White , Millicent Daintree (M D)

William Dixon Smith Lieutenant Quarter-Master of the Natal Border Mounted Rifles died of enteric at Intombi Hospital Camp on 13 January 1900 during the Siege of Ladysmith. He was born on 24 September 1857, son of John and Margaret Smith. The Smith family had Northumberland origins going back several generations, though William was in fact born just over the border at Black Hill, Co Durham. William, like his father a blacksmith by trade, arrived in Natal in 1881 (on the day of the battle of Laing's Nek, First Anglo-Boer War). He established a wagon-building business and smithy on the banks of the Umzimai River at Umzinto, on the south coast of Natal. In 1886 he married the widowed Charlotte Fisher Melvin Anderson, and they had three children to add to the five from Charlotte's first marriage. William joined the Alexandra Mounted Rifles, a Natal volunteer unit which was later amalgamated with other units under the title Border Mounted Rifles. When the 2nd Anglo-Boer war was declared in 1899, William was Quarter-Master of the BMR and together with other members of this volunteer corps entrained for Ladysmith, expecting, as many others did, that the war would be 'over by Christmas'. Fate decreed otherwise, and William was one of 21 000 people, military and civilian, besieged in Ladysmith by the Boer forces. He was destined never to see his wife and family again. William lies buried in the Intombi Camp cemetery, along with his stepson Alexander Anderson, a trooper in the Border Mounted Rifles. Charlotte thus lost a husband and a son to the Ladysmith Siege and was left to raise her large family alone. William and Charlotte's descendants still live in Natal.