Driefontein to Richmond
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Driefontein Farm to Richmond Driefontein Farm House WHEN OFFICIAL PERMISSION to establish a kerkplaats in the district was granted in 1843, it was decided that Driefontein (Three Springs), the farm of PJ van der Merwe, would be a suitable site, as running through the farm was the Wilgersloot (Willow Creek) River - a tributary of the Ongers - with its reliable source of fresh water from the three springs that gave the farm its name. The Ongers rises south of Richmond in one of the highest and coldest parts of the Karoo, its name being an adaptation of the Afrikaans word ongerus, which in English means ‘uneasy’. And particularly uneasy does its tributary, the Wilgersloot, sometimes become. Relatively dry during the winter months, with the onset of good summer rains it is very often transformed from a meandering stream into a raging torrent, as it hurtles through the old part of town. Early in 1844 the newly appointed governor of the Cape, Major-General Sir Peregrine Maitland, was approached for permission to name the village in his honour. He declined, suggesting instead that it be named for his father-in-law Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, who had died exactly 25 years earlier whilst serving as governor of Upper Canada. The Dutch Reformed Church congregation wasted little time in setting about their business and in October 1844 - two months prior to Maitland’s formal approval of the future town’s name – construction work on their church commenced. On 19 April 1845 the first plots were sold by public auction and the name officially recognised in October of that year, making Richmond only the second formal settlement to be established in the Upper Karoo. Unlike most Karoo dorps, however, the village was laid out in quite irregular fashion, the original dwellings being on either side of Van der Merwe’s farmstead along a road that for a short distance hugged the south bank of the river. Halfway along this road, and at right angles to it, a second road – Kerk Street - led through a ford to the church, all of 350 metres away, whilst some 150 metres to the west of the church, completed in 1847, was the market square. Richmond was at the time, an isolated little dorp in the middle of a vast and inhospitable region of the Karoo. It lay 135km southwest of Colesberg, 140km northwest of Graaff-Reinet and 200km northeast of Beaufort West; its closest neighbour being Victoria West, established just six months prior to it, 90km to the west. Thus in 1848 was the decision was made to create the magisterial district of Richmond; the first in the Upper Karoo. Municipal status, too, came quickly; this being attained in 1854. Anglican Bishop of the Cape, Robert Gray, visited Richmond in April 1850 and had this to say of his experience there: “It was the first time that the prayers of the Church of England had ever been offered; the first time that an English Clergyman had ever set foot in it. Moreover, there is not now, nor has there ever been, I believe, a religious teacher of any English sect in the place. I was pained to find how little acquaintance the English seemed to have with the Liturgy; - none knelt, none even stood, - all sat motionless, even when singing the 100th Psalm … I left the place with very painful and melancholy feelings for Colesberg sleeping at Mr Ackerman’s, who has a property of 60,000 acres in the Karroo: I could not induce him to accept any payment either for myself or my horses”. Members of Richmond’s Dutch Reformed Church congregation, one would imagine, were somewhat better versed in ecclesiastical procedures with the arrival in the early 1860s of their new minister, the Reverend Johannes Jacobus Kotze, for among those attending his induction service in March 1862 were the reverends JH Hofmeyr of Somerset East, Andrew Murray senior of Graaff-Reinet, and Thomas Francois Burgers of Hanover. Burgers held some pretty radical views for a man of his time, and Kotze would soon be called upon to still the waters of a very excited Hanover congregation of the church. Another new arrival in Richmond at much the same time as Kotze’s was Thomas Philippus Theron, originally of Tulbagh. Obviously a very determined young man, he opened a smithy in the town and set about improving his education to the extent that in 1864 he became a teacher at the local school. Theron remained in Richmond until 1870 when he and his wife settled on a section of the farm Gemsbokfontein (Gemsbok Spring) known as De Put, where Theron began work as a private schoolmaster in the employ of the flamboyant Johannes Jacobus Frederick ‘Hans’ Britz. Theron’s wife died in 1872. Three years later he married Aletta A Blomerus and began farming. Convinced of the need to establish a church and trading centre for the community, Theron early in 1876 formed a committee to pursue the matter; then entered into negotiations with farmers for the purchase of suitable land, and in September 1876 the title deeds for two properties were drawn up. And thus did the village of Britstown come into being. In 1879, after 17 years of service to the Richmond congregation, the Reverend Kotze was transferred to Cape Town, his replacement being Johannes Hermanus Michiel Kock, who for seven years had served the breakaway Kruisvallei congregation of Tulbagh. Kock wrote extensively, not only on religious matters, but on the travels of early explorers such as Le Vaillant, Barrow, Lichtenstein and Harris, and would serve the Richmond congregation until his death in his 90th year. He is buried in the church grounds. Kock was succeeded by Adriaan Moorreess whose grandfather was the progenitor of the family in South Africa and had married Anna Barbara Smuts of Malmsbury. Before coming to Richmond, Adriaan Moorreess, too, married a Smuts from the district of Malmesbury, Maria Magdelena Smuts. Moorreess would remain in Richmond until 1890. On 12 September 1882 a preliminary meeting of the Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging and the Afrikaner Bond took place in Cradock. This was followed up by a congress held in Richmond in May 1883, coordinated by Thomas Philippus Theron, the schoolteacher and founder of Britstown, and it was at this latter meeting that the Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging was merged into the Afrikaner Bond, with Theron as its first secretary. Theron remained as the Bond’s secretary until 1897, when he was elected chairman; a post he would retain until his death in October 1908. In 1884 Theron was elected to represent Richmond in the Cape Legislative Assembly and in this office, too, he would remain for the rest of his days. The Afrikaner Bond played a significant role in Cape politics, and although very few of its members held office in the cabinets formed by the predominantly English-speaking politicians of the day, no ministry could survive without its support. One young man who no doubt benefited from the reintroduction of Dutch in the Cape Parliament was Willem Jacobus Viljoen, born in the district of Richmond in 1869. After graduating from the South African College in Cape Town, Viljoen was in 1891 awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Leyden, where he wrote the preliminary examination for a doctorate in Dutch literature. In 1896 the University of Strasbourg awarded Viljoen a PhD magna cum laude for his thesis Beitrage zur Geshichte der Cap-Hollandischen Sprache, in which he defended the view that Afrikaans developed from the 17th century vernacular of North Holland. Although written in German, this was the first doctoral dissertation on Afrikaans. In 1895, and at the age of 26, Viljoen was appointed professor of modern languages and history at Victoria College (later University of Stellenbosch), where he was one of the founders of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Onderwijzers-Unie (ZAOU). In spite of his interest in ‘Cape Dutch’, Viljoen was an outspoken critic of the early Afrikaans movement and advocated the retention of Dutch: he was convinced that the disappearance of Dutch would result in the adoption of English, because Afrikaans had not yet developed as a written language. Dutch, he argued, would soon be made more accessible to Afrikaners by the adoption of Kollewijn’s simplified spelling, and in 1905 – the year in which he became editor of the ZAOU’s mouthpiece, Die Unie - this form of spelling was indeed accepted by the Zuid-Afrikaanse Taalbond. Born in Richmond in October 1885, meanwhile, was Percy Albert Wagner, the son of John Wagner, whose first South African ancestor had emigrated from London in 1805 as a bandmaster and surgeon to the Duke of York’s Regiment. The Wagners were of German origin and, because of the considerable musical talents of many of the regimental bandmaster’s descendants, it is believed that the South African branch of the family is related to the famous Richard Wagner. Percy Wagner’s mother, Bertha Hoffa, was the daughter of Moritz Hoffa, and Mathilde Lelienfield, both of German origin. Her brother was Albert Hoffa, born in Richmond in 1859. Educated in Germany, Hoffa went on to establish the first private orthopaedic unit in that country at Wurzburg, Bavaria before being appointed professor at Berlin University. A pioneer in modern orthopaedics, he was amongst the first to practitioners to use Swedish Massage Therapy in the treatment of patients. On 15 December 1900, just two months after the commencement of the Anglo-Boer War, Justice JBM Hertzog and Commandant Pieter Hendrik Kritzinger, each with about 700 men, crossed the Orange River and entered the Cape Colony.