Botswana Notes & Records

The compilation of this list has proved to be a surprisingly difficult exercise. Information has been unsystematically derived from archival and personal sources including my own records and, to an extent, from the internet. The many foundation stones in Gaborone proved to be an invaluable historical record. Events or developments which occurred on Gaborone's geographical periphery, are recorded in brackets.

Sir Richard Glyn and his younger brother, Robert Carr Glyn with a friend, Henry St. George Bentley and thirteen servants left Pieterrnaritzburg on 26 March 1863 in three wagons heading to Victoria Falls. Ms Patricia Glyn, a well-known South African radio personality, journalist and motivational speaker with a three person back-up team and no servants, left Durban in March, 2005 determined to follow as precisely as possible, on foot, heading to Victoria Falls, repeating the journey made by her ancestor, Sir Richard Glyn.

The original homestead on Crocodile Pools Farm celebrated its hundredth birthday in 2002, making it one of the oldest occupied houses in Botswana. Richard Transveldt was born in Germany in 1860 and emigrated to the Cape as a young man. There, he made a fortune hunting seals and lost it farming ostriches. He finally moved to Bechuanaland setting up a sawmill in Otse. He acquired land and built a fine home in the German colonial style overlooking the Metsimaswaane River. At the age of 95, Transveldt died. About 1960, the farm was sold on auction. Empty and deserted, the grand old house decayed. The Campbells bought the house in 1971 and made the house habitable. Today, Crocodile Pools Farm has been much sub-divided, but the homestead lives on, standing on a rise looking northward towards Kgale Hill and Gaborone.