Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole

The Honourable Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole (1881-1929) 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.

Biography

Cole was the third son of Lowry Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen (1845-1924) and his wife Charlotte Marion Baird. He entered the 10th Royal Hussars as a lieutenant in 1900, at age 19, and went to South Africa for the Second Boer War. 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 gifted him convert|30000|acre|km2. This parcel adjoined Delamere's own convert|100000|acre|km2|sing=on 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 and diatomite around the hot springs near the lake).

In 1917, he married Lady Eleanor Balfour, niece of former British Prime Minister Lord Balfour. Cole was deported to the German East African Protectorate after he shot a farm laborer for stealing one of his favorite Marino rams, imported from New Zealand. He returned secretly to Kekopey dressed as a Somali and his mother pleaded his case with the British government.

Cole's last days were spent in wretched misery. Blind in one eye and confined to a wheelchair in constant pain owing to his rheumatoid arthritis, he shot himself in 1929 at age 48.

Legacy

*A large cairn in the shape of an obelisk was erected by Cole's widow on his favorite spot overlooking the lake, not far from the farmhouse. It is believed that his remains were buried nearby.

*Twenty years after his death, Cole's widow built a stone chapel, the "Church of Goodwill", on the Old Nakuru Road on what was then part of the Kekopey estate. This memorialized her husband and also served as a gesture of thanksgiving for the safe return of their two sons, David Lowry Cole (1918-1989) and Arthur Gerald Cole (b. 1920), from the Second World War.

*Arthur farmed at Kekopey for some years while David farmed at Solio Ranch near Naro Moru. In 1977, the Kekopey Estate was sold off to a cooperative society and the land divided into small plots for individual shareholders. A brick farmhouse, the main building of Kekopey Ranch and built during 1917-18, is preserved today as the Lake Elementaita Lodge.