A merchant family in early Natal

The Churchill diaries and letters are in the possession of the Local History Museum in Durban. They are about the Natal family named Churchill which was founded by a young English immigrant called Joseph Fleetwood Churchill. Joseph Fleetwood Churchill landed at Durban in November, 1850. Four years after his arrival he persuaded his youngest sister, Marianne, to join him in Natal, and she kept house for him until his marriage in 1857 to Miss Emma Gillespie. Marianne subsequently married Emma's brother, Hugh Gillespie, a leading Durban businessman. There were eleven surviving children of these two unions, though Joseph had only one son, Frank Oliver Fleetwood Churchill, to carry on his name.