Ooty?!
My great grandfather’s name was Andrew Donald Francis. It was an unusual name for an Indian lad, I think you’ll agree, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Andrew was an orphan at a childrens’ home in ‘Ooty’ run by christian missionaries. Many of them were from the UK and they often gave the children in their care traditional British names. Ooty is the nickname for Ottacamund, situated in Tamil Nadu in India. In those days (late 1800s) Ooty was a popular spot for Brits. It had been surrendered to them in the 1700s and much of the land occupying the area was bought up by John Sullivan, a British Governor, around the year 1900. The town was developed heavily by wealthy Brits enjoying the Days of the Raj and railways constructed using venture capital from the Madras Presidency, who holidayed in Ooty during the summers. Many missionaries saw the opportunity to set up orphanages that fed children into ‘mission schools’ where they would be educated in English and introduced to Christianity. Andrew Francis was one of those orphans and he remained in Ooty until his early teens, when he went to live with a wealthy family in Burma as one of their house servants.
