George Fletcher Fox

George Fletcher Fox, son of Captain and Mrs V. Fox, of Cape Town.

George died in 1959. His obituary appeared in the Kokstad Advertiser on 13 August 1959:

The passing away of the late George Fletcher Fox sees the going of yet another of the 'old timers' of East Griqualand when cart and horse were the vogue, when stones across streams did for bridges, and when butter and cheese floated down swollen rivers.

 He was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, in 1890.  His father was captain of the 'Great Northern' - a cargo vessel - which operated between England, the Mediterranean and South Africa.  He brought his wife and family to settle in Cape Town, a few years after the birth of their two sons.

Owing to a leg disability, believed to be caused by an accident as a baby, Mr Fox, on a special wheeled cart, completed his schooling at St. George's Grammar School, Cape Town. From there, acting on doctor's advice, he attended the Elsinberg Agricultural College. The Boer War needed all the feed available for the horses and so dashed his big hopes of maintaining a dairy herd at the Cape. After experience in the Orange Free State, he travelled by post cart to Flitwick Grange where he became cheese maker for Strachan & Co. Five decades ago, because of the fluctuating price of cheese, he sold his four cheese factories and farmed with his wife, eldest daughter of Alex Houston, in the Franklin area. The last 14 years of his life were spent at the Swartberg Co-operative Cheese Factory, while continuing with farming.
Mr Fox has been a courageous, cheerful and industrious person always ready to help, considering others first and patient in his suffering and disability. He was a man of love and service. As a child he asked his mother to give his dinner to a poor hungry child who had been found in the street. This was typical of his life and at the last he summarised it by saying 'I have done all I was able to do’. The funeral took place from the Anglican Church, Kokstad, after a service on Saturday morning, August 1, 1959. Canon H.J. Pringle officiated.