Hugh Frederic Stoneham
| Lt. Col. Hugh Frederic Stoneham OBE | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| File:Stoneham, Hugh Frederic.jpg | |||||
| Born | 1889 | ||||
| Died | 1966 | ||||
| Residence |
Parknasilla, E. Surrey Estates, Kitale, Kenya Colony [A63] [and] The Director, The Stoneham Museum & Research Centre, Kitale, Kenya Colony, BEA [census] Stoneham Museum and Research Centre, Kitale, Kenya Colony, East Africa [1949] | ||||
| Occupation |
armed services museum work business | ||||
| |||||
Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1931.03.24 proposed by J.H. Driberg, seconded by J.L. Myres
1933.02.21 The following were appointed Local Correspondents: Father Heres for Bombay, Mr E.J. Wayland for Uganda, Lt. Col. Stoneham for Kenya, Mrs A.W. Hoernle for S. Africa and Mr T.F. McIlwraith for Canada.
Notes From Elsewhere
Hugh Frederic Stoneham
Born [date unknown] in Lewisham, Kent, England
Son of Frederic William Stoneham and Alice Lucy Deacon
Brother of Gerald Towell Stoneham, Olive Ida Stoneham and Cecil Deacon Stoneham
[spouse(s) unknown]
[children unknown]
Died 1966 in Kitale, Kenya
Stoneham joined the Kenya Defense Force, as a District Commandant, after he retired from the Army; when he left the force in 1935, he gave up his Lieutenant-Colonel rank; his time limit for the Reserves ran out on July 30, 1939, and he was completely disconnected from the military; Stoneham founded the private museum called Stoneham Museum in 1926, with a collection of insects, other animals and books that he had been gathering since he was five years old; the Museum was later turned over to the National Museums of Kenya; the new museum was built on five acres of land outside of Kitale town, about 3,280.8 ft (1 km) from the town center, in the Trans-Nzoia District of the Rift Valley Province; in December 1974, the name was changed to the National Museum of Western Kenya, Kitale, Linda Donley was hired as the first Curator, and the new Museum was opened to the public; on display in the Museum are items from the local peoples, as well as Stoneham’s collections of books, insects and other animals; in 1983, the Kitale Museum started a center called Olof Palme Memorial Agroforestry to encourage conservation in the West Pokot area; Stoneham wrote papers about birds and butterflies for the Ibis, the Bateleur and the Stoneham Museum Publication; the Trans-Nzoia District has a beautiful forest, caves, mountain elephants and rare birds; Mt Elgon forest is the place where Elgon teak trees, known all over the world for ship building, grow, as well as podo and cedar trees, which can be made into beautiful brown wood for furniture; also growing in this forest is what some think is the biggest tree in Africa; there is the Saiwa Swamp National Park, home to the rare water antelope called the Sitatunga, the Nature Conservancy and the Delta Crescent Conservancy, owned by private individuals, all the treasures a county needs to bring in the visitors, but not that many visitors come; Mt Elgon National Park does not have near as many visitors as Kenya's main attraction, Nakuru Park; mostly, this is because people think the crime level is high in the area, that there is a lot of timber poaching going on, that they have poor roads and that there are no fancy hotels; despite all the problems the area has in getting tourists to come, there are several places that they really like to go when they do come; two of them are the Kitale Museum and the Duke of Manchester mansion on the slopes of Cherangani hills; the museum is famous for its military collections which came from World War I British soldier Hugh Frederic Stoneham; unfortunately, most of the displays are now under lock and key after thieves stole a big part of the collection on May 21, 2009; at first, he lived on 1,250 acres in Cherangani Hills, given to him by the British to thank him for his services in the war; he called this home East Surrey Coffee Estates; when he moved to his red brick home in Mugenya village, Cherangani, just 12.4 mi (20 km) from the Museum, he started a collection of artifacts that went to the Museum when he died in 1966; "The white man was so dedicated to Kenya that he wanted everything which he had collected plus the cash he had saved in a Kitale bank bequeathed [given] to our country in his memory," said Mr John Masika of the Museum's education department
Publications
External Publications
The butterflies of Western Kenya Unknown Binding – 1951
by Hugh Frederic Stoneham (Author)
House Publications
Related Material Details
RAI Material
census
Other Material
National Museum of Western Kenya, Kitale
