Intombi Cemetery Memorials, Ladysmith: Anglo-Boer War 1899 15

PEARCE, FW - Trooper, Imperial Light Horse
d. 1 Feb 1900
(Plaque on ILH Wall of Remembrance)

PEARSON, Reginald W - Lieut. 2nd Batt Rifle Brigade
d. 22 Feb 1900 aged 23 years
'Rest in peace, Beloved, Until the day break, and the shadows flee away'

PLATT, Cecil Sherman - 2nd Lieut. 5th Dragoon Guards
of Barnby Manor, Nottinghamshire
d. at Ladysmith on January 8th 1900 serving with his regiment during the Siege of Ladysmith, aged 22 years

Photographs: Dixon-Smith

For more on Intombi enter that term in this blog's search facility

Isipingo Mounted Rifles 1878-1879

Early Natal Volunteers

This corps, the Isipingo Mounted Rifles, was formed under the command of Captain Dering Stainbank in 1878 primarily for local defence when the various Natal volunteer units departed for service in the Zulu War.

However, after a brief training period the unit was sent to the Zululand border in March 1879 where, together with the Alexandra Mounted Rifles, Durban Mounted Rifles and the Natal Hussars, the Isipingo Mounted Rifles was involved in guard duties. The I.M.R. did not cross the Tugela into Zululand, but half its members volunteered to serve in the composite unit the Natal Volunteer Guides. Captain Stainbank was among those who volunteered and was appointed second in command to Captain Friend Addison in the N.V.G.

At the end of the Zulu War most of the I.M.R. members transferred to the Alexandra Mounted Rifles, and the unit ceased to exist.*

On formation the following men were in the I.M.R.:

Stainbank, Captain D
Quested, Lieut. W.
Bower, Quarter-Master
Murray, Sgt-Major
Rockey, Quarter-Master-Sgt.
Chapman, Sgt.
Birkett, Corporal
Ramsay, Corporal
Haines, Trumpeter
Buckston, Trooper
Clarkson, Trooper
Chapman, Trooper
Cass, Trooper
Daddy, Trooper
Fayers, Trooper Q. R.
Fayers, Trooper W. F.
Gilbert, Trooper
Hillary, Trooper
Hogart, Trooper
Ingle, Trooper
Kenton, Trooper
McDonald, Trooper
Madore, Trooper
Munn, Trooper
Prince, Trooper
Pugh, Trooper
Robinson, Trooper
Royston, Trooper **
Sinart, Trooper
Smith, Trooper W
Platt, Trooper
Platt, Trooper
Stewart, Trooper
Stainbank, Trooper
Steel, Trooper
Westley, Trooper 
Westley, Trooper A.C.
Skinner, Trooper

The uniform of the I.M.R. was blue cloth, with scarlet facings and white metal buttons; a helmet was worn. No badge or motto is recorded. The members were armed with the Swinburn-Henry .450 carbine and the officers carried swords.

*'The Armed Forces of South Africa' by Major G Tylden.

** J.R. (John Robinson) Royston had not yet turned sixteen when he joined the Isipingo Mounted Rifles. He was ordered to confine his services to defence duties on the Zululand border, but he defied authority, crossed the border into Zululand and reported to Captain Addison of the Natal Volunteer Guides, who enrolled Royston as a special scout. In this capacity Royston took part in the battles of Inyezane, Gingindhlovu and the Relief of Eshowe and remained with the Guides until the end of the Anglo-Zulu War.
During the Anglo-Boer War he served as Sgt-Major in the Highflats Squadron of the Border Mounted Rifles. After the Relief of Ladysmith he joined the Volunteer Composite Regiment as Captain and later commanded the West Australian Mounted Infantry operating in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. He was awarded the D.S.O. In 1906 he raised and commanded Royston's Horse and was appointed Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army. In 1910 he commanded the 2 000 troops of various units which attended the coronation of King Edward VII, to whom he was presented. The King conferred on him the C.M.G. At the outbreak of World War I he was authorized to recruit a Regiment to be called the Natal Light Horse. In 1915 he was on the Staff of General McKenzie in the German SWA campaign, and later appointed OC 9th Mounted Brigade. Subsequently he commanded Australian 12th Light Horse Regiment and then the 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigade in the Palestine Campaign, 1916-1917. The name Galloping Jack was given to him at the Battle of Romani, when he rode up and down the lines calling: 'No surrender, Men'. In 1935 at the age of 75, Brigadier-General Royston announced his intention to offer his services to the Emperor of Abyssinia to raise a brigade and 'take part in the struggle of this unjust war.'

['Rough But Ready': An Official History of the Natal Mounted Rifles and its Antecedent and Associated Units 1854-1969' by Eric Goetzsche]

Muster Roll of Alexandra Mounted Rifles 1892.
Members of the Isipingo Mounted Rifles transferred to the AMR
when the IMR was disbanded.

Souvenir Saturday: Natal Border Mounted Rifles 1899 Ladysmith

Border Mounted Rifles 1899: officers who served in Ladysmith. Back Row: Lieut J Gold, Lieut L Trenor, Lieut Qtr Master W D Smith, Lieut H B Andreasen, Lieut R G Archibald, Vet. Officer Lieut W M Power. Middle Row: Lieut F L Thring, Capt R Vause, Major J F Rethman Officer Commanding, Adj. Major W Sangmeister, Capt W Arnott. Front: Lieut Jack Royston, Capt H T Platt Med. Officer

Capt Arnott was wounded at Bester's Kop. Lieut Quartermaster William Dixon Smith died of enteric at Intombi Camp in January 1900. Major W Sangmeister and Captain J R Royston received the D.S.O. Major Rethman was promoted Lieut Colonel in December 1900 and retired from the Regiment in1904; he died in 1936.

For a list of BMR serving in the Anglo-Boer War see Mole's Blog at 
molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/09/boer-war-border-mounted-rifles-list.html

Sugar and Natal: the Pioneers - Mack, Platt, Babbs, King

ROBERT GAZLEY MACK

Mack and his brother James arrived in Natal on the Henrietta in July 1850. Robert bought land on the Isipingo Flat and in 1852 he and two other Isipingo farmers sent a wagon to Compensation to buy plant cane from Edmund Morewood. In 1861, Robinson states that Mack 'started with half-a-crown and a family of sturdy sons'; by 1870 there were 300 acres under cane on the Mack estate. Though Robert Mack was dead by that time, succeeding generations of the Mack family continued as sugar planters in the Isipingo area.

SIDNEY & LAWRENCE PLATT

These Yorkshiremen arrived in Natal within a year of each other, possibly attracted by cotton prospects in the Colony. Sidney, however, bought land at Isipingo in 1849 and Lawrence secured 50 acres near his brother's property, naming the farm Prospecton. At first the Platts, like many other early farmers, grew beans as a cash crop, but in 1852 Lawrence joined Mack and Birkett, also of Isipingo, in sending an ox-cart to Morewood at Compensation to buy cane-tops. Lawrence Platt's first mill, like his brother Sidney's, was ox-powered but they each soon acquired a steam mill.

Lawrence Platt died in 1886, and his work was continued by his youngest son Alfred, born in 1853, to whom he had given Prospecton at the end of the Anglo-Zulu War 1879. Alfred Platt died in 1938 - in 1945 the Prospecton Estate was amalgamated with Tongaat Sugar Co Ltd, with Cecil Platt, grandson of Lawrence, as a director. Cecil died in 1950, aged 68.

ROBERT BABBS

Babbs and his wife Sarah were passengers on the Globe in 1850. Like Jeffels, he didn't like the allotment provided in the cotton lands near Umhlali and settled at the Isipingo Flat, becoming a sugar planter and manufacturer at his Umlaas Estate. He started with an ox-power mill but by 1856 was sending into Durban sugar made at a new 8-horse power steam mill. John Robinson wrote in 1861 that Babbs's estate was the largest but one in the Colony, with 360 acres of cane.

Between 1862 and 1864 Babbs sold Umlaas Plantation to John Daniel Koch, a merchant. At the same time Koch bought Smart's sugar estate and the combination of these two farms was named Reunion. This concern was built up by Daniel de Pass, who later formed a syndicate of neighbouring planters to make Reunion one of the leading estates in Natal.


RICHARD ('DICK') KING

The original grant of 6 000 acres made to Dick King included the whole of the Isipingo Flat. Most of his neighbours bought their land from him, and they began planting cane in 1852 though it's uncertain when King himself planted his first cane - possibly about 1854 or earlier.
When the Flat was flooded in 1856, King, by means of a raft, rescued his neighbouring sugar planter, Smart, with his family, from the attic of Smart's house, where they had been forced to stay for two days and three nights due to the rising flood-waters.

He first had an ox-power mill but by the end of 1857 was operating a steam mill. John Robinson noted in 1861 that King had 110 acres under cane.

In 1868 King's estate was sold by auction to WH Acutt for £2 200. Shortly afterwards the Reunion estate, also on the Flat, was reorganized and Robinson wrote that Reunion consisted of three different estates, those owned in 1861 by Babbs, Smart and King. In the 1870s King himself continued to grow cane on the higher ground around his house at Isipingo.

King married Clara Jane Noon, sister of Adolphus Henry and Arthur Noon, who were also sugar planters at Isipingo. See more on Noon at:
http://molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-noon-family-in-natal-mormonism-and.html