Leonard Wright family
Leonard and Elizabeth Wright came from East Riding Yorkshire as Byrne Settlers on 24th June 1849 on the “Henry
Tanner”, bringing with them four of their children, Sarah, Frances, and the twins William and Mary. Richard was left in the care of Elizabeth’s brother Christopher Danby whilst Jane and Elizabeth were left in the care of other relatives.
Ssadly they were never to see Jane again but Elizabeth did return for a visit in the 1870’s after her husband Leonard died. The journey took three and a half months and the ship was very old which leaked, and the passengers had to help to bail all through the journey. The ship was condemned immediately afterwards. The Henry Tanner arrived at Port Natal on the 10th October 1849 and small boats were used to ferry the passengers to Shore the following day. By the 1st November the family had taken residence in Pietermaritzburg only to find that their allotment was barren and stony, however they did take a lease on a farm outside the town and moved there 0n the 15 March 1850.
In 1852 they moved again, this time to just outside what is now Colenso where they built a house, kept a hotel, ran a butchery and had a ferry boat on the Tugela, from which he made 250 pounds a year. He once saved Dick King and his cattle and natives from drowning while crossing the Tugela in flood. Of the four children they brought out with them,
Sarah Wright married James Craw and lived first in Colenso then Pietermaritzburg; they had eight children. When James died Frances moved first to van Reenen then as war broke out she moved with her children Bella, Ada and Alec, to her sister Frances in Ladysmith.
Frances Wright, or Fanny, married Robert Anderson having six children with him. Robert Shand died in 1878 and in September 1880 she remarried to a widower George Tatham. Writing in 1897 Fanny described a drought which caused the death of forty-two of her cattle and in a later letter she mentions that she had experienced the coldest winter ever recorded.
William Wright married Elizabeth Illing, the daughter of Reverend Illing a Lutheran missionary living in Ladysmith. William and Elizabeth settled in Ladysmith, William owned wagons and earned a living, transporting goods from Ladysmith to the northern districts, including the gold fields. At some stage William took up farming between Ladysmith and Van Reenen and in the early 1900’s William became involved in mealie farming. William and Elizabeth had six children, Leonard unmarried, Herman married Dorothy Hines and had three children, June, Leonard and Pamela. Gilbert, who married his first wife Ida Mulchay, then Sheila Abraham with whom he had three children, James, Brigid and Gilbert John (Bob. William August married Doris Illing and had two children Joan and Graham. Madelaine married Christopher Harburn and Harold unmarried.
It would appear that William and Elizabeth were divorced because he then married Ada Fowlds. Elizabeth spent the rest of her life with her son William August.
Heavy rains fell in the summer of 1892/1893 causing much damage to crops and William, who was living in Ladysmith at the time, was badly affected by the floods. Water had been a foot deep in his house covering the floor and furniture in a shiny layer of mud; the garden completely washed away.
Other children of Leonard and Elizabeth were; Mary, or Polly the sixth child, married Henry Barrett and at one time lived with her sister Frances, as did her brother William.
Margaret, or Maggie, married Joseph Tuke Spettigue, a chemist in Ladysmith and Town Councillor.
Harry Christopher married Harriet Alice Jones, Charles James Jones daughter.
Leonard Alfred lived in Ladysmith but was unmarried. He died aged 18 having been struck by lightning playing billiards in Harrismith in a billiard saloon which was originally the old Union Chapel. Sadly he was doing well as an apprentice to his brother-in-law Joseph Pettigue and would have most likely gone into partnership with him. Ada Danby, the last child of Leonard and Elizabeth, married Joseph Pascoe and had three children.
During the siege, illness and disease were rife in Ladysmith. Sarah was ill during this time and was confined to her bed for weeks and Ada, Sarah’s youngest, did not escape for a long period of time.
Enteric was rife and the big killer, hundreds died from it as well as from dysentery, the conditions at the time being ideal breeding ground for diseases. Removal of effluent, horse and cattle manure and the inability to purify sufficient water were the main causes.
Frances and her sister Sarah were actively involved in nursing during the siege. During the latter part of 1899, before Ladysmith was besieged, they had completed Ambulance classes in which they learned to dress a wound, bandage injuries and wash a patient. They were well prepared for the demanding tasks which lay ahead of them. During the siege Fanny took in exhausted nurses and people who could not be accommodated in the various hospitals, she also nursed injured men, mainly officers, in her home. Sarah, her daughter, Ada, son Wilfred and Fanny’s son Willie were nursed by Fanny at Vine Lodge all while managing the production of food for her extended ‘family’.
Bella Craw, Elizabeth’s grand-daughter, wrote a diary of her experiences during the siege working at the volunteer hospital. After the siege Bella was chosen to serve on a troopship to England, and on arrival in London, was personally presented by King Edward V11 with a medal for her services onboard.
As Byrne settlers to Natal, Elizabeth and Leonard, along with thousands of other British settlers were responsible for conveying Victorian ideologies, values and institutions with them to Natal. They were extended to their children, who grew up in an environment in Natal which was a replica of Victorian society in Britain.
Working class emigrants who could not afford servants in Britain found that, due to the ideological race hierarchy, in which all white settlers, regardless of class, were placed at the top, they were able to employ their mown servants. Coming from a middle class, educated background, Elizabeth was faced with hardships and inconveniences which she would possibly not have experienced before in England.
Elizabeth and Leonard had approximately forty grand-children and present day descendents are scattered around the world, proving accurate Leonard’s sentiment that “the Wright family will stand long in Natal as being of the early settlers”.