Letter from John Carnegie - A most unusual and hardworking man who walked for miles in the blazing sun day after day and was always trying elaborate experiments in farming. He once made a large dam in the Ngobit river several miles downstream from our house and put in a turbine to grind the maize that he grew below the dam. But every time there was heavy rain the mill race filled with sand and gravel from all the little gullies that it crossed on the way to the mill and the turbine was damaged. Eventually a huge flood came down and burst the dam. Rotten luck!

He bought a large portable steam engine to work his saw mill and just as he set off for Nairobi one of the saw millers came to tell him that the gang couldn't saw urgently needed planks because the chap who worked the engine had gone down with flu. What were they to do, Boss? In utter frustration poor Francis saw himself missing a dental appointment, and said - "Well one of you can work the engine - its very simple really - you've seen him doing it before he fell ill - you just push lots of firewood into the little door down below and light it and when it starts hissing you move the big lever and saw the wood." Alas! an hour afterwards the engine blew up with a boom heard all over the farm. Nobody had remembered to put in the water!

However, Francis had great successes as well - he produced vast quantities of good wool and milk and beef and horses and made miles of stone walls like those in Wales. He had no talent for house design - the servant waiting at the dinner table hadn't space to cross the room to serve the guests across the table so he had to go outside and walk round the house and enter the dining room through another door! But when there were no guests everything was much simpler. He was very kind and everyone loved him - he had absolutely no stuffy pride. When something went quite outrageously wrong he told us all about it and made us choke with laughter. He was a wonderful neighbour - and friend from the time he arrived in the early 20s to the time he left near the end of the war. He made a road right up through the Aberdare forest to the moorlands - its mostly washed away now but the forest department still uses his alignment.

The first Bongo antelope to be caught and put in a zoo (in Rome) was caught just above his farm, and also the second one (for New York) just before the war. ......... Took to the bottle during the war, from loneliness and frustration and is remembered by many only for that, but we found it quite the least interesting thing about this remarkable man. ..…..…

EA Stud Book 1954 - Thoroughbred Stallions - C.F. Ryder, Deighton Downs Estate, Ngobit

Memorandum & Articles of Association of Muthaiga Country Club has F. Ryder - Settler, Deighton Downs, Ngobit

Muthaiga - One of the 7 original subscribers to Muthaiga Country Club in 1935

Gazette 22 Mar 1974 probate