In the beginning:

In 1882 a group of Boer settlers declared the Republic of Stellaland and designated the town of Vryburg as its capital. Some semblances of a settlement existed before this pronouncement. The Vryburg area at the time covered a vast swathe of land, including, Hartswater (also called Pokwane), Taung, Pudimoe and Kuruman. A year later, the Republic of Stellaland and the neighboring State of Goshen were amalgamated to form the United States of Stellaland. The capital of Goshen was Rooigrond, near Mafikeng. 

 

By December 1884, the British dispatched a military force under Sir Charles Warren to end the republic and contain the ambitions of the unruly frontiersmen. Crucially, two Jews joined that party and ended up making Vryburg their home. They were of Samson Solomon and Charles Sonnenberg, who then began to trade as Solomon and Company. It seems they were not the first Jews to reach and it appears the Isaacs family were already in town. By 1885 the two territories were fused into British Bechuanaland and by 1886 the railway line from the Cape had reached Kimberley and then Vryburg. The rail connection was a great boost for the local economy and produce from Vryburg now nourished the growing population of Kimberley, and the rest of the Cape as well as the Transvaal goldfields with greater ease. Lieutenant Colonel Marshall Hole explains the transformative nature of the railway line on Mafikeng, using Vryburg as a reference: 

 

"Mafeking in 1893 was, like Vryburg four years earlier, an uninteresting frontier settlement consisting mainly of corrugated iron stores round the regulation market square. It enjoyed a certain importance owing to its proximity to the Transvaal border (on which account it was the headquarters of a considerable body of mounted police), and it was the most advanced depot for the north, and the point where hunters, traders, and prospecting parties fitted out their expeditions for the far interior... Still, the prospect of a railway created a temporary bustle, and storekeepers and hotel proprietors began to arrive, while township plots, as well as farms along the line, were eagerly snapped up by speculators." (Marshall-Hole, 1923)

 

One of the main products that Vryburg and Solomon's Stores supplied to Kimberley was firewood. According to Max Sonnenberg, this product “was badly needed by De Beers at Kimberley.” Sonnenberg recounts that two trainloads a day were sent to Kimberley. The plentiful trees of the district were depleted. 

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Depicting the town in his autobiography, The Way I Saw It (1957), Max Sonnenberg notes, “Vryburg, we found, was one of the most important jumping off points for the Interior, the headquarters from which one line of coaches set out for Rhodesia and the other for the Rand.” Sonnenberg’s (pp. 26-27) moniker for Vryburg was  “the Suez Canal to the Interior.” As already noted, in 1893, the railway extended northwards, connecting Vryburg to Mafikeng, Gabarone and Francistown and then Bulawayo.  

 

The Vryburg story, both general and Jewish, is thus inextricably linked to that of Kimberley and northward Imperial expansion. Max Sonnenberg adds, “one of Rhode’s main arguments in favor of building a railway through Bechuanaland was that it would be easier to bring firewood to the mines.”

 

The extended railway led to a decade of growth for the town and district. Max Sonnenberg's autobiography (p. 29) elucidates the importance for the local economy: "The position of Vryburg at the railway terminus gave it a new importance when, with the opening up of Rhodesia, the railway to Bulawayo was begun. Indeed, until the direct lines to the Cape. Natal and Lourenco Marques allowed a new rail approach to Johannesburg, Vryburg remained outstanding as an entrepot, and Solomon & Co. continued to flourish."

 

Interestingly, Sonnenberg (p. 26) conveys that by 1890 the European population was already a 1,000-strong and that “nearly all the townsmen were English, and Afrikaners were comparatively rare.” The extent to which the town was English is reflected by an S Solomon advertisement - mocking Paul Kruger's hat - in 1906, four years after the end of the Second Anglo Boer War. According to Sonnenberg, there were 2,000 Africans in Vryburg. The balance between English and Afrikaans and Africans and Europeans would change dramatically within a few decades. The white minority became even smaller and predominantly Afrikaans speaking. 

 

This development phase was further boosted by the increasing local linkages with the Cape economy. In 1891 the South African Customs Union was extended to include British Bechuanaland, and by 1895 British Bechuanaland was annexed to the Cape Colony.

 

This economic boom, however, came to an unforeseen halt in 1896. The town and district faced economic hardship following an outbreak of Rinderperst. In a doctoral dissertation submitted to Stellenbosch University, Hilary Shearing notes that “Mafeking and Vryburg were by far the hardest hit in the first wave of the epidemic as about 97% of Colonial Bechuanaland cattle died.” The outbreak triggered a depression which “affected every facet of farming society.” This adverse economic climate fed into the Boer War which erupted in 1899, encouraging locals to join the Republican cause. Bechuanaland played a role in Jameson’s botched raid of the Transvaal, which led to the War. Rinderpest also led to social unrest amongst the local indigenous population, precipitating the the Bechuana Rising of 1896, led by Chief Galishwe. 

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In her book, entitled South African Memories: Social, Warlike & Sporting from Diaries Written at the Time, the renowned war correspondent, Lady Sarah Isabella (Aunt of Winston Churchill) describes her entrance to Vryburg in October 1899 as follows:

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The road now descended into a basin or hollow, wherein lay the snug little town of Vryburg with its neat houses and weaving trees, and beyond it we could see the white tents of the Boer laager. A young Dutchman had recently described Vryburg to me as a town which looked as if it had gone for a walk and got lost, and as we drove up to it I remembered his words, and saw that his smile was rather an apt one. There seemed no reason, beyond its site in a sheltered basin, why Vryburg should have been chosen for the capital of British Bechuanaland. The railway was at least a mile away on the east, and so hidden was the town that, till you were close on it, you could barely see the roofs of the houses. Then suddenly the carriage drove into the main street, which boasted some respectable shops.

 

Her observations were corroborated by Max Sonnenberg, whose first impression of Vryburg in 1891 was of “a bleak little town, in Europe we would have called it a village-lined with corrugated iron stores and shabby houses of sun-dried brick. The streets were deep in dust during the dry season, and those trees which had been planted were finding it hard to survive.”

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Below are copies of the incredible postcards collected by Keith Brodovcky. These images give us an understanding of the Vryburg that the early Jewish settlers moved to. 

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No less useful than Lady Sarah Isabella's description of Vryburg, she recounts that the night before she arrived there, she was “kindly entertained for the night by the proprietors [of a roadside store], a respectable Jewish couple.” Presumably, it was Pudimoe.

 

Jews had a long presence in Pudimoe. As early as 1891 a W. Golstruter obtained permission from Chief Molala to open a retail store at the Pudimoe siding. He curried on business without authority for 8 years and then sold the rights, with the consent of the Chief, to Messrs Cohen Brothers. Based on archival material in the Cape Town National Archives (LND, Vol: 1/845, Ref: L15241) the building was destroyed during the war (presumably the Boer War) and rebuilt and let to Lewis Rosenthal. Several applications for this site were rejected: one by a Mr. Gould (in partnership with a Clarkson) who took occupation in 1903 and applied in 1902 and one by Lewis Rosenthal (1904). We also have reference in 1910 to a J Solomon who served as Justice of the Peace and then the Falowitz family (they came from Christiana), followed by the Wolperts.

 

After her release from her Boer captors, Lady Sarah spent six weeks at Maribogo with the Sonnenberg's. 

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