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From: "Hunter, Tyron" <>
Subject: Re: [SOUTH-AFRICA] Miscellaneous birthdates from early 1900's
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:44:02 +0200


Thanks for the replies guys.

The abbreviations make a lot more sense now. It seems logical that GTC is Grahamstown Training College and CR is Community of the Resurrection. I'm sure NCR is somehow connected to that too, since many of the entries with NCR behind their name are referred to as 'Sister'. And then VHS would most likely refer to the Victoria High School for Girls as it was called in those days.

I'm making an assumption that my great-grandmother went to school in Grahamstown then (that would explain why there were so many names listed with these abbreviations). She was born in Uniondale, and descended from a Settler family based in the Eastern Cape, so it's not surprising that she might have ended up at school in Grahamstown (since that has always been a great centre of schooling in the Eastern Cape). Based on the dates in the birthday book, my great-grandfather would have given her this book when she was 13 and thus still presumably attending school (in 1905 the School Board Act made education until the age of 14 compulsory).

But my great-grandfather was born in Vryburg, and the two of them ended up marrying in Kimberley just over 6 years after he gave her this birthday book.

So was he also schooled in Kimberley? Was that where he met her?
Or had her family already relocated to the Vryburg area as well, and she was simply sent to Grahamstown as a boarder (since I know her parents died in Vryburg)? This is a quote from the Victoria Girl's High School website: "The reputation of the school was that of a good one and this attracted girls' that lived far from Grahamstown. The need for a hostel was recognised in 1906"

I think it's time for me to start searching for some school records...

Thanks again for the correspondence. I hope the names and dates listed in the birthday book will be useful to some.




>Grahamstown Training College (now part of Rhodes University), not Teachers'

>College. It used to be run by Anglican Community of the Resurrection nuns.

>(My aunts were both trained as teachers there - they, and I think all the

>trainee teachers there, used to call the CR sisters "beetles". I still have

>some old letters addressed to one of my aunts at Winchester House, GTC; she

>later taught at Victoria Girls' High in Grahamstown before moving to Port

>Elizabeth.) The CR headquarters in South Africa used to be in

>Rosettenville, Johannesburg, as the order is mainly a male one (Trevor

>Huddleston was a CR father), but I think the order may by now have closed

>that house as well as the Grahamstown women's one - I believe only the

>English house at Mirfield in Yorkshire still functions. CR behind a woman's

>name clearly means Community of the Resurrection; would NCR mean a novice to

>the order?

>

>Geoff





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