Selina Strachan

Death Notice: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C91R-3KG5?i=524&cc...

On our arrival at Umtata we lived in a cottage built of sod walls with a thatched roof on Uncle Willie Strachan’s farm down near the river and not far from the “stepping stones”. There was also a ferry there operated by my Uncle Will for his own personal convenience, or rather I should say for the convenience of his farm boys and his own children. The road to the town by way of the bridge – a steel bridge, now not so much in use as there is a concrete bridge for motor traffic – was a long one. As there was only one boat, it often happened that it was on the wrong side of the river.

I must say, however, that a farm boy was appointed by my Uncle as ferryman and it was his duty to return the boat to the farm side of the river where it was moored. When anyone wished to return to the farm from town it was necessary to “co-ee” and the ferryman would come running down in response, although I must say it was often a very tardy response and one had to continue with the “co-ee” and exercise patience. Of course there were always the “stepping-stones” by which to cross but they were not readily accessible from the ferry, and so one had to decide before hand which means to use. In any case, the stepping-stones could not be used if the river was in flood.

                          EXTRACT from Memoirs of Kenneth Harvey Owen dated 1965 (Added by N J Owen)

But to return for a while to the spiritual atmosphere of my youth, as I have said, we frequently spent holidays at Hluleka and sometimes at Port St. Johns. The journeys were always made by ox-wagon and took three days to complete. We never commenced the journey on a Sunday, and if circumstances found us on the way on a Sunday, we did not travel but remained out-spanned from Saturday evening until Monday morning. When at the camp at Hluleka on holiday, it was usual for the younger folk to take a walk in the afternoon, of a Sunday. There were so many different routes of great beauty. In the evening, all in the camp used to assemble in aunt Selina’s large dining hut and spend an hour or more just singing hymns. There were at times as many as thirty people gathered together and many with good voices so that the harmony was beautiful even though there was no instrumental accompaniment. Even to this day, many of the hymns which are so precious to me, I learnt there.

   EXTRACT from Memoirs of Kenneth Harvey Owen dated 1965 (Added by N J Owen)

I remember visiting Selina Strachan in Umtata when I was about 5 (I am now 68). My mother (Jackie Leppan) was terrified of her and even her mother (Maud) and her uncles Arthur and George (who would then have been in their seventies) were terrified. So I created a bit of a bombshell when I answered her back: she had said she would buy me for a penny and I said she could have me for a tickey! However, apparently she was tickled pink to have someone finally answer her back and took a quite a shine to me. She died not long afterwards when she was 97 and, since she was born in 1853, that would have put the date of her death as 1950.

Selina said she was six when they sailed out from England, and she was born in 1853.

                                                (RODNEY BLAIR)