379. Edith Louisa Fanny Farrar
Edith was born on April 25th, 1882 at St. Paul’s Rectory, Sparendaam (Plaisance), Demerara and was educated at Mrs. Vyphus School (later to become Bishops’ High School). She married Lionel Runnels Hill (‘Nello’) (b1878) on July 10th, 1909 at Christ Church in Georgetown. Nello was District Commissioner in New Amsterdam, Berbice, before returning to Georgetown for the last six years of his career. The Hill family originate from Norfolk and arrived in Georgetown, British Guiana, in the early 1800’s—apparently with a reputation of having previously pursued dubious careers privateering among the Caribbean islands! Nello’s father, Peter Hill Sr., was a magistrate and his brother, Arthur Heyliger Hill, I.S.O., was Immigration Agent General for East Indian immigrants. Arthur lived on 129 Parade Street, Georgetown. Arthur was awarded the Imperial Service Order for his work. After Nello retired he and Edith went to England and lived in Bognor where Edith’s brother, WALTER FARRAR was Rector. Edith died on September 18th, 1960 and is buried at Brighton Crematorium, Sussex, where Nello is also buried. Edith and Nello had two children:
Nello was Commissioner in New Amsterdam, Berbice.
380. Gertrude Elisabeth Sophie Bosch Reitz
Gertrude Elisabeth Sophie ‘Lizzie’. A daguerreotype survives showing Lizzie as a baby with her parents and grandmother at Kleinhoop. Lizzie married her first cousin, Nicholas, son of Thomas Farrar and Melicent Ann Austin. (Melicent’s sister, Josephine Gibson, had already married into the Bosch Reitz family.) They had three children of whom Phyllis Blanche married Norman Rothwell, whose mother was a Bor, a family that came from Holland to Ireland in the fifteenth century. Phyllis therefore had two connections with the Austins, one through her father Nicholas and another through her great aunt Josephine Gibson.
Nicholas was born at Werk-en-Rust, Georgetown. In 1891, he was married by his father to Gertrude Elisabeth Sophie Bosch Reitz (‘Lizzie’) (1860-1946) [see The Bosch Reitz Family in this chapter] at St. Philip’s Church, Charlestown, Georgetown. Nicholas joined the Civil Service in British Guiana in 1882 as supernumerary in the Public Works Department and later held a senior position in the Audit Office. In 1900, he was appointed Postmaster General of the British Central Africa Protectorate (now Nyasaland) where Lizzie and their three children joined him and was the first white woman in that part of Africa. In 1912, Nicholas and Lizzie returned to British Guiana where he was appointed Postmaster General, a position which he held until 1921. He and Lizzie had three children
384. Philippe John Bosch Reitz
Philippe John ‘Philip’ studied to become a doctor but returned to British Guiana where he received his training as a planter at Rose Hall estate on the Canje Creek, Berbice, before becoming director of the last cocoa plantation of the Bosch Reitz-Kuvel estates, at Johanna Catharina in Surinam. He married Frederika Françoise Aman (1877-1970) in 1902 in Paramaribo, and they had four children
388. Melicent Marie Bosch Reitz
Melicent Marie ‘Millie’ was the youngest child of Guillaume and Josephine Bosch Reitz. She was educated at Miss Beckett’s School for Girls in Georgetown and later at Vevey in Switzerland. Millie married Alfred Waterfield in 1904 in Georgetown, and died in Sussex in 1968.
Alfred was the youngest son of ten children born to Edward Waterfield and Matilda Georgiana Gossip in India in 1873. His father and two uncles attained high office in the Indian Civil Service. Two of Alfred's brothers went into the Church, one, Reginald becoming Principal of Cheltenham College and later Dean of Hereford Cathedral. Lack of family funds for schooling such a large family meant that Alfred, after studying agriculture at Aberdeen University, ended up as a sugar planter in British Guiana. In 1898 he was an overseer at Windsor Forest estate on the West Coast, followed by Le Resouvenir and Success on the East Coast, Demerara. Soon after marrying Melicent Marie Bosch Reitz in Georgetown in 1904, he was appointed manager of Hampton Court, Essequibo, where their three children, Elsie, Jack and Dorothy were born. The children had a young nursemaid, Rebecca, who was to remain a beloved and faithful nurse, following the family to England, Malaya and back to British Guiana for the following nine years. Many years later, Rebecca came out of retirement to look after Elsie's son, David, when the family came to England on holiday in 1931. After about five years at Hampton Court, the family moved to Malaya, Alfred being appointed manager of a sugar estate on Batu Kawan Island, Penang, and then at Taiping, a rubber plantation on the mainland. Once, when travelling back to Malaya by sea in 1917, his ship, the S.S. ‘Mongolia’ was mined and he lost his prized stamp collection and books. A few years after the end of WW I, the collapse of the Malayan rubber industry caused Alfred to return to England, whence, after a brief but lean spell, he was offered the post of manager of Marionville on Wakenaam Island (previously Belle Plaine where Samuel Inniss Austin had been manager) back in British Guiana. Alfred ended his career at Blairmont, Berbice, at that time one of the show estates of the colony. Alfred loved tennis and managed to have courts on all the estates on which he served, both in British Guiana and Malaya. He also was the proud owner of the first car in British Guiana, a Model-T Ford. It proved to be thoroughly unreliable, with the result that Millie refused to venture out without a mule-drawn carriage following in the event of the inevitable breakdown! Alfred and Millie retired to Pevensey Bay, Sussex, where during WW II, he was an air-raid warden. His garden was his pride and joy despite a large bomb crater on the tennis court, which he turned into a sunken garden. The story goes that Alfred always had an afternoon nap but on one occasion, a plane dogfight overhead drew him and Millie out to watch the battle above. On returning to bed, he found a machine-gun bullet embedded in his mattress below where he would have been lying. Alfred died in 1948 but Millie survived him by 22 years, until 1968. They lie buried together in Pevensey churchyard.
Alfred Jack ‘Jack’ was educated at Bradfield College and the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. He was first an overseer in British Guiana before going out to a rubber plantation in British North Borneo. At the outbreak of the Second World War Jack enlisted with and was commissioned in the 1st Royal Battalion 9th Jat Regiment in India. After training on the N.W. Frontier, his battalion was sent to Burma as part of the 16th Indian Infantry Brigade. He was killed in action in Burma on the 10th May 1942. He was reported ‘missing in action presumed killed’ by the Japanese at Shwegyin, while his battalion was employed in covering the withdrawal of British forces across the Chindwin River. In a letter from Jack’s commanding officer to his sister Dorothy (‘Doddles’), he explained that the Japanese had disguised themselves as Burmese by dressing in white clothing and, in the resulting confusion and fire fight, Jack was killed. His commanding officer wrote: ‘...He (Jack) left his orderly behind and went on alone - he insisted on doing this - ahead and vanished in the semi-darkness and was heard shouting in Hindustani to stop firing. (He had already ordered his men to stop firing). A burst of enemy fire followed and more fire increasing in intensity and his forward section of 8 men were hard pressed to hold their own and finally had to withdraw owing to casualties and to their automatic gun jamming. Jack was never seen again...’. After the war, Jack’s body was recovered and buried with his comrades in Taukkyan War Cemetery, outside Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma).
389. Richard Arthur Hugh Austin
Born in British Guiana, he left the colony when he was eight years old and did not return. He joined the Prudential Insurance Company in 1898. In 1881, he married Gertrude Emma de Joncourt Pegler (1878-1968). Little would he have imagined that his son Anthony would one day be Attorney General in British Guiana.
390. Herbert William Dare Austin
Herbert William Dare spent some years in Alexandria, Egypt with the Eastern Telegraph. Co., where in 1911 he married Marie Messayeh, the daughter of an Ottoman Syrian Pasha who had been educated in Paris. They had three children. Marie died following the birth of their twin daughters. Some years later, Herbert William took his three daughters to Penzance, Cornwall and continued his work with the Eastern Telegraph Co. in nearby Porthcurno, until his retirement.