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Thanks Maxd, I concur with your thinking. I may do a bit more digging but I think I'll move on to his WWII career in the South African Artillery in North Africa. Amazing how much conflict a person who was not particularly keen on the military could get into in one lifetime! He was even blindfolded and nearly executed during a rebellion on the Witwatersrand between the 2 World Wars...

Seriously though, he was born of a family that had maintained strong English ties and he was a committed to the relationship with Britain, despite it becoming increasing unpopular in South Africa. He refused to buy German or Japanese cars his whole life, and was very negative about those peoples in the abstract. On an individual level, however (for example with the local German parish priest) he could have a convivial conversation. His attitudes were common of a category of both English and Afrikaans speaking South Africans, but became a minority opinion.

I suspect the second Anne Farrow is probably the correct one simply because her birth date is closer, although I haven't seen her marriage document and don't have any other way of finding out.

Anne Farrow, widow of Dere/Vere Anson seems so compelling apart from the discrepancy in birth dates, Shaun. Could there be an explanation for that, such as a misunderstanding about her age by those at her death?

All I have is that she was married to Sgt Thomas Davis of HM 24th Foot, at Cape Town by the R Jones Chaplain to the Foreces at the Cape, on 30/9/1807. A couple of years later the Regiment sailed for India, and their children - John, David and Rosanna - were baptized at Fort William. The parents are listed as having died in 1818 in Dinapore. I suspect it was from cholera, as there was a massive cholera epidemic sweeping through that part of India then. It's not know how the children went back to England, but David Davis joined the Royal Artillery when he was 14 in 1826. He had children in several countries and at sea, depending upon his postings, and they seem to have been baptized by the nearest Army padre, as some were baptized CoE and some as Catholic. I didn't think that Anne could have been widowed. What was the maiden name?