book, published last year, is the product of research done by Duncan for his Ph.D. Thesis which he completed at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2013. The south coast of Natal has had very little written about it, so his idea was to attempt to produce a critical, comprehensive, wall-to-wall account reflecting the lives of  those pioneers set within the colonial and imperial context. It is also an account of how the colonization process affected the lives of the indigenous African population and experience of Indians both as indentured labourers and as free settlers.

Click to Read the full stories:

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MEETING : SATURDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2016

Gail Richards of the Durban and Coastal Branch reports:
We had a fabulous meeting this afternoon, braving a fierce thunderstorm and torrential rain and a tiny bit of hail. What a pleasure it was to see so many new faces (10 visitors), and we wish them well with their new journey.
Eleanor Lea gave an outline of how genealogy research works and where it starts with the gathering of information relatives, and how to deal with stumbling blocks. We all agreed that we should have spent more time, and had more interest, when family stories were laughed and cried over. Click on the image to enlarge.

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Our visitors raised what inroads they had made in to their Family Tree investigations – some at the very beginning (and dreadfully complex by all accounts), to those who had a fair measure of success with a few stumbling blocks along the way. If I can speak for my fellow members, it makes our hearts very happy when we see people interested in finding out about their heritage.


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World War 1 comes to the Northern Cape-Ken Gillings

The artical below is a summary of a presentation to the Durban and Coastal Branch by Ken Gillings at their November meeting.
Click on the images to enlarge

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When the South African government declared war on Germany in 1914 (following the German incursion into South Africa at Nakob), it resulted in a bitter feud between several Afrikaner leaders who opposed going to war against a former ally during the Anglo-Boer War.One of these was General Manie Maritz, who had joined the newly established Union Defence Force with the rank of Lt Colonel. Maritz gathered together a party of Boer rebels and decided to attack Upington on the 24th January 1915 although first encounter with Union troops had in fact been on the 19th January 1915 at Lutzputz, approximately 70 km west of Upington. By remarkable coincidence, the rebels' advance had been observed by a gentleman named George St Leger Gordon Lennox who was none other than the legendary Scotty Smith and who warned the garrison of the impending attack. Maritz had, however, evidently sent a message to the garrison commander - who happened to be Colonel Jaap van Deventer - demanding his surrender. Van Deventer refused and Maritz responded with a note boasting that he'd have breakfast in Upington the next morning.

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The inhabitants of Upington were warned to take shelter in the local church and the two hospitals and at dawn on Sunday 24th January 1915, Maritz, accompanied by Major Jan Kemp (another UDF officer who had joined the rebels) attacked with 1000 Boer rebels, four German guns, two pom-pom guns and two machine guns. The Cape Field Artillery had already taken up a position on two koppies north of the town and they engaged in a duel with the German guns. The rebels – led by a rebel leader from Kakamas named Stadler - approached the town

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Maritz lost 12 killed, 23 wounded and 97 POW to the UDF's 3 killed and 22 wounded. Kemp surrendered on the 4th February 1915 and he was imprisoned until 1916. Many of those rebels captured were wearing German uniforms. The dead rebels were buried in hastily dug graves in the dry river bed, but the wind soon uncovered the bodies and the Union troops reburied them in deeper graves in the same area. After the war, in 1920, Kemp became a Transvaal MP and he obtained official permission to rebury them in his constituency of Wolmaransstad.The South African casualties were buried in the Upington cemetery and their graves are well maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.There was a second prong to this attack; a force comprising Germans under the command of Major Hermann Ritter. Ritter's force headed for Steinkopf but on hearing of Maritz's defeat, decided to attack Kakamas instead. He camped outside the town, mindful of his orders not to remain in South Africa for longer than 14 days. At dawn on the 4th February 1915, Ritter launched his attack under cover of his artillery, hoping to capture the two drifts across the Orange River and then proceed downstream. His force comprised 205 mounted riflemen, four guns and four machine guns. The telegraph line to Upington was then cut and a South African outpost was captured. The German guns opened fire at a range of 920 metres targeting the force of South Africans guarding the ferry while the German mounted riflemen charged down towards the drift. They hit a snag, however, when they were stopped by barbed wire fences, so they dismounted and headed towards the ferry landing on two flanks. The South Africans on the south bank tried to send reinforcements across the river but were prevented from doing so by heavy artillery fire from the German guns.

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