TOPIC:

Neville many thanks for the A.F. Schmidt suggestion for the query above. Here is another one:

I am trying to identify a Boer Lieutenant with first name Christian. The name appears on a cheque, dated January 1893, for 10 Pond Sterling (equivalent Bpnd 1640,- today) and is drawn on the Nationale Bank in Pietersburg. The Lieutenant countersigned at the back. Given his rank was Lieutenant in 1893 he may have been promoted to a higher rank (Artillery/Police) by the start of the Boer War or perhaps he was by then retired from uniformed service and joined the war on commando in some other capacity. Also being a Lieutenant in 1893 probably means that his DoB was before 1870.

The first two letters of his name on the face of the cheque look like LU. At the back the signature looks with some stretch of imagination like Dryer if the two small letters above the name are ER. (The Bloemfontein Museum website list a C.J. Dryer, Artilleris, 1ste Battery, Grootboek Staatsartillerie Jun-Jul 1899) Both this website and the Bloemfontein Museum one list quite a few men with the name Christia(a)n Dryer or Dreyer. Anyway, not at all sure that Dryer is the correct surname.

I read the surname as LUJA. There's a definite dot above the J in the name on the cheque, to the left of the P in 'paid' on the rubber stamp.

Possibly Christian Hendrik Luja, born in Denmark in 1870, whose name appears in quite a few entries on the National Archives' online inventory :
1897 - several mineral leases
1898 - applications for employment in geological survey or public works department
1899 - application for letters of naturalisation
1904 - patent for a new invention
1921 - divorce
1933 - deceased estate.

Also found this entry for him on a Danish genealogical website : holm-slaegt.dk/holm/4071.htm . It states that in 1892 he was a lieutenant living in Sortedamsgade in Copenhagen. So he evidently had the rank before he moved to the ZAR.

Arthur, many thanks. I hadn't considered a non-Afrikaans/Dutch name. Teaches one to keep an open mind when doing research. Strange character this Christian Hendrik as it seems he enlisted as a common Trooper in the Natal Carabineers while his countrymen fought on the Boer side in the Scandinavian Corps.

Probably coincidentally, there was a man 793 Trooper C H Luja who served in the siege of Ladysmith with the Natal Carbineers and later JMR.

djb wrote: Probably coincidentally, there was a man 793 Trooper C H Luja who served in the siege of Ladysmith with the Natal Carbineers and later JMR.

Quite likely the same man. The mineral leases he applied for in 1897, the civil service job applications in 1898 and the application for naturalisation in 1899 were all in Natal, but he lived in Johannesburg after the war, and was still living there a the time of his death (although he died in Kenya, according to his death notice). His occupation was given as "mining engineer".

Hi; any help deciphering a few words of the text below would be appreciated:



"...at 11am on the 16th [or 10th] of January 1891 [?] my medal and clasps for Burmah 1887 - 1889 and 1885 to - 1887 on my tunic [on/in] the [?] Room of the [Royal] battalion..."

Thanks in advance.