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THE DIARY OF ROBERT JOHN MULLINS (1833-1 91 3) Robert John Mullins aged 23, taken just before his marriage to Harriet Jane Roe on 24 April 1862 Harriet Jane (Jennie) Roe aged 16 taken just before her marriage to Robert John Mullins on 24 April 1862 The Mullins Family Standing left to right: Penna, Alec, Bob, Ethel, Oxo, Basil Hampden Jones Seated left to rig h t: Nonie, Charles, Cuthbert, Jennie, Win, Ruth, Robert John, Hilda, Jane in Robert John Mullins Harriet Jane [Jennie] Mullins IV is volume Ijas been printed and bound by dye Departm ent of 'Jfistory JZlyodes Xlniversity Jt is dedicated to dye memory of D r B renda Niclyolb uflyo collaborated witly N a n cy Clyarton in its preparation for publication, and wlyo died shortly after reviewing dye final manuscript. Editors: Dr B.M. Nicholls N.C.J. Charton 1998 VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Editors wish to acknowledge the generous help and encouragement of many people. The late Mr Jock Sturrock and his wife Judy (granddaughter of Robert and Jenny Mullins) gave generously of time, money and effort. We have received generous help from members of the Rhodes University staff in a number of Departments: African Languages, Law, Classics, Music and English in particular, from Mr Oakley West of the Geography Department who spent many hours researching the diary for the maps. We are grateful to them for specific help given and for the way they have strengthened our sense of the University as a community of scholars. The members of the Cory Library staff have contributed greatly in their constant and characteristic helpfulness. We have cause to be grateful to a number of assistants who have helped to read the manuscript and check the typescript, i.a. Mr R Laverde and Mr A Cook. Within South Africa, the Librarian of the Diocesan School for Boys (Bishop's) helped us identify some individuals. Thanks are due, too, to overseas scholars and librarians who helped Nancy Charton when she worked overseas, and to Mrs V Pennington, the Archivist at Lancing College, to ProfessorN Ellenburgerofthe United States Naval Academy, and to the Curator of the Maritime Museum, Greenwich in London. We acknowledge gratefully the skill, patience and experience of Mrs C Charteris, Secretary of the Department of History, who worked with us through successive drafts of the text until we were all satisfied that it was as good as we can make it. Professor Margaret Donaldson read the final manuscript and has made a significant contribution to this volume. We value and are grateful for her scholarship, so readily shared. While we have sought to give our readers - and our subject - the best we can, mistakes, if and where they occur, are our responsibility. SUMMARY OF CONTENT This volume of the Graham's Town Series offers its readers extracts from the diary and the correspondence of Robert John Mullins, Anglican missionary, priest and in due time principal of what was called the Kafir Institution in Grahamstown and as such a pioneer in the of western education to black South Africans. After his marriage to Jennie Roe he was assisted in all that he undertook by a loyal and devoted wife. The editors have made use of the earlier diaries and manuscripts because of the light they shed on the conditions in the eastern Cape frontier in the crucial years before and after the cattle-killing. While Mullins' own observations are those of a young missionary his remarks and the record of his experiences are themselves to be viewed in the light of the recent scholarship in regard to the cattle-killing which reveals the multisidedness of an appalling social tragedy. What Mullins wrote records, for better or for worse, episodes which show how South Africans of different origins have in the past regarded one another. Mullins was a committed Christian eager to offer to all whom he could reach the salvation of Christ in which he so fervently believed. He was often intolerant of Xhosa customs he could not understand as well as often perplexed and discouraged. But the overwhelming impact of this record is what it took to be a missionary: courage, commitment, humour, resilience, a capacity to endure physical hardship and enjoy physical activity. All these were qualities which Robert John Mullins possessed in abundance. As his diary shows they were the qualities the frontier demanded. Working over a long period of time Nancy Charton and Brenda Nicholls (who became a co­ editor in 1991) have transcribed the diary entries and the correspondence working with the help vii of others from the often very difficult manuscript sources, while Nancy Charton herself investigated the sites of some of the missionary activity. The help of members of the Mullins family (notably Judy Sturrock and her husband) is gratefully acknowledged. Earlier generous contributions made it possible to obtain a typescript from which the editors could work. Every effort has been made to identify the individuals (Xhosa, Tembu and white) and events (both in South Africa and abroad) which are alluded to in the diary. This was a time consuming task and the editors are grateful to all who helped them with it. The book consists of an introduction and eleven chapters. The introduction describes the material and the methods of the editors, discusses the religious and social conditions of the time, addresses the problems of interpartition presented by the cattle-killings, turns attention to the dilemmas of missionaries and then focusses the attention of readers on the diarist Robert John Mullins (with Jennie as later stand-in) as well as the value of the diary. There is much to interest the educationist, the theologian, the economist, and the historian. Chapter 1 deals with Mullins' voyage to the Cape in 1854 and the extracts record the experiences of an exuberant as well as a dedicated lad of sixteen. Chapter 2 deals with the arrival at the Cape in 1854. Chapter 3 gives us a picture of Mullins' experience of Graham's Town in 1854. Chapter 4 deals with Mullins' experience at St Luke's Mission. Chapter 5 covers the period of 1856-57 when Mullins was at Balotwa and the cattle-killing frenzy developed. Chapter 6 describes the hunger and turmoil which followed in the wake of the cattle-killing. Chapter 7 describes the founding of a new station, St Peter's Gwytyu. Chapter 8 is concerned with life at St Peter's in the early months of 1858. Chapter 9 covers the last months at St Peter's and his journey to the Bashee. Chapters 10 and 11 cover the early years in the married life of Robert John Mullins and his wife Jennie. The Mullins' delight in family life is strongly evident in their joy in each other's company and their anxious joy over their first-born baby. Chapter 11 gives the reader the texts of letters written by Robert John and his wife Jennie in the years which marked the end of Mullins' career as a frontier missionary, and the opening to him of the opportunity to become Principal of the Kafir Institution. A map carefully prepared by Mr Oakley West of the Geography Department, with the assistance of Deby Brody, enables the reader to trace the frontier journeys of Robert John Mullins and his wife Jennie who were among the pioneers of frontier societies who did their best to make available to others what they believed to be the eternal benefits of the Christian faith, and the accompanying mores of the 'western' culture of their day. VIII TABLE OF CONTENTS Frontispiece ........................................................................................................................................... i D edication.................................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgem ents....................................................................................................................................vi Summary of c o n te n t..................................................................................................................................vi Table of contents .....................................................................................................................................viii List of illustrations .................................................................................................................................... ix Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................................. 40 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................................. 54 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................................. 65 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................................... 73 Chapter 5 ............................................................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 6 ............................................................................................................................................. 144 Chapter 7 ............................................................................................................................................

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