Kildaremans grave in South Africa

Leinster Leader 21/8/1976

He discovered a Kildare grave in S. Africa

Those almost forgotten graves reminders of another people, another time, that lie in Russell Road Cemetery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, have aroused the interest of Galway man Kevin Murphy. 

Kevin has been living in Port Elizabeth for many years and was just retired from the City Engineer’s Department when he noticed that in one particular corner of the cemetery many of the tombstones bore Irish names.

And so he took his camera and notebook and began unearthing the past, sorting out the inscriptions on the various tombstones carpeted in the moss and mildew of a century or more.

He photographed the inscriptions and set sail for Ireland to trace the family origins.

One tombstone bears the name of a Kildare man, Andrew Weldon, native of the parish of Cloncurry, Co. Kildare, who died on February 12, 1858, aged 49 years. 

Members or descendants of the Weldon family, if there are any still in this part of the country, may be interested in a colour slide of the tombstone which Kevin Murphy has left with the ‘Leinster Leader’.

Kevin Murphy is enlisting the help of parish records, telephone books and newspaper offices in an effort to build up a background picture of those figures from the past.

It may be a long way to the hillside cemetery in Port Elizabeth but Kevin is steadily forging a link

Discovery of a Kildaremans grave in South Africa – Leinster Leader 1976

[typed and edited by Mary O’Hara]