Ivar Thord-Gray (sometimes Gray, Ivar Thord), soldier, adventurer and man of many talents, was the son of August Reinhold Hallström and his wife Anna Hilda Andriette Svensson. He was originally named Thord Ivar Hallström, but changed his name when he joined the British military in 1896. He went to sea at the age of 17 and came to South Africa in 1895. When the war with the Matabele broke out in present Zimbabwe in 1896 he joined the British Army. From 1897 to 1902 he served in the Cape Mounted Rifles, attaining the rank of lieutenant. After the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) he was a cavalry captain during the Bambatha rebellion in 1906. Later in 1906, having spent 12 years in southern Africa, he was sent to East Africa where he became an instructor and inspector for the British police.

Thord-Gray published "Notes on the geology of the Lydenburg goldfields" in the Transactions of the Geological Society of South Africa (Vol. 8, pp. 66-81) in 1905. He was a member of the society, and of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1906. Around this time he participated in the discussion of a paper by G.G. Holmes* on "The Pretoria Series in the Marico District". The discussion was published in 1907.

As a professional soldier Thord-Gray fought on the side of the United States in the Filipino war of 1907-1908, with the French in Cochin China, with the Italians in Lybia (1911), with the Chinese army in the 1913 revolution, on the revolutionary side in Mexico (1913), and with the British in World War I (1914-1918). From 1925 he lived in the United States and became an American citizen in 1931. He wrote Attack and defense in trench warfare (1917) and a book in Swedish on Mexican temple ruins (1923).

List of sources:
Geological Society of South Africa. Transactions, 1906, Vol. 10, list of members.

Hall, A.L. A bibliography of South African geology to the end of 1920. Pretoria: Geological Survey, Memoir No. 18, 1922.

Ivor Thord-Gray. Geni. Retrieved on 26 January 2021 from https://www.geni.com/people/Ivor-Thord-Gray/6000000010298963925

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Thord Gray.

National Union Catalogue, pre-1956 imprints. London: Mansell, 1968-1980.

South African Association for the Advancement of Science. Report, 1905/6, list of members.

Windquist, A.H. Scandinavians and South Africa: Their impact on the cultural, social and economic development of pre-1902 South Africa. Cape Town: Balkema, 1978.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2021-01-26 12:04:39