Newspaper Extracts

Sue Mackay writes: . At the end of November I gave a zoom talk to eGGSA on the UK origins of the 1820 settlers, and was asked a question about John MONTGOMERY. This caused me to look at my eGGSA page on him, where I discovered I had previously noted the issues of The Friend containing his Reminiscences. I then realised that these years (December 1868 to July 1870) had already been covered by Lynn Couperthwaite’s transcriptions, but as Lynn scans the online papers for BMDs and obituaries she would not have realised the importance of these closely typed (and sometimes barely legible) articles. I found them, and decided they really should be transcribed. Once again I was able to enlist the invaluable help of Geoff Chew, not only for his knowledge of South Africa, but his proofreading and uncanny ability to decipher elusive words. I have added the transcriptions to The Friend extracts on eGGSA at https://www.eggsa.org/newspapers/index.php/the-friend (1868 December to 1870 July)

The Fort Beaufort Advocate and General Advertiser, first published on 23 July 1859, was a weekly publication produced on Saturdays.

Fort Beaufort Advocate Front Page

Nadine Van der Merwe realised the potential interest of this publication for genealogists, especially in the run up to the bicentennial of the 1820 settlers, and began to take pictures in her local library with a view to transcribing them. She then realised what a large project this was, and also that many issues were missing, so she approached eGGSA for help. The eGGSA management committee agreed to buy digital scans of the newspaper covering the period 1859-1874 from the SA National Library, and these are now being transcribed by Nadine Van der Merwe and Lorraine Beechey. Sue Mackay started adding them to the eGGSA website on 1 March, and these can now be seen in the eGGSA Newspaper Extracts section.

Because the entire paper has been scanned, the transcribers were not under the same time constraints that I was when photographing extracts from the Grahamstown Journal and other 19th century newspapers in London with a digital camera, when I could really only focus on BMDs. These new transcriptions contain all sorts of interesting snippets, advertisements, shipping news and sometimes the downright bizarre! Many of the 1820 settlers moved into the Fort Beaufort area, so in this bicentennial year we should be especially grateful to Nadine and to eGGSA for making this project possible.

Cape Gazette Alta Griffiths has scanned several years of this publication and Brenda Gassner and Lorraine Beechey are working their way through these. The first quarter of 1827 has now been added to the Newspaper Extracts section of the eGGSA web site

Additionally, Liz Eshmade has contributed her transcripts of Colin Graham Botha's extracts from from earlier issues of this periodical, Baptisms of English person, 1810-1821, and marriages of English persons, 1806-1821, and these have been added to the BDMs database section of the web site.

Cape Gazette Alta Griffiths has scanned several years of this publication and a start has been made on transcribing extracts by Brenda Gassner and Richard Ball. The first extracts, from the year 1826, have been added to the Newspaper Extracts section of the eGGSA web site

Sue Mackay writes: I have finally been able to photograph the next couple of years, from 1871 onwards, of the Grahamstown Journal at the British Library in London. The first batch can be seen among the eGGSA Newspaper Extracts.

This batch is considerably longer than usual, not only because there are a few lengthy obituaries but because I got seduced by a series of articles on Life at the Diggings, describing the burgeoning businesses at the diamond fields.

The Reminiscences of John Montgomery

The Fort Beaufort Advocate and General Advertiser 1859-1874

Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette 1828

Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette

Grahamstown Journal 1871 onwards being transcribed

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