I have discovered that I accidentally have two websites on blogger.com. If you are interested in more of my blogs, please also visit this site, where (in particular) my mother's newsletter's are published.
allanheaton.blogspot.com
Sunday, 27 July 2025
Reflections on my Life (1)
1. Introduction and Family History
Introduction
Perhaps it’s something that you do when you retire, but I have wanted to do this for a long time. It is not an autobiography, but more memories of my life and here at the beginning, some of the research I’ve done on my origins and ancestors. One of my regrets is that so much information on my parents’ and grandparents’ very eventful lives has been lost because I did not ask enough questions and record information while they were alive. For example, my parents’ service during World War II, my dad in India, Burma and Kenya, and my mom in London during the blitz bombings by Nazi Germany. Now that I approach 80 in a few years, this account from a fragmented memory is especially dedicated to my children Matthew and Tami and their children. I hope also that this memoir will hold some interest for those who have known me personally or through my books and articles.
I will give more detail later but will summarise my eventful life in introduction. I should begin by stating that my whole life has been one of Christian faith. This isn’t surprising, as I was raised in a conservative evangelical Christian family whose roots go back at least six generations. Although later years have brought me a lot of questions, I am still a Christian by conviction. I grew up in the Salvation Army in Zimbabwe and Zambia (in those days Southern and Northern Rhodesia), where my parents Keith and Gwenyth (neé Starbuck) Anderson were missionary officers.[1] I left the Army for a Pentecostal church at the age of 19 in Bulawayo, and two years later had basic theological indoctrination in South Africa to become a pastor in a Pentecostal denomination. Married in June 1979 to Olwen at the church headquarters in Pretoria, she was the fourth of five daughters of the General Overseer Leonard Brooke and his wife Ruth. In 1983 we left the denomination after eleven years working there as a minister. The reasons for that were both theological and ideological. For the previous five years (1978-83) I had been a Bible college teacher in Soshanguve, a place I returned to five years later.
In 1983 we joined a large Charismatic Baptist megachurch, Hatfield Christian Church, and continued for the next twelve years working in theological education, first in the church’s college and then on a farm we bought near Soshanguve to set up an education facility, Tshwane Christian Ministries (1988-95). A major road accident in Zambia in January 1985 interrupted a planned relocation to work in Malawi and we settled again in Pretoria. As will be seen, this fundamentally changed the direction of our lives. From 1975-92 I did four degrees part-time at the University of South Africa, finally completing my doctorate in theology in 1992. In October 1995 we moved to Birmingham, England, where I worked for four years in Selly Oak Colleges and for the next twenty years at the Department of Theology and Religion in the University of Birmingham, until my retirement in December 2019. Inevitably, there will be a lot of religion and religious work in this account of my life!
The Anderson Ancestors
I begin my story with my roots, gathered from genealogical research that I have done since my retirement. Of course, not all my ancestors were named Anderson or Starbuck but are just as much a relative as those who were. I am the son and maternal grandson of Salvation Army officers, and paternal grandson and descendant of four generations of London Missionary Society (Congregational) missionaries. Much of the information that I discovered on my ancestors is left out, which is necessary for brevity’s sake, as I have 512 seven-times great-grandparents who lived about four centuries ago. Because as far as I know, only one of those 512 has the surname Anderson, that doesn’t make the other 511 any less my ancestors. Much of the information on the Anderson ancestors is found on the website created by my dad’s older brother, Dr Ralph Anderson, whose PhD in electrical engineering was about lightning conductors, for which he became a world authority. He was also a keen genealogist, tracing the family history back to the 1600s.[1] His son, my cousin Edward, now manages the website. I will only cover a few of the figures in this history. If I go back seven generations on my genealogical tree, the following surnames that are known among the 128 of my 5X great grandparents reveal the diversity of my ancestry.
On my father’s side surnames originate in Scotland, England, Netherlands, Germany and France: Anderson, Ballinton, Blyth, Boehler, Bollmeyer, Carstens, Claasz, Davidson, Deines, Deere, de Wilde, du Plessis, Esterhuyzen, Everts, Flugge, Garrett, Geard, Hauschild, Hoffmann, Huysamer, Kayser, Knoop, Le Febre, Leith, McKenzie, Melville, Port, Reid, Schonken, Schütte, Stadler, Taylor, Turner, van Ellewee, Volcker, Wedel, Weeber, White.
On my mother’s side the surnames are all from England: Akrill, Ashley, Baker, Bettison, Bradley, Brookes, Brougham, Butcher, Challance, Chamberlain, Charles, Clayphan, Clifton, Dent, Etches, Evans, Fidling, Foster, Healy, Heaton, Kettleburn, Laver, Lewis, Martyn, Newton, Pearson, Piggott, Randall, Revill, Reynolds, Sanderson, Searle, Skelton, Stammers, Starbuck, Wall, Womersley.[2]
My earliest ancestors (5-8X great grandparents) in South Africa were mostly Dutch Protestant and French Huguenot settlers whose ancestry can be traced much further back than the seventeenth century. However, the Andersons born in Southern Africa also have traces of African and Asian ancestry. Many of the early Dutch and French settlers in South Africa intermarried or cohabited with indigenous people and imported slaves, resulting in both the so-called ‘Cape Coloureds’ but also in the Cape Dutch, who are now known as Afrikaners. My father’s side of the family has Asian (Indian and Indonesian) and African DNA, discovered only a few years ago. Two of my father’s sisters had DNA records, and at least four of my paternal cousins. The details are complicated, and I can only give some highlights here. 6X great-grandmother Appolonia Everts was born in Stellenbosch in 1706 and died in 1760. She was the daughter of Abraham Everts (1678-1712), who arrived in the Cape from the Netherlands in 1692 and married a freed slave, Catharina le Febre (1688-1760). Appolonia Everts married Stellenbosch-born Jan Andries Esterhuizen (1704-83), and their daughter Elizabeth Catharina (1733-83) married Hendrik Roedolf van Ellewee (1729-67). Another 6X great-grandfather Johannes van Ellewee (1695-1749) was born in Amsterdam and died in Stellenbosch in the Cape of Good Hope. He marriedMaria du Plessis (1702-61), daughter of a French Huguenot and born in Cape Town. They were parents of four girls and two boys, the youngest being Hendrik Roedolf. Hendrik and Elizabeth van Ellewee had one son and three daughters, the youngest being Elizabeth Maria (1750-1845). Other 5X great grandparents were Bartholomeus Schonken (1703-74), who migrated to South Africa in 1723 from the Netherlands and in 1733 married Leonora Claasz, a freed slave (then known in Dutch as a ‘free black’, vrije swarte), probably of South Asian or Indonesian origin. They were parents of two girls and two boys. The youngest son Bartholomeus(1739-1806) married Elizabeth Maria van Ellewee, who was also a ‘free black’, and were parents of five boys and eight girls, including Johanna Maria, their fourth daughter. Johanna married LMS missionary William Anderson in Cape Town in 1806, and these were my 3X great-grandparents.[3] The Schonken and van Ellewee families were part of what was later called the ‘Cape Coloured’ community, people of ‘mixed race’.
William Anderson’s ancestry is traced to Old Machar in Aberdeen, Scotland. Thomas Anderson (c.1636-99) married Elspet Deines, and they were my 7X great-grandparents. Their son George Anderson (1663-1710), a weaver by trade, married Joan Davidson (1668-1729) and lived in Wagley, Newhills, Aberdeen. Their son, also George Anderson (1698-1766), 5X great-grandfather, was born in Aberdeen and married Margaret Taylor (1697-1756). They were parents of one girl and four boys, the second of whom was William (1724-89). William Anderson moved to London as a silk merchant and there married Catherine Turner (1738-97) from Devon, in Bishopsgate, London, in 1768. They were parents of one girl and five boys, the eldest also named William, my 3X great-grandfather.
Reverend William Anderson was born in London on 1 December 1769, and died in Pacaltsdorp in the Eastern Cape on 24 September 1852. He went to South Africa as a missionary with the recently formed London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1800. For the first five years he wandered with the nomadic Griquas north of the Orange River, until he persuaded them to settle in Klaarwater (now Griquastad) and begin settled lives in agriculture. Klaarwater was far outside the Cape colony. He married Johanna Maria Schonken (1777-1848) in 1806 in the Anglican Church in Cape Town, and they lived in Griquastad. During this time, William Anderson refused a demand from the governor of the Cape in 1814 to recruit young Griquas for military service, as they were beyond the British colony’s jurisdiction. William and Johanna Anderson were parents of ten children, five girls and five boys. They left Griquastad for Zuurbraak near Swellendam in 1820, before moving to Pacaltsdorp, near George in 1821, where they remained for the rest of their lives as ministers in the Congregational Church. There William Anderson fought for the rights of the indigenous Khoikhoi who lived there.[4] One of the last official letters, after almost fifty years’ service, written by William Anderson to the LMS headquarters in London, contained the following:
I am conscious that much deficiency and imperfection has attended my very best service leaving me nothing to boast of except the mercy and faithfulness of a kind and gracious God who has preserved me amid many a thousand snares and temptations and has supported me under many difficulties and delivered me in times of great danger. I have done so little for my dear Redeemer.[5]
The second youngest child and youngest son, Bartholomew Ebenezer, was to follow his parents as an LMS minister in the Eastern Cape. Bartholomew Anderson (1819-1900) was the last of the Anderson children to be born in Griquastad, on 25 November 1819. He married Janet Susan Melvill (1819-54), the daughter of another LMS missionary, John Melvill, at Pacaltsdorp in 1841. They moved from Pacaltsdorp to help the Melvills at their mission in Dysseldorp, Western Cape in 1844, where Bartholomew became headmaster of the school. He remained there for ten years after Janet’s tragic death at the age of 35 after falling off a horse. In 1862, Bartholomew was appointed minister of the Congregational church in Oudtshoorn, a congregation that grew to 2,700 members. Bartholomew and Janet Anderson had two girls and five boys, the third of which was Ebenezer Thomas, my great-grandfather. B.E. Anderson died in Somerset West, Western Cape in 1900.
Ebenezer T. Anderson (1851-1921) was born in Dysseldorp and died in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape. He was a magistrate and for many years was Chairman of the Congregational Union of South Africa. He married Frances (Fanny) Kayser, the daughter and granddaughter of LMS missionaries from Germany. Her grandfather and another 3X great grandfather, Friedrich G. Kayser (1800-1868) was born near Leipzig and married Christiana Boehler (1795-1878) in London in 1827, before being sent to the Eastern Cape, South Africa as LMS missionaries. Their third child Henry Kayser (1831-1900) was also an LMS missionary and a contemporary of B.E. Anderson, who also worked in the Eastern Cape. Henry Kayser married Naomi Geard (1832-1911) and the eldest of their twelve children was Frances (Fanny). Naomi was herself the granddaughter of a famous early Baptist pastor John Geard, another 3X great-grandfather.[6] The second son of Ebenezer and Fanny Anderson was my dad’s father, William Wardlaw Anderson (1888-1978), who in 1915 married Sheila Blyth (1890-1976) and moved to the bush in Matabeleland, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), where they remained for the rest of their lives. They had eight children: four boys and four girls. One of the girls died at the age of six but the others lived long lives and had children of their own. We were 26 cousins on the Anderson side of the family, only six girls and twenty boys. William and Sheila Anderson were ‘Granny and Grandpa’ to us 26 Anderson, Morris, Connor and Forrest cousins. I was the eighth oldest grandchild, and all the cousins born before me were boys. At the time of writing we have lost three of the cousins older than me and one younger, three of the four being sons of Uncle Ralph. The eldest, William (Bill) and Edward are in Canada, and the daughter Helena remains in Zimbabwe, the only one of the 26 still in our home country. Other cousins live in Canada, the USA (my sister), Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South Africa.
The Starbuck Ancestors
My mother was a Starbuck. Most of the information on my mother’s family I gleaned from the England census records, which started in 1841.[7] This side of my family comes from humble beginnings in rural England. My maternal ancestors were peasant farm workers and later, industrial and mining labourers. Most of them came from the north and east of central England. They were hard-working English labourers from Lincolnshire, the East Midlands and Yorkshire. As with most peasants in seventeenth century England, they were mostly agricultural labourers in an area that produced much of the country’s food, especially wheat, barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape. During the nineteenth century they migrated into the northern industrial cities to work in the mining and steel industries and on the railways. I could name many more ancestors, but there are too many for these purposes. I have 256 seven-times great-grandparents dating from the seventeenth century on my mother’s side (not all of whom can be traced), but I will name a few. The earliest in the records are 7X great-grandparents John and Elizabeth Brougham (pronounced ‘Broom’), born in the 1660s, somewhere in Lincolnshire. Their son was William Brougham (b.1694) who was married to Jane Rickell (b.1700), parents of another William Brougham (1720-1758), who married Ann Markham (b.1720) in 1745 in Fillingham, a village in Lincolnshire. Their son, the third William Brougham (1750-1821), married Elizabeth Blakey (1753-1848) in Fillingham, the parents of Ann Brougham (1783-1825). Ann Brougham married John Akrill (1778-1830), the parents of Mary Akrill (1814-1899), my 3X great-grandmother, who married Charles Charles.
A second set of 7X great-grandparents were the Charles family, also from Lincolnshire. Sometime in the early 1700s, John Charles married Mary Kirman, and their son Joseph Charles was born in 1730 in Owmby-by-Spital, a hamlet near Grimsby in north-east Lincolnshire. He married Elizabeth Ridge (1733-1762) and their son William Charles (1757-1820) was born in Bishop Norton, a village south-west of Owmby. William married Mary Brewer (1756-1820) and their son William was born in 1771 in Bishop Norton. This William married Sarah Simpson (1771-1842), and their son James Charles (c.1794-1876) was also born in Bishop Norton. James married Mary Ann Dent (1795-1859) from Atterby, a hamlet next to Bishop Norton. Their son born in Atterby, was Charles Charles (1814-1880), my 3X great-grandfather and a bricklayer.[8] Charles married Mary Akrill, born in Owmby in Lincolnshire in October 1841, in a civil marriage. From the early censuses, they lived in various parts of the district at ‘Front Street’, Waddingham (1841 & 1851), Atkinsons Lane, Glentham (1861), and Brick Kiln Yard, St Andrews (1871). They had seven daughters: Martha (who married Charles Bell), Eliza, Mary Ann (my 2X great-grandmother), Elizabeth Hannah (who spent most of her life in the Caistor Union Workhouse where she was listed as an ‘imbecile’), Emma, Ellen, and the youngest Sarah Jane (born in 1858). Mary Charles was a widow by 1881 living in Sims Yard with Ellen, her granddaughter Georgiana (aged 8), and grandsons George Charles (6) and another Charles Charles (2), probably Ellen’s children. In her last years Mary Charles developed dementia and died at the Bracebridge Lunatic Asylum in 1899. People were much less accommodating to dementia in those days and conditions for the working class were extremely tough.
A third set of 7X great grandparents were the Starbucks, my mother’s family name. The Starbucks were originally from Nottinghamshire. Joseph Starbuck was born in Bramcote in 1643. He married Ellen Allen (b.1650), and their son was also named Joseph (1687-1740). 7X great-grandparents Richard Jarvise (1660-1706) and Mary Sneath (1660-1731) were both from Stathern in Leicestershire, the parents of Mary Jarvise (1689-1731). Mary married Joseph Starbuck in Hose, Leicestershire, where they spent the rest of their lives. Their son Francis Starbuck (1724-1788) married Elizabeth Hentson (1725-1774) and lived at her home in Harby, Leicestershire. Their son John (1755-1826) married Frances Martin (1764-1837) and lived in Hickling in Nottinghamshire. Their son William Starbuck (1798-1869) and his partner Hannah Healey (1803-1880) were parents of Joseph Starbuck (1833-1912), who was at first a shepherd then a road-worker, and my 2X great-grandfather by adoption. Joseph Starbuck married Mary Charles in 1872 and adopted her son Walter (my great-grandfather), whose biological father is unknown. He took the surname Starbuck after adoption. Joseph was born in Hickling, Nottinghamshire, and died in Heckington, Lincolnshire. His first wife was Martha, who died in early 1872, with whom he had at least seven children.
Great-great-grandmother Mary Ann Charles (1843-1894), Joseph Starbuck’s second wife, was born in the village of Snitterby, near Waddington in Lincolnshire. At the 1861 census, eighteen-year-old Mary was working as a housemaid to Charles R. Flint, vicar of Glentworth, near Gainsborough. Ten years later, when her son Walter Charles was four, she was working as a waitress in a hotel in Gainsborough. After she married Joseph Starbuck in 1872, she lived in the village of Heckington, east of Sleaford in Lincolnshire. In 1891 the Starbucks were still there with their three youngest children. Joseph was again listed as a farm labourer. Mary Starbuck died in Holbeach, Lincolnshire in 1894. Joseph married a third time in 1897, to a much younger Mary Susanna Barlow (1872-1952), and they had two children living in Ewerby, Lily B. (b.1894), Sidney (b.1898), and his son Mark Edward. In 1911 the family lived in Dembleby, Folkingham, Lincolnshire. Joseph is listed as ‘road man & old age pensioner’ who had previously worked for the district council, Mark is single and a farm labourer, and there are two lodgers with them, Harry Oxby (20) and George Bird (17), both ‘farm waggoners’. Both Joseph and Mary Ann Starbuck are buried at St Andrew’s Churchyard in Ewerby.
Walter Charles Starbuck (1867-1931) was born Walter Charles in the village of Willoughton in rural northern Lincolnshire. His grandfather Charles was a builder and bricklayer, and Walter lived with his grandparents for the first part of his life while his mother worked in the Gainsborough area as a domestic servant. Sometime before the census of 1891 Walter moved to Doncaster in South Yorkshire to work as a railway shunter, and in 1889 he married Elizabeth Ashley (1869-1954), a domestic worker and the daughter of Elisha Ashley and Harriet (née Butcher) from Crooke in Lancashire. Elizabeth’s parents were originally from Somerset but had moved to Lancashire for her father to work as a coal miner. Walter is not found on the 1881 census records but reappears in 1891 in Doncaster, with Elizabeth and his one-year-old son Thomas (my grandfather), with a lodger named George Brown. In 1891, 1901 and 1911 the family were living in the same railway house in 25 Bond Street, Doncaster, with their children Thomas William Charles (who had left home by 1911), Clara (‘Cis’, 1894-c.1980), a domestic servant by 1911 who never married, Effie (‘Eff’, 1896-1979, who married Basil Barker) and Irene (‘Rene’, 1900-80), who was the mother of Joan Starbuck (1922-2013), who became a headteacher in Southampton. My mother’s only other cousin was Geoff Barker, who was mentally disabled and dependent on his parents for the rest of his life. My mother’s youngest aunt, Gwendolyne Eva (‘Gwen’, 1904-85), married Les Greesby, and owned a small corner shop in Doncaster. They had no children. All five Starbuck children were born in Doncaster and the four sisters lived there all their lives. I met all my great-aunts and their husbands in Doncaster when I was a boy of nine with my parents on furlough during the summer of 1959. Walter Starbuck died in Doncaster in 1931 and Elizabeth, who my mother called ‘Little Granny’, died there in 1954. I was four when we left England, and do not remember her personally.
My maternal grandmother (‘Grandma’ Starbuck) was born Lily Piggott.[9] The Piggotts were from Yorkshire. 7X great-grandfather John Pygott was born in 1634 in Bolton upon Dearn,[10] a village east of Barnsley in South Yorkshire. His contemporary and another 7X great-grandfather was Godfrey Bingley (1631-83), also born in Bolton but died in Barnby Dun, in the district of Doncaster. Godfrey married Ann Wharam (1639-1728) in Bolton. Their daughter Katherine Bingley (1661-1717) married the son of John Pygott, Thomas Pygott (1653-1703) in Bolton, where they lived all their lives. Thomas and Katherine’s son John Pigot (1698-1766) had a son Thomas Pigot (born in Bolton in around 1730), who married Mary Kemp (born in 1742 in Bolton) and they also lived in Bolton upon Dearn. Thomas and Mary’s son, also Thomas Pigot, was born in 1764 and we know nothing about him or his wife Jane, except that they moved to Billinghay in Lincolnshire, where their son William Piggott (1780-1847) was born. William married Ann Chamberlain (1789-1855) in Lincolnshire, and their son John Piggott (1812-79) was a coal dealer who married Elizabeth Challance (1820-82). She was born in Cropel in Nottinghamshire but died in Sheffield. In 1851 John and Elizabeth Piggott lived at the Foundry, Horncastle (a town in Lincolnshire), where their children David (1855-1932) and Esther (b.1859) were born. My great-grandfather David moved to Sheffield for work, and it seems that his mother moved there after the death of her husband. By the 1881 census Elizabeth Piggott was a widow living at 60 Steadfast Street, Attercliffe, Sheffield with David and Esther. David Piggott was working as a steel warehouseman, later as a silver smelter, then after 1911 was an agricultural labourer in Askham, Nottinghamshire, where he lived for the rest of his life.
David Piggott married my great-grandmother Ann Laver Heaton (1854-1949) in 1884 in the Sheffield Parish church. Ann was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire and had worked as a domestic servant, laundress, and a felt hat trimmer. I was given my middle name Heaton after her, perhaps because my mother was very close to her grandparents and Ann died only five months before I was born. Before she married, Ann had been the mother of Arthur Heaton (father unknown), born in 1876 in Sheffield, and who died of acute meningitis in 1882 at the age of 6. My mother was very fond of her maternal grandparents and would regularly visit them during school holidays at their last home in the village of Askham in Nottinghamshire. David and Ann Piggott were early members of the Salvation Army in Sheffield, (as were Walter and Elizabeth Starbuck in Doncaster), but they later attended St Nicholas Church (Church of England) in Askham, where they are buried. Ann Heaton was the daughter of George (1832-1909) and Sarah (née Clayphan) Heaton (1832-1909), who were from Nottinghamshire but moved to Sheffield where George was a gasworks stoker. George and Sarah Heaton lived in Sheffield for the rest of their lives. In 1891 they lived at 59 Ripon Street, Attercliffe, Sheffield with their daughter Ann and her husband David Piggott, together with their baby daughter ‘Lillie’ (my ‘Grandma’ Lily Piggott), their son George and granddaughter Kezia.
The Piggotts had four children, two of whom died as children: Mary (1888-1892), then Lily (1890-1985), who lived to be 95, David (1893-98), and Sarah (1885-1905), who died at 20. Only Grandma Lily survived after that. In 1901 David and Ann Piggott lived at 81 Ripon Street, Attercliffe with their daughters Lily and Sarah Elizabeth, and their granddaughter Kezia, who had married James William Howe, a blacksmith, in 1900. Kezia Howe died in 1917 and her husband in 1949 in Sheffield. I visited Ripon Street, which is now next to Sheffield Hallam University and a small industrial area, and no longer has residences. By April 1911 the Piggotts were living on their own at 2 Vicarage Villas, Attercliffe, with Ann’s sister Maria Heaton (1861-1948) whose married name was Snell, and Maria’s daughters Alice Maude (b.1887, visiting from her work in ‘house duties’ in Hudson, New York), Lavinia Mabel (b.1898) and Louisa Marie (b.1902). Maria also had a son, Grandma’s cousin, who lived in New York and was also a Salvationist. I have a photo of Mr Snell with Grandma and Uncle Baz (Basil) Barker, married to great-aunt Eff. Descendants of the Snells are in upstate New York.
My Grandparents and Parents
My mother’s parents, Colonel Thomas (Tom) and Lily Starbuck were both born to the working-class families in South Yorkshire in 1890. Tom was born in Doncaster where his father worked on the railways, and Lily Piggott in Sheffield where her father worked in the steelworks. They both died in Greater London, Tom in 1950 and Lily in 1985. Tom and Lily both trained in London in around 1910 as Salvation Army officers and were married in Cockermouth in Cumbria in September 1913. My mother Gwenyth (‘Gwen’, 1916-2006) was their first child, followed by Kenneth Ashley (‘Ken’, 1922-1995). Gwen was born in Sheffield on 14 April 1916, when her mother was living at 33 Heather Road.
According to the census records of April 1911, Tom was a single Salvation Army lieutenant living at 18 Oxford Street in Carnforth, a small railway town in Lancashire with a Captain William Henry Nash. Lily was also a lieutenant living at 6 Knowles Street, Rishton, a coal mining town in Lancashire, with Captain Deborah Smith. Both these were small rural towns at the time. The Army in those days had many more officers and corps than they have today, and they usually put two single officers together, newly commissioned single officers paired with more experienced ones of the same sex. After their marriage, Tom and Lily Starbuck served in the trenches in France during World War I, for which they were honoured with MBEs. After World War II, when my grandfather was working for the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Services, he was named in the King’s Honours of 1947, Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil Division), abbreviated to OBE. My uncle Ken and aunt Joan Starbuck with their sons David (born in July 1949, two months before me) and Stuart (born in December 1952, one day before Carol) moved to Ontario, Canada in 1957. Our family moved to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in December 1953, leaving Grandma Lily Starbuck living alone at 8 Manor Avenue, Northolt, Middlesex (now part of west London). She lived there for the rest of her life, a widow for 35 years. My grandfather Colonel Tom Starbuck died at the age of 60 and is buried in Camberwell New Cemetery, Southwark, London.[11] My sister Carol and I have only two cousins on this side of the family. All four cousins were young children when they left England. I remember 8 Manor Avenue well, because it was our base when my parents had ‘homeland furlough’, a mix of holiday and deputising for six months given to ‘missionary officers’ from the UK every five years. In those days we travelled from Cape Town (a three-day train journey from Zimbabwe) and then took the two-week voyage on a Union Castle Line ship to Southampton, which trips were always exciting. I loved the four trips I made with my parents and sister, and especially to be in the open Atlantic with only the ocean in sight as far as you could see. Every time we crossed the equator there was a ceremony put on by the ship’s crew, which had its origins in a pagan ritual, where people were thrown into the ship’s swimming pool to appease King Neptune. I was 9 when we had our first furlough in 1959. At the time we were living in Sinoia (now Chinhoyi). My second visit to 8 Manor Avenue was Christmas 1964, when I was 15. We travelled on the Pendennis Castle ship from Cape Town to Southampton, stopping at Funchal, Madeira on the way. But on that occasion I had only a short time in England, as I had to return to boarding school in Salisbury (now Harare), because it was the beginning of my ‘O’ Level year in January 1965.
I knew my paternal grandparents well, because I grew up in Rhodesia and we visited them often. Rev. William Wardlaw Anderson, a minister of the London Missionary Society (Congregational/ Reformed), was born in Cape Town in 1888 and died in Bulawayo in 1978. In 1915 he married Sheila Blyth in Beaufort West, her home and the largest town in the arid Great Karoo region of what is now the Western Cape province. Granny Anderson was born in Beaufort West in 1890 and died in Bulawayo in 1976, two years before her husband and after 61 years of marriage. Her ancestors came from Dundee in Scotland and her grandfather migrated to South Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. More information on the Anderson and Blyth families is in the memoirs of my dad’s oldest brother Ralph, as follows:
My mother was born in Beaufort West and grew up in this little town which boasted mostly a large railway workshop where locomotives were maintained and repaired, and which provided employment for most of the local population. The main water supply for the town came from a nearby dam and water was run into narrow furrows on the one side of the streets of the town, as well as being piped into the domestic systems of the adjacent small houses. Each resident was given a time when they were allowed to block the furrow and run the water off it into their gardens. This was unwittingly a hazard for children, and my parents recount that on one occasion my baby sister Sheila was trapped in one of them trying to crawl under the slab that bridged it. … I well remember the little house on 39 Baird St backing also onto the grounds of the local Dutch Reformed Church.
In 1856 a certain Mr. David Henderson Blyth [1839-1908] emigrated from Dundee, Scotland, and went first to Worcester in the Cape. He must have moved thereafter to Beaufort West for he married Sophia [Kinnear] there in 1861, and their first son, John Alexander Blyth [1861-1910] was born that same year. John served the municipal Council of Beaufort West for 15 years on and off from 1866. He was my maternal grandfather, and he trained as an Accountant. He married Cornelia Weeber [1852-1938], daughter of the first Chief Justice of Beaufort and also a Deacon of the local Dutch Reformed Church [Marthinus Johannes Weeber, 1808-76]. They had 3 girls, namely, my mother Sheila the eldest, followed by May and Gladys, who became teachers at the local schools but neither of them married. Then in 1915, during the first world war, my mother married my father William Wardlaw Anderson, son of Edward [Ebenezer] Thomas Anderson who had been the Magistrate in Beaufort for 6 years from 1904, and the bridal couple left Beaufort for the then young country of Southern Rhodesia to be missionaries to the Amandebele people commonly known as the Matabele.[12]
William had been trained in London under the auspices of the London Missionary Society who commissioned him for service in Africa. He was provided with all the necessary skills for this auspicious calling, and he was sent to take over the reins so to speak, from another early missionary, James Reid who had first set up the station and homestead at Dombodema about 15 miles west of Plumtree, a small settlement on the main north railway not far from the border with Bechuanaland [Botswana].[13]
I came across this text in a book published in 1970. It says that W.W. Anderson started his missionary work with the LMS in 1914. Sadly, as is often the case, William’s wife Sheila does not get a mention, but endured the same hardships. Here is the text:
…the Shangani Reserve, the territory north of Inyati, centred around Nkai and extending down the valleys of the rivers which abound there. The pioneer missionary in the area was W.G. Brown; when he went there in 1915 … until in 1924 he was called to take over the supervision of Inyati. By then the foundation of the work had been laid in the Reserve, and the head station in Zinyangeni was at least habitable.
Brown’s successor there was William Wardlaw Anderson, who could not help being a missionary, with the blood of his forebears flowing so strongly in his veins. A direct descendant of William Anderson of Griquatown and Pacaaltsdorp, tracing his lineage also from the Kaysers of Knapp’s Hope, Anderson was the second missionary from South Africa to offer for Matabeleland. Appointed in 1914, he has served the Rhodesian churches for the whole of his life, mostly at Dombodema, where he laboured first from 1914 to 1918 in succession to Cullen Reed (a charge to make the heart of any novice but an Anderson quail), for a second period from 1920 to 1924, and again from 1942 to his retirement in 1953. Undoubtedly that station lies nearest to his heart and some of his best work was done there. But he also has the distinction of having the longest service of any missionary in the Shangani Reserve – sixteen years of gruelling work from 1926 to 1942… Fever and flood, miles of travel where no roads worth the name existed, all the disappointments and frustrations of the work – none of these daunted this servant of Christ, who happily is still with us, active and alert as ever in the cause to which he dedicated his life fifty-six long years ago.[14]
The Andersons had eight children, four boys and four girls: Ralph Blyth (1916-2013), my dad Keith Arthole(1917-2006), William Alexander (‘Alec’) (1919-2002); Sheila Frances (1921-1993); Noreen Elise (1923- 1929); Marjorie Louise (1929-); Jean Mabel (1932-2023); and Ian Robert Edward (1934-1995). Keith, the second child, was born on 25 November 1917. The first five children were born in Bulawayo because their parents were at a remote LMS mission in the Shangani Reserve in northern Matabeleland. Marjorie was born in Cape Town; and Jean and Ian in Plumtree, Rhodesia, when their parents were at the Dombodema Mission, an LMS station near Plumtree, founded in 1895 before the British colonists arrived. We mostly knew the older cousins, as some of the younger side of the family were born when we were already working, or at colleges and universities. Uncle Ralph and Auntie Helen had six children (William (Bill), Michael, Edward, Ronald, Helena and David), Uncle Alec and Auntie Kath had five (Peter, Graeme, John, Brian and Christopher), Auntie Sheila and Uncle Alf Morris had three (David, Margaret [Margie] and Patricia [Pat]), Auntie Marjorie and Uncle Campbell Connor had three (Lesley, Gavin and Barry), Auntie Jean and Uncle Bob Forrest had four (Kevin, Gordon, Noreen and Richard), and Uncle Ian and Auntie Gwenda had three (Mark, Steven and Ingrid). There are now many more great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.
[4] See Peter S. Anderson, Weapons of Peace: The Story of William & Johanna Anderson (Our Daily Bread Ministries, 2016)
[5] Quoted in Anderson, Weapons of Peace, 239.
[7] In ancestry.co.uk. UK census, April 1841, then every ten years until 1921. There is a 100 year embargo on the records made available online to the public. The records show names of everyone living in a house on the census night, their address, ages and occupations. See https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/tree/4893058/family?_gl=1%2A1driekk%2A_up%2AMQ..&cfpid=5108021420&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhLKUBhDiARIsAMaTLnEZhTqnQUHhyCZJQw1_0n458KBQX6h388qkHWq9LE0VDcUGGwHWOWoaArDDEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
[8] A combination of records in ancestry.co.uk (the England census records that begin in 1841), and parish and grave records, have given me access to this information. Maternal cousin David Starbuck in Canada also discovered names that I had not found earlier.
[9] Piggott has various spellings in the census records.
[10] Not to be confused with the much bigger town of Bolton, near Manchester.
[11] Square 25, Grave 7396.
[12] Zimbabwe was named Southern Rhodesia (after Cecil John Rhodes) in 1898, whereas present-day Zambia was Northern Rhodesia. The British joined them with Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953-63), but after Zambia and Malawi became independent in 1964, Southern Rhodesia become Rhodesia until 1980, when it became Zimbabwe.
[13] A personal memoir written by Ralph Anderson when in his nineties, kept by his son Michael and used with permission.
[14] D.R. Briggs & J. Wing, The Harvest and the Hope: The Story of Congregationalism in Southern Africa (The United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, 1970), pp. 200-201.
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