A look at Germiston’s early history

It is claimed that Johan Georg MEYER (1816-1856) bought the farm Elandsfontein in exchange for an ox-wagon. He had trekked up from Prince Albert in 1835 with the Andries Hendrik POTGIETER trek. He staked out three farms: Kliprivier, Elandsfontein and Swartkoppies. He left another trekker, Jacob SMIT, in charge of the farms while he went back to Prince Albert to sell his farm and fetch his family. He had married Hester Christina Elizabeth MULDER in 1840. After not getting suitable offers, he abandoned the farm and returned to the Transvaal. In 1845 the family settled at Elandsfontein alongside the Natalspruit River and built a farmhouse (present-day corner of Hendrik Potgieter Street and 10th Avenue in Alberton). The family cemetery was where the traffic circle in 9th Avenue stands today. The first burial was Cornelius Floris Johann MEYER, who died in 1851, aged 10, in a freak snowstorm while collecting firewood near the Jukskei River. He was the oldest son of Johan and Hester Christina Elizabeth MULDER.

In 1855, the family trekked to Prince Albert to visit relatives. On his way back, Johan died near Colesburg in October 1856. His eldest son, Johannes Petrus (aka Jan), was 13 years old. The four boys, their five sisters, and their mother continued with the return trek. In 1858 Hester married Abraham VILJOEN, and he took charge of the farms. Jacob SMIT acquired the farm Kliprivier on July 25, 1859. Hester and Abraham’s child, Jacomina Hendina, died in 1862, aged two years. Abraham died in 1894. The executor of his estate gave 300 morgen to his widow, Hester. She had this land transferred to her four daughters after the Anglo-Boer War, and then she sold it to the Alberton Estate Syndicate, which established the town of Alberton. Alberton was proclaimed a town in 1903 and named for General Hennie ALBERTS, chairman of the syndicate, and the town of Prince Albert in honour of the MEYER family. After the war, Hester lived with her daughter Wilhermina BEZUIDENHOUT on the farm De Rust in Heidelberg. She died in 1912.

JACK & SIMMER

In 1885 half of the original farm, Elandsfontein, was acquired by two merchants, John JACK and August SIMMER, who ran a trading store at Lake Chrissie. John was born in 1849 on the farm Germiston near Glasgow, Scotland. The DINWIDDIE family had owned the Germiston manor in Scotland since the early 1700s. August was from Vacha in Germany. John and August travelled from Durban to Lake Chrissie in 1882 on their way to the Witwatersrand to seek their fortune. They erected sandstone buildings at Lake Chrissie, including stables, a gin depot and a small hotel. The hotel was a small 3-room building and remained largely untouched since its original construction, still offering accommodation at the John Jack Inn.

In August 1887, John registered the Simmer & Jack Gold Mining Co. The company included George FARRAR, whose family imported drilling equipment, and Harry STRUBEN, who from 1884 had run a small gold mine in Roodepoort. Listed in 1924, the company rose to prominence as one of the Reef’s most stable mining companies before its delisting in April 2013.

The village of Germiston was established in 1886 and named after John’s birthplace in Scotland. It was formally declared a town in 1903 and a city in 1950. In 1921, the world’s largest gold refinery was established in Germiston. Most of the western world’s gold passes through Rand Refinery. Gold mining in Germiston eventually ended, but the refinery remains busy.

CHURCHES

Germiston Presbyterian Church was the first church to be established in Germiston in 1890, in a wood and iron building on the corner of President and Church Streets, opposite the Clement Mine Shaft, which was opened in 1893. John JACK had given the four stands (from President to Meyer Streets) and £500 for construction. The church stand was later leased out, and the wood and iron church building was physically lifted by hundreds of Simmer & Jack mine workers and moved to the adjacent stand on Church Street. Major MURRAY held services for the troops during the Anglo-Boer War. They decided to build a new church on Broad Street (later renamed Odendaal Street) in 1902. A water well existed on the site, which is directly below the present-day altar. The Rand Daily Mail published an advertisement in October 1904. It offered a first prize of £50 and a second prize of £25 for the best church design. A.W. SIMPSON, of 30 Empire Road in Johannesburg, won the competition. The prize money was held back until the builder’s quotes had been received. The contract was awarded to Smith & Saunders on 24 February 1905. Simpson received both the £50 prize and the £148 architectural fee. The cornerstone was laid on 15 March 1905 by Viscount Alfred MILNER, the Colonial Secretary. The silver trowel used for the stone laying was purchased from Mr BOLD, the local jeweller. The first church service was held on 08 October 1905, conducted by Reverend John SMITH of Pietermaritzburg and Reverend John SCOTT, previously from Yeoville. The official opening and dedication of the church to St Andrew took place on 27 January 1906. Lord SELBORNE, the High Commissioner for South Africa, performed the ceremony, which was attended by the mayor James BLANE and his wife Isabella Mary, John JACK and his wife Jane, and many of the 230 church members. In 1951 the name was changed from Germiston Presbyterian Church to St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Germiston.

The Anglican Parish of Germiston was founded in 1897. Prior to the parish being formally established, it was a mission chapel of the parish of Boksburg, which had been established in 1890. Baptismals, confirmations, and marriage records show that mission work existed prior to 1890, going back to the founding of Germiston in 1886. At that time, the work of the mission priests fell under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Pretoria. Originally the parish consisted of the parish church of St Boniface (present-day inner city of Germiston). The present church building in Meyer Street is the second on the site, designed by Sir Herbert BAKER and built in 1910. The original church was a tin building with a concrete and stone foundation.

ALEXANDER HOTEL

The Alexander Hotel on the corner of President and Jack Streets was partly designed by Sir Herbert BAKER. It was built in 1912 by Alexander STUART, who died when the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed during World War I on May 7, 1915. He was born in Banffshire, Scotland. He went to the USA at an early age, where he started working in construction. He emigrated to South Africa in the 1890s with his brothers John and Robert and two sisters, Annie and Helen. The family settled in Germiston. One of his sisters, Annie Rhind STUART, married the local doctor, Dr Howard Charles SPAULDING, in January 1904 in the Presbyterian church. The other sister was unmarried in 1915 and later moved to New Zealand. John STUART became a Germiston town councillor.

Alexander worked as a builder and cartage contractor in Germiston in partnership with Mr GRATTAN. When the Anglo-Boer War broke out, he joined the Railway Pioneer Regiment and fought for the British, attaining the rank of captain. In 1901 he married Petronella Wilhelmina, the widow of Boer commandant General Gerhardus Hendricus GRAVETT. After the war, he started up his business again on his own.

In 1915, Alexander travelled to the United States with his stepson Jerry GRAVETT. Alexander was originally booked on the Cameronia, but when that ship was requisitioned, he was transferred to Lusitania. The Lusitania did not list Jerry as a passenger. Jerry had been studying for a medical degree in England for a few years, so he may have gone there instead of the USA. Alexander was on a business trip as intended, starting an iron foundry in Germiston, and had inspected several foundries in Great Britain and ordered machinery. At the time of the sinking, Alexander’s father was 86 years old and living in Scotland. The cemetery in Marnoch in the Scottish Midlands has memorials to various family members. Alexander was the principal supporter of the Germiston Rugby Club, contributing funds. He also supported the Germiston Tennis Club. The news of the sinking of the Lusitania sparked off a wave of anti-German riots on the East Rand. Several German-owned businesses were burned down in Germiston, Boksburg, and Benoni.

GERMISTON LAKE

Victoria Lake is commonly known as Germiston Lake. It was named after the Victoria Falls, not Queen Victoria. The lake was originally used as a source of drinking water for the city. The Transvaal Power Company was registered in 1910 and became Eskom in 1948. Eskom donated the land to the Victoria Lake Club in the 1930s. The land where the Sea Scouts and canoeing boathouses are built, plus some land on the other side of the main road, forms part of that donation. Initially only the Scouts had a boat shed in the bay area. The boathouse was built in the 1930s on the site of the current bridge and the shed. In 1906, rowing emerged as the first official water sport, with small clinker-built boats used for both competition and leisure. Sailing began in about 1910 when 20-foot scows were used until World War I temporarily stopped leisure activity at the lake. The construction of Rand Airport in the late 1920s revived sailing after the war. The sport was popular with the nearby aviation workers. The South African Sailing Championships built the bridge in 1948 for the purpose of starting and finishing races. Canoeing began unofficially in the 1960s and officially in 1981. Rowing and sailing merged into the Victoria Lake Club in the 1940s. The club is also home to the all-time South African School Rowing Champions, St Benedict’s College. Almost 50 years after rowing began at the lake, Jeppe High School for Boys and St Benedict’s College built the first sheds in 1987. The 1990s saw the construction of additional sheds and the involvement of other schools.

RAND AIRPORT

The construction of Rand Airport, a privately owned civil airport, started in 1920. It was officially opened in 1931. It was the main airport for Johannesburg, but the city outgrew it and replaced it with Palmietfontein Airport in 1948, which was replaced by Jan Smuts International Airport in 1952. The ownership of the airport originally consisted of 23 private shareholders.

In 1917, Major Allister MILLER landed on Germiston Golf Course and decided that the area close by would be suitable as an airfield. In February 1929, 160 hectares (400 acres) of land were set aside for the Germiston Public Aerodrome as part of an agreement between the Germiston Town Council, the Elandsfontein Estate Company and the Rand Refinery. Later that year, the Germiston Town Council gained full control. Imperial Airways added South Africa to their schedule and made Germiston their base, with Rand Refinery exporting its refined gold by air. The airline received a £400,000 subsidy from both the South African and UK governments over five years.

In November 1929, the Germiston Town Council bought a further 280 ha (700 acres) of land after permission was given by the Mining Commissioner, as the land was owned by the Simmer and Jack mine. The Johannesburg and Germiston Town Councils formed a joint committee on November 14, 1930, and £85000 was set aside for a large and small hangar, administrative buildings, a workshop, floodlights, and cottages. The airport was officially opened on 21 December 1931 by the Governor-General Earl of Clarendon and owned jointly by the Germiston and Johannesburg Town Councils. In 1932, Captain Royal (Roy) Victor Nash MAKEPEACE became its manager. Roy became a pilot in 1917 and shortly afterwards founded the Aero Club of South Africa. In World War I he was an infantryman with the 1st SAI, D Company, before being transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and commissioned. He received the Military Medal for bravery as an infantryman after he single-handedly captured five German soldiers. He served with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Air Force (RAF) from October 1917 to June 1919 before returning to live in Germiston. He was born in Wales in 1899 and died in 1989 in England.

Rand Airport became the headquarters of South African Airways (SAA) when the airline’s head office was moved from Durban to Rand Airport on 01 July 1935. By 1938, development costs had reached £200 000 and losses £20 000, a cost the Germiston Town Council could no longer afford. It sold its share to the Johannesburg City Council. The final transfer took place in 1944.

In early 1939, the Union Defence Force took control of Rand Airport; by May 1940, all commercial flights had ended. The training schools based at Rand trained pilots for the war effort, and the facilities were extended with fifteen additional hangars. By 1944, a limited number of internal commercial flights resumed from the airport. In 1948 SAA moved its headquarters to Palmietfontein Airport because of runway length constraints.

Rand Airport grew quickly after World War II ended. In 1975, Rand Airport recorded 133,135 aircraft movements, making it the busiest airport in the southern hemisphere. Today, Rand Airport caters largely to light aircraft, flying schools, air charter operators, and aircraft maintenance organisations; it is also home to the South African Airways Museum.

SCHOOLS

Germiston’s oldest high school is part of the combined St Catherine’s Convent. The Catholic school was founded by the Dominican Sisters under the leadership of Mother Rose NILAND in the city centre in 1908. It was the first convent school on the East Rand and the first high school in Germiston. They erected the first building on property they purchased from Simmer and Jack, near Rose Deep Mine, in Hardach Street. By 1948, St Catherine’s Convent moved to Piercy Avenue in Parkhill Gardens. The new school had spacious grounds, tennis and netball courts, a soccer field and a swimming pool.

In 1968, the school limited its intake to girls from grades one to seven and boys from grades one to three. In May 1985, the headmistress, Sister Alraed, approached the regional prioress about the possibility of extending the school to accommodate boys up to Grade Seven. The response was positive, and from January 1986, St Catherine’s operated as a co-ed preparatory school. Many of the established Germiston families have had generations of children pass through St Catherine’s School.

Germiston High School was founded alongside Victoria Lake. From the 1940s to 1963, the girls were based on Fourth Avenue in Lambton at what was known as Germiston Girls’ High School, while the boys remained on the 1917 campus as Germiston Boys’ High School. In 1964, due to the need to relocate the Afrikaans Delville Primary School, the girls were moved back to combine with the boys in the original buildings. Famous past pupils include Dr Sydney BRENNER, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize. The Germiston Boys’ High School cadet band was one of the most successful in South Africa from 1952 to 1964, often recording an average mark of 99% in music performance, drumming, bugle and trumpet ensembles, drill, dress, and discipline. The school also had a large music centre for a number of years, which grew due to the work of the late George BURGESS and included jazz and concert bands.

WITS RIFLES

The Witwatersrand Rifles Regiment is a mechanised infantry regiment based at Germiston. The reserve unit is commonly known as the “Wits Rifles” and was formed by proclamation on May 1, 1903. It absorbed the members of the Railway Pioneer Regiment and the Rand Rifles, both of which had fought in the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). In 1907, it absorbed the Transvaal Light Infantry Regiment.

CARNEGIE LIBRARY

The Carnegie Germiston Library was made possible by the Carnegie Corporation, a philanthropic trust based in the USA. Andrew CARNEGIE established the Carnegie Corporation in 1911 to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding. The Corporation has supported libraries around the world for over a century, funding their construction in English-speaking countries. Between 1883 and 1929, 2,509 libraries were constructed, of which 12 were built in South Africa: Harrismith (1907), Hopetown (1908), Muizenberg (1909), Barberton (1911), Moorreesburg (1911), Standerton (1911), Potchefstroom (1912), Benoni (1913), Newcastle (1913), Germiston (1915) and Krugersdorp (1917).

The requests for the corporation to fund a library came from the towns and cities. In 1905, the first plans to build a library in Germiston were made. In 1909, the municipal office established the first municipal library in a small room. The construction of the Germiston Carnegie Library was given the go-ahead on 16 March 1915 with a grant of $26 407, the largest amount for a Carnegie Library in South Africa. The library, designed by the municipal engineer James BRIGHT (1872-1944), was opened in 1922.

The library has seen much neglect and vandalism. At one time, the library was converted into a restaurant, then a club, and by 2013, it had become derelict when a fire broke out and destroyed what remained of it. Only the outer walls remain. The original main entrance doors were put into safekeeping with the municipality. In 2015 the municipality decided to convert what remained of the building into a 400-seat theatre for the performing arts, although such a plan dates back to 2010. The project was completed in 2016 and named the Dumisani Masilela Civic Theatre. In 2017, an attempted hijacking claimed the life of actor Dumisani MASILELA.

WELL-KNOWN RESIDENTS

Albert JOHANNESON, professional footballer and first black player to play in the FA Cup
André NEL, South African cricket fast bowler
Andre WATSON, rugby referee
Arlene DICKINSON, a South African-Canadian entrepreneur
Bobby LOCKE, professional golfer
Daisy Louisa DE MELKER, nurse that poisoned two husbands and a son
Dr Sydney BRENNER, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Ernie ELS, professional golfer, attended Delville Primary School and Jan de Klerk High School.
Helen SUZMAN, a politician
Jeannie DE GOUVEIA, also known as Jeannie D, is a TV presenter, media personality, and the founder of Finery Gin.
John CUNDILL, journalist and playwright
Marie WARDER, a journalist, later became an advocate for the cause of hemochromatosis.
Mimi COETZEE, opera singer, attended Delville Laerskool.
Neville COLMAN, haematologist and DNA expert
Pierre ISSA, Lebanese-South African footballer
Stanley SKEWES, mathematician
Trevor DENMAN, American sportscaster in thoroughbred horse racing
Viv VERMAAK is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and director.