Sam Basch 12 May 2013

At the Bergendal Monument outside Belfast in Mpumalanga two names are engraved one below the other on the black granite panel:  From Elandskloof (Click on the image to enlarge) {artsexylightbox path="images/stories/Noord_Transvaal/SambaschAHA" previewWidth="100" previewHeight="100"}{/artsexylightbox} - A. Basch; R. Basch.
Initially I could not place these two, although I had been busy with the family research since late-2009.  So inexperienced was I that it did not immediately dawn on me that this very same A. Basch could be our progenitor.
In 2010 we even booked a bitterly cold weekend at Elandskloof, nowadays a trout farm near Dullstroom, to look for the gravesite of progenitor Alexander Oskar Adolf Berthold BASCH (1837-1902).  According to my information he had farmed on Elandskloof until 1902.  We even combed the old cemetery at Machadodorp where he apparently owned a house. Nothing.
Then I came across a shocking fact from his spouse's documentation in the archives:  she stated he was murdered on 20 April 1901.  Elria Wessels at the Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein confirmed the information by email, but gave the year as 1902.  And she also referred to Robert (Gert) Basch, aged 14, who, like Alexander, was murdered two miles outside Dullstroom.
Now we know their names are the ones on the Bergendal Monument, possibly reinterred from Elandskloof.  But who was young Robert?
Alexander's Death Notice lists the names of four children from his first marriage with Martha Christina Elizabeth Geertruida SMIT (1837-1870) and ten children with Aletta Petronella STOLTZ (1848-1920).  Still there is no mention of a Robert Gert.

Could he perhaps have been a grandchild?  Archival documents on Alexander’s male descendents still left me empty-handed.
Then Dr David de Klerk from Worcester recently sent me a web link to the data at Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein, where Alexander Oscar’s and Robert Gert’s date of death is given as 3 March 1902.  Which date is correct?
And just this week (9 May 2013) a friend and researcher in Waterval-Boven, Piet Schoeman, mentioned that the “joiners” - or “National Scouts” as they were called by the British - often shot dead Boer combatants.  Could this have happened to Alexander and Robert?  According to a source that Piet consulted (Military History Journal Vol. 1, 1998), Alexander was an assistant-field cornet who managed a heliograph station at Elandskloof.
Dr De Klerk also provided another link to the University of Cape Town’s data on the concentration camps. And Aha, there I find the entry under Aletta Petronella BASCH, born Stoltz - at the time in the Barberton camp - that “Robert Daniel, aged 15” was with his father Alexander Oscar on commando.
Whilst the second name and age differ from the other sources, I feel the probability is strong that we are dealing with the same individual:  Robert BASCH who fought in the Anglo-Boer War and was killed.
At least his name will live on at Bergendal.