McGregor Museum Kimberley, 5-10 Atlas Street, Kimberley (2026)

02/09/2026

In HERITAGE MONTH... Towards a KIMBERLEY and NORTHERN CAPE READING LIST...

Roberts, Brian. 1976. Kimberley, Turbulent City. Cape Town: David Philip (in association with the Historical Society of Kimberley and the Northern Cape).

02/09/2026

TREES play a vital role in the health and well-being of PEOPLE and their ENVIRONMENT.
ARBOR DAY originated in 1872 in Nebraska - United States.

In South Africa, Arbor Day was first celebrated in 1983 and Arbor Week falls within the first week of September every year.

Keep on planting indigenous:
* Trees that come from or are well suited to your region need less water and TLC (tender loving care). 😊
* By planting indigenous, you play a role in preserving our natural heritage.
* Indigenous plants attract pollinators and birds – promoting biodiversity.
* Plant bee-friendly trees like Vachellia karroo (sweet thorn) and Ziziphus mucronata (buffalo thorn).

Text: Annemarie van Heerden, Botany Dept

02/09/2026

HERITAGE MONTH McGregor Museum Kimberley - headquaters since 1976 in the old Kimberley Sanatorium building - which was later the Hotel Belgrave and, from 1933 to 1971, the Convent of the Holy Family.

31/08/2026

CELEBRATING WOMEN in WOMEN'S MONTH : SOPHY GRAY (5 January 1814 – 27 April 1871), architect, artist and administrator—considered to be South Africa’s FIRST WOMAN ARCHITECT—responsible for churches in three Northern Cape towns.

Sophy (or Sophia) Gray, whose life is commemorated on 31 August in the Anglican liturgical calendar in Southern Africa, was the wife of the Rt Revd Robert Gray, first Anglican Bishop of Cape Town. They arrived in South Africa in February 1848 and, together, worked at building up (literally and figuratively) what would later become the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

It was as a designer of churches that she had an impact on three towns which are now part of the Northern Cape: Fraserburg (St Augustine’s), Victoria West (St John’s) and Colesberg (Christ Church). She may have contributed the design for the earliest (1850) part of what would become the Cathedral of St Andrew and St Michael in Bloemfontein.

Sophy Gray brought with her, from England, architectural plans that could be adapted for the building of churches and schools in new parishes that were being established in Southern Africa. Wherever she went, accompanying her husband on his visitations in the expanding (and dividing) diocese, plans were made for church buildings. By the time of her death in 1871 more than sixty churches had been built in the four new dioceses – Cape Town, Grahamstown, Natal, and Bloemfontein. (Kimberley, dating from 1871, was briefly administered, ecclesiastically, from Grahamstown, and then, until 1911, from Bloemfontein). Forty of the earliest Anglican churches that are still standing today are of her design.

Both Sophy and her husband favoured the Neo-Gothic or Gothic Revival style of church architecture, which was fashionable in Britain at the time and advocated by the Tractarians (High Church movement); they disliked the Romanesque style. But neither Sophy nor Robert Gray felt that church design should stick slavishly to a given style and allowed some diversity.

The Grays set up their residence on the farm Boscheuwel above Claremont, which was later renamed Bishopscourt, where they raised their five children, and also started a school for the local community. She also took responsibility for nursing her husband, who suffered from chronic illness.

As a skilled horsewoman, Sophy Gray often accompanied the Bishop on his horseback visitations throughout the vast Diocese, travelling under harsh and sometimes dangerous conditions.

Her artistic skills are shown in the numerous water-colours and sketches that illustrate her husband’s journals. As an administrator, she organized and kept records of the synods, meetings, and official ceremonies, and managed the diocesan accounts, correspondence and church chronicles.

Women architects were unknown in the Victorian age but Sophy Gray gained respect for her work, with the profession today recognising her as South Africa’s first woman architect. The School of Architecture at the University of the Free State hosts an annual Sophy Gray Lecture and Exhibition in her memory.

31/08/2026

Remembering PETER BEAUMONT, former head of archaeology at the MCGREGOR MUSEUM, who died in Kimberley ten years ago, on 31 August 2016.

Beaumont, born in Cape Town in 1935, matriculated at Rondebosch Boys’ High School before studying archaeology under A.J.H. Goodwin at the University of Cape Town. His first appointment, in 1958, was as a Research Officer at Wits and then under Professor Raymond Dart at the Bernard Price Institute (1965–1977). He moved to Kimberley where he headed archaeology at the McGregor Museum from 1978 to 2000. In retirement he continued to be active, publishing on sites he had excavated in earlier years.

His name is associated with some of South Africa’s most significant sites, including Border Cave, Wonderwerk Cave, Kathu and Canteen Kopje.

As Dart’s field assistant in the later 1960s, Beaumont undertook an investigation of ancient workings in a high-grade haematite deposit at Bomvu Ridge in Swaziland. He established that mining of minerals for pigment not only pre-dated mining for ores, but extended back into the Middle Stone Age. An assemblage of more than 30 000 artefacts was found at the site of Lion Cavern, in rubble “older than 41 000 years BP”. Recognising that the actual age of this material – and evidence for the oldest known pigment mining in the world – lay beyond the range of radiocarbon dating, Beaumont was prompted to excavate at Border Cave in the hope of establishing a regional chronology and for better understanding the Middle Stone Age of Lion Cavern.

In 1971, fresh from a season of fieldwork at Border Cave, Beaumont challenged the then standard view that modern humans originated in Asia. In an article published in the Rand Daily Mail, he was quoted as saying he believed Africa would eventually be proved “the source of modern man’s beginning”. Finds made at Border Cave, he predicted at the time, coupled with accurate radiocarbon dating results provided by his close friend, the late Dr John Vogel, “would convince even the hardiest sceptic of modern man’s emergence in Africa”. It would spur “a renaissance for South African archaeology.”

Beaumont and Vogel’s two-part article, published in African Studies in 1972, ‘On a new radiocarbon chronology for Africa south of the equator’, summarised evidence for both anatomical and behavioural modernity in Africa in Middle Stone Age times as the “transfiguring achievements of these earliest modern men”. It was only in the late 1980s that new DNA-based studies gave independent support for Beaumont’s prescient line of thinking, and a florescence of studies in southern African Pleistocene archaeology, as previously predicted, ensued.

Some of Beaumont’s Border Cave findings were corroborated and amplified by a team headed by Paola Villa and Francesco d’Errico, applying multiple methods of analysis, published in 2012, with Beaumont as a co-author.

Beaumont’s interest in ancient mining was what first brought him to the Northern Cape, where he researched precolonial ochre mines near Postmasburg. Stationed at the McGregor Museum from 1978, he began his study of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sequences inter alia at Wonderwerk Cave, Kathu, Equus Cave (Taung), and along the Vaal River including Pniel and Canteen Kopje. In an era when archaeology was becoming a multi-disciplinary endeavour, Beaumont engaged with palynologists, sedimentologists, and, particularly, dating specialists, whose inputs enhanced the significance of what he called the Northern Cape Pleistocene Project.

Commenting in the Diamond Fields Advertiser following Beaumont’s death, Michael Chazan, co-director of on-going research at Wonderwerk Cave, remarked that in this work “Peter Beaumont established the Northern Cape as a premier palaeoscience region in Africa.” Where he had left off would “keep researchers busy for generations,” he added.

Beaumont promoted public interest in archaeology through talks and museum exhibits, as well as involvement in creating the 1989 television series, “Origins: the Southern Evidence”. He was instrumental in opening Wonderwerk Cave and Canteen Kopje as public sites with displays for schools and tourists. The King and Queen of Sweden invited him to address the Travellers Club of Stockholm, in 1998, after meeting him as guests of the Oppenheimers at Rooipoort. The Hollywood celebrity Val Kilmer travelled to Kimberley to learn from him of his work with Adrian Boshier, the central figure in Lyall Watson’s “The Lightning Bird”. Among the many people who attended a memorial gathering in Kimberley were Nicky and Strilli Oppenheimer, who, through friendship over many years, took a personal interest in his work.

Beaumont is remembered as one of a kind. With a unique brand of humour, his exuberance and hearty laugh were contagious. He had a habit of scratching his wild woolly hair when puzzled or excited; when words sometimes failed him, his thoughts raced ahead, and he would leave sentences incomplete or peppered with “well, umm … put it this way … umm.” With a grin or a twinkle in his arresting blue eyes, or gesticulating beside the campfire, his stories were always mesmerising.

Beaumont was elected President of the South African Society for Quaternary Research in 1995, serving as the Vice President of the INQUA congress that was hosted four years later in South Africa.

(Based on the obituary in the South African Archaeological Bulletin - David Morris, Judy Maguire & Philip Kiberd, Dec 2016).

30/08/2026

CELEBRATING WOMEN in WOMEN'S MONTH : the ST MICHAEL’S SISTERS and ST MICHAEL’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, Kimberley.

The Community of St Michael and All Angels was an Anglican religious order of nuns, founded in Bloemfontein in 1874 by Bishop Allan Webb, which contributed to education as significantly as it did to nursing. Webb’s predecessor, Bishop Edward Twells had earlier written of the need for a Sisterhood to provide for the education of girls in Bloemfontein.

Three novices and three lay helpers under Emma, a Mother Superior, arrived from England in April 1874, and immediately set about establishing a school, St Michael's—a school that exists to this day in Bloemfontein as one of the leading schools in South Africa. The Community also founded the St George's Cottage Hospital, in 1877, as the first hospital in the Orange Free State.

A pressing priority for Bishop Webb was to serve the mushrooming throng of diggers who were converging in thousands on the Diamond Fields, on Kimberley, in the early 1870s—which was then at the western edge of the Diocese of Bloemfontein. Having sent priests, the bishop despatched, in 1876, a representative of the newly formed Community of St Michael and All Angels. Sister Henrietta Stockdale pioneered the training of nurses at Kimberley’s Carnarvon Hospital, and, as the Community enlarged its effort in Kimberley, so it extended its work to education. A school for girls, also called ST MICHAEL’S, was opened in Kimberley in January 1877, under Sister Louisa. The undated photograph shows Sister Henrietta with some of the staff and students.

Unlike its sister school in Bloemfontein, St Michael’s Kimberley, has not survived into the present: it closed about 1914.

St Michael’s was originally situated at the Cricket Ground, De Beers Road but, around 1895, relocated to new premises at the corner of Memorial and Du Toitspan Roads. It was from the latter site that the procession of servers, choir and clergy departed in March 1907 and again in May 1908 for the laying of the foundation stone and subsequent dedication of the new St Cyprian’s Church – later Cathedral – further along Du Toitspan Rd.

The site of St Michael’s at the bottom of Memorial Road was later occupied by the Belgravia Junior School, in a building designed by William Timlin; and after Belgravia Primary amalgamated with Boys’ Junior the building was taken over by the Henrietta Stockdale Nursing College.
(Photo via KIMBERLEY CALLS…AND RECALLS)

30/08/2026

CELEBRATING WOMEN in WOMEN'S MONTH : SISTERS OF MERCY from the north of Ireland to Bechuanaland via Kimberley.

The Roman Catholic Church officially established a presence in the central interior of South Africa with the institution, in 1886, of the Apostolic Vicariate of Kimberley in Orange (Vicariatus Apostolicus Fluminis Orangensis). It was entrusted to Bishop Anthony Gaughren O.M.I. Vast in extent, the needs of different districts called for attention. Thus in 1894 the Revd Fr Porte O.M.I., having visited Bechuanaland, wrote to Bishop Gaughren urging the necessity of a Convent School for girls at what was then Mafeking (now Mahikeng). Many, both Catholic and non-Catholic, he reported, were not only willing but desirous to have such a school for their children, and would give it their whole-hearted support. Mahikeng, the Tshidi Barolong capital, had also become a colonial town of strategic significance, to which the railway from Cape Town was completed in 1894.

Bishop Gaughren had a Church built there in 1896 and set about seeking Sisters for the project. The Holy Family Sisters, in Kimberley, were unable to provide help, being already fully committed, but the Superior, Mother Xavier Garland, suggested that the Bishop might appeal to the Convent of Mercy in Strabane, in the north of Ireland, where she had been to school.

Gaughren, also an Irishman, called on the Bishop of Derry on a visit in 1897, and was granted leave to visit the Strabane Convent. There, he pleaded his cause so eloquently that many volunteers came forward. Five were chosen: Mother Teresa Cowley (former Superior of Strabane, who was to be the Superior of the group), Mother Magdalen Dunne (Bursar, in Strabane), Mother Stanislaus Gallagher (Novice Mistress in Strabane), Sr. M. Evangelist McGlynn (the Community Nurse), and Sr M. Gonzaga McDonagh, the youngest of the group, who was a gifted linguist and musician. The young superioress of Strabane, Mother M. Joseph, is recorded as reproaching the Bishop, with the words, "My Lord, you are taking the best of the Community". His Lordship, with disarming amiability declared he wanted only the best, and spoke so convincingly of the work to be done in a neglected part of his large Vicariate that all opposition was overcome. As he was leaving, his Lordship, standing on one of the terraces, allowed his gaze to rest on the valley whose cornfields, orchards and meadows were then beautiful with the promise of a rich harvest. The contrast between this scene and that of the desert-like spaces of Bechuanaland must have been vividly before him. When someone asked if the scenery of South Africa compared with that spread out before their eyes he answered promptly: "More extensive, but not varied!". It must have brought many a wry smile when they eventually reached their destination.

The Sisters were to leave as soon as possible, though work would not be started in Mafeking until the following year.

Three of the pupils at the convent sought to join the sisters and obtained parental blessing to do so. Thus the five Sisters were augmented by three Postulants, Margaret Coffey (Mother Magdalen's niece), (later Mother M. Joseph); Helen Byrne (later Mother M. Patricia, Novice Mistress), and Brigid McGlinchey (Mother Evangelist's niece), (later Mother M. Columba). There was a fourth girl, who was to be a lay Sister - Sarah. She did not stay long and returned to Ireland. The parents of these girls gave generous gifts towards the expenses of the new mission.

A crowded six weeks followed, with outfits to be made, and farewell visits paid. The Sisters travelled via Dublin, Holyhead to London, where they were the guests of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Hamerton Convent. The Superioress, Mother Angelina, was a past pupil of Strabane Convent. Sr M. Laurence of the same community was a cousin of Mother Teresa. A record kept by one of the travellers says that the hospitality and friendliness of these Sisters was beyond belief. They were taken to see places of interest around London. On the morning of their departure, 24 September 1897 – the feast of Our Lady of Mercy - they attended Mass at 6.30 a.m., followed by Benediction, and the hymn "Mother of Mercy" sung specially for those leaving.

They sailed in the "Arundel Castle". The Captain was a friendly Cork man, and on board was a South African priest of Irish descent, Fr. Quirke, who proved a most entertaining travelling companion, providing much information on the country to which they were going.

On arrival in Cape Town on 17 October they were put up by the Dominican Sisters at St. Mary's Convent, Bouquet Street; and the following evening boarded the train for Kimberley, where they were met by Fr. Lenoir, O.M.I. and the Revd Brother Mullen, Superior of the Christian Brothers. At the Holy Family convent in Currey Street, the Revd Mother Xavier and her Community welcomed them with the most affectionate kindness.

Sr M. Gonzaga had been in poor health before the voyage began and, contrary to expectations, had not improved; she had been worse on arrival in Cape Town. In Kimberley her health grew steadily worse. Scheduled to head on to Taung, the group instead secured a house to rent in Currey Street where Dr Ashe did what he could for the ailing Sister – he resolutely refused all payment. She died on 2 January 1898 and was buried in the Nazareth House plot in the Gladstone cemetery, Kimberley.

The Sisters, having resided in Kimberley from late October 1897, eventually made it to Mafeking on 15 February 1898.

(Edited version of “The Story of the Sisters of Mercy, South Africa” cited in Kimberley Calls…and Recalls).
(Pictured is the pioneering group of Sisters of Mercy who stayed in Kimberley prior to their departure for Mahikeng.)

29/08/2026

CELEBRATING WOMEN in WOMEN'S MONTH : MARY MEADER, pioneer of aerial photography, took aerial views of Kimberley in November 1937.

RACHAEL MARY UPJOHN LIGHT MEADER (1916-2008) American aerial photographer and explorer, best known in aviation circles for her 56 000 km flight in 1937–1938 (with her husband Dr Richard Light), during which she photographed unprecedented images of South America and Africa. The flight was their way of celebrating their 1935 marriage. The couple were in Kimberley on 23 November 1937, and she took a set of striking aerial views.

Mary Meader was born Upjohn and married twice, her second husband being Edwin Meader, a geography professor.

In the 1930s aerial photography was as yet a young field, initially serving as a tool for military intelligence in World War I. Mary and Richard's interests were more geographic (though some governments, concerned about their activity, banned Mary’s use of her camera). They were intrigued to document land forms and human use of them. During their 18-month odyssey, Mary took over 2000 photographs – some of them described as “landmarks in the photography of South America and Africa” – when they caught features never before seen from the air, including Peru's Nazca lines (those extraordinary geoglyphs recognised notably through Mary Meader’s images) and Uganda's Ruwenzori Mountains.

Mary Meader took flying lessons and learnt Morse code so that she could co-pilot, navigate and operate the radio on their epic flight. Their Bellanca CH-400 Skyrocket monoplane was one of the most up-to-date aircraft of the 1930s, but it was not pressurised, insulated, or heated. At higher altitudes Mary wore a fur coat and boots, breathed oxygen through a wooden mouthpiece, and communicated with her husband by intercom. To handle her 20-pound camera, secured with a clothesline, she would brace herself on the window frame and lean out to capture the views that would make her famous. She used a Fairchild F-8 aerial camera and a 35 mm Leica. On a typical day, Mary and Richard would arise at 04:00 and fly until 11:00; after lunch they would visit the some of the spots on the ground which they planned to photograph the next day.

Mary Meader’s African pictures were included in a book written by her husband and published by the American Geographical Society. The historic significance of their flight was recognized by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum which has an exhibit on the Lights' unprecedented fly-over of Africa. She was a member of the Society of Woman Geographers from 1942, and in 2005 was granted an Outstanding Achievement Award for her having pioneered aerial photography. A year later Mary Meader became an honorary member of the American Geographical Society and was invited to sign her name on the Society’s famous Fliers’ & Explorers’ Globe. Inscribed on its surface are the signatures of many who defined the history of 20th-century flight and exploration, among them: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Apollo astronauts, Robert Peary, Richard Byrd, and Sir Edmund Hillary. Mrs Meader was one of only three invited to sign it twice: she wrote her name across East Africa and across the Andes.

Mary Meader was heir to the Upjohn pharmaceutical company fortune; her philanthropy later in life was principally directed to endowing the Western Michigan University, the University of Michigan, and various charities in Kalamazoo, the city in which she was born and spent almost all her days.

One of the largest gifts was her donation of $4 million to establish the W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change - which digitises maps and aerial photographs from throughout the world to document and evaluate the changes across the Earth’s surfaces. Into her 70s, Mrs Meader travelled to an elementary school where she taught children to read.

Mary Meader was 91 when she died in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in March 2008.

29/08/2026

STEVENGRAPH (mmkp6032) – Historic commemorative images of the past

The Stevengraph is a picture woven from silk. It was invented in c 1861 by Thomas Stevens a weaver based in Coventry, England. The town was the centre of a ribbon weaving industry, but a free trade agreement signed in 1860, the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty, had a detrimental effect on the local economy.

To counteract this Stevens adapted the Jacquard looms to weave colourful pictures from silk, and by 1862 there were four different designs. By the 1880s there were over 900 designs, and the silk pictures were given the name Stevengraph after the man who had pioneered them. The silk pictures were utilised in useful objects like bookmarks, greetings cards and badges for organisations such as schools and masonic societies, as well as commemorative pictures.

This example, from the collection of the McGregor Museum, falls into the latter category. It depicts Queen Victoria surrounded by portraits of the prime ministers who served her from her accession in 1837 until 1886, with the dates they were elected to that office, in some cases multiple times. Also depicted are the royal coat-of-arms and views of Balmoral Castle, the Houses of Parliament and Windsor Castle.

This Stevengraph was most likely produced to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Note on the card mount the statement: ‘Woven in pure silk by Thomas Stevens, Coventry’.

Postcards incorporating silk pictures were also manufactured by Thomas Stevens, and others, but were only accepted by the Post Office in 1903. It should be noted that strictly speaking the term Stevengraph refers only to pictures and scenes woven from silk, not the bookmarks, postcards and other items made from that material.

Robert Hart

29/08/2026

MAGERSFONTEIN BATTLEFIELD MUSEUM - CLOSED TODAY and TOMORROW (29-30 August) - on account of there being no water. We apologise for any inconvenience.

McGregor Museum Kimberley

02/09/2026

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