THE descendants of a soldier who fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879 have been tracked down to Monmouthshire.

As reported in the Argus in August, Swansea filmmaker Peter Hall was looking for living relatives of Private John Connolly after having the soldier’s grave restored.

After Mr Hall’s appeal was shared in the Argus, word soon spread to Kevin Connolly, who lives in Bulwark, Chepstow.

MORE NEWS:

Mr Connolly and his wife had previously undertaken some genealogy work and suspected they had a relative who was at the famous battle, in which around 150 British and colonial troops defended a position against as many as 4,000 Zulu warriors, though their efforts to identify that soldier had proved inconclusive.

“My son-in-law’s father saw [the article] and sent a link to my daughter,” Mr Connolly said this week. “My wife had done a lot of family history and when we checked we saw it was the same person.”

Mr Connolly, he found, was the great-grandson of Private Connolly. He and his family contacted Mr Hall, who arranged for them to visit Swansea and see where their ancestor was buried.

“We went to the grave, and they laid a wreath – I found it quite moving,” Mr Hall said. “After they had paid their respects, I took them to the streets where John Connolly had lived with his wife and children.”

The family also visited Michael and Matthew Isaac at the Nurse and Payne stonemasons in Swansea. The Isaacs had volunteered their services, for free, when Mr Hall had enquired about a new headstone for Private Connolly’s hitherto unmarked grave.

For Mr Hall, the family’s visit brings closure to what he felt was an injustice – Private Connolly, a veteran of two wars in Africa, had been given a military funeral but was buried in an unmarked grave because his family could not afford a headstone.

“It hurt when I saw that unmarked grave,” he said. “I felt terrible – it wasn’t right.”

Private Connolly’s grave, with its new headstone, was re-dedicated at a ceremony earlier this year attended by a representative of the Royal Welsh Regiment and members of the Swansea branch of the Royal British Legion, but Mr Hall felt locating the soldier’s family was “the last piece of the jigsaw”.

Upon visiting his ancestor’s grave and former neighbourhood, Mr Connolly said the family was “quite emotional” – with particular thought given to his late father, who died two years ago.

“I was really sad my father wasn’t there – he would have been so proud, and over the moon,” he said.

Mr Connolly recalled his father’s stories, passed down through the generations, about an ancestor who had fought in the Angle-Zulu War – but said there had been disappointment when those stories were not able to be confirmed.

“At least now we know everything my grandfather told my father was true,” he said. “It’s been an ongoing story in our family.”

The family has now ordered a replica of Private Connolly’s service medal, and plans to do more research into his life.

“Things have all come together,” Mr Connolly said.