Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

6 Chapter One A Need for Friends Charles Bennett Llewellyn was born in Pietermaritzburg in the then British-run Cape Colony in southern Africa on 29 September 1876, the eldest of five sons of Thomas Buck Llewellyn and his wife, Anne Elizabeth Rich. According to his death notice, Thomas was born in August 1845 at Pembroke, in West Wales. Some in the family believed that he arrived in South Africa as the master of a sailing ship, but it is probable that he landed as a serving soldier. The details of his birth place do not necessarily imply that he was of pure European stock, but there is no evidence to the contrary. The origins of Anne Llewellyn have been established. Anne Elizabeth Rich was born at Jamestown, St. Helena, the island in the South Atlantic, according to the details of her estate which were compiled on her death. Her deceased estate at the National Archives Depot, Pietermaritzburg contains a death notice dated 7 April 1920 which in clear type shows her birthplace as St. Helena. Her marriage declaration at the archives has a handwritten entry for place of birth which is given as James Town, St. Helena. She died intestate and was buried in the Wesleyan Cemetery at Pietermaritzburg. The only trace of the Rich family on the island was a reference to J.Rich, active in the Poor Society and the Ancient Order of Foresters. In the nineteenth century many Helenians left the island when work there became hard to find, because of changes in British Government policy, or world events, like the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which revolutionised sea traffic to the Far East and Australasia, with devastating effect on St Helena’s population. Many exiles found their way to the Cape. Pietermaritzburg was founded by Boer settlers in 1838, as the intended capital of their Republic of Natalia, after they had driven out the Zulus. The inland site, 50 kilometres north-west of Port Natal (which would soon be renamed Durban), had been a treeless plain, in a hollow encircled by gently rising hills, beyond which to the east loomed the Drakensberg Mountains. The city took its name from two Voortrekker leaders, Pieter Retief, and Gerrit Maritz, though some have argued otherwise. The Dutch settlers were in turn chased out by the British Army in 1843, but not