More Stories from East Africa's past for you to enjoy
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 blake@oldafricamagazine.com 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...
Arms Trade in East Africa
Arms Trade in East Africa In 1847 the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf saw a caravan taking 1000 muskets inland; this was just one example of the vast number of arms supplied to the interior of Africa. When traders, Arab and other, reached Uganda it was common for them...
Epidemics in Early Nairobi
Now that we are suffering another epidemic, it is interesting to look at the epidemics in Nairobi 120 years ago, when the city was in its infancy. There was an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1902, in the Indian bazaar. There were 69 cases of whom 55 died. Energetic...
Europeans Settle in Molo
Europeans Settle in Molo In 1819 Sir Frederick Jackson was travelling from Naivasha to Sotik. When he emerged from the Mau forest he saw miles of rolling countryside. The first surveys of this area were made in 1903. It was an uninhabited plateau, too cold at...
Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen in Kenya
Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen in Kenya Upon their marriage in June 1947 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip acquired one of their more unusual wedding presents: Sagana Lodge, at Kiganjo near Nyeri, given by the people of Kenya. In 1952 they went to Kenya to stay...
The First Kenya Railway Survey
The First Kenya Railway Survey The final routes of the East African Railway Now that the new railway is again under consideration it is interesting to look at the original plans for the first Kenya-Uganda railway. The preliminary surveys were made in 1891 and 1892...
Hunting with Hounds in Early Colonial Kenya
Hunting with Hounds in Early Colonial Kenya Early British settlers in Kenya brought with them a favourite hobby of the upper classes – hunting with hounds. A small pack of English foxhounds was imported from India by George Hammond Goldfinch, who settled in British...