George Augustus Kolbe

The record

What the archive holds

HIS OBITUARY IS FOUND, eighteen days after the death: Grahamstown Journal, 19 December 1844. “DIED at his Farm, Wirtemberg, near the Orange River, December 1st, THE REV. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, aged 44 years, a man possessed of a most amiable temper, and of more than ordinary abilities. HE WAS THE LAST REMAINING OF EIGHT SONS OF JOHN GODLOFF KOLBE ESQ. OF BRUNSWICK-SQUARE, LONDON, has left a WIDOW AND TEN CHILDREN... he having been for many years engaged in RENDERING THEM MEDICAL ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE whenever called upon... HIS DISEASE WAS AN AFFECTION ON THE LUNGS.” EIGHT SONS, seven of them dead before December 1844 and not one in this archive. BRUNSWICK SQUARE, which is not Conduit Street and is a mile and a half from it. A MAN WHO DOCTORED A DISTRICT FOR THIRTY YEARS, where his own death notice says only “Agriculturist”. And a cause of death, after nearly a year ill. The notice also says 44 when he was 41, and ten children when this archive counts eleven living — it is the best kind of source and it is not a register. 1820 Settler — the Nautilus, Owen's party, Algoa Bay 14 Apr 1820. Married at sixteen on a sworn falsehood, AND THE ROLL CARRIES A SECOND ONE: “KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS 20. CHEMIST. W MARGARET 19”, where he was sixteen and she was sixteen. HE SAILED FROM GRAVESEND FOUR DAYS BEFORE HIS SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY. The two lies do not even agree — nobody “twenty-one and upwards” in January 1819 is twenty in December. OWEN'S PARTY WAS 52 PEOPLE, No. 3 on the Colonial Department list, joint-stock and recruited in London, and IT COLLAPSED IN 1821 when Thomas Owen refused to draw rations and left; his brother took over and the party dispersed. He was eighteen, with no leader, no rations and no location, and the next record of him is the Graaff-Reinet mission three years later. Preached across the Orange River. His grandson could not name him in 1915. 15 SEPTEMBER — HE WAS AN LMS MISSIONARY, AND HIS FATHER WROTE TO HIM. The South African Library at Cape Town holds MSB751, the GA KOLBE COLLECTION, donated by Dr Jean Griffiths of Somerset West in 1985: “George Augustus Kolbe, PHARMACIST, 1820 settler, MISSIONARY, married Margaret Downing” and, on a second entry, “George Augustus Kolbe, 1802–44. LMS MISSIONARY.” IT CORROBORATES A MEMORY THIS ARCHIVE PUBLISHED THE SAME MORNING AS AN INFERENCE — John Montgomery's recollection of a BUSHMAN MISSION SCHOOL AT KOOLSKOP about 1824, where Colesberg now stands. Two sources with nothing to do with each other, agreeing. THE COLLECTION IS FOUR PHOTOCOPIED PAGES CONTAINING A LETTER OF 23 AUGUST 1830 FROM JOHAN KOLBE IN LONDON TO HIS SON — the only known document connecting the tailor of Conduit Street to the settler of Colesberg. IT HAS NOW BEEN READ, AND IT DOES NOT CARRY A STREET ADDRESS. THE CATALOGUE CALLED IT A LETTER “ON HIS ORDINATION” AND THIS ARCHIVE REPEATED THE CATALOGUE; IT IS NOT. 20 SEPTEMBER 2026 — AND A SECOND ATTACHMENT CAME WITH IT. A two-page Afrikaans typescript headed “MSB 751 / [Konsep] vir DSAB / VOORLOPIGE TEKS”, initialled KS and dated 18/2/92 — A DRAFT ENTRY FOR THE DICTIONARY OF SOUTH AFRICAN BIOGRAPHY, BY DR KAREL SCHOEMAN, on the word of the National Library that holds the file: “the author, KS, would be Dr. Karel Schoeman who worked here at the National Library”. IT IS A SECONDARY WORK AND THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT TAKE SECONDARY WORKS AS EVIDENCE — BUT IT AGREES WITH THIS ARCHIVE ON NINE POINTS REACHED BY NINE OTHER ROADS (the 1802 birth, J.G.E. Kolbe 1822–68 at Leeuberg as a commandant, Margaret Downing 1803–1867, the 1819 London marriage, the apothecary’s trade, the farm Wurthemberg, ten children, Philippolis from March 1831) AND IT IS WRONG ABOUT EXACTLY ONE THING: it calls his father A GERMAN APOTHECARY. He was a tailor, on 121 rate books, two printed masters’ lists, three Gazette notices, the census, the burial register and his other son’s sworn deposition. THE TRADE IS THE SON’S, MOVED ONE GENERATION UP. WHAT THE ENTRY ADDS, ALL OF IT UNTESTED: the GRAAFF-REINET MISSIONARY SOCIETY from about 1824, WORKING AMONG THE SLAVES of the district; acceptance as an LMS MISSION ASSISTANT ON 8 FEBRUARY 1828 and posting to BOESMANSKOOL — THE PRESENT BETHULIE — with JAMES CLARK among the SAN; a journey with MELVILL to the CALEDON VALLEY IN NOVEMBER 1828, as far as present-day Ladybrand, THE EARLIEST JOURNEY IN THE PRESENT FREE STATE OF WHICH A WRITTEN RECORD SURVIVES, and PRINTED UNDER HIS OWN NAME in the Transactions of the Missionary Society for 1829 — a second document he wrote himself, SEARCHED FOR AND NOT FOUND; PHILIPPOLIS from March 1831, alone after Melvill left in March 1832; ORDINATION ON 25 MAY 1833 BY THE FRENCH MISSIONARIES ARBOUSSET AND CASALIS; his advice behind the Berlin Missionary Society’s founding of BETHANIE in 1834; AN ACCUSATION OF ADULTERY IN 1836 with the wife of one of his congregation, agitated by H. HENDRICKS, secretary of the Griqua Council — AN INQUIRY BY THE FRENCH MISSIONARIES ACQUITTED HIM — continued opposition from T. ATKINSON, withdrawal from the station in MARCH 1837 and DISMISSAL BY THE LMS ON 19 JUNE 1837; and the farm DRIEFONTEIN near Philippolis. IT IS ALSO WRONG A SECOND TIME, AND IN ITS OWN FIRST SOURCE: it says his death notice records only eight children. THE DEATH NOTICE NAMES TEN, and this archive has read it, photographed it and published the transcription — KAB MOOC 6/9/35: 7698, signed M. Kolbe at Colesberg in January 1845. IT ALSO SETTLES THE FARM NAME. This archive had WIRTEMBERG from the obituary and KNAPDAAR from the death notice and had quietly run them into one address; “WURTHEMBERG, SOMETIMES ALSO GIVEN AS KNAPDAAR” is the statement that assumption needed. AND IT NAMES A PORTRAIT: a likeness of him AS A YOUNG MAN, in 1992 with C.J. DU PLESSIS OF RUIGTEVLEI, district Bethulie, reproduced in Olivier (1973); and a CHARLES BELL WATERCOLOUR OF A CHURCH SERVICE AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834 WITH KOLBE IN THE PULPIT, in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg. THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS NO LIKENESS OF ANYBODY BORN BEFORE 1850. There may be two of this man. AND HE WROTE SOMETHING ELSE, AND IT IS FINDABLE. The 1829 journal extract the DSAB cites is catalogued under the OTHER man’s name, which is why a search for Kolbe found nothing: “EXTRACTS OF THE JOURNAL OF MESSRS MELVILL AND KOLBE, ADDRESSED TO THE REV. RICHARD MILES, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE SOCIETY’S MISSIONS IN AFRICA, PHILIPPOLIS, 25 NOV. 1828”, in the Council for World Missions archive at SOAS — which is source 4 on the DSAB’s own list, two lines above source 6. An edited version dated 18 November 1828 appears in MELVILL (1829), and the journey is printed entire in KAREL SCHOEMAN (ed.), EARLY WHITE TRAVELLERS IN THE TRANSGARIEP, 1819–1840 (Protea, 2003), p. 30. AND A SWORN WITNESS PUTS HIM AT BETHULIE WITH THE BUSHMEN, IN JUNE 1831. Basutoland Records (1883), the Cape's printed compilation of official documents, carries at page 436 the deposition of Frans Johannes Cornelis Cronje, taken at Smithfield on 14 September 1858 before Johannes Jacobus Sauer, Landdrost of the Caledon River District. Cronje had come up from Colesberg to hunt in June 1831 with Piet Venter, Barend Venter, Willem Venter, his brother Stephanus Cronje and Hendrik Weber, the Commandant of the District: “We then met with the missionaries KOLBE AND KLERK with some BUSHMEN AT BETHULIE.” “KLERK” IS ALMOST CERTAINLY JAMES CLARK, the man Sibree pairs him with at the Bushman station — a Dutch deponent writing an English surname down as he heard it — and the pairing is what identifies the Kolbe. This is an eyewitness, under oath, naming him at work, and it is the earliest independent sighting of him this archive holds. IT ALSO SITS AWKWARDLY WITH THE CHRONOLOGY AND IS NOT SMOOTHED OVER. Sibree has him reaching Philippolis on 13 March 1831, and Schoeman's chronology says March 1831 too, so by that June he should have been a long ride away. Either he was back at his old station, or a man deposing twenty-seven years later has slipped a year — and nothing here decides which. AND THE DOCUMENT HAS AN INTEREST. These depositions were taken to argue that the land had been empty, so the party's “no other native tribes besides a few Bushmen” is testimony with a purpose and is read as such. The page was read as an image, which corrected the transcript twice: the text file gives “Barend Teater” and “Bethulle” where the type says BAREND VENTER and BETHULIE. 11 OCTOBER, LATE — HIS OWN JOURNAL IS IN PRINT, IT IS FREE, AND IT HAS BEEN SINCE 1833. The London Missionary Society's own monthly, The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, is on the Internet Archive unrestricted, volume by volume, 1828 to 1837 — the whole of his mission. Ten volumes were taken and read. THE SUM OF HIS OWN WORDS IN THIS ARCHIVE WAS ONE SENTENCE, QUOTED AT SECOND HAND. IT IS NOW ELEVEN MONTHS OF A JOURNAL AND TWO LETTERS. THE JOURNAL. Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1833, pp. 410–412: “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. George Augustus Kolbe, from 8th October, 1831, to 3rd September, 1832.” Philippolis, day by day. 6 November 1831, 260 at the services, three admitted as members, the Lord's Supper to fifteen, and at ten at night he can still hear praying and singing. 9 November, the chief writes to Veld-Cornet Joubert complaining that colonists have insulted and beaten his people. 18 January 1832, “Vaccinated twenty-six persons” and ninety children in the school. 29 January, a day of thanksgiving for deliverance from small-pox. 5 February, two elders and two deacons chosen, and he sets out the church's discipline in his own hand. 15 February, Bushmen take two heifers, the thieves are whipped and the rest sent away with meat, and he writes: “there is no need of discharging a gun, much less of shooting them.” 1 April, the new church opens — built entirely by the inhabitants of the district, the Society giving 200 rix-dollars and some nails and hinges; stone walls two and a half feet thick and twelve feet high, room for five hundred, and a hundred left standing in the street. 2 April, 335 children in the school. 8 May, he rides out to a horde of Corannas with the small-pox. 23 May, having preached against the brandy the colonists bring in, the chief prohibits its sale at the station; three days later a Griqua is given so much brandy by a colonist that he is found dead in his bed. 21 July, “The Veld-Cornet Joubert … and two other farmers, arrived here this afternoon, for the purpose of obtaining MEDICAL ADVICE” — which is the obituary's «rendering them medical advice and assistance whenever called upon», sixteen years before the obituary, in his own journal. 5 August, the chapel «literally crammed», five hundred present, Captain Waterboer and his council down from Griqua Town. THE LETTER THAT SETTLES THE DATE THIS ARCHIVE COULD NOT SETTLE. Same serial, 1831: “Extracts of a Letter from Rev. G. A. Kolbe, dated Philippolis, April 30, 1831, addressed to the Foreign Secretary.” It opens: “As I resided for NEARLY THREE YEARS among the Bushmen previous to my removal to this station …” and then says it outright — “WHEN I ARRIVED, IN APRIL, 1828, WITH MY COLLEAGUE, IN THE BUSHMAN COUNTRY.” AND HIS COLLEAGUE SAYS THE SAME THING FROM THE OTHER SIDE. The 1830 volume prints a letter from Mr James Clark, dated Bushman Station, near Caledon River, 31 December 1828: Landdrost Stockenstrom of Graaff-Reinet and the Lieutenant-Governor asked him to begin a new station east of Philippolis near the Caledon, and “brother Kolbe and myself removed to this station, and arrived here in the beginning of MAY last.” TWO MEN, WRITING THREE YEARS APART AND NEITHER FOR THE RECORD, PUT HIM AT THE BUSHMAN STATION IN APRIL OR MAY 1828. So the DSAB's 1828 is right and SIBREE'S 8 FEBRUARY 1829 IS NOT AN ARRIVAL AT ALL — it is the Society formally accepting a man who had already been in the field a year, which is exactly the reading Schoeman's chronology suggested this morning and which is now his own word and his colleague's instead of an inference. The conflict this archive has carried since September is closed. IT ALSO DATES BETHULIE. The station Clark describes founding with him, at Stockenstrom's request and with farmers' subscribed cattle, is the Boesmanskool that became Bethulie. AND IT IS THE FIRST TIME THIS ARCHIVE HAS HEARD HIM ON THE PEOPLE HE WORKED AMONG. In the same 1831 letter: the Bushmen's raids on the farmers' herds “proceeded from a recollection of former injuries, excited by the intrusion of the colonists into their country”; and “Truly, the oppression of the Bushmen has been great; they have been looked upon, by many, little above the level of the brute creation; and having been subjected to a temporary slavery, they have smarted under the lash of the oppressor.” He also writes that not one of them had been brought to the faith, that “Temporal advantages are all they desire”, and that revenge and disobedience are reckoned virtues among them — the condescension and the indictment in one paragraph, and both are left standing here, because quoting only the half that reads well in 2026 would be choosing his words for him. LEGASSICK QUOTES HIM: on the Caledon they met people with “NO OTHER MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE THAN THE WILD ANIMALS FOUND IN THESE PARTS”. THE FIRST WORDS OF HIS THIS ARCHIVE HAS READ, AND THEY ARE ABOUT FAMINE. AND THE MAN HE ADDRESSED IT TO IS VERY PROBABLY THE MAN WHO CALLED AT HIS FATHER’S HOUSE: Richard Miles was sent to Cape Town to act as DR PHILIP’S SUBSTITUTE while Philip was in England, which puts him at the Cape in 1828 and back in London by 1830. The 1830 letter says only “Mr Miles”, so this is an identification and not a document. 20 SEPTEMBER, LATER — AND THE SOCIETY’S OWN REGISTER HAS HIM, FREE, IN EIGHT LINES. James Sibree, A REGISTER OF MISSIONARIES (LMS, 4th ed. 1923), ENTRY 278: “Was previously connected with the GRAAFF REINET MISSIONARY SOCIETY, and laboured AMONG THE SLAVES around Graaff Reinet. Was ACCEPTED PROVISIONALLY BY MR. MILES, FEB. 8, 1829, which action was CONFIRMED BY THE DIRECTORS, JULY 29, 1829. First laboured with MR. CLARK, at the BUSHMAN STATION, CALEDON RIVER. Thence proceeded to PHILIPPOLIS, arriving there, MARCH 13, 1831. On MAY 26, 1833, he was ordained by the French missionaries, Messrs. LEMUE, PELLISIER, AND ARBOUSSET. His connection was dissolved by the Directors, JUNE 19, 1837.” IT SETTLES MR MILES — the man who called at the tailor’s house in London was no messenger, HE WAS THE OFFICER WHO ACCEPTED HIM — and it explains the father’s adverb, because “provisionally” by Miles and “confirmed” by the Directors is precisely what “FULLY accepted” means. IT DISAGREES WITH THE DSAB on the year of acceptance (1829, not 1828), the day of the ordination (26 May) and the men who performed it (Lemue, Pellissier and Arbousset — no Casalis). AND IT IS WRONG ABOUT A SON. Entry 522 calls FREDERICK WILLIAM KOLBE, the Rhenish then LMS missionary of George and Paarl, “SON OF REV. G. A. KOLBE (No. 278)”, where Schoeman says he was no relation. SCHOEMAN IS RIGHT AND THE SOCIETY’S OWN REGISTER IS WRONG: the arithmetic gave it away — a birth of 3 November 1821 against John Gerson Eliezar’s 7 July 1822, EIGHT MONTHS APART — and three works settled it. The New Catholic Encyclopedia calls his son Monsignor F.C. Kolbe “the son of a WESTPHALIAN (GERMAN) PROTESTANT MISSIONARY”; S2A3 names him FRIEDRICH WILHELM KOLBE, Herero scholar, married at Cape Town in 1849 and at Okahandja by April 1850; and the DSAB had published its own entry on him in 1987. SIBREE HAS TWO KOLBES IN SOUTH AFRICA AND A COMPILER JOINED THEM. AND THE DICTIONARY ITSELF NOW SAYS SO, WITH A TOWN. Read 11 October 2026 by search-inside, which opens a borrowable scan without borrowing it: Dictionary of South African Biography V, 419 — Kolbe, Friedrich Wilhelm, born GÜTERSLOH IN WESTPHALIA on 3 NOVEMBER 1821, died CAPE TOWN 1899, a missionary and Herero scholar. The arithmetic above stands and no longer has to carry the argument alone: a man born in Westphalia in 1821 is not the son of a settler who had been at the Cape since April 1820. HIS PARENTS ARE STILL NOT READ — the dictionary names parents in a fixed form, and that sentence falls outside every snippet the preview allows. AND THE SAME INDEX SAYS WHAT IS NOT THERE: its cumulative list at p.922 carries F. C. Kolbe at I, 433 and the two above at V, 419, and no George Augustus Kolbe anywhere in five volumes — which is what this archive had already reasoned about the draft, now with the printed index agreeing. AND THE SON'S ENTRY FINISHES IT. Dictionary of South African Biography I, 433 — Friedrich Carl (Frederick Charles) Kolbe, the Monsignor, born George, 28 September 1854, died Sea Point, Cape Town, 12 January 1936 — “was the son of Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe of Gütersloh in Westphalia, who came to SOUTH AFRICA IN 1844 as one of the earliest missionaries of the Rhenish mission society in Damaraland, and his wife, Isabella Elliott”. THE SETTLER DIED AT COLESBERG ON 1 DECEMBER 1844. So the man Sibree made his son reached this country, aged twenty-three, from Westphalia, for a different society and a different field, in the year the Settler died. Two volumes of the dictionary give the Westphalian birth independently, and neither has ever joined the two families. F. W. Kolbe's own parents remain unread, which is all that is left of that question. AND HIS OWN JOURNALS ARE CATALOGUED, IN LONDON. The Council for World Mission archive at SOAS, item-level: CWM/LMS/05/05/100 — “Extracts from the Journal of JOHN MELVILL AND GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, during a tour to the north-eastwards of Philippolis, 13–22 NOV 1828”, the manuscript behind the printed extract this archive hunted all morning; /102, extracts at Philippolis 1828–1831; /106, Journal, Philippolis 1831–1834; /108, Journal, Philippolis 6 Oct 1832 – Sep 1833. SIX YEARS OF HIS LIFE IN HIS OWN WRITING. Until 11 October 2026 this archive held one sentence of his at second hand; it now holds ELEVEN MONTHS of his journal and two of his letters, printed by the Society in its own monthly and free — but printed as EXTRACTS, visibly cut, so the manuscripts behind them are still the ask. AND THE YEAR OF THE ACCUSATION IS ONE BOX: incoming correspondence /044 (1835, which the catalogue says contains him), /046 (1836) and the 1837 file — 1836–1837 IS BOX 15. AND ONE LIKENESS IS CATALOGUED, IN SCOTLAND: University of Edinburgh, Centre for the Study of World Christianity, CSWC 60 — five photograph copies of Bell sketches of African congregations, ITEM 3 “MR. KOLBE… AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834”. Edinburgh calls him “a moravian missionary?”, question mark and all; HE WAS LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, and this archive has his father’s letter saying so. The DSAB puts the original watercolour in Johannesburg and never mentions Scotland; Edinburgh never mentions Johannesburg. 11 OCTOBER — SCHOEMAN PUBLISHED THE DOCUMENTS BEHIND HIS OWN DRAFT, AND THEY NAME A THIRD MAN IN THE CHARGE. Everything above about 1836 rests on his voorlopige teks of February 1992, which this archive has always labelled a secondary work it does not take as evidence. The same scholar then edited “Griqua Records: the Philippolis Captaincy, 1825–1861” for the Van Riebeeck Society, Second Series 25 (Cape Town, 1996), ISBN 0958411212, which prints the Captaincy's own papers — including those of H. Hendricks, who led the agitation. Its index puts G.A. Kolbe on three pages, and all three have now been read through the Internet Archive's search-inside, which gives page numbers and their text on a borrowable book without borrowing it. PAGE 35 IS A CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENT AND NOT A GLOSS: the Griquas complain of their late missionary Kolbe, whom they, with Wright and Atkinson, hold dangerous to peace and good order, and they claim the right to make him quit their territory. Schoeman's footnote to it has him incurring the enmity of Hendrik Hendrickze — the book's own spelling, which its index says is discussed at p. xiii — accused of adultery, with his colleagues Wright and Atkinson particularly zealous in pressing the charges, gone from the station but still living north of the Orange. THE DRAFT NAMED HENDRICKS AND ATKINSON; THE DOCUMENTS ADD PETER WRIGHT OF GRIQUATOWN. The same index gives the eleven missionaries who served Philippolis — Atkinson, Christie, Clark, Kolbe, Melvill, Philip, Schreiner, Solomon, Thomson, van der Schalk and Wright — so two of the eleven pressed the charge against a third. AND ITS CHRONOLOGY MAY DISSOLVE A DISAGREEMENT THIS ARCHIVE HAS CARRIED SINCE SEPTEMBER. It dates the founding of the Bushman School, later Bethulie, by James Clark and G.A. Kolbe to MAY 1828; his own arrival at Philippolis to March 1831; Theophilus Atkinson's to August 1836; and his withdrawal to March 1837. If he was founding the school in May 1828 he was in the field before the Society formally took him on, and Sibree's 8 February 1829 and the DSAB's 8 February 1828 are then dating two different things — the acceptance and the posting — rather than contradicting one another. That is a reading of a chronology and not a document, and it is offered as one. Three pages is where the index has him BY NAME: page 35 calls him “their late missionary” without the surname, which is exactly what an index cannot catch, so the volume is not finished with. A SECOND KOLBE IN THE SAME BOOK IS NOT HIM: the index carries Kolbe, J. at p. 130, a lessee of a farm owed Rds1480 under a settlement of Sir Harry Smith's, printed in Dutch there and in English at p. 268. Nothing is claimed about him, and he is written down so that the next reader does not fold two initials into one man.

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