A brief history...

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.....of the founding of Grahamstown.

Christopher Wedderburn, a tailor from Lindale near Barrow in Furness, together with his wife and young family, was lured by the promise of a farming paradise in Southern Africa to join the 4,500 British 1820 Settlers. The reality must have been somewhat different. The hardships endured in the sea voyage alone, lasting just over four months in cramped, insanitary conditions with no cabins for 'ordinary' settlers, are almost impossible for us to imagine today.....

Throughout history, emigration has frequently been driven by dire economic circumstances, such as those to be found in England after the Napoleonic Wars. At this time there was considerable unemployment in Britain. Soldiers had been demobilised after the Wars, the industrial revolution was in full sway. Grahamstown itself had already been founded by Lt. John Graham in 1812 as the military headquarters for a system of forts along the Fish River, the established border of the Cape Colony. Appointed Governor to the Colony in 1814, Lord Charles Somerset realised that the presence of a concentration of settlers from Europe along this border would limit the need for an excessively strong military presence. He therefore devised a scheme that he believed would solve both problems at a stroke. The scheme was however ill-conceived, and few of the Settlers were able to prosper as farmers. The 100 acre land allotments per family were ridiculously inadequate, especially as the Settlers, who had previously earned their livings as traders or craftsmen, had little or no farming experience. 

There were already Dutch speakers living in the region, who had adjusted quite well. In 1795, the French had overrun Holland and laid claim to her overseas possessions. The British, in order to keep the Cape out of French hands, sent a squadron of ships to Cape Town, defeated the Dutch in a minor battle, and took control for an initial period of 7 years. In 1800 the Dutch East India Company, old, corrupt and top-heavy, went bankrupt. When the British handed the Cape back in 1802, it was not to the Company, but to the Government of Holland. The return to Dutch rule was short lived. With Napoleon running rampant at the time, Britain once again sent a squadron of ships to seize the Cape to keep it from French hands. The settlers, who still thought of themselves as Dutch, were now to be British subjects in perpetuity. In truth, they were no longer Dutch. After so many generations of separation from Holland, their language had undergone a remarkable metamorphosis, and taken aboard all manner of new words and usages from the various influences that the settlers had encountered. The British decided that this language was a worthless patois, not worth preserving. English was decreed the only language in which education would be provided and in which official business could be conducted.

But the British, now in power, proved either unwilling or unable to do anything about the troubled situation along the Eastern Frontier, where the farmers had been suffering greatly from Xhosa incursions and raids on their cattle.

The new British Settlers were settled in a belt of small farms along the Great Fish River and told to plant wheat (the Governor reasoning that no one had ever seen the Xhosa drive off a field of wheat). As a device to put an end to the Xhosa raiding, this scheme was a failure. Furthermore, the crops were to fail time and time again. The Settlers therefore began drifting into the towns, where they reverted to their former trades. The authorities at first opposed this exodus from the land, but eventually granted the Settlers building plots around Grahamstown. Like the Huguenots in 1688, the 1820 Settlers brought many talents to a community that was to benefit greatly from their skills. Beautifully restored groups of these cottages can still be seen around Artificer's Square in New and MacDonald Streets, and many of the shops remain a reminder of those early days of trading. Thus Grahamstown changed from a military settlement into a thriving market town. 

By 1836, the Dutch community along the Eastern Frontier had given up on the British. They decided to leave the Colony by trekking north-eastwards into the interior, where they knew there were lands for the taking.

Mandela's speech at the unveiling of the new 1820 Settlers Memorial in Grahamstown in 1996 accurately portrays how those emigrants had been used as political chess pieces "....Pawns in a larger game, the 1820 Settlers came to the part of Africa at the behest of an imperial power seeking to use its own poor and unemployed in a bid to advance conquest and imperial ambitions. Though their own impulse to freedom rendered them largely unsuitable for that task, they were nevertheless caught up on the wrong side of history, unable or unwilling to acknowledge as equals those into whose homeland they had been implanted....."

Mandela's words were none the less conciliatory on the whole, and hint at an understanding of the dilemmas and difficulties which faced the Settlers on their arrival. It is a testament to the fortitude and character of the original Settlers that they survived survived disease, hostility, the unfamiliar terrain, not to mention inadequate planning and manipulation by the British authorities, with their descendants, including large numbers of Wedderburns, to be found throughout the world today. It is a matter of some pride to be able to say that one is descended from the 1820 Settlers.

 

Grahamstown - a focal point for the Wedderburn Settlers to South Africa in 1820 - is stratagically positioned in a temperate valley the Eastern Cape, 125km from Port Elizabeth and 180km from East London, between the coastal plain and the hinterland. Originally a military settlement (established in 1812) it began to expand and prosper during the 1820s as a number of disillusioned Settlers began to leave their farms.....