Africa

There is a branch of the family in Southern Africa whose migration was relatively recent in genealogical terms. I have been in contact with a member of the family branch, who has given me some details of their life there.

Peter William Shout –was born Cowton Castle (see Northallerton page) in 1927 and grew up in Catton near Hexham, Northumberland. After service in WW2 he joined the British South Africa Police in Salisbury, Rhodesia. He subsequently moved to Bulawayo, Rhodesia’s second city, where he married Agnes Hogan. They had two children who are both still alive.

My Aunt Martha Granger Shout spent some time in Rhodesia as a nurse travelling to South Africa in 1949. She was subsequently in Ghana for several years. She served as the principal / sister tutor at the nursing school in Cape Coast. She was there during the time of independence and President Nkrumah. I was briefly in Accra in 1981 working on a project at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. The changes between conditions when she was there and my visit were quite striking. From a land of relative plenty Ghana had become a struggling economy with many shortages of basic essentials.  My stay was curtailed by the  second coup of Jerry Rawlings, which occurred while I was back in England for a Christmas break. I never returned!

By one of those strange quirks of fate Martha who worked for the International Council of Nurses, based in Geneva visited Bulawayo and met Agnes who was a nursing sister. They did not know what the family connection was, but with such an unusual name knew there had to be one!