Two Scotts on the trot

Andrew and Catherine Scott (cousins on the Growdon side of the family) are cycling around in South America, and have started a blog Two Scotts on the trot, where you can follow their adventures.

Cycling round South America, but a lift can help if there’s a headwind

As they put it, “A trot, yes, but on our ‘burros de aceros’ (iron donkeys)… a “cheap-as-we-can” cycling-camping expedition around southern South America.”

Thursday 20^th August saw two firsts.  We obtained our first hitchhike (owing to a nasty headwind and dry heat) with a friendly gentleman, an electrical engineer, who was heading as far as Wanda, which happened to be a perfect destination.  It gave us enough distance to cycle to Iguazu, but without having to spend a week getting there.  The drive also turned into a Spanish lesson.  We unloaded in Wanda and gratefully thanked him.  It was then we noticed Andrew’s bicycle’s back tyre was completely flat. Our first puncture.

 

Tombstone Tuesday: Vause family of Durban

On our holiday in Durban last month we visited St Thomas’s Cemetery in Durban, high up on the Berea, where my great great grandfather Richard Vause is buried.

I’d visited his grave earlier, with my grandmother, in 1968, and she had told me that she wanted to be buried there too, though whether she ever was buried there I don’t know. I’d visited a few years later and had some photos of the grave, but we thought it would be nice to have some digital photos as well, so we went to look for it, and could not find it after looking at almost every other grave in the place. Had I imagined it? Had it been moved?

No, it was still there, but it was so big that we hadn’t seen it for looking. It was just about the most prominent grave in the place. In this picture you can see it, the one with the pillar and the urn on top. The Vodapine behind it is bigger — it is actually a cellphone mast owned by Vodacom, disguised as a pine tree. There are also Vodapalms and various other varieties of Vodadendrons.

The Vause family grave in St Thomas’s Cemetery, with an urn on top, dwarfed only by a Vodapine

The current St Thomas’s Church is a bit further down the hill. The original one on the cemetery site was a wood and iron affair, replaced in the 1920s by the stone chapel that is there today, but is not used much. Richard Vause was one of the first, if not the first, churchwarden of the old St Thomas’s, and he lived a little way down the hill in what may still be called Vause Road with his wife Matilda (nee Park) and their eight children.

Their son Charles Reynolds Vause was the very first to be baptised at St Thomas’s, and is the fiorst entry in the baptism register, and was probably one of the first to be buried in the cemetery also. He and his sister Matilda, the two youngest of the Vause children, died young.

Memorial to Charles Reynolds Vause (1864-1866) and Mary Martin Vause (1866-1866), the youngest children of Richard and Matilda Vause

The second son of Richard and Matilda Vause, William John Vause, who died at the age of 41, is also buried in the plot. He married Jessie Cottam, but they had no children.

Grave of William John Vause (1855-1896) in St Thomas’s Cemetery

 

William John Vause’s elder brother, Richard Wyatt Vause (my great grandfather) married Maggie Cottam, Jessie Cottam’s sister, and Maggie Cottam also died young (but was buried in Pietermaritzburg). Jessie Vause, then remarried Gordon Parkes, but had no children by him either, and brought up her dead sister’s children. Richard Wyatt Vause, known as Wyatt to his friends, lived as a widower.

Memorial to Wyatt Vause (1854-1926), my great grandfather.

There are several other members of the Vause family buried in the same plot.

St Thomas’s Cemetery, showing the current chapel, and the Vause grave, with the urn on top of a pillar.

The cemetery also contains the grave of Julia, the daughter of nCaptain Allen Gardiner, RN. After retiring from the navy, Gardiner became a missionary, and went to Zululand. There he met a hostile reception from King Dingane and his people, so he returned to Durban, and established himself on a hill above the town. After finding the people there more receptive to his message he named the hill Berea, after the place where St Paul met a better reception than he did in Thessalonica (Acts 17:10-12). Allen Gardiner is not buried at St Thomas’s Cemetery, however. He went on to South America, where he died of starvation on Tierra del Fuego, and the South American Missionary Society was started in his memory.

Chaffey & Chaffin families — the same?

My great-great-grandmother Catherine Harris married twice – first to Thomas Cheafey or Chaffey, and second to James Andrew Hayes. She had a son by her first marriage, Charles Thomas Chaffey, who apparently changed his name to Chaffin. I wondered why he might have done that, and then someone drew my attention to this:

http://genforum.genealogy.com/chaffee/messages/505.html

which describes someone else doing something similar.

When it happens one, it is odd. When it happens twice it begins to look like a conspiracy!

Chaffey or Chaffin family of Bristol

For a long time I have been trying to find what happened to Charles Thomas CHAFFEY, who was born in Bristol in 1838.

In the 1851 census of Bedminster he is shown as an errand boy, aged 12, step son of James Andrew HAYES and his wife Catherine. I later found his parents marriage – Thomas CHEAFEY married Catherine HARRIS, daughter of James HARRIS, Engineer.

But Charles Thomas CHAFFEY disappeared after the 1851 census. Then I thought I would check omn a Charles T. CHAFFIN who was staying at Skyn Yard, Cabot Street, Bedminster in the 1881 census. At the same address was James A.A. Hayes, the half brother of Charles Thomas CHAFFEY. Everything else seemed to fit, names and dates etc., so I concluded that Charles
Thomas CHAFFEY and Charles Thomas CHAFFIN were the same person.

I just wonder why he had apparently changed his name.

Here are family group records for this family:

                     Family History System            11 Aug 2012
Merged Group Reports
NAME: HARRIS, Catherine, Born ??? 1818 in Whitchurch, Glamorgan,
Died ??? 1875? at age 57; FATHER: HARRIS, James; MOTHER: Sarah,
Born ??? 1779, Died ???

MARRIED 20 Oct 1846 in Bitton, GLS, ENG, to HAYES, James Andrew,
Born Oct 1821 in Winscombe, Somerset, Died 28 Aug 1905 in
Bristol, ENG at age 83; FATHER: HAYES, Simon, Born ??? 1785,
Died Dec 1861 at age 76; MOTHER: ALLEN, Rachel, Born Feb 1787,
Died 7 Mar 1867 at age 80; Builder of Bedminster. Bapt. 7 Oct
1821, Winscombe, Somerset.

MARRIED 22 Dec 1835 in St Thomas, Bristol, to CHAFFEY, Thomas,
Died May 1840 in Bedminster, Bristol; His name spelt Cheafy in
register; Surname shown as Cheafey in marriage register.

CHILDREN:
1. M CHAFFEY, Charles Thomas, born ??? 1838 in Bedminster,
Bristol, died ???; Married 21 Jul 1864 to STALLARD, Emma;
3 children
2. F HAYES, Emma, born 16 Feb 1843 in Bedminster, Bristol,
died 11 Feb 1924 in Bristol; Married to HOWELL, John A
3. M HAYES, James Andrew Allen, born Feb 1845? in Bedminster,
Bristol, died Nov 1899 in Bristol, England; Married ???
1868 to HEALLS, Emily; 7 children
4. M HAYES, William Allen, born 29 Jan 1849 in Bedminster,
died 1 Oct 1915 in Axbridge, Somerset; Married 19 Aug
1872 to STOOKE, Mary Barber; 4 children
5. F HAYES, Sabina Kate, born ??? 1854? in Bedminster, Bristol,
died Feb 1924 in Cheltenham, GLS, ENG; Married ??? 1885
to GRIDLEY, Edward; 5 children
6. F HAYES, Adelaide Sarah Maria, born ??? 1856? in Bedminster,
Bristol, died ??? 1934 in Bristol

=================================================================
Residence Information

From ??? 1851
Address: 4 Little Paradise, Bedminster, Somerset, England;
In 1851 census master carpenter employing 4 men

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NAME: CHAFFEY, Charles Thomas, Born ??? 1838 in Bedminster,
Bristol, Died ???; FATHER: CHAFFEY, Thomas, Died May 1840;
MOTHER: HARRIS, Catherine, Born ??? 1818, Died ??? 1875? at
age 57; Appears as Chaffey in 1841 and 1851 censuses, but from
1861 on is recorded as Chaffin. In 1881 census is shown as
living in Skyn Yard, Cabot Street, Bedminster with his half
brother James A.A. Hayes.

MARRIED 21 Jul 1864 in Bedminster, SOM, ENG, to STALLARD, Emma,
Born ??? 1841 in Swindon, WIL, ENG, Died ???

CHILDREN:
1. M CHAFFIN, George Thomas Charles, born Aug 1865 in Swindon,
WIL, ENG, died ???
2. F CHAFFIN, Blanche Kate, born Nov 1867 in Swindon, WIL, ENG,
died ???
3. M CHAFFIN, Albert William, born Aug 1873 in Bedminster, SOM,
ENG, died May 1932 in Bedminster, SOM, ENG; Married Aug
1902 to BISSICKS, Rosina