britishcolumbia

Extract from www.bcin.ca/Interface/openbcin.cgi?submit=submit&Chin...

Abstract: During his second period of duty in India from 1903 to 1914, Brigadier-General Herbert Colborne Nanton of the Royal Engineers was presented with a collection of Indian arms by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, a frontier state in northeastern Bengal. Two of these Nanton family heirlooms, a knife and a sword with a scabbard, recently underwent treatment in the Art Conservation programme at Queen's University. The style and construction of the knife identify it as an Afghan or Khyber knife, decorated on both sides and top of the blade with an Indian metal inlay technique known as koftgari. The second weapon can be classified as a talwar with a Persian blade made of watered steel and an Indian hilt also decorated with koftgari inlay. The history of both types of arms is closely linked to the establishment and spread of the Mughal Empire in India during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

There is an avenue called Nanton in Vancouver, British Columbia. I guess it must be named after this gentleman!

From Archives Canada www.archivescanada.ca/english/search/ItemDisplay.asp?sess...

ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Herbert Colborne Nanton, civil engineer soldier, received his education from Upper Canada College, Toronto, and the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ont. Upon graduation in 1883, he joined the C.P.R. as a civil engineer. He left the railway to serve in the Northwest Rebellion with the Midland Regiment. Shortly after the Suppression of the rebellion, he was offered a commission with the Imperial Forces, and was stationed in India.

During the Boer War, Nanton fought in South Africa. He went to France in 1914 to serve as Chief Engineer of an Indian Army Corps, remaining with it until the end of 1915. He was then transferred to the XV Corps, serving with it until 1917, when he was transferred to the XVII Corps, where he remained until the end of the war. After the war he returned to India where he served as Chief Engineer, Southern Army until his retirement in 1921. He died in Victoria, B.C., in 1935.

See also: Morgan, Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 1912.

SCOPE AND CONTENT:
Fonds consists of letters by Herbert Colborne Nanton from France to members of his family in Winnipeg, a diary kept by Nanton at the front in France, 1914-1915, 1917, and notes made by Augustus Meredith Nanton during a trip in 1901 to Russia to explore the possibilities of developing trade links between Canada and Russia.

Also included is a photograph, taken by the Albert Jeakins Studio, Simla, India, of Herbert Colborne Nanton in the dress uniform of a Lieutenant-Colonel, Royal Engineers, Simla, India.

Help piece together the Life Stories of more than 8 million men and women who made a contribution during the First World War at www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/

Breathtaking shot. Thank you for sharing this.

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