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Auction: 19002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 549

(x) Durban Road Town Guard

Approximately 21 Medals were awarded to the unit.

Queen's South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Pte. A. Newmark. Durban Road T.G.), good very fine and rare

Aaron Newmark was born in Lithuania in 1876 and emigrated to Cape Town in 1895. At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War, he returned to the Cape Colony to settle at Durban Road and set up in business as a general dealer in partnership with Mr. Herman Sacks - trading as 'Newmark & Sacks'.

Newmark attested for the Durban Road Town Guard on 17 February 1901. The relevant roll states:

'The call to Permanent duty at Elsies Rover Bridge was not well responded to. There were only 24 men although 28 were required. The bridge was guarded from 1st April to 19th May 1901 - Relieving Driscoll's Scouts.'

Discharged on 17 May 1901, Newmark subsequently returned to Lithuania to marry Luba August. A daughter, Annie, was born at Durban Road in 1904. In 1917, Newmark moved with his family to Cape Town and started a wholesale grocery business in which he was active for half a century. He died in 1974, aged 97, and was buried at Muizenberg.

Sold with copied roll entry and Colonial Defence Force discharge certificate, together with original contemporary business card 'Newmark & Sacks, General Merchants, Main and Station Roads, Bellville, C.C.', portrait photograph, large family group photograph and an appealing large photograph - likely of Newmark, his wife and daughter, and Mr. Sacks - taken outside the Newmark and Sacks store, Durban Road.


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Sold for
£140