SOME NATAL SUGAR PIONEERS & THEIR FAMILIES
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For decades prior to white settlement in Natal, there was an indigenous variety of sugar cane which grew wild and was known to the Zulus as 'imphe'. It was chewable and sweet, but its sugar content wasn't found by settlers to be high enough to make its cultivation commercially viable. There was also 'umoba', an imported strain of true sugarcane: in 1837 the traveller Nathaniel Isaacs mentions both these plants. In 1858, Michael Jeffels, a planter and miller at Isipingo, stated that to his certain knowledge sugarcane was growing in the area of the Isipingo River at the time of Shaka's war with Faku in 1828.

EDMUND MOREWOOD

Morewood, regarded as the founding father of the sugar industry in Natal, made a very early visit to this area in 1833, before spending time in Australia, New Zealand and Mauritius. He returned to Natal in 1838, after the Battle of Blood River, when British military forces had been temporarily withdrawn and the flag of the Voortrekker Republic of Natalia had been hoisted at the port. Morewood was on good terms with the Voortrekkers and was one of the men chosen to visit the Zulu King, Mpande, in the hopes of making a peace treaty. In 1840 Morewood was appointed Harbour Master and Commissioner of Customs under the Republican government, and it was in this capacity that he became involved in the events of 1842 when the vessels Conch and Southampton brought reinforcements to assist in raising the siege of a British force at what is now the Old Fort, Durban. William Bell, Captain of the Conch, remarked that Morewood, on being rowed out to the schooner, accompanied by the Voortrekkers' Military Secretary, was astonished to find the Conch's lower deck bristling with grenadiers 'as thick as bees'. According to Bell's Narrative, Morewood 'had sufficient power of speech left to say he was a friend of the English, but at the same time I could see that he was much embarrassed by the position he had placed himself in ...' - and it truly was a difficult situation for an Englishman then employed by the enemy.

However, Morewood remained in Natal and though the British authorities retained some understandable suspicions as to his allegiance, he quickly adjusted to the new British regime and began to pursue his interest in sugar cultivation. In November 1847 the first plant cane was brought to Natal from Mauritius on the Sarah Bell, by the Milner brothers. It's thought that this cane, or a portion of it, was imported for Morewood. He began planting towards the end of 1847 or early in 1848. At that time he was employed as manager of the Natal Cotton Company on the Umhloti River, but he resigned his position in July 1849 to focus on growing sugar on his property, Compensation.

According to John Robinson's 'Notes on Natal' written in 1870, 'before 1850 agriculture in this colony was confined to the growth of a little wheat by the Boers, and of a fair quantity of maize by the natives. Cotton culture ... had been attempted at New Germany (by the Bergtheil Settlers) ... a few coffee bushes were bearing berries in the garden of a private householder of Durban, and a small patch of sugarcane was being planted by Mr Morewood at Compensation.' Arrowroot (to a value of £31) was the first agricultural product to be exported from Natal, in 1853, but the following year the export record showed a new export 'Sugar, £2'. It was a small beginning, but of great significance. After that date, sugar was exported every year in increasing quantities, and, as Morewood had predicted, it became the 'staple article of Natal'.

A young man named George Lamond who arrived in Durban in June 1850 on the Byrne ship Unicorn, joined Morewood at Compensation and later wrote that he found the estate under the management of 'a surveyor named George Jackson, with some half-a-dozen ploughmen (plus native labour). We had six acres under cane ... When I left in 1854 we had more than 100 acres of cane ready for crushing. In 1851 I helped to make and eat the first sugar manufactured in Natal ... The ploughmen were Randal, South, Coward, Dykes and an apprentice named Moore, son of a Gloucester parson, and a grand old Dutch gardener named van Versfeld'. Late in 1850, Morewood constructed a simple mill, which would be used to crush his first cane crop.

Morewood, a man of apparently boundless energy, was also involved in immigration as agent in Natal for the Justina, which arrived in November 1850 under a private scheme arranged by George Murdoch and Capt Richard Pelly. Among the passengers were Thomas and Lewis Reynolds who would become leading figures in the sugar industry.
(See www.genealogyworld.net/rose/maritime/justina.html for the full passenger list of the Justina.)

The ship also brought £5 000 worth of merchandise for sale in South Africa: this venture had been arranged by Morewood's brother, J.J. Morewood, then residing in London.

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 on 23 June in Durban's Market Square: the auctioneer was Robert Acutt.

First public auction of Natal sugar, Durban, 1855

Today Natal produces over 2 million tons of sugar per annum, supplying the whole of South Africa, and exporting the surplus. Better quality, fast-growing cultivars with a higher sugar yield have replaced the early inferior varieties of cane.

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.

A replica of Morewood's first sugar mill can be seen at the Morewood Memorial Garden, established on canelands inland from Ballito. There is a signposted turn-off from the old north coast road 43 kms from Durban.

Sketch of Morewood's farm 'Compensation', 1852

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, 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.

Caractacus Reliance Rathbone

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 (not on the Edmond as stated in Osborn's 'Valiant Harvest'), Feilden's home in Durban was 'Feniscowles', at Umbilo. From Henry Milner, he leased 130 acres on the Springfield Estate where he planted cane - this showed considerable vision on Feilden's part as it was some time prior to Morewood showing the feasibility of this crop in Natal.

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.

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.'

Feniscowles Durban Natal

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.

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. 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.

RICHARD ('DICK') KING

The original grant of 6 000 acres made to Dick King included the whole of the Isipingo Flat. Most of his neighbours bought their land from him, and they began planting cane in 1852 though it's uncertain when King himself planted his first cane - possibly about 1854 or earlier.
When the Flat was flooded in 1856, King, by means of a raft, rescued his neighbouring sugar planter, Smart, with his family, from the attic of Smart's house, where they had been forced to stay for two days and three nights due to the rising flood-waters.

He first had an ox-power mill but by the end of 1857 was operating a steam mill. John Robinson noted in 1861 that King had 110 acres under cane.

In 1868 King's estate was sold by auction to WH Acutt for £2 200. Shortly afterwards the Reunion estate, also on the Flat, was reorganized and Robinson wrote that Reunion consisted of three different estates, those owned in 1861 by Babbs, Smart and King. In the 1870s King himself continued to grow cane on the higher ground around his house at Isipingo.

King married Clara Jane Noon, sister of Adolphus Henry and Arthur Noon, who were also sugar planters at Isipingo. See www.genealogyworld.net/rose/nuggets/noon.html for more on the Noon family.

Dick King

ROBERT GAZLEY MACK

Mack and his brother James arrived in Natal on the Henrietta in July 1850. Robert bought land on the Isipingo Flat and in 1852 he and two other Isipingo farmers sent a wagon to Compensation to buy plant cane from Edmund Morewood. In 1861, Robinson states that Mack 'started with half-a-crown and a family of sturdy sons'; by 1870 there were 300 acres under cane on the Mack estate. Though Robert Mack was dead by that time, succeeding generations of the Mack family continued as sugar planters in the Isipingo area.

SIDNEY & LAWRENCE PLATT

These Yorkshiremen arrived in Natal within a year of each other, possibly attracted by cotton prospects in the Colony. Sidney, however, bought land at Isipingo in 1849 and Lawrence secured 50 acres near his brother's property, naming the farm Prospecton. At first the Platts, like many other early farmers, grew beans as a cash crop, but in 1852 Lawrence joined Mack and Birkett, also of Isipingo, in sending an ox-cart to Morewood at Compensation to buy cane-tops. Lawrence Platt's first mill, like his brother Sidney's, was ox-powered but they each soon acquired a steam mill.

Lawrence Platt died in 1886, and his work was continued by his youngest son Alfred, born in 1853, to whom he had given Prospecton at the end of the Anglo-Zulu War 1879. Alfred Platt died in 1938 - in 1945 the Prospecton Estate was amalgamated with Tongaat Sugar Co Ltd, with Cecil Platt, grandson of Lawrence, as a director. Cecil died in 1950, aged 68.

ROBERT BABBS

Babbs and his wife Sarah were passengers on the Globe in 1850. Like Jeffels, he didn't like the allotment provided in the cotton lands near Umhlali and settled at the Isipingo Flat, becoming a sugar planter and manufacturer at his Umlaas Estate. He started with an ox-power mill but by 1856 was sending into Durban sugar made at a new 8-horse power steam mill. John Robinson wrote in 1861 that Babbs's estate was the largest but one in the Colony, with 360 acres of cane.

Between 1862 and 1864 Babbs sold Umlaas Plantation to John Daniel Koch, a merchant. At the same time Koch bought Smart's sugar estate and the combination of these two farms was named Reunion. This concern was built up by Daniel de Pass, who later formed a syndicate of neighbouring planters to make Reunion one of the leading estates in Natal.

JOHN DANIEL KOCH

Koch was one of the founders of the Durban Club and a prominent Durban merchant. He bought the estates of Babbs and Smart and worked the re-named estate, Reunion, for about five years. In 1868 Reunion was put up for sale, Koch having been declared insolvent.

Robinson noted in 1870: 'Reunion represents three different estates, those owned when I was here in 1861 by Mr Babbs, Mr Smart and Mr R King. Since Messrs de Pass & Co became owners of the property, a large amount of capital has been expended in improvements. ... The first engine is 25-horse power and drives the mill, which is the original one imported by Mr Babbs, the largest in the Colony. The other engine works the vacuum pan and centrifugals. ... 700 or 800 acres are under cane and 220 labourers are employed. Like its neighbours, Reunion suffered disastrously from the flood of 1868 and the frost of 1869.'

Illovo Sugar Estates Ltd acquired the whole of Reunion in 1920.

DANIEL DE PASS

As a young man, de Pass joined his father's Cape Town firm of De Pass, Spence & Co and was instrumental in persuading the then governor to annex the Ichaboe Guano Islands to the Cape Colony. He developed the Sandwich Bay fisheries, from which stemmed his sugar milling project of Reunion Estate at Isipingo. His ships, after unloading fish at Mauritius, returned laden with sugar. Later, de Pass decided he would produce his own sugar in Natal and in due course became owner of Reunion Estate.

It's interesting to note that in the 1860s, de Pass was joined by his cousin, Daniel Montague Kisch, who subsequently assisted in the management of the Reunion and Umzinto plantations which belonged to de Pass. Daniel Montague Kisch was the brother of Natal photographers Benjamin and Henry Kisch. [For more about Daniel M Kisch's extraordinary life see www.dmkisch.com/index.php?cmd=sm&SubPage_ID=2 ]

Postcard 'Sugar Mill, Natal'

Sources:

G Russell: The History of Old Durban
RF Osborn: Valiant Harvest
Natal Who's Who 1933
J Clark: Natal Settler Agent
EW Feilden: My African Home
DH Strutt: History of Costume in South Africa
L Herrman: The History of the Jews in South Africa
Pietermaritzburg Archives: miscellaneous deceased estate files

© R Dixon-Smith 2007