Maternal Ancestors

PROUD/CAMPBELL/FRASER

1. John Proud (great grandfather) was born in Walsall, Birmingham in c1825. By the 1851 Census he was 25, still in Walsall and had a wife Mary Ann (26) and a son, John Joseph (3). He was a spur dealer.

2. John Joseph Proud (grandfather) was born in Walsall c1847. He married Georgina Campbell Fraser in 1877 in Walsall where he was a spur manufacturer (in the 1881 cencus employing one man and two boys ). They are known to have had seven children, Mary Ann (c1878) Georgina (c1879) Isabella (c1880) Lily (c1881) John (c1886) Sarah (c1888) and Rosie (1890). The Prouds remained in Walsall until at least 1901 when they had three children left at home, John (presumably Uncle Jack)then aged 17, Sarah 13 and Rosie 11. At some time after that but before 1917 they emigrated to South Africa where they stayed for the rest of their lives. It is likely that many of the older daughters preceeded them to South Africa to join their Fraser grandparents.

3. Sarah Campbell (great grandmother) was born in Urray, Scotland in about 1828. She had a daughter (grandmother) Georgina born in Beauly, Scotland about 1850 and her father was George Russell shipmaster about whom nothing else is known. Sarah Campbell married Thomas Fraser in Beauly in 1860 and he thus became Georgina Campbell's stepfather and she became Georgina Campbell Fraser.

4. Thomas Itcheson Fraser was born in Beauly in 1835 where he had a shop and became a saddle and harness maker. After their marriage in 1860 the Fraser family moved to Glasgow, then Birmingham and finally after 1881 to South Africa where by 1886 Thomas had established in Cape Town and later in addition in Bloemfontein a leather goods business which prospered particularly well during the Boer War. He became a wealthy man and was generous to his older step granddaughters when they married but lost most of his wealth before he died in Cape Town in 1919 aged 85.

5. Rosie (or Rose) Proud (mother) was born in Walsall in 1890 and Married Reginald George Clarke in Cape Town on 11th May 1917.