GEORGE NEWS - Like so many others who had to celebrate their special day at home during the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown, our town's 209th birthday anniversary passed almost unnoticed last week Thursday, 23 April.
Let's take a moment and acknowledge the history of George - the sixth oldest town in South Africa - rooted at the foot of a mountain in the district of Outeniqualand.
Brief
On 23 April 1811 the Earl of Caledon, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, issued a proclamation to form a new magisterial district in Outeniqualand*.
He named the both the district and the town George after the reigning monarch of England, George III.
This district (Drostdy) then included the present towns of George, Mossel Bay, Knysna, Oudtshoorn, Uniondale and Calitzdorp.
Adrianus Gysbertus van Kervel, the first magistrate, completed the first official building, the gaol, on the site of the present George Tourism Bureau in 1812, followed by the courthouse, now the Magistrate's building, in 1813.
The Drostdy, Van Kerval's official office and residence, was completed at the end of 1815. Today it is the heart of cultural life in the town as the George Museum, indicating its significance in the history of the town.
Van Kervel’s duties included the granting of farms, making roads, advising farmers, collection of taxes and maintaining law and order. His CV included being manager of the Lombard Bank, which did not provide the necessary skills to manage a new town and district.
He came to the Cape from Holland in the employ of the Dutch East India Company (DEIC). Rev DI Latrobe who visited George in 1815 as a guest of van Kervel, said he found him worthy and of “excellent character”. He noted that van Kervel was a great lover of music, especially Haydn and Mozart. Van Kervel also became a landowner of Witfontein (400 morgen) and Camphersdrift (6 morgen).
* Outeniqualand is the strip of land on the Southern Cape Coast between the Outeniqua Mountains and the Indian Ocean from Gouritz River to Plettenberg Bay.
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