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Name: MAHER, Alfred Colin
Birth Date: 4 Nov 1905 Bray, Berks.
Death Date: 30 Apr 1979 Algarve
First Date: 1929
Profession: KFA - Agricultural Officer who preached the need for soil conservation measures day after day, year in year out, regardless of his own interests ... until in 1937 the Dept. of Agriculture set up a small soil conservation section.
Area: Kitale, Nakuru
Married: 1. Margaret b. 1905; 2. Anne Laycock b. 1911 Gisburn near Skipton, d. 25 July 1952 Kinangop, teacher at Nakuru School; 3. In Chichester 10 July 1951 Alice Mary Jenkins Money b. 4 Oct 1913, d. 18 Jan 1984 Reigate
Children: Terence (aka Kabell) (1936-2019); Fiona Louise (Armitage) (1941); Angela Mary (1946); Vanessa Anne (1947)
Book Reference: KFA, Sitrep 2, Hut, Fiona Armitage, Colonial, EA & Rhodesia, Dominion
War Service: Military service 1939-40, 2nd Lieut.
School: Maidenhead County Boys' School and St. John's College Cambridge; MA (Cantab), Dip. Agric., AICTA
General Information:
Pre-war volunteer to the Kenya Regiment (KR 558). No birthdate in KR records.
Letter from Fiona Armitage - 28 Nov. 1997 - '....my father started the Soil Conservation Service in 1938 after a study tour of the USA and set up training for staff in quite a novel way for the 1930s and 40s I understand. He died in 1979 ......'
Colonial - Agric. Officer Kenya 1930; Agric. Officer and experimentalist 1932; Senr. Soil Conservation Offr. 1945; Sec. Bd. of Agric. 1935-36; Sec. Maize Control Enq. Commsn. 1935; reported on aspects of flax industry and machinery, N.I. and Scotland 1936; visited USA 1938 to study soil conservation; author of numerous articles and reports on soil erosion, conservation and agric.
East Africa & Rhodesia - 13/7/50 - Mr Colin Maher, who has been in charge of the Soil Conservation Service of Kenya since it was started at the end of 1937, has just retired from the Colonial Agricultural Service to farm on the Kinangop. This is sad but not surprising news, for a man of his temperament was bound, sooner or later to withdraw from a position which must often have galled him. It has long been evident that the SCS was coldly regarded by the Agricultural Dept.; one of the best judges in Kenya once told me that they deemed it "not merely a poor but also a socially undesirable relation," and each of the friends to whom I have at one time or another repeated the observation for comment has considered it accurate. If it is not that, then the Agricultural Dept. has allowed itself to be widely misunderstood. There is also a feeling that Mr Maher has not been reasonably treated in the matter of status and emoluments, considering that he has controlled work involving an annual expenditure of £200,000 and the supervision of half a dozen district headquarters. In short the farming community which has warmly admired his work, thinks that it has been undervalued officially.
Dominion - Agricultural Department - Assistant Agricultural Officer - 1930
Gazette - 19/11/1929 - Arrived on 1st Appointment - Asst. Agricultural Officer - A.C. Maher
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