More Stories from East Africa's past for you to enjoy
Thomson in Maasailand
Thomson in Maasailand Recently there have been articles in Old Africa about the Maasai, so it would be interesting to look at early European contacts with those peoples. In 1877 Maasai warriors had prevented Johann Maria Hildebrandt, a German botanist, from travelling...
Billiard Balls, Pianos and Elephants
Billiard Balls, Pianos and Elephants Before the invention of plastics, billiard balls, piano keys, combs and scores of other items were made of ivory. Playing the piano was called ‘tickling the ivories.’ More ivory was used for piano keys than for all other purposes...
The Shooting of little Willie Hall at Nairobi School in 1920
The Shooting of little Willie Hall at Nairobi School In 1920 William Harold Hall, an eleven-year-old boy boarding at Nairobi School, was shot dead in the school dormitory by another pupil. This sorry incident was reported to Viscount Milner, Secretary of State for the...
‘Long Lou’ Llewellin and his Hats
‘Long Lou’ Llewellin and his Hats ‘Long Lou’, a six-foot-four, broad-shouldered man, ‘beloved of ladies and a very Bayard in battle,’ was Gloucestershire-born John Lionel Bretherton Llewellyn Llewellin. He wore an eyeglass and sandals, with often nothing in between...
‘Biltong’ Ross
Charles Joseph Ross ‘Biltong’ Ross was a larger-than-life Kenyan character. Born in Australia on 4 July 1857, he joined the Australian Mounted Police, rounding up gangs of bushrangers. As a young man he travelled to America where he lived with native Americans and...
Margaret Griffiths, a Missionary Wife
Margaret Griffiths, a Missionary Wife The women who accompanied their husbands on their early missionary endeavours in East Africa were a stalwart bunch. One such was wife of John Bynner Griffiths, a Methodist missionary at Mazeras. Margaret E. Edwards was born in...
The Kenya Firm of Hughes Ltd.
The Kenya Firm of Hughes Ltd. The firm of Hughes is famous throughout Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. What were its origins? It was the brainchild of John Joseph Hughes, a twenty-year-old sent to Kenya in 1920 as a buyer for the London firm of fibre merchants Robinson,...
A Titanic Survivor in Kenya: Amy Fenwick
A Titanic Survivor in Kenya: Amy Fenwick We often read about the activities of men in early Kenya, but we hear little of their wives. William Fenwick went to Kenya in 1920 as an administrative cadet, the first rank of those who became district and later provincial...
Naivasha Sports Club Celebrates 100 Years
100 Years at Naivasha Sports Club: 1922-2022 is a new book now available from Old Africa books. Contact [email protected] to order your copy. Shel Arensen and Chuck Bengough researched the history and wrote the book. A box filled with books of handwritten...
JW Arthur, Missionary
JW Arthur, Missionary: An Early Supporter of African Interests in Kenya John William Arthur, born in 1881, a medical doctor trained in Glasgow, joined the Church of Scotland Mission in Kenya in 1906. He was posted to the Kikuyu mission, where he arrived on 1 January...
The other John Paterson
The Other John Paterson Many of us have heard of the John Patterson who was involved in overcoming the man- eating lions of Tsavo. But there was another man of the same name who had an important, if not so spectacular role. The other John Paterson brought both coffee...
Kenya’s Legion of Frontiersmen
Kenya’s Legion of Frontiersmen The worldwide Legion of Frontiersmen, with a branch in Kenya, was a voluntary, unofficial military organisation not always tolerated by governments. It originated at the turn of the twentieth century during the Boer War in South Africa....
Ivory Poaching in the Lado Enclave
Ivory Poaching in the Lado Enclave Africans and Arabs were not the only ivory poachers in early East Africa. European hunters probably poached far more ivory than Africans and Arabs. Their favoured hunting ground was the Lado enclave, a triangle of land bordering...
Egerton: the Lord, the Farm, the College and the University
Egerton: the Lord, the Farm, the College and the University As a third son, Maurice Egerton never expected to inherit the Barony of Tatton and the Tatton Park estate in Cheshire with its grand residence, Tatton Hall. But his eldest brother William died in infancy and...
The Mythical Nandi Bear – Eyewitness Reports
Eyewitness Reports of the Nandi Bear This mythical creature was named the Nandi bear by Europeans because accounts of its existence came mainly from the Nandi people (part of the Kalenjin). Early reports by Europeans describe a bearlike creature. For example Geoffrey...
The Hook Brothers and the Silverbeck Hotel
Logan Hook, tall and handsome, a submarine commander in the First World War, went to Kenya in 1921. He took his family to Nanyuki where for 15 years they lived in a grass house which cost them £15.00 to build. As they knew nothing about farming, they established the...
African Education in Early Colonial Kenya
Missionary teacher with African students. It was the missions who first started education for the African population during colonial times in Kenya, because education was essential for their evangelical work and the training of Africans to take up proselytising. In...
New book about Malindi and History of the East African Coast
Bluff is Old Africa's latest book, an autobiography that is set in Malindi on the Kenya coast from the 1940s until the 1970s. Written by Thomas Allfree, a fisheries officer and one of Malindi's 'characters,' this book evokes life in the coastal town and gives insight...