GEORGE NEWS - In 1811, when the Governor, Lord Caledon, created the new George Drostdy, there already existed the independent settlement of Hoogekraal, home to the Outeniqua Khoikhoi, led by their chief, Kaptein Dikkop.
Dikkop had recently had a son, known to history as Paul and - it may be that with the boy’s future in mind - the father approached the London Missionary Society to send a teacher so that his people could be taught “the same things that were taught to the white people”.
Two years later, Rev. John Campbell arrived in the area as part of an inspection of the Missionary Society’s missions. He was instrumental in the arrival of the first missionary, in the form of the Rev. Charles Pacalt in 1813.
While Paul Dikkop was still a little boy, his father died in 1816, followed only two years later by Pacalt. In 1819, Rev. John Campbell revisited the settlement, now named Pacaltsdorp. He was on a visit to South Africa which was to last two years and, at the end of it, he sailed from Cape Town on the Castle Forbes. Campbell records, “I took on board with me Paul, a Hottentot youth about eleven years of age, son of Dikkop, late chief of Hooge Kraal, that he might receive an education in England.“
What little Paul and, indeed, his mother thought about this has to be imagined! The intention, at least, was benign. Paul would be educated in England and would return to his people after that.
The voyage, with a stop at St. Helena, took three months. In a letter to his sister Campbell says, “April 26. Since I wrote the last word above, we have had a tempest for seven long days and nights. Now that it is over, I wish you had seen it; it would have been a display of the power of God to you that you cannot conceive unless by being in it. Raging elements is a good name for such a spectacle! It blew us back about 150 miles, notwithstanding all means to prevent our retreat. My little cabin was soaked with water the whole time.”
Again one can only wonder at what young Paul would have made of this.
Campbell was minister of the Kingsland (Hackney) Independent Chapel in N. London. Paul was sent to school in Shackwell (now Shacklewell), not far from Kingsland. It would have been largely an area of open fields in those days, and perhaps not too unlike “home” for Paul. Here he progresses very well.
1823 August 2, Paul writes the following letter to Campbell:
"Shackwell.
We have one French man and one Portuguese man in our school. I did ride here in the coach, because it rained. The two Madagascar boys are gone to Manchester to learn Latin and Greek. I was very sorry when they went away...
I hope that when you come home that you will fetch me here again; for Joseph and Samuel [presumably Campbell's sons] are very glad to see me. The thieves have been stealing the apples in the garden.
I remain, sir,
Yours, respectfully,
Paul Dikkop."
In September1824, when Paul would have been about 14, he developed a pain in his side and died. Without further evidence, it sounds like a ruptured appendix – a source of near-certain death in those days.
The last word - from Campbell: Paul Dikkop, whom I brought with me to England, and who lately died (we hope in the Lord), was making considerable progress in his education, and likely to be instrumental of good to his fellow countrymen on his return; but God, whose thoughts are not as ours, saw fit to call him to the eternal world, professing, as a sinner, his sole dependence on the Saviour. I bow to his holy will, saying, Amen!"
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