Over 1000 graves photographed from Carnarvon Cemetery in the Cape Province.  You can begin searching here or you can browse through our gallery

The town of Carnarvon was named after  Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert  the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. He was born in London on 24 June 1831  and died  29 June 1890 in London . As a  Conservative, he became a member of the House of Lords in 1849 and was Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (1858-59) he was the strongest influence in the Colonial Office. He became Colonial Secretary (1866-67) when the act implementing Canadian federation was passed. In his next term of office (1874-78) he attempted to federate South Africa. He first envisaged a federation based on the Cape and including Griqualand West, Natal and the Orange Free State. As both the Cape and the O.F.S. were hostile, the London conference of August 1876 failed. He then planned a scheme based on the Transvaal, Griqualand West and Natal, which he hoped the Cape and the O.F.S. would have to join later. With a view to this, Shepstone annexed the Transvaal in April 1877 (arousing much disquiet in the Cape and the O.F.S.), and a permissive act for confederation was passed by the British Parliament.

Carnarvon resigned in 1878, and in 1881, when the Transvaal Republic resumed its independence, it became clear that confederation imposed by the imperial government could not succeed. Carnarvon in the Cape was named after him.

 

Lord Carnarvon married firstly Lady Evelyn, daughter of George Stanhope, 6th Earl of Chesterfield, in 1861. They had one son and three daughters. After her death in 1875 he married secondly his first cousin Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of Henry Howard, in 1878. They had two sons, of whom the eldest was the Hon. Aubrey Herbert and the youngest George. His eldest daughter Lady Winifred married as her second husband Lord Burghclere and was the mother of the Hon. Evelyn, first wife of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. Carnarvon’s son Aubrey was the father of Laura Herbert, who was the second wife of Evelyn Waugh. Lord Carnarvon died at Portman Square, London, in June 1890, aged 59. His second wife survived him by almost forty years and died in February 1929, aged 72.

 

Around  1850 the Government moved over 100 Bantu refugee families who had been dispersed as a result of the wars between Shaka and Moshesh to this neighbourhood. In 1860 the village of Harmsfontein was established in the territory of the Rhenish mission station Schietfontein. In 1874 the name was changed to Carnarvon in honour of the British Colonial Secretary. The town became a municipality in 1882.  Present day Lord Carnarvon (George Reginald Oliver Molyneux Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon) and Lady Carnarvon lives in Highclere castle.