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Hi All,
I am a direct descendant of a 1820 Settler.Our family has been, and still is living in the Stormberg Region since the 1850's. I have always been interested in the Boer War, and farm close to the where "The Battle of Stormberg" took place. The northern boundary of this region is the Orange River, and as a result many of the local boers became "Cape Rebels" by joining the Free State Burghers. As one can imagine the animosity between the Afrikaans and English speaking population.
One of my "grand" uncles, George Samuel Hayter, trekked to the Magaliesburg area in the then Transvaal in 1883. He became a "Franchised Burgher" of the Transvaal, and a member of the Krugersdorp Commando. He was one of the Burghers who died in action at the "the Battle of Talana Hill".
I have often wondered where he was buried, and only recently discovered his name on a Memorial Site at Dundee, Natal.

http://www.eggsa.org/library/main.php?g2_itemId=1133784



I am pleased to discover this site and hope to share information with other members.

Thank you,

George John Hayter
Burgersdorp.
East Cape

Interesting story George. Great site this is. I found details of my great-grandfathers involvement as well. Fantastic to trace one`s roots.

Hello and welcome.

Welcome, George. I will look forward to reading contributions about the war in your part of the old Cape Colony.
Regards
Brett

To all above,
Thank you all for your response and welcome. Last week I paid a visit to the Museum and battle field at Talana Hill, Dundee.
Not finding my great uncle's name on any of the ABW memorials, it was suggested that I go to the "Plat Rand" Memorial at Ladismith. There I found his name stating that he was killed at the time of the "Talana Hill Battle". I have since found out that the "Krugerdorp Commando" weren't stationed at Talana at the time of the battle, but were on another hill close by called Lennox.
The above information was kindly given to me by Pat Rundgren (a local historian at Dundee) , I quote from an email he sent me :
No doubt you’ve already seen that his name DOES appear on the Platrand memorial, but nowhere else. However, a telegram was sent by Louis Botha the day after the battle to inform the Boer authorities that “there were killed on battlefield yesterday (October 20th), principally by all kinds of shells, Krugersdorp 2 ….”. At least this confirms that 2 Krugersdorpers were indeed killed.

These two were also mentioned in a Digger’s News article dated 23 October 1899, which contained a list of killed or wounded. The names given were G. HAYKER (note spelling) and G. Hinds of Krugersdorp. So presumably they got the spelling incorrect.

I have not been able to find their place of burial yet. Some Boers were buried on the top of Talana and others near the old Boer hospital at Thornley farm. I’m going to go to the latter and check if anything still remains. Been there many times, but wasn’t specifically looking for graves as I assumed that they had all been removed. But it’s likely that’s where the bodies would have ended up if they had been killed/ died of wounds on Lennox.

I have taken several photo's of the Platrand Memorial, and will post them latter.
Bye for now,
farmergeo