The 1820 Settler families are still alive and well. So says the great granddaughter of Charles Duncan Griffith, Lorna Thelma Wilson, who visited Grahamstown on Monday.
The 1820 Settler families are still alive and well. So says the great granddaughter of Charles Duncan Griffith, Lorna Thelma Wilson, who visited Grahamstown on Monday.
Lorna has come to the Eastern Cape with her husband to look at Rhodes University with their grandson and to do more research on her family’s history and heritage.
She is very proud of her lineage and the fact that she is the great granddaughter of such an extraordinary man.
While searching online for information on her family, Lorna discovered that she has over 3000 relatives on record which include the movie action star Bruce Lee and the singer from The Black Eyed Peas, Fergie.
Charles Griffith was born in Grahamstown in September 1830 after his parents came over to South Africa in 1820.
This was after he was educated both in Grahamstown and Cape Town and was involved in both the War of the Axe in 1846 and the Mlanjeni War in 1850.
He later became a Civil Commissioner and magistrate of the District of Albert in 1858 and then Queenstown from 1859 to 1868.
Griffith was once again called to service for the Frontier Armed Mounted Police in 1877, where he fought in the Gcaleka War as a Colonel. He later became Commandant-General of the Colonial Forces until the end of the war when he moved toEast London in 1881.
In East London he was involved in commercial activities at the harbour and was later elected to Parliament where he served on and off from 1888 to 1896. Colonel Charles Duncan Griffith passed away on the 17 October 1906 at the age of 76.
