Tuesday 26 Aug: What do the contents of the Pringle collection, as far as I’ve got in the papers and so very provisionally, suggest about interconnections with people in some of the other networks and figurations I’ve worked on to date? Unexpectedly, the main links have turned out to be with people in missionary circles.

Elizabeth Hockly’s sister-in-law Mary Ann married Thomas Samuel Hood, an 1820 settler who became a missionary and was based near Stellenbosch. Among his connections were Dr John Philip and also Rev James Read jnr and his wife Ann Barker. The Reads, father and son, were Kat River settlement missionaries and in the thick of the events, and also disputes about the rights and wrongs of the events, which occurred between 1849 and 1852 (or thereabouts). They, together with the visiting Dr John Philip, head of the LMS in S. Africa, were also at various points customers of Elizabeth’s daughter Harriet Townsend in Cradock, both buying goods and cashing money drafts with her.

Elizabeth Hockly’s sister Fanny (Frances Chapman) married another missionary, William Ross. Ross was based at a number of stations but particularly from 1843 on at Likatlong or Sekatlong (now in Botswana), where he knew and/or worked with Mackenzie, Helmore and Livingstone (please to look up all unfamiliar names, as no time or space to explain). Likatlong was closely connected with the Kuruman mission station, associated with the Moffats, and also the station at Taung where the widowed and ex-Kuruman John Brown (not to be confused with John Tom Brown) worked for many years. John Brown subsequently married one of James Read jnr’s daughters, and one of their sons later married Olive Schreiner’s niece Effie Hemming. Ross often appears in Moffat letters, including those of Mary Moffat in the Cory collections, as well as he and Fanny and their children being also often included in Hockley, Townsend and later Pringle letters. James Brown later appears in them too, concerning his grief and loneliness when widowed.

Elizabeth Hockley’s younger daughter Maria’s first husband was the unfortunate James Brownlee, clerk to his brother Charles, ‘Diplomatic Commissioner among the Gaikas’, for whom he was mistaken and killed during the Eighth Frontier War. Their father John Brownlee was a missionary turned Resident Agent and then missionary again, in the area of what is now King William’s Town. One of Brownlee snr’s employees was Jan Tzatzoe, son of a local Khosa Chief who later succeeded to the chiefdom. Jan had converted to Christianity under the aegis of James Read snr and been brought up for some years with James Read jnr and then later with Charles Brownlee and his younger brother James under the tutelage of John Brownlee (which latter was not as cosy as it might sound).

To weave the connections out a little further: In 1837 the recently ordained Gottlob Schreiner and his new wife Rebecca Lyndall sailed to their life as a missionary couple in South Africa. Their companions were Dr John Philip, Rev James Read snr, Jan Tzatzoe and the Griqua Christian leader Andries Stoffel, with these latter four men returning from giving evidence to the 1836 parliamentary Buxton Committee, with James Read jnr, who had also given evidence, returning separately.

This is a paradox, isnt’ it? All these connections can be traced out and a time-line could easily be added to them, but none of them are Pringle ones except by virtue of the second marriage of Harriet Townsend to William Dods Pringle. That can be thought about later and perhaps an equal weight of Pringle connections traced when the rest of the collection has been combed through.

And the photograph? Guess!

Last updated: 26 August 2014