Gazette 6 Dec 1938 Aberdare Voters List

Foster - Bartlett used to take people out in his lorry to see lion. The Bartlett garden contained beds of roses, pinks, iris pallida, salvias, petunias, and coreopsis. Some rose beds were enclosed in high geranium hedges. They grew peaches and had a vegetable garden watered by furrows. The house was black and white with a thatched roof. The Bartletts had first settled at Kericho, where they had grown coffee, maize and wheat. Locusts drove them out and they trekked with their ox-waggon to Timau and built their house on their 4000 acre Timau Farm.

Garden - '...... Mrs Bartlett ... this young pleasant-faced blue-eyed woman has two daughters and three sons born all over the world. By and by her husband came out to join the party. I have always thought my son-in-law a burly man, but he looked a little fellow beside the great white hunter and distinguished flying-man who towered over him, laughing, jolly, and twice as broad. They used to grow coffee, maize, wheat, till the locusts came and ate them out; they trekked from Kericho in an ox-wagon when they got locusts there to View Point Farm at Timau, where he owned 4,000 acres. Their eldest boy was eleven months old then, and they had the most hair-raising times. They are a gallant pair. They had ordered the house to be ready for their arrival, and when they got there worn-out and late one day they saw a few bare poles against the sky. Their house! Mr Bartlett went after lion nearly every night in those days, the place was thick with them. I sat at tea listening to their wonderful memories, eating nice cake and eyeing an enormous skin on the wall. I asked about it. "Yes, it's nearly a record, in all ten feet six in length. That is the lion; I was only four feet away when I shot him - and then I got the lioness. They used to be all around the place."

Bartlett - "… served in the Royal Flying Corps as a fighter pilot and went into battle in France in 1916. In 1917, at the age of 18, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Web - Bartlett, Albert Frederick, 2/Lt - Born South African at N Transvaal S.Africa - With 66 Squadron from 6/12/1917 to 06/06/1918 as pilot - Eventual fate missing in action on 06/06/1918 in aircraft B7353 Bartlett - "… In 1919 my father took up a Soldier Settler farm in the Lumbwa-Kericho area of Kenya ….. In 1922 Mother joined my father in Kenya where they were married and started farm life. A year later I was born. At that time most settlers grew flax and everybody lost fortunes when the market collapsed. Father was a good athlete, as well as a sportsman, and could beat the Lumbwa in a flat race over some distances. ……….. My family sold the farm because of debt and various other commitments and moved to new land offered to settlers on the slopes of Mount Kenya. It was a pity they did not stay in Kericho as it later became a very successful tea-growing area. My parents put all their worldly possessions into an ox-wagon and trekked to our new home. ……… The farm was at an elevation of 7,200 feet and due to the high altitude, the climate was always pleasant - warm during the day and cool at night. ……. My parents had more children and eventually I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters. We were very isolated and seldom had visitors, so we enjoyed each others companionship and as a result became a very close family. There were many hardships. Money was scarce, especially during the Depression years, so Father took on many different jobs. He built houses and cattle dips and surveyed irrigation canals for farmers in the district. He also took up professional hunting. His clients included British army officers serving in India and also American hunters.

Bartlett - Our financial position improved when Father started to grow pyrethrum ……… The market was good and increasingly profitable. As a result of our improved finances, all of us were sent to boarding school in Nairobi. ….. In 1938, my grandfather and Uncle Billy came from South Africa to take our family back to that country. My grandfather had a farm close to Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg and wanted Father to manage it as he was planning a world tour, visiting relatives in New Zealand and a son in America. My parents realised that we would get a better education in South Africa and parents accepted the position.

Gazette - 20/7/1921 - Register of Voters - Lake Area - Albert Frederick Bartlett - Farmer, Kawa Goket Estate - Kericho

His wife was a talented gardener.

Gazette 10 July 1962 wife's probate

Gazette 9 Apr 1963 [sic] probate