Jan Gysbert Hugo BOSMAN (aka Vere Bosman di Ravelli) was born in Piketberg on the 24th February 1882. He took the pseudonym di Ravelli in 1902 in Leipzig, when he began his career as a concert pianist. His father, Izak, was from the Bottelary Bosmans, and his mother Hermina (Miena) BOONZAAIER from Winkelshoek, Piketberg, which was laid out by her grandfather Petrus Johannes BOONZAAIER in 1781. One of his sisters taught him music. After taking his final B.A. examinations at Victoria College in Stellenbosch, he left for London on the 1st October 1899 aboard the Briton. Soon after arriving there, he moved to Leipzig. He performed in public for the first time in November 1902. In 1903 he gave his first concert, in Berlin, playing Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. This was followed by a tour of Germany which launched his international career and made him the first South African international concert pianist.

In September 1905 he returned to South Africa and gave many concerts across the country. At one stage he tried to study traditional Zulu music. Amongst his friends he counted Gen. Jan SMUTS and Gustav PRELLER. He was particularly fond of old church music. He made important contributions to Die Brandwag (1910 – 1912), writing about music. There wasn’t yet enough appreciation of music in South Africa and he left for Europe on the 28th November 1910 aboard the SS Bulawayo. Travelling with him were the Afrikaans composer Charles NEL and Lionel MEIRING. They settled in Munich where he gave them piano lessons for a while. After getting his concert pianist career going again, WWI brought things to a halt. By then he was in London. When the war ended he had the Spanish flu and went to Locarno, Italy, in 1919 to recuperate. During this time he studied Arabic and Hebrew, and as a result compiled an Arabic-English glossary for the Koran. In 1921 he published a volume of English poems titled In an Italian Mirror.

He resumed his concert pianist career in 1921 in Paris, and retained Sharp’s of England as his sole agents. He made Florence his base after 1932 but lost his house there due to WWII. In February 1956 he returned to South Africa, staying with Maggie LAUBSCHER. He was made an honorary life member of the South African Academy in 1959. In 1964 he published a fable,st Theodore and the crocodile. He died on the 20th May 1967 in Somerset West.

Sydney Richfield

Sydney RICHFIELD was born on the 30th September 1882 in London, England. He learnt to play the violin and piano. In 1902 he immigrated to South Africa, like an elder brother, where he composed several popular Afrikaans songs. His first composition was the Good Hope March, which became popular and was often heard in Cape Town’s bioscopes and theatres. In 1904 he moved to Potchefstroom, where he lived until 1928. He produced operettas, revitalised the town band, and started a music school. He taught the piano, violin, mandoline and music theory. When the Town Hall was opened in 1909, he put on the operetta Paul Jones by Planquette.
In 1913 he married Mary Ann Emily LUCAS (previously married to a PRETORIUS with whom she had three daughters) and shortly afterwards the family left for England. Sydney joined the Royal Flying Corps band as a conductor in 1916. He composed an Air Force march, Ad Astra, in 1917. In 1920 he was demobilized and returned to Potchefstroom, where he started teaching again and formed a town band which played at silent movies in the Lyric Bioscope. After the band broke up in 1922, Sydney took over an amateur ensemble which included the poet Totius. Through this association, he became involved with Afrikaans music. In 1925 when Potchefstroom put on an historical pageant, he composed the Afrikaans music. By now he was also winning medals in eisteddfodau and other competitions. In 1928 he moved to Pretoria and carried on teaching and composing. He led a brass band that played at the Fountains on Sunday afternoons. Amongst his popular compositions were River Mooi, Vegkop, and Die Donker Stroom. Sydney died in Pretoria on the 12th April 1967. One of his wife’s daughters, Paula, became a popular Afrikaans singer.

Eduard Christiaan Pienaar

Eduard Christiaan PIENAAR was born on the 13th December 1882 on the farm Hoëkraal in the Potchefstroom district, the youngest of the seven sons and seven daughters of Abel Jacobus PIENAAR and Sarah Susanna BOSMAN. During the Anglo-Boer War he was part of Gen. Piet CRONJE’s commando. He was taken prisoner at Paardeberg in February 1900 and sent to St. Helena. After his release, he attended Paarl Gymnasium where he matriculated in 1904. In 1907 he graduated from Victoria College in Stellenbosch with a B.A. degree. This was followed by teaching posts in Sutherland and Franschhoek. In 1909 he married Francina Carolina MARAIS from Paarl. They had four sons and three daughters.

In 1911 he became a lecturer in Dutch at Victoria College. At the beginning of 1914, with a government bursary and the support of the Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Vereeniging, he went to Holland, taking his wife and three children. He studied Dutch language and literature in Amsterdam and Utrecht, obtaining his doctorate in July 1919, with the thesis, Taal en poësie van die Tweede Afrikaanse Taalbeweging. The family returned to South Africa in 1920 and he became a Professor at Stellenbosch, lecturing in Dutch and Afrikaans.

The promotion of Afrikaans was his life’s passion. He was a founding member of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge and served on various committees such as the Voortrekker Monument committee and the Huguenot Monument committee. It was his idea to have the symbolic ox-wagons around the Voortrekker Monument. He died in Stellenbosch on the 11th June 1949. He was returning from watching a rugby match at Coetzenburg when he had a heart attack outside his home in Die Laan.

Haji Sullaiman Shahmahomed

1882 saw the arrival of Haji Sullaiman SHAHMAHOMED from India. He was a wealthy Muslim educationalist, writer and philanthropist. He settled in Cape Town and married Rahimah, daughter of Imam SALIE, in 1888. He bought two portions of Mariendal Estate, next to the disused Muslim cemetery in Claremont, where he planned to build a mosque and academy. On the 29th June 1911 the foundation stone was laid. In terms of the trust, he appointed the Mayor of Cape Town and the Cape ‘s Civil Commissioner as co-administrators of the academy. This caused resentment among the Muslim community because the appointees were non-Muslim. The Aljamia Mosque was completed but not the academy. In August 1923 he wrote to the University of Cape Town, wanting to found a chair in Islamic Studies and Arabic, and enclosed a Union Government Stock Certificate to the value of £1 000. This trust is still active. He was very involved in the renovations of Shaykh Yusuf’s tomb at Faure in 1927, the Park Road mosque in Wynberg; and the mosque in Claremont. He died in 1927.

Professor Ritchie

William RITCHIE was born on the 12th October 1854 in Peterhead, Scotland. He came to the Cape in 1878 as a lecturer in Classics and English at the Grey Institute, Port Elizabeth. In 1882 the South African College in Cape Town appointed him to the chair of Classics, which he held until his retirement in 1930. When the College became the University of Cape Town in 1918, he became its historian. His history of the South African College appeared in two volumes in the same year. It is a valuable account of higher education in the Cape during the 19th century. He died in Nairobi on the 8th September 1931.

 

Thomas Charles John Bain

Thomas Charles John BAIN (1830 – 1893) completed the Homtini Pass in 1882. The pass was built largely due to the determination of the Hon. Henry BARRINGTON (1808 – 1882), a farmer and owner of the Portland estate near Knysna. Construction on the Seven Passes road from George to Knysna, ending in the Homtini Pass, started in 1867.
Thomas was the son of Andrew Geddes BAIN (1797 – 1864) and Maria Elizabeth VON BACKSTROM. His father was the only child of Alexander BAIN and Jean GEDDES. Andrew came to the Cape in 1816 from Scotland with his uncle Lt.-Col. William GEDDES of the 83rd Regiment. He went on to build eight mountain roads and passes in the Cape. Thomas was his father’s assistant during the construction of Mitchell’s Pass, and eventually built 24 mountain roads and passes. One of the very few passes not built by a BAIN in the 1800s was Montagu Pass (George to Oudtshoorn). It was built by Henry Fancourt WHITE from Australia in 1843 – 1847. Two other passes that were in construction by Thomas in 1882 were the Swartberg Pass (Oudtshoorn to Prince Albert, 1880 – 1888) and Baviaanskloof (Willowmore to Patensie, 1880 – 1890).

Henry Barrington

Portland Manor was built by Henry BARRINGTON, based on the family home Bedkett Hall in Shrivenham, England. Henry was immortalised in Daleen MATTHEE’s novel, Moerbeibos. He was the 10th son of the 5th Viscount BARRINGTON, prebendary of Durham Cathedral and rector of Sedgefield. Henry’s mother was Elizabeth ADAIR, grand-daughter of the Duke of Richmond. Henry took a law degree and was admitted to the Bar. He later joined the diplomatic service and in 1842 was sent to the Cape as legal adviser to the Chief Commissioner of British Kaffraria.

A meeting with Thomas Henry DUTHIE of Belvidere led to him buying the farm Portland from Thomas. Thomas inherited the farm from his father-in-law George REX. Henry returned to England where in 1848 he married Georgiana KNOX who was known as the Belle of Bath. They arrived at Plettenberg Bay aboard a ship laden with their family heirlooms, wedding gifts, furniture and farming equipment. They lived in a cottage while the manor house was built over 16 years. It had eight bedrooms, a library, and a large dining room. Seven children were born to them. In February 1868 the Manor was completely gutted in the forest fire that swept from Swellendam to Humansdorp. Henry rebuilt the manor using yellow wood, stinkwood and blackwood from the estate. He tried his hand, often unsuccessfully, at cattle, sheep and wheat farming in addition to bee keeping, apple and mulberry orchards. He is also credited with building the first sawmill in the area. In 1870 Henry was elected to the Cape Parliament.

He died in 1882 and the estate passed to his eldest son, John, who died unmarried in 1900. His sister Kate inherited the estate. She married Francis NEWDIGATE of Forest Hall, Plettenberg Bay, who was killed in the Anglo-Boer War. Portland Manor remained in their family until 1956, when it was bought from Miss Bunny NEWDIGATE by Seymour FROST. He started a restoration programme and eventually sold the property in 1975 to Miles PRICE-MOOR. In the 1990s the property returned to Henry’s descendants when it was owned by Jacqueline PETRIE, one of his great-grandchildren. During her ownership, Portland Manor became a guest house until it was put up for auction in 2000. It is now owned by Denis and Debbie CORNE who have restored Portland Manor once again.
Sources:
South African Music Encyclopaedia, Vol. 1 & 3; edited by J.P. Malan
Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. II
Honey, silk and cider; by Katherine Newdigate, from Henry’s letters and journals
Timber and tides: the story of Knysna and Plettenberg Bay; by Winifred Tapson
Portland Manor: http://www.portlandmanor.com

Tags: Alexander, ANC, Anglo-Boer, biography, Board, Boer, British, Cape, Cape Town, Carolin, Church, Claremont, Durham, Dutch, education, Eisteddfodau, England, Europe, family, farm, Faure, Florence, George, George Rex, German, Germany, Hebrew, Holland, Huguenot, India, Islamic, J.P., Kloof, Knysna, Law, Leipzig, London, Montagu Pass, Music, Nederland, Oudtshoorn, Paarl, Paris, Parliament, Philanthropist, Pianist, Pretoria, Rugby, Scotland, Slim, Somerset West, South African College, St. Helena, Stellenbosch, Swellendam, Thomas, UK, union, University of Cape Town, Voortrekker, White, William, Wynberg, Zulu