TOPIC:

This example of soapstone very much looks like the stone the bible is made of.

I also happen to have one, not of soap stone however a very hard almost red stone dated 21.10.1902.
Line 1: Kakool - Place
Line 2: B.P.O.W - Boer Prisoner Of War.
Line 3: 21.10.1902 - Date
Line 4: Presumed to be the amount of time spent by indication of X's

Other Side ZAR Crest







..

vanZweel welcome to the forum. Your stone book is a nice example, given the date made by a POW who didn't want to sign the Oath of Alliance, I particularly like the ZAR Crest. The last line is probably just decoration. Below a photograph of an example by (or made for) POW F.J. Strijdom with very similar lettering and decoration.

VanZweel, If you have any further information about the stone book, there are a few possibilities for further research. For example, my stone book carries the name F.J Strydom. The War Museum of the Boer Republics in Bloemfontein has a database accessible via their website wmbr.org.za (select: Research). Bearing in mind that Kakool is also written as Kakul and Strydom as Strijdom I found the following:



You may note that the Museum database does not have a camp listed for this man so if I had only looked for Kakool or Kakul I would not have found him. I checked on the list of Anglo Boere Oorlog medal recipients, but he is not on there.

In the unlikely case that your book was owned by a POW with the van Zweel family name, you have two candidates.



Since your book has the ZAR Crest, it is likely that the POW came from the Transvaal and not the OVS. Both van Zweel's in the database came from the Transvaal (respectively Slangfontein, near Pietersburg and Bethal)