Sunday, April 16, 2006

Kenya as I knew it

Well, not as I, knew it, but as Howell Evans knew it.

Yesterday the manuscript of Kenya as I knew it arrived from Ione Evans in New Zealand. It was written by her father-in-law, Howell Evans, and tells of his time in Kenya as an agricultural officer from 1949-1963. I've only just started reading it, so can't comment much on the content yet.

Ione is descended from Henry Green, one of the Greens who came to South Africa from Canada in the 1840s, and her branch of the Green family was completely unknown to us until she made contact a few months ago. All we knew was that Henry Green's daughter Edith Susanna married an Ernest BORWICK, and no trace of their descendants could be found, until Ione got in touch and told us about numerous descendants in Kenya, New Zealand and elsewhere.

One of the continuing mysteries is Henry Green's second wife and her family. Most of the sources we had said she was the daughter of "Count von Lilienstein" who came to British Kaffraria with the German military settlers in 1858. But it seems that he was not a count, but a Captain (Hauptmann) and was a border guard on the Danish frontier before coming to the Cape.

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