J.C. Chase was an 1820 settler who travelled to the Cape with Bailie's party. He was a man of some standing and education. There is evidence that he was a member of the Worshipful Company of Founders, whose arms were later adopted by Aliwal North, but he was reputedly a bookseller in London in 1819. Clearly the reading and writing of books were among his chief preoccupations at the Cape. He was particularly interested in travel and exploration and was one of the early white visitors to Griqualand. But his main objective at the Cape was probably to seek the security of a government appointment, and he held quite a succession of offices until he secured a permanent post in the administration. Even then he was moved from Graham's Town to Albert before he found his niche at Uitenhage, where he was Civil Commissioner and Resident Magistrate from 1849 to 1863. Intro., p.1.

James Erith, a freeholder of the country of Kent, was one of the “1820 Settlers" who emigrated to the Cape and were settled mainly in the Zuurveld in the present district of Albany. This investigation was prompted by the fact that though he was by no means the settler to suffer misfortune and injustice, he was the only proprietor of a small party who eventually secured compensation. The case was the case of James Erith but the initiative and persistence was that of his wife, Jane Erith, who made in all five voyages spread over twelve years, before she secured some at least of the ends she sought and the family settled in Cape Town. The Eriths fought their case with the respective Colonial Offices for twelve years in all, and in the case of the Colonial Office, London, confronted no less than four Secretaries of State in five successive Cabinets. In the course of their struggle the Eriths received (a) the balance of their deposit; (b) cash compensation for cattle stolen by the Xhosa, and in the fina1 arbitration in 1832 the sum of £500 cash. James Erith, master baker, remains a rather shadowy figure, sharp-sighted to his own interest, querulous and not very effective. The triumph of 1832 was in the main the triumph of Jane, his wife, an amateur and robust Portia. Shrewd, tenacious, deft in argument this importunate woman knew how to stand her ground; there can have been few women who secured passage on a naval vessel and then allowed the Admiralty to submit its account to the Colonial Office. How the Eriths subsisted between their eviction from Waaye Plaats in 1823 and the arbitration award of 1832, has not been established. On occasion in London Mrs. Erith stayed with the Rev. R. Stewarts, Rutland House, Black Heath Road in Greenwich: in Cape Town it is believed that Erith plied his old trade. When he died there, in 1869 at the age of seventy nine, he left a house and three cottages to his daughter Ellen: mortgaged property in the district of Caledon, to his son-in-law George Budge : a house and three mortgaged properties in Simon’s Town to his daughter Anne Budge. He left an income of £24 per annum to his daughter Jane Moodie, widow of the late John Powell. The records used in this study, in addition to those printed in Theal, were the series C.O. 48 from the Public Record Office, London, now available on microfilm in the Cory Library at Rhodes University and records of the District of Albany in the Archives, Cape Town. The investigation has, it is thought, thrown new light on the background to the emigration scheme of 1819, on the mishandling of the Settlers in the Zuurveld after their arrival in the Cape, and on the punctilious attention to detail given by the Colonial Office, London. While it is true that the interests of the Eriths were probably smothered in the Tory endeavour to damp down the attack on Somerset in l826-1827, the Secretaries of State are by no means discredited by this analysis. It sasys much for any pattern of administration that in the thick of the Reform Bill crisis, the efforts of a single obscure member of Parliament, Mr. J O Briscoe, could secure a final arbitration award.

In 1959, the late Miss M.G. Masson of Salem, at the instigation of Mrs. Dorothy Rivett-Carnac, presented a bundle of Gush family papers to the Cory Library. Among these papers was a series of letters written by Hannah Dennison, who came to South Africa in 1820, as a member of Carton's party from Nottinghamshire. This thesis offers a transcription of the letters together with editorial comment, and the letters from the main source for a reconstruction of the life and attitudes of a most enterprising woman.

Preface: The arrival of the 1820 Settlers in South Africa and their impact on the political and social life of the Cape Colony has been well covered by historical research. This work is an attempt to illuminate yet another area in which their impact was felt. The failure of the settlement scheme under which these people were introduced into the colony has tended to detract from the importance which agriculture played in the early years of their residence in South Africa. The failure of the first crops may well have ended the attempts by many to establish themselves on the land but for others it was the beginning of a process of adaptation to the agricultural conditions of a new country. In this they were remarkably successful and within a decade the English farming community of the eastern frontier was prospering. The theme of this work traces the progress of these farmers through the initial period of crop failures, which condemned the settlement in the eyes of many, and through the ensuing years and later misfortune, the Sixth Frontier war of 1834-35. Both these setbacks were very significant in moulding the development of agriculture as practised by these farmers. In the past, historians have tended to over-estimate the reverse suffered by these farmers during this frontier war. The seemingly paradoxical questions raised by the rapid recovery of this community after the war have been left largely unanswered. Some attempt is made in the pages which follow to shed new light on this issue. In the first three chapters of this work the letters written by Thomas Philipps to his family in Britain form the chief source of information. Much of this correspondence has already found wider publication in a volume edited by Arthur Keppel-Jones, but there are significant omissions, particularly with regard to Philipps' commentary on agricultural matters. Unfortunately, this series of letters ends in 1830, and the chief sources for the latter period of this work are the various entries made) on agricultural matters, in the Graham's Town Journal, together with the farm diary of James Collett, another frontier farmer. From these, and various other works, it has been possible to trace the major developments of this farming community.

This thesis is an exploration of diaries and letters written by middle-class English-speaking settler women living on the Eastern Cape frontier between 1820 and 1890. By according primacy to these women’s experiences and perceptions, it aims for a greater understanding of women’s encounters with the frontier, and how these were articulated in their personal writing. An emphasis on the recurrent themes of ill-health, fearfulness and solitude undermines the popular myth of the brave, conquering, invincible pioneers which dominates settler historiography to date. The tensions felt by white women living on the frontier disrupted their identities as middle-class Victorian ‘ladies’, and as a result these women either constantly re-established a sense of self, or absorbed some aspects of the Eastern Cape, and thus redefined themselves. Settler women’s experiences of the frontier changed little during the seventy year period spanned by this study, indicating that frontier life led to a rigidification and reinforcement of old, familiar values and behaviours. Rather than adapting to and embracing their new surroundings, settler women sought to duplicate accepted, conventional Victorian ideals and customs. White Victorian women identified themselves as refined, civilized, moral and respectable, and perceived Africa and Africans as untamed, immoral, uncivilized and threatening. To keep these menacing, destabilizing forces at bay, settler women attempted to recreate ‘home’ in the Eastern Cape; to domesticate the frontier by rendering it as familiar and predictable as possible. The fear, illness and solitariness that characterise settler women’s personal writings manifest their attempts to eliminate alienating difference, and record their refusal to truly engage with the frontier landscape and its inhabitants.

From preface: This study of the British settlers of 1820 in South Africa uses one party of emigrants as a unit of historical research. In unfolding their story, it attempts to discover how far the standard assumptions about the 1820 settlement are borne out by the historical facts. No systematic set of hypotheses for investigation was established in advance; instead, the structure of the thesis has been determined by the course of the narrative, and the main issues have emerged spontaneously as it has progressed. Although the chronology has been maintained as far as possible, the narrative itself does not follow an entirely straightforward course. The emigrant party of eighty-four men and their families under the leadership of John Bailie which is the subject of the study was officially subdivided five weeks after landing at Algoa Bay, and the dispersal of its members to the established towns of the colony began even sooner. At the end of the three-year period laid down as a residential qualification by Government, less than a third remained to claim land on the party's location in Albany.

The "Reminiscences" of Thomas Stubbs are one of several such compositions which have survived from the 1820 Settlers. The manuscript offers one of the fullest and most lively accounts of frontier life, and the experiences of the Settlers as seen through the eyes of Thomas Stubbs. The object of this thesis has been to reconstruct the life of Thomas Stubbs which has proved an arduous yet absorbing task and to comment upon and evaluate some of the views Stubbs expressed when he wrote the "Reminiscences" between 1874 and 1875, as well as to test, where possible, the validity of the opinions and sentiments formed during a half-century's acquaintance with the Eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope.

I first read the diaries of Thomas Shone in 1971, when working on manuscripts in the Cory Library, Rhodes University, for the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. The diaries were a significant source of South African English; but more than that, they created a moving and vivid picture of one man's life and personality, which made a deep impression. Written daily (unlike many other settler writings, which are reminiscences), the diaries proved to be a journey into the interior life of Thomas Shone, with all his guilt, pain and occasional joys, documented in his idiosyncratic style. Photographs show Thomas to have been a man with a determined, even hard, mouth, and piercing eyes under rather lowering brows. If he was like his son, Thomas junior, he was "erect and bright", and of the "typical Shone build, rather stumpy and fairly broad." His command of language suggests a good education and a sharp intellect, strangely at variance with his description as a labourer. His writing is imbued with the archaic ring of the King James Bible, and much of the charm of the diaries lies in their movement between the sublime and the mundane, as when Shone breaks a discussion of his need to be faithful to God, to note that "Sarah sat a hen on 22 eggs." Shone's diary is an intensely personal document, yet there are signs that he was at times conscious of a possible audience. His use of the phrase "My friends" to address his readers " is likely to have been part of a convention of the time, rather than overt acknowledgement of the presence of an audience; however at the most personal level of all, his relationship with his mistress, he was not explicit, but employed a form of code (.∶.) Furthermore, there is evidence that he kept a rough diary, from which he later made a neat copy. Thomas began his diary in order to record his attempt to stay away from drink, but his writing soon came to mean more to him than this. He gradually introduced notes on his daily activities, and his temptation to drink became just one part of a personal history. From 5 August 1838, when he first wrote of the loss of his wife, the diary became an important outlet for his misery. Despite his unhappiness, Thomas took delight in the use of sarcasm and wry humour to comment on the foibles of humanity. "Me and Billy went to Mandy's; I cut my thumb and three trees", he wrote; and "Indian corn bread makes my belly ache... (My relations have the mind ache; I believe it is worse than the belly ache.)" "Religion is flying away to other parts as fast as it can; the religion here is money, and Cattle and a covetious Spirit for other men's goods ", he grumbled of the Clumber community. The most effective (and prolonged) use of his gift for sharp conment may be found in his description of the watchnight service at Clumber. Shone seems to have possessed a natural flair for language, and used metaphor and simile to good effect, as in the following examples: "Now am I like a dove that as lost his mate"; Every thing seems quiet; I have still a war in my mind"; "Riches very often finds wing and flys away"; and "My mind is like the troubled sea, never at rest". He often showed an affinity for rhythm and alliteration, probably as a result of his familiarity with Biblical English: "These are my days of grief and sorrow"; "poor poverty"; and "Hard is my fate... all things seem to go contrary, strive which way I will." These examples of language provide a strong contrast with his reporting of everyday activities: Shone changes from one linguistic register into another in his movement from introspective to factual writing. At times Shone achieves an extraordinary vividness in his description of small incidents, as in his stories of encounters with monkeys, or his report of an altercation with his son Jack. One of the loveliest passages is his account of a day spent on his old location at Scott's Bottan. Thomas was "political" only insofar as politics touched his own life. For the political historian the diaries are frustrating; except for his descriptions of the War of Mlanjeni, Shone shows little interest in the wider issues of his time. However, the diaries show the complex web of relationships in a small community, and give insights into commercial interaction, domestic activities, marriage ties, religious attitudes, family behaviour and interpersonal conflicts, all set within the political tensions of the frontier society. As the diaries progressed, and Thomas Shone aged, he weed from being an active participant in the life of the frontier, to being an onlooker and commentator. Possessed of a mind (and tongue) which isolated him from many of his neighbours, he was no doubt also separated from his community by his relationship with Ann Hiscock and by his heavy drinking. The diaries became his vehicle for expressing the inexpressible; and in the end it was religion which gave him solace. It is the "interior" diary which provides much of the fascination which Shone's writings hold for the modern reader. Professor Guy Butler has pointed out that writing was a secondary activity for the settlers, whose chief preoccupation was survival in a difficult environment. Shone's diaries certainly reflect his economic struggle; but it is their portrayal of his pilgrimage through life which makes them remarkable.