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Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 1998-06 > 0897029971


From: "Leighton, Jennifer (Head Office)" <>
Subject: RE: KETH / WARKUS FAMILIES
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 08:59:31 +0200


Dear Amanda,

I enclose a rather lenghtly couple of extracts which I have on record
regarding the German Legionnaires. If you need more I can look up the
actual town they started just outside East London and send that info to
you.

I wonder whether I could impose on you and ask whether you could let me
have the Cory Museum's e-mail / snail mail address. I possibly also
have ancestors -"BRANDT" who came over on the "La Rochelle" - but have
not yet started researching. I am currently busy with my "LEIGHTON"
tree.

"East London

At the close of the Crimean War in 1857, members of the German Legion
who served in the British Army was settled in British Kaffraria. Some 2
400 men, women and children landed in East London and thereafter greatly
influenced the growth and development of the district. Many well-known
South African families are descended from these colonists and many of
the place names in what is today known as the Border are of German
origin.

A memorial to the German immigrants can be seen near the beach front.
It commemorates their arrival in 1857. In the same year on 28th
November, 153 Irish colleen immigrants were put safely ashore from the
chartered 583-ton tea clipper Lady Kennaway. They came to marry the
German legionnaires. Give days after the landing the ship, lying in the
roadstead, was wrecked in a heavy storm.

K.W.Town
During 1857 the area was settled by more than 2 000 immigrant German
legionnaires who played a major part in the growth impetus of Kind
William's Town, and after the visit of Prince Alfred on 13 August 1860
the status of 'Royal Borough' was conferred on the town. Upon the
peaceful consolidation of the frontier in 1878, British Kaffraria was
annexed to the Cape. It remained a garrison town for imperial troops
until the first World War and still bears much of the character of its
military history."

Hope this helps.

Kind regards

Jenni Leighton
Johannesburg - South Africa
Researching : LEIGHTON / LORD / BRANDT / HAY / TURNER

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