Alfred BERTHELSEN 

IN SEARCH OF ALFRED MAGNUS WALDEMAR BERTHELSEN

SOUTH AFRICAN CONNECTIONS RE-ESTABLISHED

The Challenge

When trying to trace long-lost family members—never give up hope. I had spent many years trying to "find" my great uncle, Alfred “Alf” Magnus Waldemar Berthelsen, of Danish parentage who was born on 30 May 1876 at "Danevang", a Pialba farm in Queensland's Hervey Bay district. Information emerging from my enquiries of family was sketchy and the only points that could be corroborated were that "he [Alf] went to South Africa and worked in a diamond mine. He married a woman of German descent and she died in childbirth." One aunt recalled another clue that "he and his wife visited Queensland on their honeymoon just before World War I."

Alf did indeed work in a diamond mine but as a furnace man—I learned this from his death notice (the equivalent of our probate), a copy of which I obtained from the Pretoria National Archives, RSA. This document further disclosed other important details—it stated that Alf was widowed and his second wife was Anne with whom he had a daughter. This led to further enquiries resulting in my obtaining a death notice for the first wife, Minnie Mary Augusta  Berthelsen (previously Jones née Rudolph) who was born c1880 in Germany (another point confirmed) and died in South Africa in 1906 from tuberculosis (not childbirth)!

Alf married Anne, of Irish descent, in 1912 at Krugersdorp, near Johannesburg, and yes, they did visit Queensland on a delayed honeymoon in 1913/14. During their Toowoomba stay with my maternal grandfather and grandmother, Alf and "Anne" were sponsors at my aunt Trafalgar "Val's" baptism (their niece) which was confirmed by a baptismal certificate that I obtained from St Patrick's Cathedral, Toowoomba (yet another clue confirmed).

In an attempt to discover whether any descendants were still in South Africa, I wrote to some of the major city newspapers in 1997 asking them to publish my letter but received no response. Then I heard of a Johannesburg radio program titled "Where Are They Now?" and sent off a request in search of Mary Alannah Berthelsen or her descendants. Eventually, I received written notification from the radio station that they had heard from a relative following the broadcast and supplied me with contact details.

The morning that my request was announced on-air, Mary Alannah, now widowed and residing in a retirement home near Johannesburg, did not personally hear the broadcast. Fortuitously, one of her fellow residents who decided to skip breakfast that day to listen to the radio, came rushing up to her with the news that someone in Australia was looking for her. Though her surname had changed by marriage, her friend thought her Christian names so unusual that it just had to be her.

Eureka!

What a breakthrough! Finding Mary Alannah and verifying her father's connection as my great uncle Alf was a marvellous result, something that I never thought achievable. Mary was only five years old when her father died. She had corresponded for a short time with one of her father's sisters in Brisbane, post-World War II, and still had the letters which told of her father's adventures when he left Bundaberg, Queensland in 1893 to take part in the social experiment of "New Australia" in Paraguay (South America). Gavin Souter's fascinating look at this endeavour in his book, A Peculiar People, states—

It is hard enough to determine accurately how many went on the two voyages of the Royal Tar, for the surviving passenger lists almost all reach different totals .... [but] According to [his] reckoning, the Royal Tar carried on its first voyage 220 colonists and their children, and on the second voyage 199.

Alf's name appears as "A. Berthelsen" on the ship's list of passengers who sailed on the second voyage from Adelaide on 31st December 1893. A fellow researcher, Robert Adamson, wrote about this settlement in the Queensland Family Historian of May 1997 and he says, in part–

In 1893, almost 500 Australians, including at least forty Queensland families, set out on the Royal Tar for Paraguay, South America..... Their aim was to escape what they perceived as the ills of Australian society, evidenced by such events as the 1891 shearers' strike and the 1890s depression, and to live in peace and harmony with equality for all.

Some historians will be interested to learn that the De Gunst family, also from Alf's hometown of Bundaberg, joined this settlement. Frank, Nancy and their three children, one of whom was Molly De Gunst, later to achieve fame as an Australian singer, were among the ship's passenger list on the first voyage in July 1893.

This experiment was short lived and Alf, destitute and desperate to leave South America when it failed (he was reported to be "nearly the last to leave"), wrote home to his sister, Thyra in Brisbane, asking for money to help pay a poll tax of 18s. 6d. (R1.85) to enter South Africa. He managed to get work on a ship leaving Montevideo, Paraguay and landed at East London, Union of South Africa, as it was then. Shortly afterwards he enlisted to serve with the Kaffrarian Rifles when the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899.

I am indebted to the regimental officers who run the Kaffrarian museum in East London, RSA for their help and assistance in locating an army record. This led me to engage the services of a London researcher who was able to verify Alf's war service details, including an award, being a Queen's South Africa Medal with the Cape Colony and Wepener clasps. The medal rolls further disclosed that Alf was to receive a supplementary South Africa 1901 clasp but for reasons unknown, it was not issued and was returned to the Mint.

(The Kaffrarian Rifles has recently been renamed the Buffalo Volunteer Rifles as the term "Kaffrarian" was now thought to be offensive. It is derived from the word "Kaffir" which was used primarily by Afrikaners in South Africa against Africans. British Kaffraria was annexed c1847, became a regular Crown Colony in 1860 and was incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1865).

Part 3
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