Sunday, April 28, 2013

A little Town Called Nigel



In South Africa, in the province of Gauteng there is a little town called Nigel. I am from Nigel and I always wondered where the name came from - I thought it was named after maybe the founder of the town.



I was wrong and then I found this interesting titbit, which is a very interesting story.

In 1882, a farmer Petrus Johannes Marais of the farm Varkensfontein in the Heidelberg district made an agreement with a prospector named Johnstone allowing him to prospect for gold on the farm his.
Johnstone’s prospecting operations continued for a considerable time shrouded in secrecy. Then one day a stranger called on farmer Marais and made him an offer to buy the farm.

Fortunately, farmer Marais was at that time reading “The Fortunes of Nigel" by Sir Walter Scott, a story about a young man, Nigel Olifaunt, also known as Lord Glenvarloch who was the victim of a dishonest intrigue but eventually achieved his goal in life. This Nigel Olifaunt travels to London in order to ask the King to repay his father's loan. Nigel wishes to use the money to pay off a mortgage on his estate—but the Duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles already have their eyes on it. The lord is drawn into the chaotic life of the court, and when he becomes an enemy of the profligate Lord Dalgarno, he finds himself in grave danger.



The stranger's visit immediately aroused farmer Marais's suspicions to the extent that he decided to visit his farm himself. Once at the farm he found that his suspicions were well founded. With the experiences of Nigel, the character in the novel in mind, he determined not to allow himself to be cheated by cunning fortune seekers and at once set about to establish his own company. In July 1888, two years after the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand, he achieved his goal. His company was registered as the Nigel Gold Mining Company. The town, which grew around the mine, still bears the name derived from Scott's book.

In 1888, the State President Paul Kruger declared Nigel as a public digging under notice no. 331 and since then the history and development of Nigel are inseparable from those of the gold mines. The town was little more than a mining camp until 1923, when the control of the town was passed into the hands of a Dorpvillage. The first meeting of this council was held on 2 January 1923.

The town is on the edge of the area known as the East Rand, the industrial engine room of Johannesburg.

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