William SYMONS

  Noted events in his life were:

• Baptism. Great grandfather, William Symons was born in 1815? Could be December 1814? (baptised on the 8^th of January 1815) and lived at Mt Edgecombe, Devon on the border of Cornwall. His first wife (whom he married in the parish of Stoke Damerell, Plymouth in Devonshire) was Mary Jane Dobson they had 8-10 children two were born after they emigrated. William was the first. William worked as a carpenter in Plymouth dockyards.

• Death. in 1918. Barbara Durlacher, in the first of four articles about early British settlers in South Africa, tells of a shipload of Irish girls who volunteered to be shipped out in 1857 as potential brides for men and soldiers on the Cape Eastern border with Kaffraria.
She notes "I am on a visit to Cape Town and have been talking to Mrs Sybil Tuck of Somerset West and Mrs Amy Row of Sea Point, grand-daughters of William James Symons, who as a lad of 17 arrived in South Africa in the same ship as the bouncy cargo of girls in the sailing vessel, Lady Kennaway.
William Symons left a quite detailed record of the voyage in the form of a series of articles he wrote for the Daily Dispatch, East London, describing events and adventures on board under the title "Life in an Emigrant Ship 56 Years Ago."
His grand-daughters have an old scrap book in which the cuttings of his memoirs of the voyage are pasted. Not only does he describe events in the Lady Kennaway, but also old days in King William's Town, and early times in East London, when he died at the age of 78 in 1918. This scrap book is a wonderful piece of Africana...."

• 1820 Settlers. Barbara Durlacher, in the second of four articles about early British settlers in South Africa, tells "My paternal grandfather, William James Symons was one of South Africa's pioneers, sailing to South Africa from Plymouth at the age of 17 in 1857 on the sailing ship Lady Kennaway. This ship was later wrecked on the sandbar off the mouth of the Buffalo River at East London, as told in my tale "Finding Out". Fortunately for William James and the children he was to sire, he survived and went on to prosper mightily, becoming the owner of a large sawmill and timber merchant business in King William's Town and later in East London. He is also credited with being the 'inventor' of a type of high-axled trek wagon, which - so legend has it - was used by the British Army in the Crimea. He fathered eleven children, of whom my father was the last, being born around 1897 - although I'm not sure of that date."

William married Mary Jane DOBSON in Stoke Dammeral, Plymouth.

William next married Charlotte.