Sugar and Natal: the Pioneers - Jeffels

MICHAEL JEFFELS

Jeffels arrived in Natal on the Sovereign in March 1850 with his wife Mary and children. His allotment of about 112 acres on the cotton lands, assigned to him under Byrne's scheme, was relinquished in favour of a property on Dick King's farm on the Isipingo Flat, near the confluence of the Umbogintwini. Jeffels purchased plant cane from Morewood in 1852 and by 1853 the Feildens rode out to visit the Jeffels family, reporting that 'the sugarcane of three or four months growth was very fine'. In 1853 and 1854 Jeffels imported two sets of sugar mill machinery from England, the first recorded importation into Natal of such machinery.

As early as 1854, Jeffels saw the need for central milling if sugar was to be produced economically in Natal, and he was instrumental in organizing a meeting at Messrs Evans and Churchill's store, to find ways of building and maintaining a central mill at Isipingo to meet the needs of the growing number of small planters.

In 1856, The Natal Mercury remarked that 'Mr Jeffels is the type of a class that form the pioneers and harbingers of all successful colonization ...'

In a letter to the same newspaper in October 1858, Jeffels claimed that he had imported the first sugar-mill and plant into Natal, had brought the first sugar of quantity into Durban, and introduced the first steam sugar-mill into the Colony.

A parcel of Jeffels's sugar won a prize at an exhibition in Cape Town and was purchased by the French consul, who sent it on to the Paris Exhibition. Jeffels was at that time well ahead of other Natal sugar planters. He was also a public-spirited citizen, nominated as a Durban Councillor and as Justice of the Peace. He died in 1862; his will is held at Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository. By the 1870s his estate was managed by WF Jeffels, possibly Michael's brother.

Jeffels's Albion Estate was sold in 1899, eventually becoming part of Prospecton Sugar Estate.

For more on the Isipingo sugar planters see article in Natalia by Duncan Du Bois:
http://natalia.org.za/Files/42/Natalia%2042%20Article%20Article%20Du%20Bois%20pp%2019-32.pdf

Sugar and Natal: the Pioneers - Joyner

WILLIAM JOYNER

The Feildens were not alone in their losses as a result of the 1856 flood. On the Isipingo Flat, William Joyner's sugar mill machinery was washed away forever.

Joyner came to Natal with his wife Ann and family on the Conquering Hero in June 1850 and lived in Durban for about two years working as a painter and decorator before moving to the Isipingo to farm at his sugar estate named Dingwall. During that time, Richard ('Dick') King, the well-known early colonist, was his neighbour. In 1860 Joyner sold his Isipingo property and moved to a new farm in Alexandra County on the Ifafa River, Ellangowan. By 1863 he had a 6-horse power steam mill in operation. In 1870, John Robinson wrote: 'Mr Joyner ... assisted by his intelligent and industrious sons, has year by year laboured on, until now more than 200 acres of sugarcane stretch round his house and a steam mill smokes under his windows'. Joyner produced sugar made from the indigenous cane, imphe.

His daughter, Clara Joyner Anderson, in her Reminiscences and Memories of Early Durban and its Pioneers*, gives a detailed picture of what life was like for pioneering sugar farmers in Natal, working with primitive equipment and their crop threatened by the elements and other hazards. Joyner at one period prospected for gold and during one of his absences from home a run-away fire threatened his Ellangowan mill. Close neighbours, Aiken and Bazley, came to the rescue of Mrs Joyner who was running the mill alone.

Joyner sold Ellangowan estate in 1868. Eventually it became part of Reynolds Bros Ltd. William Joyner died in East Griqualand in 1886 at the residence of his son, Archibald Scott Keith Joyner. The latter was born 3 Jan 1877; he married Florence Rose Beale and they had two sons and three daughters. Archibald Joyner served in the Natal Royal Rifles 1896-99, transferred to B Squadron, Natal Carbineers 1899; he was a marksman. After the Anglo-Boer War he farmed in the Matatiele district at 'Bon Accord'. In 1916 he was Lieut in 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment serving 16 months in the trenches in France, and was wounded 22 August 1919. He then returned to farming in East Griqualand.

For more on Joyner descendants see:
http://home.global.co.za/~mercon/mercer/James%20Keith%20Joyner.htm

* copies available at Killie Campbell Library, Durban

Sugar and Natal: the Pioneers - Sinclair, Povall, Feilden

ARCHIBALD SINCLAIR

EF Rathbone mentions that in 1881 he saw Sinclair's 'small American mill' powered by two oxen. Sinclair probably planted his first cane about 1872 - the Natal Blue Book for 1874 notes that the Ambleside Plantation mill was an 8-horse cattle power American mill and American evaporator. Sinclair farmed at Lower Umzimkulu in 1878, naming the property Ambleside after a British ship of that name which was wrecked in August 1868 on the coast between the mouths of the Umtentweni and Umzimkulu Rivers. He introduced the first sugar mill, crushed the first cane and made the first sugar at Umzimkulu.

CHARLES POVALL

Meadowbank Sugar Estate was started by Povall in 1850, and he began crushing cane at his own mill in 1863. By late 1874, he sold the estate for £6 000. Eventually Meadowbank became part of Natal Estates Ltd.

Povall, a Wesleyan who arrived with his wife Mary and three children on the Edward in March 1850, worked with George Cato on breaking up ships wrecked on Natal's coast, and assisted in the building of the William Shaw at Durban.

JOHN LEYLAND FEILDEN

Feilden was one of the earliest sugar planters in Natal. A fellow passenger of Povall's on the Edward, Feilden's home in Durban was Feniscowles, at Umbilo. It's not often remembered that Feilden planted his first cane at Umbilo as early as 1850. From Henry Milner, he leased 130 acres on the Springfield Estate where he planted cane. It showed considerable vision on Feilden's part as it was some time prior to Morewood showing the feasibility of this crop in Natal. The sugar sold at the first public auction in Durban in June 1855 was produced by Feilden, who was Milner's largest lessee.

In 1856, the Umgeni River came down in spate and the resulting floods destroyed a portion of Feilden's crop. Though the remainder was saved, this disaster led to the Feildens returning to England in July 1857.

The Feilden farm, Feniscowles

Feilden's contribution to the sugar industry was important though of comparatively short duration. He acquired immortality through his wife, Eliza Whigham Feilden, who kept a diary of their experiences in Natal, illustrated by her own sketches. This, as well as some of her correspondence with her relatives in England, was the basis for her book My African Home published in London in 1887.

She writes: 'Alas for our hopes! The river Umgeni rose so rapidly, and so high, that the whole country in its neighbourhood became a lake. Twenty or thirty feet of water covered many of the plantations ... The effects of this sad flood were greater and worse than we at all anticipated, and finally drove us out of Natal.'