Hello forum members,
I am a new member and have found this site very useful. I am an Indian born writer and researcher, and live now in the US.
I'd really appreciate your inputs and suggestions about something or rather, someone, the aforementioned: Joanna Adriana Quinta Du Preez. I've been reading up about Boer POW camps in India; the publication by the Anglo Boer War Museum is especially helpful. But it was in the course of something else that I came by Joanna AQ Du Preez.
She came up when I was researching a piece on an Indian woman announcer at the BBC London during World War II. She (Venu CHitale) a woman from Bombay traveled with Ms Du Preez to London in 1938 or thereabouts -- as ancestry records show - and stayed there till 1945. Ancestry also records them as studying for degrees as extension students of Oxford University. Ms Du Preez also worked for the BBC.
A record on ancestry shows details of Joanna's death certificate/record. She died in Cape Town, in 1948, of a brain tumor; she had apparently returned to Cape Town (her 'hometown'?) after World War II.
I was really intrigued by her story. This is what got me to read more about the Boers in India. And I hope for some suggestions and leads her, I'd truly be grateful.
I do know of the many Du Preezes who were prisoners in India. And a listing of prisoners at Angloboer war camp site does have a mention of Joanna Adriana Quinta Du Preez; as well as her mother, Joanna Adriana Du Preez, whose husband was a commado in the war.
But Joanna AQ Du Preez is listed as being born in 1891 (13 years old in 1904), whereas the Joanna who died in 1948, with the same name, has a birth year of 1905. That made me curious - because it appears at the time of her death, she had no known living relatives.
Also I am curious as to what she was doing in India post Anglo-Boer war?
I do hope you could help, really. I did attach the death record from ancestry if that helps too. This is the link if the attachment didn't go through:
www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/416762:60149
And this is the link of the piece I did on 'Venu Chitale' who was Joanna AQ Du Preez's student in India:
scroll.in/magazine/922997/the-indian-wom...nal-life-for-herself
Sincerely,
Adity Kay
