There were two traditions in the Daly Family – they were Trekkers or Traders, or both. William Daly certainly was a Trekker, coming to the Cape from Ireland in 1831. There he settled, married Barbara Croeser and traded as an apothecary-surgeon. In 1862, his son, Ramsay Daly, trekked with Catharina and her Rocher family all the way across the Karoo, eventually settling in the Transvaal Republic, in Potchefstroom, then a bustling centre with great promise. Here Ramsay opened a trading store which came to grief in the 1890s during the economic downturn following the First Anglo-Boer War.
Back in the Cape in 1866 when William and Barbara both died within days of each other, their youngest son, Jacob Daly, was orphaned at 11 years of age. He soon also took the long road North, eventually reaching Potchefstroom. Here, perhaps with the help of his older brother Ramsay, he took employment in a trading store owned by John Reid. In the mid-1870s, this firm sent him to their store in Zeerust, North-West of Potchefstroom, near Mafeking (now Mafikeng) on the road to Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Zeerust was a small Afrikaner-dominated town only settled in 1867. There was no railway so all stock for a trading company had to be brought from the coast by oxwagon. It was a very long road so this was not, on the face of it, a good career move.[2]
At 21 years of age, Jacob had become a trader, and an entrepeneurial trader. At 22 years of age he married 20 year old Sarah Jane Sephton. Her family were Wesleyan 1820 Settlers who had settled in Zeerust. Jacob and Sarah Jane were well suited. Jacob left John Reid and Company, started his own trading business, J Daly and Company. Together Jacob and Sarah started building their own house. According to their son, George Gilbert, they built one room and moved into that while they constructed the rest of the house by hand, fetching yellow wood planks and beams for the roof from Grahamstown by ox wagon. Jacob changed his name: he was no longer Jacob Marthinus Hendrik but Jacob Martin Henry.
Jacob and Sarah Jane’s first child, Edward Albert, was born in 1880 and six more children followed at regular intervals. They were all given traditional English names although there was a Ramsay Lamy included. Tragically, Sarah Jane died giving birth to the seventh child in 1891. Jacob soon remarried, Emily Augusta Landsberg. (The Landsberg, Daly and Rocher families were inter-related and knew each other well in Potchefstroom.) By 1904, the couple had produced another 6 children. All these children were also given English names.
Jacob now had a considerable commitment to address. He did not falter. The move to Zeerust had seen him escape the economic downturn in Potchefstroom after the First Anglo-Boer War. He now applied himself locally, applying to join the Volksraad of the Groot Marico, lobbying to have a teacher and a cornet appointed in Zeerust. He ordered many books, medicines and applied for the railroad to be extended to Zeerust. The main records of his activities, however, concern the importation of large amounts of guns and ammunition. The Second Anglo-Boer War was looming but it is not clear whether the weapons were destined for the Boer forces or for the hunting trade that dominated that part of the South African Republic.
For a man raised as an Afrikaner (however briefly) but now heading an Anglicised family, the Anglo-Boer War would have presented difficult choices for Jacob and Emily. This was a war that split families. All the Potchefstroom Daly family committed to the Boer side but it is unlikely that the Sephton family shared this commitment. It is not clear how the family fared. In November 1899 a Boer telegram noted: “Jacob Daly, storekeeper in Zeerust, found guilty of profiteering”[3] but this may well have been because he wanted the Boer forces to pay for the store of arms he had in his store which they ransacked.
Early in the War things went well for the Boers. The British army chose Mafeking, near Zeerust, to store armaments and this town was famously besieged by the Boer army until, in 1900, relieved by Baden Powell leading a force that included many South African volunteers.[4]
History tells us that the Boer army was not particularly amenable to discipline. By 1900 they were in retreat and engaging in guerrilla tactics. The area around Zeerust was hotly contested. Many Boer supporters were persuaded by British offers of peace and security and surrendered signing an oath of allegiance thereby becoming “protected burghers”. After the war they could claim compensation for losses sustained from British actions. Jacob Daly and Emily Augusta Daly both lodged such claims in 1903.[5]
If Jacob was loosely connected with the Boer army, two of his young sons took a different path. In 1900 when Zeerust was under British control the two oldest sons, Edward Albert and George Gilbert served in the Zeeerust Town Guard.[6] And yet the family came together after the war. They are unusual in the Daly family for the number and quality of the photographs neatly pasted into albums but also for the fond letters that they write to each other. This may have helped.
Here the Daly family is photographed, probably in early 1920, with Jacob and Emily in the centre:
The family letters set this family apart. The ones from George Gilbert are warm and chatty. A letter to his daughter Ethne starts “My dearest Fatty”. Jacob was part of this tradition but some of his surviving letters are not to the family but about them. In 1915 he wrote a friendly letter, in Dutch, to the Prime Minister, Louis Botha, assuring him of his loyalty during the recent Maritz Rebellion, and sending him personal good wishes[7]. Months later he wrote again, in English this time, asking “Dear General” to facilitate a transfer of George Gilbert from the Lands Department to the Department of Justice for which he is better qualified having passed his “Law Exam”. He ends the letter, “I remain Dear General your true old friend, J Daly.[8]
[1] Downloaded from Encyclopedia Britannica from https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa
[2] It is in this isolated area that Herman Charles Bosman located the stories told in Mafeking Road by Oom Schalk Lourens.
[3] http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=A781/R/6797
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mafeking
[5] DEPOT TAB
SOURCE CJC
TYPE LEER
VOLUME_NO 401
SYSTEM 01
REFERENCE CJC30
PART 1
DESCRIPTION CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION. PROTECTED BURGHERS. MARICO. J DALY & CO.
STARTING 1903
ENDING 1903
DEPOT TAB
SOURCE CJC
TYPE LEER
VOLUME_NO 400
SYSTEM 01
REFERENCE CJC9
PART 1
DESCRIPTION CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION. PROTECTED BURGHERS. MARICO. EMILY AUGUSTA
DALY.
STARTING 1903
ENDING 1903
[6] https://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/south-african-units/2481-zeerust-town-guard
[7] The rebels opposed the government’s plans to join the Allied Forces in WW1
[8] DEPOT SAB
SOURCE PM
TYPE LEER
VOLUME_NO 1/1/326
SYSTEM 01
REFERENCE PM185/15/1915
PART 1
DESCRIPTION PUBLIC SERVICE. J DALY – TRANSFER OF HIS SON.
STARTING 1915
ENDING 1915