The Cawood File
This file contains the known descendants, to the 6th
generation, of Joshua Cawood, born about 1690, nailmaker of Otley, Yorkshire.
Notes for Elizabeth Sarah ("Lily") CAWOOD
Some indication of Lillie Cawood's life is given in "Reminiscences of My
Family", by Isabel Barlow. The Cawood family were 1820 settlers, who
settled in Cradock.
Lily, my great-grandmother, was known throughout the family as "Old Lady Gran". She was a small, upright figure supported by a walking stick, as I remember her, who spent her latter years (well into her 90s) spending a few months at a time with her
relatives.
I remember her chiefly for her periodic visits to Uncle Allister's farm. She was invariably dressed in Victorian dress, usually black, with a long skirt down to her shoes, and a long-sleeved blouse with a lace collar buttoned round her neck, and lace
cuffs. She usually wore mittens, and favoured cameo brooches. In her nineties her favourite reading was cowboy stories: she described the cowboys to me once as "rough, but such natural gentlemen, my dear." She was present at Allister's once during a
census. Allister was amused by the fact that she had insisted on recording her religion as "Universal Religion". He felt the census statisticians would have difficulty in categorising that, or in finding other members. She also played, and composed
for, the piano. I remember two of her compositions: one was, I think, called "Rippling Waters", and was a sort of poor man's "Rustle of Spring"; the other was a formidable combination of the South African national anthem, "Die Stem", and "God Save
the King" It ended: "Eendrag maak Mag; Together we sing, Long live South Africa, God save the King!", or words to that effect, in alternate Afrikaans and English bursts.
Newspaper cutting in the possession of my cousin Wendy Prior: included a picture of Lily (sic) Norval, and an account that she "trekked from the OFS to Rhodesia by donkey wagon, going beyond Sinoia to the farthest Government surveyed farm in that
district. In 1895 she trekked from the Free State to the gold fields, staying on the Rand for two years and then returning".
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