Andries Stockenström

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Andries Stockenström
Andries Stockenström

Sir Andries Stockenström, 1st Baronet, (6 July 1792 Cape Town - 16 March 1864 London) was lieutenant governor of British Kaffraria from 13 September 1836 to 9 August 1838.

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[edit] Life and career

The eldest son of Anders Stockenström (1757-1811), he received an elementary education in Cape Town and in 1808 took up an appointment as clerk in his father’s office at Graaff-Reinet. On route he met up with Lt-Col R Collins and accompanied him as a Dutch interpreter on a journey that took them to the Orange River and into the Xhosa country. Inclined to pursue a military career, Andries accompanied the expedition sent in 1810 to inform Ndlambe, the Rharhabe paramount chief, of the government’s aim to expel him from the Zuurveld.

In 1811 he was commissioned as an ensign in the Cape Regiment, took part in the 4th Frontier War of 1811-12, and in the campaign against Ndlambe. When Anders Stockenström was killed, Andries was his father’s aide-de-camp. On hearing of the incident while at Bruintjieshoogte, Andries and 18 mounted burghers made haste to Doringnek surprising a number of the killers, slaying 13 and recovering eight horses. After the Doringnek incident Andries was appointed to his father’s position in command of the burgher forces.

Following Ndlambe’s expulsion he assisted Colonel John Graham in the selection of fortifications for the protection of the Fish River frontier, after which Governor Sir John Cradock appointed him to the new position of assistant landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, stationed initially at Van Stadensdam on the (upper) Fish River, and afterwards at the newly founded town of Cradock.

As his duties were mostly of a military nature, Andries retained his commission and retired on full pay.

In 1813, he led a campaign across the Fish against Xhosa tribes that had violated the new frontier. In May 1814 he became a lieutenant in the Cape Regiment.

In 1818 Stockenström campaigned against Ndlambe and the amaGcaleka as an ally of Ngqika. The Graaff-Reinet burghers, under his command, defended the left flank at the Kat River. In 1819 he took to the field against Ndlambe who had invaded the colony and attacked Grahamstown. The Graaff-Reinet burghers’ mission was to meet any possible threat from the north. Col T Willshire advanced against the Gcaleka with the Cape, Stellenbosch and Swellendam commandos, and the Graaff-Reinet commando was ordered to clear insurgents from the dense bush in the Fish River area – previously regarded as impenetrable. Stockenström was promoted to captain in the Cape Regiment after this campaign.

From about this period his relationship with Governor Lord Charles Somerset declined, in part because of his “outspoken criticism of Somerset’s frontier policy or his refusal to allow the settlement of the 1820 Settlers in his district and his opposition to their location on the frontier”, Duminy suggests, and in part because of a quarrel with the Governor’s son, Col. Henry Somerset. In addition, Stockenström was friendly with Acting Governor Sir Rufane Donkin, and since Grahamstown editor Robert Godlonton was a staunch supporter of Col. Somerset, this “meant that the remainder of his public career was characterized by personal and political feuds”. His military career ended in July 1820 when he was transferred to the Corsican Rangers and placed on half-pay.

The Graaff-Reinet district’s involvement with the frontier was reduced by the creation in 1821 of the separate district of Albany (out of Uitenhage) and in 1826 of the district of Somerset (later Somerset East, out of Graaff-Reinet), though Stockenström remained landdrost until the reform of 1828 which abolished his office.

In 1827 the Council of Advice was enlarged to include two unofficial members, and in June that year Stockenström was appointed to fill one of these positions.

Early in 1829 Major-General Richard Bourke, who had arrived in the colony in 1826 as Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern Province, but instead became Acting Governor when Lord Charles Somerset departed, appointed Stockenström to the new post of Commissioner-General for the Eastern Province.

Despite these problems Stockenström tried to reach a frontier settlement, and concentrated on establishing a dense population in the Ceded Territory between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers.

The Xhosa chief Maqoma had earlier in 1829 become regent of the amaRharhabe following the death of his father, Ngqika, and the succession of his infant half-brother Sandile. Stockenström expelled him from the strategic Kat River valley and settled it with Khoikhoi. He promulgated new regulations dealing with the recovery of stolen stock. Provided the civil authorities gave permission, armed parties were permitted to cross the frontier and recover stolen stock by force, if necessary.

In 1830 Stockenström allowed a punitive expedition against Tyali, being convinced that this Xhosa chief was guilty of brazen theft. However, the expedition resulted in the shooting of another chief, Zeko, which caused considerable controversy. Stockenström at first commended Field Commandant Erasmus for his conduct, but later investigation showed that reports of Zeko being armed and removing livestock were false.

The outcome of this investigation was suspicion on Stockenström's part of Col Somerset’s motives in demanding further punitive expeditions. The issue became critical in June 1831 when Somerset was authorised by Cape Town to launch an expedition despite Stockenström's objections. Stockenström became increasingly critical of the frontier policy implemented, both in his reports from Graaff-Reinet and in the proceedings of the Council of Advice. After Lord Stanley, Secretary for the Colonies, had requested his resignation from the council, Stockenström left the colony in 1833 and, while in London, resigned as Commissioner-General. On hearing of the outbreak of the Sixth Frontier War in December 1834, he decided to settle in Sweden.

In August 1835 he gave evidence to the House of Commons select committee on aborigines. His opinions, while critical of the liberals, impressed Lord Glenelg, the new Secretary for the Colonies, who appointed him Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern Province. Stockenström, however, did not find his task on the frontier any easier, since he lacked authority over the military, his subordinates were still free to correspond with Cape Town, and he was no more independent of the Governor than before. His tenure as Lieutenant-Governor was marred by virulent and libellous campaigns conducted against him by Col Somerset, Godlonton and a variety of other interested parties, which served to annul all his positive actions in bringing peace to the frontier.

But even here things had been changed in his absence. Stockenström's plans for populating the Ceded Territory had been abandoned. Governor Sir Benjamin d’Urban had nonetheless settled the Mfengu in the territory and opened it up for permanent white settlement.

In February 1838 Stockenström started a libel action against Captain Duncan Campbell, civil commissioner for Albany, who claimed that Stockenström had murdered a Xhosa in 1813. The Supreme Court, however, found the evidence against Campbell insufficient, and Stockenström requested the new Governor, Sir George Napier, to launch a full inquiry.

Stockenström was exonerated by the court of inquiry in June 1838, but nonetheless felt his position hopeless, and travelled to Britain to consult Glenelg. Glenelg refused to accept Stockenström's resignation, but his successor, Lord Normanby, dismissed Stockenström in August 1839. Stockenström was created baronet a decade later in 1849, and awarded a pension of £700 a year.

Stockenström returned to the Cape in May 1840 and divided his time between his farm Klipkraal, in the Swaershoek Valley near Somerset East, Uitenhage and Cape Town. In 1845 he settled on his farm Maasström, at the foot of the Kaga Mountains, where he remained until April 1846 when the Seventh Frontier War broke out.

The burghers objected to serving under a military commander, and Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland promoted Stockenström to colonel and placed him in command of the levies. The burgher force first cleared the south-western part of the Eastern Province, up to the upper Fish River, and then advanced to Fort Beaufort, where it was intended that he would invade the Xhosa country. However, the military diverted him to the Amathole[21] mountains and then, having invaded the Xhosa country east of the Kei without him, attempted to discredit him by repudiating the agreement Andries had made with the Rharhabe parmount, Sarhili.

Andries, his health ruined by this expedition (he remained in poor health the rest of his life), called on the British government to institute an inquiry into the war, maintaining that it had been prolonged needlessly.

But the new Governor, Sir Harry Smith, ostentatiously denounced the Stockenström treaty system as the cause of the war – in a meeting with the Xhosa chiefs he tore up a piece of paper and announced: “No more treaties” – and in other respects also angered Sir Andries, who warned that Smith’s policies would precipitate a crisis.

But Earl Grey, Secretary for the Colonies, declined to take action.

Sir Andries’s response was to back calls for representative government. When Smith called an election in 1850 (the only one of its kind) to get around the difficulty of finding suitable people to serve on the legislative council, he received the most votes cast for any candidate from the Eastern Province.

But the official members set out to discredit their claim to represent popular opinion, and Sir Andries and the other popularly elected members resigned in September.

In 1851 he and John Fairbairn travelled to Britain in the hope of persuading the government to introduce representative government. But as a result of his call for an inquiry into Governor Smith’s policies, Sir Andries was in turn made the scapegoat for their failure, and was additionally blamed for the Kat River rebellion during the Eighth Frontier War of 1850.

During his absence, his opponents destroyed Maasström in 1851.

Instead of a commission of inquiry, a select committee was appointed. Duminy writes that it “neither recommended an inquiry nor prepared a report”.

Representative government was nonetheless instituted in 1853, and Sir Andries was approached to run for election to Parliament for the Eastern Divisions. To meet the expenses of the campaign and of the destruction of his property, he arranged for the subdivision of a part of Maasström (one-third of the 4 985 morgen) as a township, which was named Bedford, after Sir Andries’s friend, the 8th Duke of Bedford.

Following a heated electoral campaign, Sir Andries defeated his old enemy, Godlonton – despite renewed publication of all the old accusations against him in the Graham’s Town Journal – by almost 2 000 votes.

As a member of the legislative council, Sir Andries piloted the passage of the Divisional Councils Act, which in his view restored a link between the government and the, governed which had been broken in 1828 (with the abolition of landdrosts). He also supported the passing of the Burgher Force Bill, which placed the commandos on an equal footing with the military.

In other respects, he was frustrated. The Khoikhoi settlement on the Kat River was broken up, and little was done to rein in frontier warmongers and land speculators.

Failing health saw him resign his seat in March 1856, and he left the colony the following month. He lived for a while in Nice, Naples and England, returned to the Cape in 1860, and again went to London in ’62, where he eventually died of the bronchitis that had plagued him for years. He was buried in Kensel Green cemetery, London.

[edit] Family

Anders Andersen Stockenström (*1707 †1764), inspector of mines and mayor of Filipstad x Caterina Margarita Ekman (*1723).

  1. Anders Stockenström *6 January 1757 Filipstad in Värmland, Sweden x 1 June 1786 Maria Geertruyda Broeders (baptised 11 March 1764), daughter of Peter Caspar Brodersen (or Broders), from Rantrum, a North Frisian town in Schleswig, and Elsabe Cornelia Colijn. The couple had four sons and four daughters.
    1. Sir Andries Stockenström, 1st baronet x 8 December 1828 Elsabe Helena Maasdorp (1808-1889), daughter of Gijsbert Henry Maasdorp. The couple had six children, of whom the firstborn died as a baby.
      1. Sir Gijsbert Henry Stockenström (1841-1912), 2nd baronet - no issue
      2. Elizabeth Maria Henrietta Stockenström x 1852 farmer and politician Charles William Hutton (13 July 1826 - 1 February 1905), who in 1887 edited Sir Andries’s autobiography in two volumes, and was Cape Colony treasurer from 1881-1884.
        1. Ella Elizabeth Hutton *1 February 1853 x Christian Maasdorp - 6 children
        2. Andries Stockenstrom Hutton x Blanche Giddy
        3. Charles Henry Hutton d.1897 x Elizabeth Leonard - 3 children
        4. Edward Drummond Hutton d.1941 x Sara Maria Nel - 2 children
      3. Maria Susanna Stockenström d.1870 x 1864 Sir Sidney Godolphin Alexander Shippard (1838/40-1902), lawyer and administrator
      4. Justice Andries Stockenström (22 April 1844 - 22 March 1880) x 24 December 1867 Maria Henrietta Hartzenberg, of Graaff-Reinet
        1. Sir Andries Stockenström, 3rd baronet (1868-1922)(only son), advocate of the Transvaal Supreme Court and a member of the Transvaal and Union parliaments.
          1. Sir Anders Johan Booysen Stockenström, 4th baronet (1908-1957)
            1. Andrée Mabel Stockenström (only child, owner of Maasström) x Gardiner

[edit] Anders Stockenström

In September 1781 Anders Stockenström sailed from Texel as a quarter-gunner aboard a VOC ship, ’t Zeepaard. Scurvy broke out in the fleet when it reached the Equator, and when it reached Table Bay in December 1782, 1 202 of the 2 753 passengers and crew had died, and 915 were ill. Four of the most heavily armed ships, including ’t Zeepaard, sailed for Batavia, after four weeks, to assist in the war against the British. It is not known whether Anders sailed with the fleet, but two years later he was working as an assistant in the goods office in Cape Town, where he remained for some years. He also served on a vessel carrying slaves for the VOC from Madagascar to the Cape, and was afterwards, until 1795 with the British occupation of the Cape), bookkeeper to the fleet. In March 1796 General J H Craig appointed Anders secretary to Landdrost A A Faure, of Swellendam.

Following the takeover of the Cape by the Batavian Republic, Anders was appointed landdrost of Graaff-Reinet by both Governor Jan Willem Janssens and Commissioner-General Jacob Abraham Uitenhage de Mist. The latter swore him in on 14 February 1804, at which time Graaff-Reinet had been without a permanent landdrost since 1801.

During his eight years as landdrost – under Batavian rule until 1806, and then under British rule – the district experienced Bushman raids in the north and north-west, and an unsettled frontier with the amaXhosa. Public buildings were in need of restoration following the Khoikhoi/Xhosa invasion of 1802-03 (the Third Frontier War). While commandos were sent against the Bushmen, Anders also tried to reconcile the Bushmen by having game shot for them, and periodically giving them cattle.

When steps were eventually taken against the Xhosa in December 1811, Anders, in command of the burghers of Graaff-Reinet, occupied Bruintjieshoogte to protect the area north of the Zuurberg. The commandos of George, Uitenhage and Swellendam, together with the Cape Regiment, gathered at the Sundays River mouth and after Christmas, crossed the river to drive the Xhosa from the Addo bush.

On 27 December Col John Graham of Fintry sent orders to Stockenström to join the rest of the force at Coerney, where Col J G Cuyler (landdrost of Uitenhage) was in charge. Realising that this would leave the area north of the Zuurberg vulnerable to Xhosa attack, Anders went to discuss the matter with Graham.

He set out at sunset on 29 December 1811 with 24 men. About five hours later he encountered a number of Xhosa of the Imidange clan under Kasa on Doringnek, the watershed between the White and Coerney rivers, on the Zuurberg.

Relying on his popularity as the friend and benefactor of both colonists and indigenous peoples, Anders dismounted and went to meet the war party unarmed. He spent at least half an hour endeavouring to persuade Kasa to return to their country without bloodshed. But when he returned to mount his horse, the Imidange had surrounded his party and attacked, killing eight burghers and an interpreter. Four were wounded but managed to escape.

[edit] Sir Gijsbert Henry Stockenström

Sir Andries’s eldest surviving son (*1841 †1912) succeeded him as baronet and was a member of the Cape Legislative Council from 1891 to 1910. Sir Gijsbert died without issue, and the title passed to to the offspring of his younger brother, also named Andries.

[edit] Justice Andries Stockenström

Born in Graaff-Reinet on 22-04-1844, the younger Andries received an education in law in England and Germany. He was called to the English Bar at the Middle Temple in 1865, and in 1866 was admitted as an advocate in Cape Town. He soon moved to Grahamstown, where he built up a large practice.

In 1875 he was named to act as a judge in the Griqualand West Land Court by High Commissioner Sir Henry Barkly. However, like his father, he was dogged by controversy, it being said that he was prejudiced against attorney David Arnot, agent for the Waterboer Griqua, and sympathetic towards Oranje Vrij Staat President Johannes Brand.

In a crucial finding, Andries ruled that the Griqua chiefs were tribal, not territorial, rulers. This resulted in the denial also of many titles issued by Nicolaas Waterboer, Cornelis Kok and others. It also validated the claims of the OVS to the dry diamond diggings, but President Brand waived his country’s rights in return for a payment of £90 000.

The furore that arose in the wake of the Land Court findings led Barkly’s successor, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, to support Andries’s plea for a full Royal Commission of Inquiry. Winifred Maxwell writes in the DSAB (with reference to Andries):

“To his chagrin Britain refused on grounds of ‘Mr. Stockenström’s high reputation for the conscientious discharge of his official duties’. There was absolute confidence in his integrity.”

Andries contested the Grahamstown parliamentary seat in 1876, but was not elected. He was appointed Attorney-General in ’77, and in ’78 succeeded in being elected MP for Albert (Burgersdorp). He was reappointed judge in ’79.

Although unwell, he undertook a circuit in 1880, but died on his 36th birthday.

[edit] Sources