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Name: BUTTON, Phyllis Margaret, Mrs
Nee: Robertson
Birth Date: 1886
Death Date: 12 Mar 1956
First Date: 1923
Profession: As Miss Robertson, Governess for Philip Percival
Area: Machakos
Married: 1925 Ernest Fred Button (1886-1953)
Children: Thomas Buchanan b. 1926, Anne Moncrieff (Moorse) ?Walker?, b. 1930. Daughter married Hugh Walker, living in Sherborne 1999
Book Reference: Hut, Hugh Walker
General Information:
Article on file describing wartime farming days near Machakos
Letter from Hugh Walker - ' …Ernest Button .. 1944 .. Then aged 58 his war work was to obtain supplies of meat from the local tribes to feed the army, the civilian population and prisoners of war. (Italian). He first came to Kenya from South Africa just after the First World War as one of the earlier Kenya settlers. He took up some 13,000 (?) acres of mainly savannah type land at a place called Kalenzoni near Konza in the Machakos District adjacent to the Kamba tribe from whom they obtained labour. He took a loan from the Kenya Land Bank of some £2,000 and farmed mainly cattle. Like many of the early settlers he first lived in a mud and wattle rondavel. He married Phyllis Button in 1925. She had come out from England, aged about 40, to be governess to the children of the white hunter Philip Percival in Machakos District. Before long, however, she met and married Ernest Button. They had two children, a boy Tom and a girl Anne. Farming was difficult in those early years and they experienced many problems, including droughts, locusts, various cattle diseases and lack of water until dams were built and boreholes sunk; but the latter were not brought in until the early days of the war.