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Name: FOSTER, Francis Benjamin Lynde 'Fronny'

Nee: bro of Edward Hinckley, Henry Edward B., Charles Webb, George William, Robert Cholmondeley and Hugh Gascoigne Foster

Birth Date: 1892 Attleborough, Norfolk

Death Date: 17 Mar 1965 Mombasa

First Date: 1913

Profession: Farmed at Likoni, Mombasa, and also had various other occupations in Uganda and at Kaptagat

Area: Likoni, Mombasa, Uganda and Kaptagat

Married: In Bodmin 1929 Mrs Lily R. Battersby née Ayre d. 1953 [his bro Hugh also married a Battersby]

Book Reference: Gillett, Hut, Stud

General Information:

EA Stud Book 1954 - Arabian Stallions - Owners - Mrs Foster, Kaptagat Gazette 19 Oct 1965 - probate
Curtis - p. 117 - 'The Fosters of Kaptagat' - 'Kaptagat, 21 Kms south-east of Eldoret, is largely the creation of the Foster family. Not only did they farm there for many years, but they were also responsible for the prep school and the Kaptagat Arms, now Kaptagat Hotel. They even had a family polo team.
There were 7 brothers and 3 sisters, children of a Norfolk country doctor. 4 of the brothers, George, Robert, Fronny [Francis] and Hugh, came to EA before WW1, and a 5th brother, Charlie, immediately after it. Their early farming was in Uganda. Hugh Foster recalls how this came about: 'My brother George, destined by our mother for the church, had made up his own mind and gone out to EA in 1908. Mr and Mrs Sewell, friends of the family, had started farming a few years before in the Kedong Valley, and George went out to join them.
The Kedong Valley in those days abounded with game and George's letters were full of lion, buffalo and buck of every sort and made me green with envy. George didn't stay long with the Sewells, but got the strangest assortment of jobs. He became an assistant at Wardle's the chemist in Nairobi, but at the end of a fortnight was asked to arrange the window. This annoyed George, and with the remark that he had taken the job as assistant chemist, not as an advertisement, he walked out. Eventually he took the job of guard on the railway. His train was loaded with corrugated iron, bundles of various lengths for stations all up the line. George didn't notice the different lengths specified but just shot out the required number of sheets at each station. By the time he reached Kisumu the complaints were rolling in. This didn't upset him in the least. He just left the train and boarded a boat on Lake Victoria for Uganda, where he obtained work as a road foreman.
Later he took a job as manager of Chikot, a coffee plantation about 15 miles from Jinja. George wrote glowing accounts to us of the fortunes we could make in Uganda, and of the herds of buffalo which were all round Chikot. He wrote to Robert in Johannesburg and fired him with such enthusiasm that he chucked up a job in a prep school and made a bee-line for Uganda. He arrived in February 1913. Fronny and I were also wild to go to Uganda. Fronny left first, threw away all chances of becoming an engineer and joined Robert and George in August. My grandmother turned up trumps, gave me my fare, a .375 rifle and 300 rounds of ammunition, and I sailed for Mombasa in the Gascon and arrived in September 1913.
I was just 19 years old when I arrived, Fronny was 21, Robert 23 and George 25. The brothers were good shots and fascinated by hunting. After their war service Hugh had various game control assignments, and shot in Tanganyika and the Belgian Congo as well as Uganda. Robert was killed by a lion while shooting in the Congo in 1919; his grave is still in existence in what is now the Albert National Park.
The family's own farming operations started with the planting of coffee in Uganda during and shortly after WW1. To this in 1924 they added cotton growing and ginning. They moved from Uganda to Kaptagat in 1931

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