George Benjamin Dunbar Moodie

"South Africa, Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801-2004," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVS4-BVHR: accessed 11 May 2015), George Benjamin Dunbar Moodie, 11 Jul 1862; citing Baptism, Natal, South Africa, William Cullen Library, Wits University, Johannesburg; FHL microfilm.

Sponsors named: George Moodie, W J D Moodie and C Moodie.

The third but, after 1879, eldest surviving son and heir-apparent of William James Dunbar Moodie.

The Moodie Trek:

Rhodes believed it was essential to his plans of occupying Manicaland, to establish a European settlement and he obtained the services of George Benjamin Dunbar Moodie to recruit farmers from the Orange Free State, with the offer of a 3 000 morgen farm in Gazaland to every man and boy who could trek to the Eastern districts.

Dunbar Moodie contacted his uncle, Thomas Moodie, a maize and wheat grower in the Bethlehem district of the Free State, whose ancestors had been tenant farmers at Melsetter in the Orkneys. After some bargaining with Rhodes regarding the terms of land tenure, Thomas Moodie organised a party of 29 families consisting of 37 men and 31 women, with 17 wagons and 350 horses and cattle. They were mostly Afrikaans speaking farmers and the party set off in May 1892.