JOSEPH MILLER
We have seen that John Hannah Miller emigrate with the 1820 Settlers and settled in the bushveld of what was to become the Bathurst district and later the Eastern Cape. But what of their children, the first generation born into that environment? Of the following, it is Joseph Miller that I can trace my existence to. As usual, I am indebted to Norma van As' book Small World.
Joseph Miller was born on the 19th April 1834 to John and Hannah Miller.
He married Emily Frances Dennison at Baviaans River. (She was born on the 14th January 1839 to George and Mary Webber). The young couple set up home on the farm Hindhope which her father had leased. Wheat and barley had been grown there and there were some cattle, all of which did badly because of drought and disease. Drought affected the cattle for both ploughing and travel by wagon. Even by the standards of the time, it was rather remote. Joseph and Emily helped her ailing parents as best they could. Both parents suffered from serious ill health, yet Mary bore another child there in 1860.
When her father George died, Emily was 22 years old and had 6 children of her own between the ages of 16 and new born.
Joseph applied for and was granted a farm of three thousand acres “beyond the Fish River,” an area that the government wished to be settled to strengthen the frontier outposts. The land was offered to men who were prepared to serve in the event of a native uprising. They were expected to provide their own mounts and fire arms. In 1859 two of the older generation, George Dennison writing to Daniel Webber noted : “Joseph has got a grant in Kaffirland”. Even getting there was hazardous. George Dennison lent his son his horse to accompany Joseph, but “the journey was too much for the poor beast”.
We find references to “Kwelegha” elsewhere. It appears that such territorial definitions are rather broad. Kwelegha is not that near the Fish River, . Also spelt “Kwelera”, it refers to a district or the river. This is some distance beyond East London up the east coast – particularly if travel is by ox wagon. The Fish River being not really that far from Grahamstown and the area in which the origin 1820 Settlers were allocated land. The Kwelegha River winds inland and with some imagination can be considered as near King William's Town, then an emerging town and military base. Joseph received his grant in 1859. Quite where his farm was is unclear. By this time British German Legionnaires were being demobbed from Crimea and settled in the area too. So while more Europeans were settling the area, all newcomers were seen with a quasi military role. The British Empire had already envisaged the future South Africa, but the gaps were being coloured in. New settlers had many challenges : opening up and establishing viable farms, weather and failing crops or livestock, wild animals, the opposing native population. And all this just to reach subsistence level.
The young family moved there after the birth of the baby; their furniture, farm implement and other possessions transported in Joseph's wagon pulled by oxen; their livestock driven alongside them. They lived in the tent-wagon until Joseph had constructed a wattle and daub house.
When diamonds were discovered in the hinterland, Joseph augmented his farm income with doing transporting for others.
Norma van As notes that “In 1879 Joseph moved from the King Williams Town district to the farm Woodlands, near Arnoldton, in the East London district”. This house I do know. Well sort of. Two things happened near East London in the 1960s and '70s. The large Bridledrift Dam was built and the extensive Mdantsane township was started. Dams generally have a protected zone around them to ensure minimum pollution. Mdantsane was built to house black people both excluded from East London under apartheid and those drifting into urban areas from the countryside. That too need a large unoccupied zone for management and political reasons. Unfortunately Woodlands farm was within this zone. I was to briefly see it while access tracks were still passible.
But at the time that the Millers lived there it was a successful home, sturdy and comfortable. The children walked or rode to the nearest station to get to school in East London. “Emily wrote to her uncle : “We have some ostriches and cattle, but most of our living is from wood and sneezewood poles”. Joseph was to suffer an accident while out on horseback looking after sick cattle and the Boer War cut them off from family in the Transvaal.
Alec Hugh, their youngest child died of typhoid fever in 1900 while with his regiment. Norma van As tells of further hardships, illnesses, bereavements and other challenges. Joseph moved his family to St Peters Road in East London in about 1904 and near relatives.
Joseph died in August 1905 from “a complication of diseases”. Emily moved to Kimberley with her youngest daughter Ella and died there the following year.
The children of Joseph and Emily were:
They had the following children :
- Alice Mary Miller
- Ida Emily Miller b. 1861 d. 1930. She married Angus William Newman b. 1859 d. 1912
- Donald John Miller
- Lilian Elizabeth Miller
- Ella Evelyn Miller
- Clifford George Miller
- Roland Henry Miller
