South Africa General Mission

An article published by Woolgar in November 2010, ‘The "Mrs. Head" correspondence’, examined covers sent to Mrs. Caroline Head at Wimbledon, Surrey, from Swazieland and other parts of southern Africa. Caroline Head annotated the envelopes in pencil to record addressees’ names. On page 91, Figure 11 was illustrated a cover posted from Calvinia, Cape of Good Hope, which entered the post on 12^th November 1900 and was annotated by Caroline Head, "Daniel". However, at that stage Daniel’s identity had not been established although Reference “51” on page 93 noted:

'There was a ‘worker’ named Daniel in Swazieland during the 1890s and Mr. and Mrs. Head took a particular interest in a mission station in Pondoland named ‘Daniel’.

This last statement may have been misleading, as Mrs. Head always annotated the name of the person who corresponded to her, and not the name of a mission station.

It would now appear that Daniel (illustrated here) was an Evangelist who had volunteered to serve for the South Africa General Mission, and by 1906/7 was at a mission station near Dumisa in Tongaland. He had also served in Swazieland, for page 13 of the December 1895 edition of The South Africa Pioneer records, 'Swazieland. We are sending our Evangelist in Durban, Daniel and his wife to help in this spot. The Old Queen’s kraal, and between Bethany & Darkton. They leave for Bethany in December.' It was not uncommon for missionaries and workers from the Cape General Mission and the South Africa General Mission, to move between mission stations within southern Africa. The 1916 edition of SAGM journal recorded that in 1897 he was at Mbabane.

Nowadays, many scholars recognise the important contribution from black missionaries in recruiting the indigenous to the Christian faith. Patrick Harries’ book, Work, Culture and Identity published in 1994, shows how some black miners, who had acquired a modicum of literacy and knowledge of the gospels, while working on the Transvaal mines, carried bibles and items such as paper, pencils and religious tracts home with them, in order to spread the "Word" to their tribe in southern Moçambique. Moreover, when thousands of black miners left the mines at the start of the South Africa War, before and during October 1899, converts took their new Christian Faith with them, much to the concern of the Portuguese authorities and the Moçambique Catholic Church.

There was an error made in the Mrs Head article as published in The Transvaal Philatelist. On page 88 it stated: “Clara Harris and Georgina Gabb founded the Hebron mission called ‘Welcome’ one year after starting missionary work at Bethany.” However, a letter from Georgina Gabb was published in 1912 and records:

'We [Miss F. Georgina Gabb and Miss Clara Harris] came up here in August, 1894, at the invitation of an old native, to teach the children; he had given us a warm invitation, but when we arrived they were having a beer-drink, and we had to sleep under a wagon till after some days he cleared out one of his huts into which thankfully we moved. It was not comfortable, as there was a low door, no window, the rain came in, and there was little light. Still we were very happy there, and found lots to praise God for. After two months our little sod house was finished. We called it “The Welcome”; we made it very pretty inside, and divided it by curtains, it was 12 feet by seventeen, and was living-sleeping-saddle-store-room, school and Church. A rat also paid us a nightly visit and nibbled at our food. In less than two months it began to fall down … with posts and many pieces of twisted telegraph wire it held together. God’s blessing was there, and some of the very best converts are the fruit of those days. On March 6^th 1896, we left the little sod house and moved [to] Hebron'.

Therefore, ‘The Welcome’ was their hut and out-station and not the Mission Station at Hebron.

"The Welcome" Mission Station, 1894; about one mile from Hebron.
It is not known if the lady standing to the left is Frances Georgina Gabb.