Elizabeth BUSCHE [7728]

   Another name for Elizabeth was BUSH.

  General Notes:

Elizabeth Parke née Bush (1790-1880), started a boarding house at Grahamstown SA. The family moved to Capetown in 1838, where she started a boarding house in an old brewery at Papenboom, Newlands, a suburb of Capetown. At first, these boarding houses were modest operations. In a 1907 letter, Lizzy Arbuthnot née Ball, one of Elizabeth's nieces, described one of them as a place where her grandmother took in a few Indian people as borders when they were at The Cape for health. Then Amelia's grandmother opened what would become the world-famous Parke's Hotel in Cape Town, it was featured in recommendations from as far away as Bombay.

A glimpse of the style with which Elizabeth Parke and her daughters entertained in the 1830s & 1840s can be found in the account of a dinner she hosted in honour of Sir Benjamin D'Urban, sometime Governor in the Cape Colony .

They say Mrs. Parke excelled all former efforts on this occasion, both in the extent and variety of her Bill of Fare. "A spirit that walketh abroad unseen and unmolested" tells me that there were - 10 Hams, 12 Turkeys, 12 Tongues, 28 Ducks, 28 Fowls, 3 Rounds Beef (large), 6 Joints Lamb, 6 ditto Veal, 6 ditto Beef - these were roasted - 32 made dishes, 6 Raised Pies, 12 Tureens Mock Turtle Soup, 5 Giblets ditto, Game, 10 Dishes Vegetables, 3 Large Cake, and 1 Small ditto, Jelly Blancmange, Pastry, and Fruits of all descriptions. No wonder after such a dinner as this, that the floor should require sanding here and there in patches the next morning, and that with the vibration of the "hip, hip, hipping" the glass before the East India Company's Rules and Regulations should be smashed into shivers. April 2nd, 1846 Sam Sly's African Journal

This hotel was key to the survival of the Parke family.
Ref: The Silver Bowl http://sharonoddiebrown.blogspot.ca/2015_08_01_archive.html

Elizabeth married William Tollemache PARKE [7719] [MRIN: 2577], son of PARKE [22672] and Unknown. (William Tollemache PARKE [7719] was born in 1790 and died in 1852.)