The McAlister and Bassage Family Medals

Three: Guide J. S. McAlister, Field Intelligence Department, late Interpreter, Army Medical Department

South Africa 1877-79, 1 clasp, 1879 (Interpr. J. S. McAlister.); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, no clasp (Guide J. S. McAlister. F.I.D.); King's South Africa 1901-02, 1 clasp, South Africa 1902 (Guide J. S. McAlister. F.I.D.) nearly extremely fine, the first very scarce (3) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The McAlister and Bassage Family Medals.

View
Collection

Single clasp to K.S.A. not confirmed. Sold with original photograph of a group of Army Medical Department men with field ambulances in South Africa, and another of McAlister on horseback.

James Simpson McAlister was born in 1848, a son of Robert McAlister (b. 1826) of Claton, Glasgow, and Christina Boyle (b. 1821) of Kirkenton, Dumbartonshire. In 1853 Robert McAlister had a farm, ‘Hillside’, in Melmoth, Natal. His son, J. S. McAlister was an Inspector of Police in New Germany when, on 25 September 1873, he married his first wife, Elizabeth Boyle, by whom he had two children, Robert and Charlotte, before she died at the early age of 29. He married secondly, Gertruida Peternella Wilson, of Humansdorp, Eastern Cape. They had five children, the eldest of whom, Susanna Jacoba Theodora Dawelina, married John James Bassage on 22 August 1906 (See Lot 251).