Sugar and Natal: the Pioneers - Rathbone

EPHRAIM FREDERICK RATHBONE

In 1848, Ephraim Rathbone became overseer of the north coast cotton estate then managed by Edmund Morewood. Born in Tiverton, Devon in 1812, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Rathbone, Ephraim Rathbone had spent about 16 years in Mauritius and had considerable experience as a sugar planter there, before emigrating to Natal on the Rosebud, 1855 in August 1848. According to Rathbone, he urged Morewood to suggest to the Cotton Company the advantage of cultivating sugar rather than cotton. Morewood agreed that Rathbone should experiment initially with 5 acres, providing Rathbone supplied the plant cane. Rathbone states: 'I found a small patch (of cane growing) on Mr Peel's farm, Umgeni ... which I purchased for the Cotton Company and engaged four Mauritian coolies to hoe five acres on an establishment I formed on the Umhloti ... In July 1849 I was appointed manager and gave Mr Morewood the cane on the Umhloti for removal to Compensation, with advice on its culture. I offered gratuitously to supervise his planting 40 acres on his estate'.

In May 1842 The Natal Times reported that a party of gentlemen were to inspect Mr Morewood's enterprise - among them was Rathbone. That Rathbone remained a strong supporter of Morewood can be seen from Rathbone's letter to The Natal Mercury in 1859:

'Mr Morewood was the first man in Natal with sufficient spirit to speculate with his own funds in sugar cultivation: only for the enterprising spirit which animated him, the production of the Colony would have remained at potatoes and beans, and the great landowners have been content with one shilling per acre for their land. When Morewood made the first sugar it was: "Hurrah, Morewood, for my land is now worth 10s" and when he was ruined for want of sufficient funds they ought to have supplied him by a sub ... and not ungratefully try to deprive him of the unprofitable merit of being the first sugar manufacturer'.

Ephraim Rathbone married twice (both marriages took place in Mauritius) and founded a large Rathbone clan in Natal. Eleven children are listed on his Death Notice but other sources mention fourteen in total. There were two sons from his first marriage with Josephine Emilie Modet: Thomas Britannia and Frederick. With his second wife, Ann/e Williamson he had at least eight children: John Mexican, Annie Alice Chieftain (married Seymour), Flora Natalia Blade (married Matthew), Harriet Pumgwine/Ponguin (married Shuttleworth), Caractacus Reliance, Boedicia Industria (married Silverlock), Alfred Leyricer, Constance Rosemont (married Fearnsides) and (perhaps at this stage the parents were running out of exotic names) Elizabeth Edith.

Ephraim operated as a trader for many years in Natal and Zululand. He died on 24 June 1882, aged 70, at Lower Umzimkulu, Alexandra County. Among the documents in his deceased estate file is an interesting invoice dated July 29 1882 listing the type of articles sold by 'Rathbone & Horning' including: green beads, striped beads, hoes, clasp knives, blankets, red serge coats, rugs (square pattern), white baize, covered sheets, handkerchiefs, Tonga Salampore, Striped Salampore @ 10/6 (Salampore was a blue cotton cloth originally in 17th c made at Nellore in India and exported, later a cheap print with stripes and bright colours much used for trade goods), serge trousers and military trousers.

In 1859 Rathbone was given a grant of land 'in the Zulu Country' under an agreement with King Mpande and remained 'in undisturbed occupation of the land, residing on and cultivating portions of the same until 1862 when owing to false reports made to the King as to his intentions, Cetywayo (sic) ordered him to leave, though at the same time admitting E F Rathbone's right to the land and of his family to reside on it.' For his own safety Rathbone deemed it advisable to comply with Cetewayo's order to quit. Subsequently in 1864 Cetewayo discovered that Rathbone had been falsely accused and invited him to return but Rathbone, distrusting the King's promises of future friendship, declined to do so.

Frederick Rathbone, Ephraim's second son by his first wife, married Sarah Warren, and farmed cane at Tongaat, Inanda, Natal. He died aged 83 in 1927.

Ephraim's daughter Harriet Pumgwine Rathbone (1852-1945) married, at Utrecht, James William Shuttleworth (1847-1918), who was a transport rider and later farmed at 'Duck Pond', Newcastle. They had 9 children, of whom only one was a boy.

Caractacus Reliance Rathbone

Caractacus, Ephraim's fourth son, known as 'Crack' to the family, had a remarkable career in his own right. Born in 1854 in Zululand, he married in 1881 Caroline Magdaline Williams and farmed at 'Tiverton' in the District of Utrecht. In 1870 he went to the Diamond Fields with his brother-in-law John Seymour, and took up claims at Heilbron. After working these for six months he went to Dutoit's Pan in 1871 and then went to New Rush (later called Kimberley), selling out of his claims there in 1872. He then proceeded to Button's Gold Reef near Marabastad, before returning to his farm. He saw service throughout the Anglo-Zulu War 1879 as Lieutenant in Wood's Irregulars, under Sir Evelyn Wood, receiving the campaign medal and bar. In 1880 he served in Basutoland as a Lieutenant in Hanson's Troop, Transvaal Horse, and earned another medal and bar. He was Guide and Interpreter to Colonel Deane OC Natal Field Force in 1881 (First Anglo-Boer War), then transferred to Field Hospital as Officer-in-Charge and Interpreter to Native Stretcher Bearers, attached to Natal Field Force, under Surgeon-Major Babington. He was present at the actions at Ingogo Heights (9 February 1881) and Majuba (27 February 1881).

In 1882 he went to Lower Umzimkulu and planted cane on Ambleside (property owned by Archie Sinclair who had an ox power mill). In 1885 he moved to the Harding District, and then farmed near the Ingela in 1886. He became a transport rider to Barberton in 1888, discovered the only coal mine worth working on the Newcastle Town Lands and worked this for two years before returning to farming. He served as OC transport attached to Lord Dundonald's Mounted Brigade, under General Sir Redvers Buller, in the Transvaal, 1900 (Second Anglo-Boer War). He joined the Field Intelligence Department, under the Hon Captain Guest, serving to the end of the war in 1902, and receiving the Queen's medal, 2 bars, and the King's medal, 2 bars. Caractacus Reliance Rathbone had six sons and a daughter.

Sugar in Natal: the Pioneers - Edmund Morewood cont

Early in 1851 Morewood purchased a large acreage of land, including a farm at Umhlali which he sold off in 20 acre lots. This provided funding for his sugar enterprise at Compensation, then still at the experimental stage. In January 1852, The Natal Times reported that 'E Morewood Esqre has succeeded in perfecting the production of sugar on his estate at Compensation' and that the sample shown 'is of a quality to prove incontestably the adaption of the coast lands of the colony for the successful production of this valuable article'. The news caused a sensation. However, Morewood was to undergo many trials and tribulations: equipment was primitive, the production process was slow, and transport was an additional problem. Morewood lacked the necessary capital to acquire better machinery and his fellow colonists were cautious regarding investment. He had his detractors, too.

In 1853 Morewood went to England in the hope of acquiring improved machinery and raising further funds, but due to 'a series of unfortunate circumstances' his efforts ended in failure and he lost his property in Natal.

Nevertheless, Morewood had started the ball rolling for sugar as a commercial undertaking, and other Natal settlers were cultivating sugar. By 1854 cane was being grown at Umhlali, Tongaat, Umgeni, Umbilo, Isipingo and Umkomaas, and there were 6 sugar mills at work. In 1855 the first public auction of Natal-made sugar took place in Durban's Market Square.

Apart from the brother J J Morewood of London, mentioned above, little is known of Edmund Morewood's family. The 1881 Census for Llangennech, Carmarthen, Wales reveals an Edmund Morewood aged 60 and unmarried, born at Stoke Newington, London, whose occupation was steel, iron and tin plate manufacturer. He is believed to have been the inventor of the tin plate machine, and had several workshops in Wales - 13 at Llangelly and 7 at Swansea. In 1892, E Morewood and Co. established tin plate and steel making works and a foundry plant at Gas City, Indiana. The 1900 Census for Gas City shows hundreds of families who came from Wales to work for E Morewood and Co as puddlers etc. Further research may discover whether Edmund Morewood the tin plate manufacturer was related to Morewood the sugar planter: apart from identical names, they seem to have shared an inventive streak, and both men were bachelors.

JJ Morewood, Edmund's brother, was living in London in the 1850s, so a search of the 1851 Census could reveal more about him*. Morewood himself left Natal early in 1853 and never returned. He spent a year in Hamburg, Germany, and then went to Brazil where he kept a school, but this failed due, Morewood stated, to religious prejudices. Another venture, a cotton spinning and weaving factory at Faubati in Brazil, for which Morewood attempted to borrow money from old Natal friends such as Beningfield and Kahts, also seems to have come to naught. There is no doubt, though, that Natal is indebted to Edmund Morewood.

Sugar mill, Natal

* There is a John J Morewood, born 1807, occupation merchant, living at 1 Barford Terrace, Islington, London, with wife, Sarah, and 8 children.

Sugar and Natal 1855

The first public auction of Natal-made sugar was held in Durban's Market Square, 23 June, 1855 - a historic event.

The engraving, left, from the Illustrated London News, is a snapshot in time depicting colonial life, the people of Natal and their costume. Auctioneer Robert Acutt's name can be seen displayed behind the wagon carrying the sugar - a relatively small quantity but the start of greater things to come.

Robert Osborn, in his book Valiant Harvest, mentions:

Acutt gave his services gratuitously on this occasion, and Henry Milner ordered champagne for the company present to toast the sugar enterprise... the Springfield Estate supplied some eight tons of sugar packed in gunny sacks enclosed in vacoa bags imported from Mauritius. The sugar was sold by the single bag, the several qualities averaging 30 shillings per cwt. The novel scene was the subject of a sketch by J Lloyd ... (later this appeared in the Illustrated London News)

Although the sugar auctioned on that day was made from Springfield cane, purportedly to have grown on Milner's estate, it was produced in fact by John Leyland Feilden, Milner's largest lessee - Feilden leased 130 acres of the total Springfield acreage of 250 acres.

Barbados and the Gadsden connection

And now for something completely different.

Barbados first assumed significance for me through its connections with the Gadsden surname. In November 1715, Thomas Gadsden (1688-1741), born in Stepney, London, married Elizabeth Terrey in the parish of St Michael, Bridgetown, Barbados. Elizabeth was Barbadian born, daughter of an Irish sea captain, Christopher Terrey. The sea featured largely in Thomas Gadsden’s career, too. His father, another Thomas, had been a merchant captain sailing his own ship, the Mary & Elizabeth, between Britain and her American colonies and dying - in all likelihood of fever - at Nevis in the West Indies in 1691.

Thomas Gadsden the younger joined the British Navy as a midshipman in 1702, climbing the ladder to the rank of Lieutenant within five years. Discharged on half-pay in 1712, he returned to the sea in the merchant service, trading in various commodities as his father had done before him between the New World colonies and Britain. During this time Barbados would have been a regular port of call and Thomas undoubtedly took advantage of the brisk trade between Barbados and Charlestown (later Charleston) on the mainland of South Carolina.

Thomas established useful contacts in Charlestown and he and his wife Elizabeth moved there permanently, Thomas graduating to the important post of King’s Collector of Customs. Their first three children died in infancy. A fourth child, a son, was born and named Christopher after Elizabeth’s father.

Christopher Gadsden

Christopher Gadsden (1724-1805) was destined to become famous as a leader of the South Carolina Radicals, serving in the Continental Congress which enacted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. During the Revolutionary War he was a Brigadier General of forces defending Charlestown.

His story is told in numerous sources, among them Godbold and Woody’s Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution (University of Tennessee Press, 1982). Read my brief account  at www.infobarrel.com/Christopher_Gadsden_1724-1805

Barbados July 2012, coastal view; could be Natal.

As usually happens, the search for context – the backdrop to events - draws family historians to a wide variety of topics, including in the case of Gadsden research the strong ties which existed between Barbados and South Carolina. I also found a number of intriguing similarities between Barbados and Natal, both sugar-growing colonies which experienced attendant labour difficulties.

St Michael's 

St Michael’s, Bridgetown, the church where Thomas and Elizabeth Gadsden were married in 1715, was a wooden structure put up in the 1660s and taken down by a hurricane in 1780 (hurricanes were prevalent in Barbados). Consequently, the building now on the same site is not the original church, but one constructed in 1789.

The Great Hurricane of 1831 attempted, though failed, to destroy this replacement edifice built of coral stone. Now officially the Cathedral Church of St Michael’s and All Angels (Diocese of Barbados) it is still in use but in urgent need of restoration. In the churchyard, gravestones – some of very early date - show signs of vandalism, lead picked out of memorial  inscriptions.

East Point Lighthouse, Barbados

General dilapidation extends to other man-made landmarks, including the lighthouses at Harrison’s Point and East Point.

Despite inevitable concessions to tourism, the scenic beauty of Barbados remains untouched: wide white sands and limpid turquoise sea, palm trees and green fields of sugar cane. This
is not the place to comment on the darker threads in the island's tapestry: pirates and slaves.

At Bathsheba

Further reading:

Warren Alleyne and Henry Fraser: The Barbados-Carolina Connection (Macmillan, Caribbean 1988)

More on the 1860s in Durban.

The Natal Railway Company didn’t do well to begin with, despite the line being kept busy transporting cargo. By 1863 there was some improvement financially and an extension was made to the line as far as a new station named West End. Another locomotive was acquired by the Company in 1865 and named Perseverance (a quality much needed in colonial Natal). In 1867 the line was extended as far as the Umgeni Village. Natal sugar production was increasing in volume and this product was transported to the Umgeni end of the line by ox wagon then taken to the Point by the railway. Such developments gave opportunities for employment as well as for growing entrepreneurial ability among the merchants and other citizens of Durban.

The harbour was an area of on-going difficulty and in the early 1860s, after Milne retired from the lists and other engineers and other surveys had failed to come up with a suitable scheme for improving the entrance, one Captain James Vetch, R.E., contributed his mite in 1862.  Perhaps his grand design would have provided a more practical answer to the problems if Vetch had actually visited the site: he never came to Natal. Undeterred by such considerations he submitted a report. For Lieutenant Governor Scott, who pushed the Vetch scheme, hiring contractors to begin building breakwaters, the project assumed nightmarish proportions and eventually was abandoned. Colonial Engineer Peter Paterson had to be called in to try and save the day.

A more promising step seemed to be  the building of the first bridge across the Umgeni River: called the Queen’s Bridge, this was opened to joyous celebrations (at each end of the bridge) on 22 September 1865.

Victoria County was thus joined to Durban by road, a boon for the numerous colonists then residing north of the Umgeni - particularly the sugar planters. The joy was short-lived. In August 1868 the bridge was washed away during floods. There were murmurings about the timber piles not having been sunk deep enough to withstand the waters.

American missionary letters, Natal: Dr Newton Adams, sugar and indigo

In October of 1851 Charlotte Grout writes to her mother, Mrs James Bailey, of the illness and death of the veteran ABCFM missionary, Dr Newton Adams. The Grouts had been to a General Meeting:

It was at Amahlongwa 90 miles from here. I felt as though I could not get ready to go with my family, & then go such a great distance with them. Eliza was not five months old then. But we did go, & on our way down we called at Doct. Adams, one day’s ride this side of Amahlongwa. We found him more unwell than usual from his labors the previous Sabbath, & they had reluctantly decided not to attend the Meeting, though every thing was prepared for the journey. We left, and spent five or six days. After we had started to return, a messenger came with the intelligence that Doct. A. was dead. We hastened on & arrived at the station the same night & found indeed that our dear sister was a sorrowful widow. He had died during the night, & Mr Butler very Providentially was there, having left the meeting one day sooner than the others on account of his wife whom he left at home ill. We remained till after the funeral & then returned home worn out.

Charlotte was anxious for her husband Aldin:

He is growing old fast & as one after another of our brethren fail in the midst of their years, I cannot but think that he too may soon go. He has been recently writing to the Rooms [HQ of the ABCFM] an account of the sickness and death of Doct. Adams, also a letter to his [Adams’s] afflicted mother in Bloomfield, N.Y. Mr Lindley is a little older than Mr G. He is now unable to preach, & we have some fears that he may soon follow our lamented br. A. Two others have also poor health. One would have said when I came out to Africa that Mr Grout would soonest fail, but then who were the strongest have first been called. But if we are all prepared, if our lamps are constantly trimmed & burning, it matters little who is first called.

Rev Aldin had been busy, with help from his mission Africans, building a Meeting House (chapel) for their community at Umvoti. We get a clear picture of this structure – and how much time and effort went into its creation - when reading Aldin’s report to his brother-in-law, James Bailey, in July 1855:

Some years ago … we had commenced building a Meeting House. We have not been at work on it quite as long as Solomon was in building his Temple, but it is only this year that we report it as finished. The people subscribed 15 pounds in money which bought boards enough to finish flooring and seating it. It has a roof of thatch but its walls are of burned bricks, its floor of boards, and it is seated throughout. I have made a pulpit which tho humble in its appearance, resembles pulpits which we see at home. Our people placed the boards, but I have made all the seats with my own hands, as well as to joint the floor boards and put them down. The whole is 50 feet by 32 in the extreme, and will seat 400 natives. I have not unfrequently had it full. We have had from our Society to put up this building only $50. All the other expense has been borne by our people and self, and white people who see it say it is worth $1000.

The same letter to James Bailey makes reference to two interesting developments in Natal: first, that it is becoming a ‘sugar-growing country’ and second, that ‘two men from Java’ who were experienced in the production of indigo had settled in the Colony with a view to cultivating the plant commercially and establishing an industry.

The men from Java were Dutch planters T C Colenbrander and W Van Prehn.  [See Colenbrander in the search facility on this blog.]