TOPIC:

HI I am an amateur genealogist with a number of discovered ancestors on the Anglo side of the Boer War and a large number of undiscovered ancestors on the Boer side.

I am hoping to connect some of the dots.

I have recently acquired a fascinating piece of Memorabilia - a 17th Century edition of Horace (in the original Latin) inscribed as "removed from a Boer Farm House before burning on General's orders. They shot at us whilst flying a white flag from the upper story".

I suspect the incident took place between May 1900 and October 1900 in the Free State. Any clues on how to track down and find the actual Farmhouse would be welcome. I believe the British Soldier concerned was a "Chaplain with Sir Arthur Paget's Brigade"

Farina,

That is a great artefact to own.

In terms of connecting those dots, I don't think it can be done with the information you have available. Many farms were burnt over a wide area so I cannot see how you could narrow down the population of possible farms.

Happy to be proved wrong though.

Kind regards
David

Thanks David

One thing that gives me hope is that the so called "Phase 3" of the Boer war where the scorched earth policy really took off is usually only timed as starting in around Oct 1900. I know that he was invalided home on Oct 29 1900 with "sunstroke".

Accordingly there may have been relatively few farms burnt under the "white flag" rule at that stage.

The ideal thing I am looking for is Army diaries of "Sir Arthur Paget's Brigade" which lists the farms destroyed. I would then try and look at the education level of the owners of the farms (I am hoping just the ones in early October). My gut feel is that there wouldn't have been too many boers who studied Latin.

I must admit I did despair a little when I discovered that the Concentration Camp schools had Latin as a subject, and my guess is that Horace was a set work for all those classes..

kind regards

Zane Farina