A FERMANAGH author who has researched how her cousin, orphaned at the age of eight in South Africa was reportedly taken in by a tribe, before making his way back to Ireland, was featured on an RTE Radio documentary over the weekend.
Called the “Prospector’s Son,” the documentary will hear how Rosemarie Gilchrist from Belcoo, unravels the story of her cousin, Cyril Barton, who went missing in the bush until discovered by a man who traced his family back to Fermanagh. In the documentary, Rosemarie goes in search of what actually happened.
Cyril Barton was born in South Africa in 1875 to Irish parents, Florence and Folliott Barton.  
Cyril’s mother, née Florence Lyons Montgomery, came from an Anglo-Irish family who were landlords in Killargue, County Leitrim. She married Folliott Barton from Pettigo, County Fermanagh, who also came from a landed family. 
Folliott, an engineer, set up a large scale mining enterprise in Belbulbin, County Sligo. However, things didn’t go to plan and the enterprise ended five years into a 21-year lease. He was then declared bankrupt, and a hurried escape to South Africa followed in search of better prospects.  
The late 19th century was a time of colonial expansion in South Africa. The discovery of diamonds and gold led to expanding frontiers and large-scale immigration of people from all over the world. 
After a month-long journey, the Bartons disembarked in Cape Town, and travelled up country where Folliott hoped to find engineering work in new towns and cities where harbours, breakwaters, bridges and dams were being built.
Florence was a graphic letter writer, and her letters written to her family back in Ireland have survived, and document the birth of Cyril in Grahamstown in June 1875, along with the trials and tribulations of Florence, Folliott and Cyril and their travels through South Africa via ox-wagon. 
It was a day-by-day existence where they constantly struggled to make ends meet, and longed to return to Ireland.
After a number of years the letters stop. Rosemarie came across some old family documents from Ireland which give an account of what happened next to Cyril and his parents. 
It revealed how Florence died of malarial fever and following her death, eight-year-old Cyril and his father moved onto the gold fields of the Northern Province. En route, Folliott had his possessions and wagon stolen and was killed. The maid travelling with them grabbed the young boy, Cyril, and took him to her tribe in the mountains.
According to the family account, nothing more was heard of Cyril for many years. 
Years afterwards, his grandmother had a South African newspaper sent to her in which was an account of a white child having been found by a hunter in a wild tribal area far up country. 
Eventually Cyril was brought home to his father’s people in Ireland where he found work in Dublin.
In ‘Documentary on One: The Prospector’s Son’, Rosemarie and documentary maker, Sarah Blake, go in search of Cyril’s story – a trail that moves from Fermanagh, Leitrim and Sligo, to the remote Highveld of the Mpumalanga region of South Africa, and back to Dublin.
The documentary also featured Fermanagh writer, broadcaster and historian Séamas Mac Annaidh, and Ineke Loane who lives in the Barton ancestral home in Pettigo, Co Fermanagh.