Francesca Mary Eleanor Mähler ("Cissie")
| Daughter of
Werner Louis Adolphe Julius Mähler and
Catherine Mary Richards,
born on the 26th of June 1879 in London Married George Hay Rattray on the 5th of December 1901 in Streatham, London Children
Died 1972
|
|
| Cissie married George Rattray on a trip home
from Rhodesia and returned with him to a store he ran 40 miles outside
Bulawayo in the Matopos where Louis was born. They later moved to Kingston
Farm, Bindura. She described the early days in Bindura in a newspaper
article:- "We were only a tiny community then," she said. "There were only four other white women, and we met every afternoon. But now, when I walk down the street, people say 'Who is that old lady with the white hair?'" When she came to Bindura, or Kimberley Reefs as it was then called, she made the journey from Salisbury by coach, and it took two days. The road then was merely a scuffled track through grass which stood ten feet high on either side. On arrival at the hotel, if the hut for casual visitors could be so described, the traveller was handed a piece of rag to remove the dust from his face, before using the hotel towels. There was no railway, no school, nor yet the need for one, no post office and no hospital. The nearest doctor was stationed at Shamva, and when he was sent for he came 22 miles on a bicycle through lion-infested country. Fresh meat was delivered once a week from the Chinn Mine. It came in a lump of about 40 pounds, which the residents divided among them. The Settlement took its name from the old Kimberley Reefs mine. There were in addition the Hay Mine worked by Mr. G. H. Rattray, and the Mangwe, worked by another pioneer, Captain Hoste, who used to walk into Salisbury. In his absence Mrs. Hoste looked after the mining operations. The dropping of the stamps on the Asp Mine, now the Phoenix Prince Mine, was a great event in the district. From 1910 life became quite gay. Settlers arrived in a steady stream, and farming sites were occupied. The first tennis courts were built and there were dances picnics and sometimes gymkhana. People were dependent on themselves for amusement in those days, said Mrs. Rattray, for roads were too bad. for frequent trips to town, especially in rainy weather.
|
 Cissie (?) and baby Joan at Kingston Farm 1916. |
| Cissie contracted Blackwater Fever - a severe
form of Malaria - early on and subsequently returned to England each year
during the malaria season.
|
Notes
1 Information from Beryl Bowman (née Rattray)
2 In
1901 Cissie was living with her widowed mother, and the rest of the family,
in Streatham, London.
In
1911 she had returned from South Africa and was visiting her
mother, again in Streatham. Dorothy would have been under a year
old but is not with her mother. Beryl and Alan are staying with
Cissie's mother-in-law, Sarah Jane, and her sister-in-law, Mary,
at 71 Lansdowne Road, Croydon.
