Reverend William Clifford Holden, SV/PROG

I was researching my Great grandfather, who is the Rev William Clifford Holden. We have all his first edition books, and I always knew about him. Since his "Collonial History Of Natal" has been brought back into print I've been trying to find out more about him. I found your records and thought I'd get in touch. I didn't actually know he had two wives. I'm now not sure which wife I come from. I'll ask my father for more details.

From what I know about that line, is that my Grandfather, Alfred Parnaby Holden was the only surviving child from the family. I thought he was the only son. He had 3 or 4 sisters I think and they all died. One got married and had a child before she died. That child is Dr Robert Brooks who worked for Rhodes University as professor of fine arts. To my knowledge, Robert Brooks and his daughter are the only living relatives besides us.However, the other marriage thing does change everything. They all ended up in Rhodesia at one point- my grandfather and his sisters grew up there.

My grandfather was chief civil engineer for the railways of Rhodesia. He died when I was 3 so that would be around 1986 (I'll get the exact date if you like).

Alfred Holden (my grandfather) married late in life, and married a 30 year old scottish nurse called Mary Lindsay Hamilton. Together they had my father, Dr Douglas Alfred Holden (24th July) and my uncle Donald Holden (don't know his middle name). I'll confirm their years of birth I think dad was 1955 and Don 1957.

Donald Holden never married nor had children.

Dr Douglas Alfred Holden (an anesthetist) married Genevieve Jeanne Jacqueline Bartie in 1980 and had two children, me, Fiona Mary Holden (1982) and my brother Bruce Douglas Holden (1985) in the Western Cape.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/SOUTH-AFRICA-EASTERN-...

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William Clifford HOLDEN, who spent more than 60 years in the Wesleyan Ministry. He was a native of Derbyshire, England, and whilst a youth sought and found the Lord. His conversion was clear, and he lived in the daily consciousness of the Lord’s abiding presence. He was in due time accepted for the Methodist Ministry.

After three years’ service in England he came out to the Cape Colony in the year 1839, and early manifested those characteristics which marked his career. He was untiring in his industry;and, by unintermitting application, he made himself familiar with the History and Customs of the Native Races, and his work in the Native Tribes has taken its place as a standard authority. He was faithful in the discharge of his duties as a minister, carrying the gospel of Christ into new spheres, which at a later date became prosperous Methodist Churches. He was the Pioneer of Methodism in Natal. He was a diligent student of Scriptures, and his sermons were marked by evangelical fervour and spiritual power. He was an active pastor, and numbers living on solitary and remote farms were as carefully visited as residents in towns.

During the years of his retirement, he was still diligent; and, up to the time of his last illness, which was of brief duration, he was one of the chaplains of the Chronic Sick Hospital, Graham’s Town, devoting most of his time to the spiritual well-being of its inmates. He passed peacefully and triumphantly away, on the 14th of October, 1897, in the eighty-fourth year of his age and the sixty-first of his ministry. From; Minutes of Sixteenth Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of South Africa, 1898