HARRY MCKENZIE
Harry was born on 10.8.1920 in Bulawayo.
My father was a pumper on the Railways and we lived in remote places in Railway houses along the line, where there were no neighbours. My father had charge of (what was to us) a huge pumping station on the river from where he had to keep the water tanks next to the railway line filled for the steam engines which passed through. There was also a very large deposit of river sand next to these water tanks, which the train crews needed for their engines, and it was on one of these sand dumps that Harry was spotted in the powerful engine lights, playing happily, having sleep walked from the house in the middle of the night. The engine driver restored him safely to the house where he hadn't even been missed. He was just a toddler then. Our houses were wooden ones raised off the ground, (affording a wonderful playing place for us) and cladded on the outside with corrugated iron. No indoor conveniences so the lavatory (or piccanini khia) was a small structure containing a bench seat over a pit, at the bottom of the yard, so at night, potties were the norm. Harry had one of these vessels dumped on him when he stupidly jumped out to boo my mother on her morning rounds of emptying the slops. One often encountered a variety of wildlife in these P.K.s ranging from spiders to lizards and even snakes. (Wasn't it Tori (as a baby who experienced this type of outdoor P.K. at the dam on the farm in which she had spotted a lizard and implored her mother not to go there as there was a crocodile in it?)
We were living in Kalomo when Harry reached school age, and he was enrolled as a boarder in the Government School at Mazabuka, so having made arrangements for him to be met on his arrival by one of the personnel, he was put on the train to make the journey on his own, but when he got there he got off on the wrong side of the track and was assumed not to have arrived, so this abandoned little boy with his school trunk, had to "make a plan" at that early age. He enlisted the aid of a piccanin to carry his trunk and guide him to the school. He was only at that school for a few years when Mary was ready for school, so a different plan had to be made for them both. By that time we had moved to a place called Mwomboshi, not very far from Lusaka and the best arrangement my parents could make to get them to school was to put them on a goods train before light in the morning for the short journey to Lusaka where the station master took them to his house and put them back to bed with his own school children. I can still remember the ritual of lighting up the paraffin lamps needed on these days, even for getting them to the train. This arrangement lasted until I was ready for school, so we then lived in Lusaka for a number of years and Dad did the commuting on a bike. At some point he had been using a motor bike, but not wearing goggles, he was unfortunate enough to have a moth fly into his eye, which resulted in the complete loss of sight in that eye.
When Laura was still in school we were transferred again to a place called Ngwerere so a new plan had to be made for schooling. Uncle Jack Reid stepped in then and undertook to be responsible for Harry's education in his own old school, St. George's, which had then moved from Bulawayo to Salisbury, and the rest of us were home-taught with correspondence courses until we were finally transferred out of Zambia (which was then deemed to be too dangerously malarial for Dad and me to survive many more attacks). And wonder of wonders, this new place, an actual village with its own ten pupil primary school, and a brick built house for us, was pure magic. Harry of course remained a stranger whom we only saw during the school holidays. On our final move from Zambia he was permitted to join us in our week-long journey in our goods van home on rail, and was dropped off in Harare as we passed through to our final destination. So you see he grew up as being somewhat of an outsider, which was sad for him.
When he finished school he was also employed by the Railways as a goods clerk in the Macheke station, and during that time he bought himself a vintage Citroen, shaped like a rowing boat with no roof and three seats (only one in the v-shaped back) which he permitted me and my friends, all aged about 11 or 12, and including Ronnie Drysdale, to drive it if we put our pocket money into it in petrol. None of us knew how to drive, and the thing was held together with wire mostly, with no ignition, so it had to be push started. We became quite proficient but didn't know how to keep the car stationary once it ignited, to allow the pushers on, so those who couldn't successfully scramble, got left behind. Harry didn't seem to mind what we were doing to his car, but the combined parents eventually put a stop to it.
Harry wasn't home long before the Second World War broke out and he was called up for active service as a boy of nineteen. He and my young looking Dad looked like brothers then and the doctor wouldn't divulge the results of Harry's medical to Dad on that assumption. (On the other hand, my mother who was aging naturally, was taken for Dad's mother on occasions. Not very nice for her). Six years of war followed before Harry mercifully came home again, and he returned to his old job, but at Headlands instead necessitating living away again. He served in North Africa mostly ending up in Italy when the war ended. One notable thing which happened to him during that time was when he crossed by troop ship from Africa to Italy, and the ship was torpedoed and sunk. He had been on deck duty that very early morning, so wasn't trapped below like so many others were, but he noticed that someone had dropped a cauldron of porridge at the top of the steps, which made those trying to escape, slip back on the porridge. He stayed as long as it was prudent to do so, pulling soldiers up, and when he finally found himself in the water, he grabbed onto a piece of floating plank only to find my boyfriend on the other end, so they made it out together after an hour in the water. He had formed an attachment to my boyfriend's sister, but sadly she didn't wait out the long war years for his return, and he never found another replacement for her. That might have had something to do with lack of opportunity as well, as he left the Railways to take up a bush job with the Blair Institute on malaria and bilharzia control. From then on he lived a lonely life in camps, mainly in the Concession and Chiredzi areas, and finally succumbed to the effects of the bottle, which cost him his job. He then went home again to Macheke, by which time Dad had retired and was living in what he facetiously called The White House (his private little joke), and Harry took a job at Theydon controlling the maize dumps there for the Grain Marketing Board. He was home when Dad died in that house, and stayed on with Mum until his own death at age 60 from lung cancer.
Ella Reid with her parents at Mapityolo sometime between 1901 and 1905
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Ella Reid with her parents at Mapityolo sometime between 1901 and 1905
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
William Ross McKenzie 1894 - 1974
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSS McKENZIE (or Willie, as he was known)
Willie was one of twin sons born to Maria Jacoba and Thomas Henry McKenzie in Mafeking on 31st August 1894. His twin was named Jack and he had two older sisters, Minnie and Susan, an older brother Tommy and two earlier siblings, Roderick and an unnamed one, both of whom had died in infancy. I believe Ross to be an acquired name, which is yet another indication of the McKenzies having originally hailed from Ross & Cromarty, born out too by the naming of his first farm on retirement i.e. "Rossie" and his father's farm in Monze - Glenshiels.
I believe I told you about the twins’ "famous" crocodile. It was their habit when going to bed to take with them a jug of milk, which regularly attracted a python during the night. Whilst it was drinking their milk, they treated it as a pet and stroked it with bits of straw. On hearing them talking about their crocodile, their mother investigated which of course ended in the demise of their pet.
His father at the time of his birth was an engine driver working for George Pauling contractors who were laying the railway line through Bechuanaland to Bulawayo, and at the age of two in 1897, his mother put her daughters into boarding school in Bloemfontein to join her husband in Bulawayo where her next four children were born, and where Willie and Jack were enrolled in Plumtree School. They were not there for long as, in a fit of anger over something which displeased her at the school, their mother removed them from school and made no more attempt to educate them.
The family moved to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1907, then on to Zimba and Matetsi and his father bought a farm in Magoye, which much later, was sold and replaced with another farm in Monze, and this one was eventually bequeathed to his daughter Susan on his death. The Magoye period must have been at the time Willie married Ella as his marriage certificate declared him to be a farmer, which probably meant that he was helping his father. Also prior to this he was a transport rider, moving goods on ox-wagons. On one of these trips he was alone (inexplicably) when he was chased by a lion in very open country, and his only means of escape was to climb the only miserable thorn tree in sight where he was obliged to spend the whole night before the lion gave up and moved on. He recounted another strange incident whilst camping on one of his trips, and whilst sitting quietly beside his camp fire, he heard galloping horses approaching, but they stopped in the trees on the perimeter just outside the light cast by his camp fire and he heard his sister's voice urgently calling him. He found no trace of anyone however, so erroneously took this as advance warning that something bad had happened to someone in the family, as had happened on two other occasions, once when the glass on a portrait of his brother hanging on the wall of his house, for no reason whatsoever, cracked across his face from corner to corner at the time he later found was the time of his brother's death, and on the other, a trinket box presented to him by another brother, which proudly sat on a corner shelf, inexplicably fell from its place with no interference, and that also heralded the death of that brother.
They led a sad and dangerous life as death visited the family with monotonous regularity. His twin died in Bulawayo in 1907 of pneumonia, his youngest sister died in Livingstone in 1924 (the same year as her father died) and just a week before her scheduled wedding, of blackwater fever, as did his brother Harry at the age of eighteen at Monze, his brother Alfie was taken by a crocodile at the age of 25, Tommy of course first went missing for two years between the age of 7 and 9, and then again when he enlisted in the First World war, never to be heard of again, and his sister Susan and brother Eddie both died around the early nineteen fifties, Eddie in the cab of a railway engine in a crash or derailment. That left Willie and Minnie, and finally just Minnie after Willie's death on 4/7/1974. His poor mother survived all but four of her many children. (Sep 9 2007 I withdraw my understanding of Eddie's accident. Mona must be right, as I have just checked this out with Mary and her version is a similar variation of the accident in that she says he was unwell when the accident occurred and it was he who drove the engine into the buffers, injuring himself badly in the process. She says he was thrown against the hot metal inside the cab.)
You probably have photos of dynamiting the Kafue River. They would be of Alfie's brothers trying to retrieve his body from the crocodiles they had witnessed from the railway bridge, pushing Alfie's body downstream laid across their snouts. He had been crossing the river at a drift, probably swimming next to his horse when he was snatched. As a result Willie had a life-long hatred of crocodiles, and refused to have their effigies in the house. He had a very unpleasant experience once when he entered his pump house to find a group of crocodiles in possession of it. I don't know how he despatched them, possibly by returning to the house for a gun. He often had to contend with large snakes which he consigned to the furnace, and rats too, larger than the cat which was intended to control them, so that he was obliged to go to the assistance of the cat.
Periodic visitations by hoppers (locusts in their pre-flight stage) and army ants, were taxing events, the latter aptly named as they came in their thousands like an invading army, devouring everything in their path and making it necessary to remove oneself from their advance. They came during the night once in Ngwerere when Jack was still a baby, and the whole family had to abscond with their bedding to the pump house for shelter until they had passed, Willie riding pick-a-back on an African, as he was at that time laid up with a broken leg. When they returned the next morning, they found nothing but bones instead of joints hanging from the meat hooks in the pantry. No fridges then, so the custom was to have a pantry with a through draft and smooth concrete shelves and bowls of cold water to keep food cool.
When the word got out that the hoppers were coming, long trenches about a meter deep were quickly dug blocking their path, and drums of water put to heat over open fires. The hoppers didn't stop hopping though, and like lemmings jumped straight into the trenches where they were shoveled into grain bags and dumped into cauldrons of boiling water, to become instant protein meals for the eager gangs.
For the entire length of his married life, until his retirement, Willie worked as a pumper on the Railways. This post came with the provision of a house, free rail travel and goods transport, medical care for the whole family, and sufficient acreage to grow his own fruit and vegetables and keep his own dairy cows and whatever other animals he desired, but these pumping stations were always in remote areas with no neighbours, so the family lived in total isolation. The stations he was posted to were Kalomo, Mwomboshi, and Ngwerere in Northern Rhodesia before a long period in Southern Rhodesia at Macheke, and a return to Northern Rhodesia to a place called Kafulafuta before his retirement in Macheke where he bought a farm about five miles out on the Mtoko Road which he called Rossie. He kept a dairy herd, horses for his personal use, grew maize and opened what was known as a kaffir store, and remained there for a number of years before selling that and buying another farm a bit further out called Dawn, on which he did much the same as he had done on Rossie. When he sold Dawn it was to move nearer into the village, so he replaced that farm with a smallholding called Halsprings about 2 miles out on the Salisbury road, where he made building bricks, then he sold that to move to the larger Killarney where he again kept dairy cows. From there he bought his final property which was a partially completed house on 14 acres of land on the edge of the village, but only retained 5 of those on which was an established orchard, and where he again kept cows and horses. There were always chickens on each of these places, but that was Ella's own project. This house was adjacent to the one earlier occupied by Ella's parents and later owned by Willie and Ella's youngest son Jack. Whist he was completing the house, he rented a cottage in the village.
He had a very definite nose for property and could not resist the buying and selling he indulged in, in most cases without even consulting his wife before moving her to yet another new home, mostly in need of massive repair or development. She just accepted and adapted in her inimitable way.
He was also very skillful with his hands and could make a wide range of useful things, such as horse or ox-drawn vehicles, tables and deckchairs, and even baking utensils, endowing his children with miniature sized deckchairs, stools and baking pans to suit their sizes.
Willie was a kindly and unselfish man who was always ready to help those around him who might need his assistance. He was particularly fond of the babies in the family, but had less patience with them as they grew older, though he was never at any time mean or harsh with them.
He had a sense of responsibility towards his mother and took care of her physical needs, but emotionally he found her difficult, and was apt to abandon her to his wife to deal with.
He loved horses and usually owned a few wherever he was. He encouraged us all to become proficient at riding. For a short while he also had a racehorse in Lusaka.
One notable thing about him was his attachment to his hat. He NEVER went out of doors without it, and even wore it on the verandah. Another notable thing about him was his apparent youth where on occasions he was mistaken for his wife's son and his children's brother.
In his younger days, Willie traveled by motorbike, but he didn't wear protective goggles, and whilst traveling by night once, a moth attracted by his headlight, flew into his eye resulting in complete blindness in that eye.
He and Ella were a very close couple, whose habit it was to wake very early to chat and drink copious cups of coffee in bed before getting ready for the day. In the evenings it was their wont for her to read to him. He was very fond of walking and did much of that, but he also liked above anything to sit beside a river, a tumbling brook or a waterfall.
He died comfortably in one of his deckchairs in the bedroom of "The White House" on 4/7/1974, cared for to the end by his devoted Ella.
Willie was one of twin sons born to Maria Jacoba and Thomas Henry McKenzie in Mafeking on 31st August 1894. His twin was named Jack and he had two older sisters, Minnie and Susan, an older brother Tommy and two earlier siblings, Roderick and an unnamed one, both of whom had died in infancy. I believe Ross to be an acquired name, which is yet another indication of the McKenzies having originally hailed from Ross & Cromarty, born out too by the naming of his first farm on retirement i.e. "Rossie" and his father's farm in Monze - Glenshiels.
I believe I told you about the twins’ "famous" crocodile. It was their habit when going to bed to take with them a jug of milk, which regularly attracted a python during the night. Whilst it was drinking their milk, they treated it as a pet and stroked it with bits of straw. On hearing them talking about their crocodile, their mother investigated which of course ended in the demise of their pet.
His father at the time of his birth was an engine driver working for George Pauling contractors who were laying the railway line through Bechuanaland to Bulawayo, and at the age of two in 1897, his mother put her daughters into boarding school in Bloemfontein to join her husband in Bulawayo where her next four children were born, and where Willie and Jack were enrolled in Plumtree School. They were not there for long as, in a fit of anger over something which displeased her at the school, their mother removed them from school and made no more attempt to educate them.
The family moved to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1907, then on to Zimba and Matetsi and his father bought a farm in Magoye, which much later, was sold and replaced with another farm in Monze, and this one was eventually bequeathed to his daughter Susan on his death. The Magoye period must have been at the time Willie married Ella as his marriage certificate declared him to be a farmer, which probably meant that he was helping his father. Also prior to this he was a transport rider, moving goods on ox-wagons. On one of these trips he was alone (inexplicably) when he was chased by a lion in very open country, and his only means of escape was to climb the only miserable thorn tree in sight where he was obliged to spend the whole night before the lion gave up and moved on. He recounted another strange incident whilst camping on one of his trips, and whilst sitting quietly beside his camp fire, he heard galloping horses approaching, but they stopped in the trees on the perimeter just outside the light cast by his camp fire and he heard his sister's voice urgently calling him. He found no trace of anyone however, so erroneously took this as advance warning that something bad had happened to someone in the family, as had happened on two other occasions, once when the glass on a portrait of his brother hanging on the wall of his house, for no reason whatsoever, cracked across his face from corner to corner at the time he later found was the time of his brother's death, and on the other, a trinket box presented to him by another brother, which proudly sat on a corner shelf, inexplicably fell from its place with no interference, and that also heralded the death of that brother.
They led a sad and dangerous life as death visited the family with monotonous regularity. His twin died in Bulawayo in 1907 of pneumonia, his youngest sister died in Livingstone in 1924 (the same year as her father died) and just a week before her scheduled wedding, of blackwater fever, as did his brother Harry at the age of eighteen at Monze, his brother Alfie was taken by a crocodile at the age of 25, Tommy of course first went missing for two years between the age of 7 and 9, and then again when he enlisted in the First World war, never to be heard of again, and his sister Susan and brother Eddie both died around the early nineteen fifties, Eddie in the cab of a railway engine in a crash or derailment. That left Willie and Minnie, and finally just Minnie after Willie's death on 4/7/1974. His poor mother survived all but four of her many children. (Sep 9 2007 I withdraw my understanding of Eddie's accident. Mona must be right, as I have just checked this out with Mary and her version is a similar variation of the accident in that she says he was unwell when the accident occurred and it was he who drove the engine into the buffers, injuring himself badly in the process. She says he was thrown against the hot metal inside the cab.)
You probably have photos of dynamiting the Kafue River. They would be of Alfie's brothers trying to retrieve his body from the crocodiles they had witnessed from the railway bridge, pushing Alfie's body downstream laid across their snouts. He had been crossing the river at a drift, probably swimming next to his horse when he was snatched. As a result Willie had a life-long hatred of crocodiles, and refused to have their effigies in the house. He had a very unpleasant experience once when he entered his pump house to find a group of crocodiles in possession of it. I don't know how he despatched them, possibly by returning to the house for a gun. He often had to contend with large snakes which he consigned to the furnace, and rats too, larger than the cat which was intended to control them, so that he was obliged to go to the assistance of the cat.
Periodic visitations by hoppers (locusts in their pre-flight stage) and army ants, were taxing events, the latter aptly named as they came in their thousands like an invading army, devouring everything in their path and making it necessary to remove oneself from their advance. They came during the night once in Ngwerere when Jack was still a baby, and the whole family had to abscond with their bedding to the pump house for shelter until they had passed, Willie riding pick-a-back on an African, as he was at that time laid up with a broken leg. When they returned the next morning, they found nothing but bones instead of joints hanging from the meat hooks in the pantry. No fridges then, so the custom was to have a pantry with a through draft and smooth concrete shelves and bowls of cold water to keep food cool.
When the word got out that the hoppers were coming, long trenches about a meter deep were quickly dug blocking their path, and drums of water put to heat over open fires. The hoppers didn't stop hopping though, and like lemmings jumped straight into the trenches where they were shoveled into grain bags and dumped into cauldrons of boiling water, to become instant protein meals for the eager gangs.
For the entire length of his married life, until his retirement, Willie worked as a pumper on the Railways. This post came with the provision of a house, free rail travel and goods transport, medical care for the whole family, and sufficient acreage to grow his own fruit and vegetables and keep his own dairy cows and whatever other animals he desired, but these pumping stations were always in remote areas with no neighbours, so the family lived in total isolation. The stations he was posted to were Kalomo, Mwomboshi, and Ngwerere in Northern Rhodesia before a long period in Southern Rhodesia at Macheke, and a return to Northern Rhodesia to a place called Kafulafuta before his retirement in Macheke where he bought a farm about five miles out on the Mtoko Road which he called Rossie. He kept a dairy herd, horses for his personal use, grew maize and opened what was known as a kaffir store, and remained there for a number of years before selling that and buying another farm a bit further out called Dawn, on which he did much the same as he had done on Rossie. When he sold Dawn it was to move nearer into the village, so he replaced that farm with a smallholding called Halsprings about 2 miles out on the Salisbury road, where he made building bricks, then he sold that to move to the larger Killarney where he again kept dairy cows. From there he bought his final property which was a partially completed house on 14 acres of land on the edge of the village, but only retained 5 of those on which was an established orchard, and where he again kept cows and horses. There were always chickens on each of these places, but that was Ella's own project. This house was adjacent to the one earlier occupied by Ella's parents and later owned by Willie and Ella's youngest son Jack. Whist he was completing the house, he rented a cottage in the village.
He had a very definite nose for property and could not resist the buying and selling he indulged in, in most cases without even consulting his wife before moving her to yet another new home, mostly in need of massive repair or development. She just accepted and adapted in her inimitable way.
He was also very skillful with his hands and could make a wide range of useful things, such as horse or ox-drawn vehicles, tables and deckchairs, and even baking utensils, endowing his children with miniature sized deckchairs, stools and baking pans to suit their sizes.
Willie was a kindly and unselfish man who was always ready to help those around him who might need his assistance. He was particularly fond of the babies in the family, but had less patience with them as they grew older, though he was never at any time mean or harsh with them.
He had a sense of responsibility towards his mother and took care of her physical needs, but emotionally he found her difficult, and was apt to abandon her to his wife to deal with.
He loved horses and usually owned a few wherever he was. He encouraged us all to become proficient at riding. For a short while he also had a racehorse in Lusaka.
One notable thing about him was his attachment to his hat. He NEVER went out of doors without it, and even wore it on the verandah. Another notable thing about him was his apparent youth where on occasions he was mistaken for his wife's son and his children's brother.
In his younger days, Willie traveled by motorbike, but he didn't wear protective goggles, and whilst traveling by night once, a moth attracted by his headlight, flew into his eye resulting in complete blindness in that eye.
He and Ella were a very close couple, whose habit it was to wake very early to chat and drink copious cups of coffee in bed before getting ready for the day. In the evenings it was their wont for her to read to him. He was very fond of walking and did much of that, but he also liked above anything to sit beside a river, a tumbling brook or a waterfall.
He died comfortably in one of his deckchairs in the bedroom of "The White House" on 4/7/1974, cared for to the end by his devoted Ella.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Early Days in Rhodesia
ISABELLA HARDIE MCKENZIE (NEE REID)
The story of Isabella Hardie Mckenzie comes in two parts, personal and historical. This is her personal story, as written by her daughter, Gwen.
She was a gentle, obliging, non-critical person who raised her family (including from time to time, some nieces and nephews and from the early days of her marriage, her widowed mother-in-law and later, her own widowed mother) always in a sympathetic and loving way. Hers was mostly a life of uncomplaining want, at times bordering on poverty, as my father only earned a mere twenty-five pounds a month, though that was added to by the provision of a house as well as free medical and rail travel for himself and his family. Nor were there any overheads to pay such as electricity (non-existent then) and water (which was collected in a rainwater tank).
She was the oldest child of three, and the only daughter of John Lawrence Reid and his wife Mary Ann Low, born on 13th January 1895 on the family farm Struie in Strathearn, Scotland, and at the age of two her much loved father became so seriously ill that he was obliged to leave Scotland to settle in a warmer climate. Before this was decided upon the family took lodgings in the Blackford Hill area of Morningside in Edinburgh, to be near the Royal Infirmary and the doctors. It was from the upstairs windows of these lodgings that this small girl watched, each day, the soldiers from the nearby Redford Barracks marching past, the memory remaining with her until her death at the age of 93. Another example of her excellent memory was that she was still able to recite a long and complicated verse titled "Deportmental Ditties" which she had learnt at the age of 8. (Copy attached)
In 1898 the farm was sold for GBP3,500, and the family sailed to Cape Town and from there travelled by train to Bulawayo in the newly founded colony of Rhodesia. They were not pioneers, but enjoyed the status of early settlers. The family's movements are chronicled separately, but of her, she was in the main educated by her mother, who had herself received a good education at the Merchant Maidens’ School in Edinburgh. Consequently she had little exposure to other children and only saw her two brothers when they were on school holidays from St. George’s College in Bulawayo, and later Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
She assisted her father in his dairy and with his egg and chicken producing business, and this interest remained with her throughout her life. She also worked for a short spell in a dairy in Bulawayo before joining the staff of a large departmental store, Haddon & Sly, as a book-keeping clerk. When bulk dry goods consignments arrived from South Africa by wagon, all staff were diverted to weighing and re-packing this into brown paper bags for re-sale.
It was through a business associate of her father's, a Mr. Booth, who owned a saddlery business in Bulawayo, that my mother met my father, Willie McKenzie, he being the brother of Mrs. Booth. She married him on St. Patrick's Day 1919 and their first home was a free standing 10ft. square wood and iron room which served as their total accommodation.
From her long years living at home prior to her marriage, her energies were directed into book learning and practical skills, giving her a good all round knowledge, and as a result, her family automatically sought her opinion on most subjects throughout her life.
Although she was seemingly a very healthy and relatively slender woman throughout her life, she did acquire allergies of avocado pears, bananas and eggs, the latter being most tedious as that included such things as cakes, biscuits and some puddings. Nor could she eat Yorkshire pudding or mayonnaise. She also suffered a peculiar sensitivity around her waist by not being able to tolerate elastic in that region, so had to resort to buttoned underwear. When she was in her late sixties, she contracted jaundice, and when admitted to hospital, she confounded the nursing staff with her assertion that this was the first time she had been hospitalised. She broke her ankle whilst climbing kopjies in her eighties (my brother Jack fondly referred to her as a mountain goat). Nevertheless, in her late eighties she walked five miles in a sponsored marathon to raise funds, and was greatly commended for her efforts.
She was an expert at crochet and produced many fine pieces, using sewing thread, but it was only when her children began to arrive, did she learn knitting and sewing, an industry which kept her very busy catering for the needs of herself and her family. In her later years she occupied herself with knitting squares and joining them together to make blankets for charity. She also continued to crochet but, as her sight diminished, with coarser thread such as twine.
Shortly after Rhodesia became Independent Zimbabwe, she reluctantly, under pressure from her family, relocated to Cathcart in the Eastern Cape territory of South Africa where she quickly settled into the community and became involved in voluntary work in the workshop of the Callie Evans Old Age Home, an establishment funded and maintained by the residents of that small market town. She, herself, was eventually admitted to this same home at the age of 91, and two years later had a fall and died in the local cottage hospital from complications brought on by a broken sternum.
She was a very good person who endeared herself to all who knew her. Would that I could be even the half of her.
This is part two of Ella's story - the historical bit, told to me by her. I hear that Cheryl also has a very comprehensive account, so I hope these two accounts don't confuse, but will rather add to each other.
John Lawrence Reid, having contracted T.B. of the kidney which settled in his spine, and left him with a large distinctive, and permanent hump on his back, was obliged to move to a warmer climate, so he sold his farm Struie to Charles Calder, distiller in Bo'ness on 12 Nov 1896 for GBP3,500 and rented a house in the Blackford Hill area of Morningside in Edinburgh for a year, whilst undergoing treatment, before he, his wife and daughter left Scotland and arrived in Cape Town in January 1898 bound for Rhodesia, arriving in Bulawayo by train in February 1898, that part of the journey having taken two weeks. On arrival there, they stayed at Butters Building which was a boarding house, before purchasing 200 acres at Rangemoor, west of Bulawayo, with the river as their boundary. He erected a water engine driven by donkeys, and grew vegetables, the first pickings of which were ready when the Boer War broke out. Since communications from the south were cut by the war, the prices escalated with butter being sold for one pound sterling per pound weight. Other than vegetables, he also kept cattle, goats, donkeys, pigs and fowls and supplied chickens, eggs, butter and milk to the Grand Hotel, and he did very well.
They remained there for three years before moving to Bulawayo for schooling for Ella and for the birth of Lawrence. They bought a plot on high ground in Duncan Road in the southern suburbs, and built a small iron house, then John acquired premises next to the Imperial Hotel and started a joinery shop. (He must have longed for his cabinet maker father-in-law's assistance in that) He secured good contracts and through those met Colonel Napier who contracted him to build hay sheds on Springs farm twelve miles out of Bulawayo, as well as overseeing the cutting of the hay for 25% of the farm profits. He closed the shop to devote his energies to this contract, which lasted for two years.
Ella started school at Miss Monary's private school where the Bulawayo Technical College now stands.
After the birth of Lawrence, John's wife was poorly so she and the children left in September 1902 for Scotland and were joined by him in May 1903. They stayed in Dunning with John's sister, Mary Hill, and whilst there Ella attended school with her cousin Lizzie. They all returned to Africa in June 1903.
On their return they rented a house in Queen's Grounds and John returned to carpentry, making furniture. He met Col. Napier again who offered him a house on the farm Springs and 25% of the profits in return for his services. Whilst there, donkey wagons journeyed continuously to Bulawayo supplying fodder to mainly the Police and Army for their horses. They also grew maize. Then, after two years, it seems John made a bad move. He left to go gold mining on Julia Mine as a smallworker, and lost all his money, so the family returned to their original house in Duncan Road, where their second son John was born.
From there John secured a contract to build the Globe & Phoenix Club at Que Que, leaving his family in Bulawayo, but when he returned they were all ill with whooping cough. On expiry of the contract, A.G. Hendrie financed him to return to the mine so he let the house for five pounds per month and spent the next two years on the mine, which once again ended in failure.
In 1909 they sold the house to buy a dairy at Hillside which prospered until the arrival of East Coast Fever six months later when the entire herd was shot by the authorities for which he later received compensation of GBP100. A B.S.A.Co director, Jesser-Cope, heard of the disaster and offered John a job as a stockman on Rhodesdale Estate which was B.S.A.Co. property. They stayed there for two years from 1910, and it was whilst there that their house containing most of their valuable possessions was burnt down by Jack going to bed with a lit candle.
In July 1912 John received a letter from Mr. Sly of Haddon & Sly offering him the manager-ship of his farm Denver near Bulawayo, for GBP150 per month plus a free house and produce. Ella started chickens and incubating, but the venture was not very successful because of predators. John erected a solid stone built house where they lived until 1923, when Sly's son took over the farm.
(Here is an overlapping note: In 1916 Ella went to Bulawayo as assistant in a Bulawayo dairy for 5 pounds per month. She boarded with Mrs. Square (a friend of her mother's) all-in for four pounds ten shillings leaving her with nine shillings for herself out of her salary. (This was the usual sort of distribution of one's funds) She was expected to start work before light and arrived one morning to find the place had been burgled, and that is what decided her to leave, and she got employment in Haddon & Sly in 1916/1917, and stayed there until she married. The association her father John had with Mr. Booth was not only because of supplying harnessing for Col. Napier's donkeys, but he also had an interest in the Ella Gold Mine, named after Ella Reid).
In 1923 John bought a portion of the farm Denver which was near Pasipas siding and called it Newlands. There they did dairy and chickens. We used to travel down annually from Zambia to visit them at this farm, and because the train only momentarily stopped there, we had to start throwing our luggage off the train well before we reached the siding as there was only enough time to get all of us children off, despite being lined up and waiting ready to alight. Then we had to backtrack to collect our luggage and make our way to the farm, which wasn't very far from the siding.
This farm was sold in 1935 for the now elderly couple to be able to relocate to Macheke to be near Ella, where they bought No. 10 Springfield, renaming it Dundee. He died there 18 months later and we as a family moved in with his widow until the house was sold, after which she moved in with us until her death in 1945. Dundee was later re-purchased by Ella's youngest son Jack.
Whilst John was still the proprietor of Struie, he had a dispute with his neighbour, Mr Halden, about damaging right of way for Mr Halden's cattle through Struie which ended in litigation, and although the court found in his favour, the cost to him was crippling. Separately, I have a printout of the case notes.
This is the poem which Granny learnt as a child of eight, and recited from memory in her eighties.
On the question of behaviour when at table
There is much that proves perplexing to the mind.
Should we eat, that is, as much as we are able
Should we drink as much as nature feels inclined.
Is it right to use a spoon to swallow curry
Is it wrong to use a knife for eating cheese
There is scope for much embarrassment and worry
In such knotty points as these.
On the processes of eating and of drinking
Which are separate, distinctive, well defined
There is no-one who must acquiesce in thinking
That these functions must in any way be combined
For the man who fills his mouth with beef or pheasant
And proceeds to sluice it down with bitter beer
Is a person who, at table, 'tis not pleasant to sit near
And then, no-one needs be instructed
That our vitals must not ever be inhaled
And that no-one who is properly conducted
Would be guilty of the scandal thus entailed
When a burst of unpremeditated laughter
Sends a glass of rare old port which you imbibe
Coursing lung wards, well the scene that follows after
Were not fitting to describe
Let me tell you of my favourite Aunt Anna
Who though 80, is alert and full of fun
Inhaled the greater part of a banana
When at luncheon, once, I chanced to make a pun
All in vain the doctors probed and ordered massage
My relation is deprived of half a lung
For the plantain in her pulmonary passage
Is embedded like a bun
If asparagus or artichokes be handed
Do not view them with a terror stricken eye
Nor allow yourself a coward to be branded
By allowing such a dish to pass you by
Each leaf, or stalk, when dipped in melted butter
Should be held between the finger tips with grace
And then flung, without a tremor or a flutter
Through the porthole of your face
Do not scatter bits of food about your clothing
Do not harbour mashed potatoes in your beard
You will find that people gaze at you in loathing
If some spinach to your eyebrow has adhered
Last of all, I mean it kindly, gentle reader
If you cannot keep your fingers off a bone
If in fact you are a gross and careless feeder
You had better feed alone
A favourite chastising saying of Granny's when we complained about others, was,
All the world is queer but thee and me,
And even thee's a little queer!
The story of Isabella Hardie Mckenzie comes in two parts, personal and historical. This is her personal story, as written by her daughter, Gwen.
She was a gentle, obliging, non-critical person who raised her family (including from time to time, some nieces and nephews and from the early days of her marriage, her widowed mother-in-law and later, her own widowed mother) always in a sympathetic and loving way. Hers was mostly a life of uncomplaining want, at times bordering on poverty, as my father only earned a mere twenty-five pounds a month, though that was added to by the provision of a house as well as free medical and rail travel for himself and his family. Nor were there any overheads to pay such as electricity (non-existent then) and water (which was collected in a rainwater tank).
She was the oldest child of three, and the only daughter of John Lawrence Reid and his wife Mary Ann Low, born on 13th January 1895 on the family farm Struie in Strathearn, Scotland, and at the age of two her much loved father became so seriously ill that he was obliged to leave Scotland to settle in a warmer climate. Before this was decided upon the family took lodgings in the Blackford Hill area of Morningside in Edinburgh, to be near the Royal Infirmary and the doctors. It was from the upstairs windows of these lodgings that this small girl watched, each day, the soldiers from the nearby Redford Barracks marching past, the memory remaining with her until her death at the age of 93. Another example of her excellent memory was that she was still able to recite a long and complicated verse titled "Deportmental Ditties" which she had learnt at the age of 8. (Copy attached)
In 1898 the farm was sold for GBP3,500, and the family sailed to Cape Town and from there travelled by train to Bulawayo in the newly founded colony of Rhodesia. They were not pioneers, but enjoyed the status of early settlers. The family's movements are chronicled separately, but of her, she was in the main educated by her mother, who had herself received a good education at the Merchant Maidens’ School in Edinburgh. Consequently she had little exposure to other children and only saw her two brothers when they were on school holidays from St. George’s College in Bulawayo, and later Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
She assisted her father in his dairy and with his egg and chicken producing business, and this interest remained with her throughout her life. She also worked for a short spell in a dairy in Bulawayo before joining the staff of a large departmental store, Haddon & Sly, as a book-keeping clerk. When bulk dry goods consignments arrived from South Africa by wagon, all staff were diverted to weighing and re-packing this into brown paper bags for re-sale.
It was through a business associate of her father's, a Mr. Booth, who owned a saddlery business in Bulawayo, that my mother met my father, Willie McKenzie, he being the brother of Mrs. Booth. She married him on St. Patrick's Day 1919 and their first home was a free standing 10ft. square wood and iron room which served as their total accommodation.
From her long years living at home prior to her marriage, her energies were directed into book learning and practical skills, giving her a good all round knowledge, and as a result, her family automatically sought her opinion on most subjects throughout her life.
Although she was seemingly a very healthy and relatively slender woman throughout her life, she did acquire allergies of avocado pears, bananas and eggs, the latter being most tedious as that included such things as cakes, biscuits and some puddings. Nor could she eat Yorkshire pudding or mayonnaise. She also suffered a peculiar sensitivity around her waist by not being able to tolerate elastic in that region, so had to resort to buttoned underwear. When she was in her late sixties, she contracted jaundice, and when admitted to hospital, she confounded the nursing staff with her assertion that this was the first time she had been hospitalised. She broke her ankle whilst climbing kopjies in her eighties (my brother Jack fondly referred to her as a mountain goat). Nevertheless, in her late eighties she walked five miles in a sponsored marathon to raise funds, and was greatly commended for her efforts.
She was an expert at crochet and produced many fine pieces, using sewing thread, but it was only when her children began to arrive, did she learn knitting and sewing, an industry which kept her very busy catering for the needs of herself and her family. In her later years she occupied herself with knitting squares and joining them together to make blankets for charity. She also continued to crochet but, as her sight diminished, with coarser thread such as twine.
Shortly after Rhodesia became Independent Zimbabwe, she reluctantly, under pressure from her family, relocated to Cathcart in the Eastern Cape territory of South Africa where she quickly settled into the community and became involved in voluntary work in the workshop of the Callie Evans Old Age Home, an establishment funded and maintained by the residents of that small market town. She, herself, was eventually admitted to this same home at the age of 91, and two years later had a fall and died in the local cottage hospital from complications brought on by a broken sternum.
She was a very good person who endeared herself to all who knew her. Would that I could be even the half of her.
This is part two of Ella's story - the historical bit, told to me by her. I hear that Cheryl also has a very comprehensive account, so I hope these two accounts don't confuse, but will rather add to each other.
John Lawrence Reid, having contracted T.B. of the kidney which settled in his spine, and left him with a large distinctive, and permanent hump on his back, was obliged to move to a warmer climate, so he sold his farm Struie to Charles Calder, distiller in Bo'ness on 12 Nov 1896 for GBP3,500 and rented a house in the Blackford Hill area of Morningside in Edinburgh for a year, whilst undergoing treatment, before he, his wife and daughter left Scotland and arrived in Cape Town in January 1898 bound for Rhodesia, arriving in Bulawayo by train in February 1898, that part of the journey having taken two weeks. On arrival there, they stayed at Butters Building which was a boarding house, before purchasing 200 acres at Rangemoor, west of Bulawayo, with the river as their boundary. He erected a water engine driven by donkeys, and grew vegetables, the first pickings of which were ready when the Boer War broke out. Since communications from the south were cut by the war, the prices escalated with butter being sold for one pound sterling per pound weight. Other than vegetables, he also kept cattle, goats, donkeys, pigs and fowls and supplied chickens, eggs, butter and milk to the Grand Hotel, and he did very well.
They remained there for three years before moving to Bulawayo for schooling for Ella and for the birth of Lawrence. They bought a plot on high ground in Duncan Road in the southern suburbs, and built a small iron house, then John acquired premises next to the Imperial Hotel and started a joinery shop. (He must have longed for his cabinet maker father-in-law's assistance in that) He secured good contracts and through those met Colonel Napier who contracted him to build hay sheds on Springs farm twelve miles out of Bulawayo, as well as overseeing the cutting of the hay for 25% of the farm profits. He closed the shop to devote his energies to this contract, which lasted for two years.
Ella started school at Miss Monary's private school where the Bulawayo Technical College now stands.
After the birth of Lawrence, John's wife was poorly so she and the children left in September 1902 for Scotland and were joined by him in May 1903. They stayed in Dunning with John's sister, Mary Hill, and whilst there Ella attended school with her cousin Lizzie. They all returned to Africa in June 1903.
On their return they rented a house in Queen's Grounds and John returned to carpentry, making furniture. He met Col. Napier again who offered him a house on the farm Springs and 25% of the profits in return for his services. Whilst there, donkey wagons journeyed continuously to Bulawayo supplying fodder to mainly the Police and Army for their horses. They also grew maize. Then, after two years, it seems John made a bad move. He left to go gold mining on Julia Mine as a smallworker, and lost all his money, so the family returned to their original house in Duncan Road, where their second son John was born.
From there John secured a contract to build the Globe & Phoenix Club at Que Que, leaving his family in Bulawayo, but when he returned they were all ill with whooping cough. On expiry of the contract, A.G. Hendrie financed him to return to the mine so he let the house for five pounds per month and spent the next two years on the mine, which once again ended in failure.
In 1909 they sold the house to buy a dairy at Hillside which prospered until the arrival of East Coast Fever six months later when the entire herd was shot by the authorities for which he later received compensation of GBP100. A B.S.A.Co director, Jesser-Cope, heard of the disaster and offered John a job as a stockman on Rhodesdale Estate which was B.S.A.Co. property. They stayed there for two years from 1910, and it was whilst there that their house containing most of their valuable possessions was burnt down by Jack going to bed with a lit candle.
In July 1912 John received a letter from Mr. Sly of Haddon & Sly offering him the manager-ship of his farm Denver near Bulawayo, for GBP150 per month plus a free house and produce. Ella started chickens and incubating, but the venture was not very successful because of predators. John erected a solid stone built house where they lived until 1923, when Sly's son took over the farm.
(Here is an overlapping note: In 1916 Ella went to Bulawayo as assistant in a Bulawayo dairy for 5 pounds per month. She boarded with Mrs. Square (a friend of her mother's) all-in for four pounds ten shillings leaving her with nine shillings for herself out of her salary. (This was the usual sort of distribution of one's funds) She was expected to start work before light and arrived one morning to find the place had been burgled, and that is what decided her to leave, and she got employment in Haddon & Sly in 1916/1917, and stayed there until she married. The association her father John had with Mr. Booth was not only because of supplying harnessing for Col. Napier's donkeys, but he also had an interest in the Ella Gold Mine, named after Ella Reid).
In 1923 John bought a portion of the farm Denver which was near Pasipas siding and called it Newlands. There they did dairy and chickens. We used to travel down annually from Zambia to visit them at this farm, and because the train only momentarily stopped there, we had to start throwing our luggage off the train well before we reached the siding as there was only enough time to get all of us children off, despite being lined up and waiting ready to alight. Then we had to backtrack to collect our luggage and make our way to the farm, which wasn't very far from the siding.
This farm was sold in 1935 for the now elderly couple to be able to relocate to Macheke to be near Ella, where they bought No. 10 Springfield, renaming it Dundee. He died there 18 months later and we as a family moved in with his widow until the house was sold, after which she moved in with us until her death in 1945. Dundee was later re-purchased by Ella's youngest son Jack.
Whilst John was still the proprietor of Struie, he had a dispute with his neighbour, Mr Halden, about damaging right of way for Mr Halden's cattle through Struie which ended in litigation, and although the court found in his favour, the cost to him was crippling. Separately, I have a printout of the case notes.
This is the poem which Granny learnt as a child of eight, and recited from memory in her eighties.
On the question of behaviour when at table
There is much that proves perplexing to the mind.
Should we eat, that is, as much as we are able
Should we drink as much as nature feels inclined.
Is it right to use a spoon to swallow curry
Is it wrong to use a knife for eating cheese
There is scope for much embarrassment and worry
In such knotty points as these.
On the processes of eating and of drinking
Which are separate, distinctive, well defined
There is no-one who must acquiesce in thinking
That these functions must in any way be combined
For the man who fills his mouth with beef or pheasant
And proceeds to sluice it down with bitter beer
Is a person who, at table, 'tis not pleasant to sit near
And then, no-one needs be instructed
That our vitals must not ever be inhaled
And that no-one who is properly conducted
Would be guilty of the scandal thus entailed
When a burst of unpremeditated laughter
Sends a glass of rare old port which you imbibe
Coursing lung wards, well the scene that follows after
Were not fitting to describe
Let me tell you of my favourite Aunt Anna
Who though 80, is alert and full of fun
Inhaled the greater part of a banana
When at luncheon, once, I chanced to make a pun
All in vain the doctors probed and ordered massage
My relation is deprived of half a lung
For the plantain in her pulmonary passage
Is embedded like a bun
If asparagus or artichokes be handed
Do not view them with a terror stricken eye
Nor allow yourself a coward to be branded
By allowing such a dish to pass you by
Each leaf, or stalk, when dipped in melted butter
Should be held between the finger tips with grace
And then flung, without a tremor or a flutter
Through the porthole of your face
Do not scatter bits of food about your clothing
Do not harbour mashed potatoes in your beard
You will find that people gaze at you in loathing
If some spinach to your eyebrow has adhered
Last of all, I mean it kindly, gentle reader
If you cannot keep your fingers off a bone
If in fact you are a gross and careless feeder
You had better feed alone
A favourite chastising saying of Granny's when we complained about others, was,
All the world is queer but thee and me,
And even thee's a little queer!
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