Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole

The Honourable Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole (18811929) was a pioneer settler and farmer (1905) of the East Africa Protectorate. Part of his Kekopey Ranch on Lake Elementaita, Kenya, where he is buried, is preserved today as the Lake Elementaita Lodge. His brother was The Hon. Berkeley Cole, another aristocratic white settler in Kenya.

Biography

Cole was born into the Ascendancy, Ireland's old Anglo-Irish aristocracy. From a prominent Ulster family, he was the third son of The 4th Earl of Enniskillen (1845-1924) and his wealthy Scottish wife, Charlotte Marion Baird. Galbraith Cole entered the 10th Royal Hussars as a second lieutenant in 1900, at age 19, and went to South Africa for the Second Boer War. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 18 September 1901.[1][2][3] After being injured in the war, he made his way to Kenya where his sister Florence had married the prominent settler Lord Delamere. Cole first tried farming in the area beyond Thomson's Falls in 1905, but he eventually moved to the Lake Elementaita area where his wealthy brother-in-law gave him 30,000 acres (120 km2). This parcel adjoined Delamere's own 100,000-acre (400 km2) farm, Soysambu, on the western side of the lake, between Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru. Cole named his farm "Kekopey Ranch"; the name is supposed to be from a Masaai word meaning "place where green turns white" (a reference to the soda (sodium salts) and diatomite around the hot springs near the lake).

In 1917, he married Lady Eleanor Balfour, niece of Lord Balfour, the former British Prime Minister. Cole was deported to German East Africa after he shot dead a farm labourer for stealing one of his favourite Merino rams, imported from New Zealand. He returned secretly to Kekopey dressed as a Somali and his mother, the Countess of Enniskillen, pleaded his case with the British Government.

Cole's last days were spent in wretched misery. Blind in one eye, using a wheelchair, and in constant pain owing to his rheumatoid arthritis, he shot himself in 1929 at age 48, at his favourite spot, the viewpoint where his memorial now stands.

Legacy

References

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