Gallery Samples Stories of our Ancestors | Page 25

So now we must include the WATERS family in the heritage of our (Granny) Ida because this
couple was, after all, to become Ida’s parents. So here’s another strand to the tale:
George’s parents, JOB AND MARY WATERS, emigrated by way of the ship Elvina from Berkshire
to Cape Town in 1846. Their 7th and it seems last child, GEORGE JOB, was born during that
same year if dates are correct. The family settled in Southwell in the Albany district of the
Eastern Cape, during the Basuto War.
When George was possibly 29, in 1875, he was married for the first time to a young lady called
ELIZABETH REED who shortly after the marriage was killed in a riding accident.
It didn’t take him too long to recover from his bereavement it seems for in 1877, two years
after his first marriage, he married Sarah Jane. The couple had eight children between 1878
and 1895, all of whom are given their place on the Genealogical Chart. Of these children IDA
BEATRICE WATERS was the fourth, born on 3rd
October 1884.
I am told that George and Sarah Jane and their children
attended the little Anglican village church (see photo)
in Southwell. They must have continued to make their
home where George’s parents had established
themselves originally.
It’s possible, however, that Sarah Jane was never an
Anglican as I have the ‘evidence’ in my possession in
the form of a small ‘Quarterly Ticket for June 1883,
for the Wesleyan-Methodist Society (est. 1739)’ and
signed by Sarah Waters. This date is a year before the
birth of Ida so she would have been about twenty six.
The most likely explanation was that George and not
Ida had been the Anglican.

ST JAMES ANGLICAN CHURCH,
SOUTHWELL

Although we are informed of names and dates on the genealogical charts we have only
fragments of information about the lives of these people. Ida was not a story-teller and by the
time Ruby was old enough to ask her Mother I doubt if she’d have told her much. We can guess
that the family farmed but I have no idea how they functioned, what the ambience of the family
was, and whether Sarah Jane continued to make or at least wear beautiful clothes and play
musical instruments as well as raise children and farm. An impossible set of conflicting tasks
I’d say. I’m told that Ida was a good musician in her youth so she must have been taught those
skills which indicate there was still at least interest shown by her Mother.
On the next page you will see what appears to be evidence of a tragedy. Whatever the
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