Some dreams come true — Henry Green

Ione Evans writes from New Zealand:

Amanda our daughter in England has found the book Some Dreams Come True for me and is posting it. Will be interesting to read for the history apart from it having a picture of Henry Green in it. Will scan pic and send when it arrives. Exciting! Hope you are with transport again. How do you fare insurance wise in SA? Having lovely sunny days even if am temperatures are COLD!

The great mystery with Henry Green is the identity of his wife’s parents, or at least his wife’s mother — we know her father was Capt Carl Arthur von Lilienstein, who was a border gaurd between Prussia and Denmark before coming to South Africa with the 1858 German military settlers. These were part of the British German Legion, who were recruited to fight in the Crimean War, but the war ended before they could go there, so they came to settle in British Kaffraria (now part of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, around East London) instead, and act as border guards there. Cattle rustling across the border was common, and it was hoped that military settlers would be able to prevent it, and thus save the British taxpayers some money. It didn’t work.

At about that time Henry Green’s brother Edward was in the Cape Mounted Rifles, but transferred to a regiment stationed in India, sending his wife Emily and children to England, and eventually the family ended up in New Zealand. Edward was the ancestor of the Nation, Mocine, and Blum branches of the family.

Back to Henry: his wife was sometimes referred to as “Countess”, and some have inferred from this that her father was a Count, but this is apparently not so. So there is also the mystery of where the “Countess” came from. Maybe the book Some dreams coem true will throw some light on the mystery!

Oh, and for the last couple of weeks out night time temperatures have been around 8 degrees C, and the daytime ones about 25, which hardly seems like winter at all! The insurance assessor visited lately, so we hope they will pay out for our stolen car.

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