Henry Boase Austin was educated at Grey College, Bloemfontein, to the age of 15, after which he worked as a clerk for seven years. In October 1889 he was appointed as a clerk in the office of the surveyor-general of the Orange Free State (now the Free State), and in December 1897 rose to chief clerk and examiner of deeds in the Deeds Office. In the year the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) broke out he published a poem entitled Boers, British and Colonials (brotherliness becomes comrades) (Bloemfontein, 1899). Following the British occupation of the Orange Free State he was appointed by the British administration in March 1901 as assistant registrar of deeds for the Orange River Colony and promoted to registrar of deeds in July 1905 - a post he filled until the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. During the resulting amalgamation of the various colonial administrations in 1911 he retired on pension and settled in Somerset West. On 21 July 1921 he married Grace Susanna Stone.

Austin's hobbies were astronomy, photography, gardening, and science in general. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in January 1908), and was a Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute, a member of the Society of Arts of London, and a freemason. In 1903 he joined the recently established South African Association for the Advancement of Science and during its meeting in Bloemfontein in 1909 read a paper on "The tercentenary of the telescope". The paper was not published in the Report of the meeting. Also in 1903 he joined the Philosophical Society of the Orange River Colony, which was founded that year, and read two papers on astronomy of which summaries were published in its Transactions. One was titled "The glory of the heavens" (Vol. 1, 1903-7, p. 46), while the other dealt with "Comet Daniel" (Vol. 1, 1903-7, p. 70).

List of sources:

British 1820 Settlers to South Africa. Transcribed marriage entries for Austin. https://www.1820settlers.com/genealogy/settlerbrowsemarrs.php?name=AUSTIN as on 26 January 2023.

Civil service list of the Orange River Colony, 1907, 1910.

Men of the times: Old colonists of the Cape Colony and Orange River Colony. Johannesburg: Transvaal Publishing Co., 1906.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 10 January 1908, Vol. LXVIII (3), p. 11 [Fellows elected].

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Austin, Henry Boase / Austin, H.B.

Philosophical Society of the Orange River Colony. Transactions, Vol. 1, 1903-7.

South African Association for the Advancement of Science. Report, 1903, 1905/6, 1909, 1910.

South African bibliography to the year 1925, Vol. 5. Cape Town: South African Library, 1991.

South African who's who, 1908, 1909.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2023-01-26 09:08:51