Ancestor Details
Ancestor's Name: William Bradshaw Galliard Smith
Ancestor's date of birth: 03/12/1862
Ancestor's date of death: 30/10/1901
Cause of Death: His commanding officer wrote to his father that he was one of the best me he had and would have got his commission. He was found lying near Corporal Bell with 200 empty cartiridges by his side and was buried on the field with his fallen comrades. His comrades said he killed or wounded 30 Boers with his own rifle before he received a fatal shot. This was in the battle for Bakenlaagte, South Africa.
Service Number: 33450 and/or 31839
Colony or State of enlistment: Possibly Victoria where he sailed from.
Unit: 2nd Scottish Horse
Rank attained in Boer War: SGT, Date Effective: Detail not provided
Highest Rank attained (if served after war): Died in the course of the war
Murray Page: Not applicable
Contingent: Not applicable
Ship: Detail not provided, Date of Sailing: 14/03/1901
Memorial details: His name appears on a 3.6 metre high grey obelisk memorial at Germiston (Primrose) Cemetery, South Africa. This obelisk orignally stood over the burial site of the thirty three Scottish Horse troops who died near Bakenlaagte but in the 1960s their remains where exhumed as part of the policy of the South African Graves Board to centralise all military cemeteries.
Decorations: QSA Medal with clasps
Personal Characteristics: Bradshaw's father, Rev Pierce Galliard Smith wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald after his death, "I am sorry my son joined the Army.....but he was a fine man, 1.92 metres (6' 4"), a splendid horseman and an experienced bushman. His death has caused great grief to me and his mother and our family. He would have been 39 on 3rd Decr."
Reasons to go and fight: Bradshaw was born in Canberra, the son of Rev Pierce Galliard Smith (of St John's Church, Canberra for 51 years) and Emily Philippa Davis. Before Bradshaw left for South Afica he worked on pastoral properties in northern Queensland and the Northern Territory. He also travelled a great deal of the unknown and little known parts of Australia gold prospecting, also in British and German New Guinea. He was in South Africa in 1886 on the Road to Kimbeley.
Details of service in war: There is a plaque in St John's Church Canberra to the memory of Bradshaw, put there by his family. The footnote on it reads "Heroically doing his duty.
Service and life after the Boer War: Did not survive the war.
Descendant Details
Name of Descendant: Adrienne Fane Bradley, WESTON CREEK ACT
Relationship to Ancestor: great niece
