PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - To commemorate the arrival of the British Settlers 200 years ago, the Van Plettenberg Historical Society will be hosting a talk by a direct descendant of a settler family next week.
The British Settlers arrived in the Cape Colony two centuries ago - an event that has been labelled by historians as the "most callous mass migration of people in the history of the British Empire".
Courteney Bradfield will be the speaker at the event which will be held on 7 July at the Formosa Garden Village. Bradfield's extensive research provides a fascinating insight into this extraordinary resettlement programme.
He will touch on the conditions promoting this migration of people and will look at it from a Cape Colony perspective, as well as from events in Britain which resulted in the implementation of a plan put forward by the governor of the Cape Colony, Lord Charles Somerset.
This plan was supposedly to benefit Britain as well as the Cape Colony.
Attendees will be able to follow the Settlers' journey from Britain to their allocated location in the Cape Colony, as well as their trials, tribulations, and successes of starting a new life in a strange and foreign country and making it their home.
Bradfield's father and mother are direct descendants of 1820 settler families. He is not a historian, but has extensive resources to draw on, such as 1820 Settler diaries, written material, as well as a historian in Nottingham in the UK who has access to the national archives. This has proved to be an invaluable source of information that allows for a balanced approach.
All five generations of Courteney's paternal forebears, from 1820 Settlers to date, are buried in a single graveyard in the Clumber Valley just outside of Bathurst, roughly halfway between Grahamstown and Port Alfred. This is what prompted him to start research on his family more than 40 years ago.
He still attends the Clumber Church which was built in 1867 and he started his schooling there.
Both church and school are situated on the exact spot where the wagons rolled in, in 1820, carrying the 167 members of the Nottingham Party, to start a new life in a strange and foreign land.
The talk will start at 17:30 for 18:00 and for more information and tickets, contact Len Swimmer at swimmer@telkomsa.net or 082 452 1799.
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