Frontier Origins and Imperial Incorporation
In 1882, a group of Boer settlers declared the Republic of Stellaland, with Vryburg as its capital. Prior to this declaration, there was already some settlement in the area. The region surrounding Vryburg included several towns, including Hartswater (also known as Pokwane), Taung, Pudimoe, and Kuruman. A year later, the Republic of Stellaland and the neighboring State of Goshen merged to form the United States of Stellaland. The capital of Goshen was Rooigrond, near Mafikeng. 

​

By December 1884, the British sent a military force led by Sir Charles Warren to dismantle the republic and restrain the ambitions of the unruly frontiersmen. By 1885, the two territories had merged into British Bechuanaland. In 1895, British Bechuanaland was annexed to the Cape Colony, further linking the region into the British imperial economy and administration.

​

Railways, Empire, and the Rise of Vryburg

By 1886, the railway from the Cape had reached Kimberley and Vryburg. The introduction of the railway significantly changed the local economy, establishing Vryburg as an important supply center for the expanding mineral and agricultural markets of southern Africa. Produce from Vryburg could now more easily support the growing populations of Kimberley, the Cape, and the Transvaal goldfields.

​

Lieutenant Colonel Marshall Hole described this transformation in reference to Mafikeng, using Vryburg as a parallel: 

 

"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)

 

By 1893, the railway extended northwards, connecting Vryburg to Mafikeng, Gaborone and Francistown, and eventually to Bulawayo. This extension ushered in growth for the town and district and solidified Vryburg’s strategic importance as a northern entrepôt.

​

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.”

 

Jewish Settlement and Commercial Networks

Among those who arrived with or shortly after the British expedition were Jewish settlers. Notably, two Jewish men, Samson Solomon and Charles Sonnenberg, joined Sir Charles Warren’s force and eventually made Vryburg their home. They established a trading firm known as Solomon and Company.

​

They were not however the first Jews in Vryburg. The Isaacs family and Ikey Sonnenberg’s family were already present. Jewish traders quickly became embedded in the commercial life of the frontier town and surrounding districts.

​

One of the main products that Vryburg and Solomon’s Stores supplied to Kimberley was firewood. According to Max Sonnenberg, this commodity “was badly needed by De Beers at Kimberley,” and two trainloads a day were sent south. The heavy demand led to the depletion of trees in the district.

​

In his autobiography The Way I Saw It (1957), Max Sonnenberg described Vryburg as: “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.”​ He referred to Vryburg (pp. 26–27) as “the Suez Canal to the Interior.” Absent direct rail links between Johannesburg and centres like the Cape, Natal, and Lourenço Marques, Vryburg and Solomon & Co. flourished. Many of the staff of this company were German Jews. 

​

Pudimoe

Beyond Vryburg itself, Jewish commercial life extended into surrounding rural areas. Jews had a long presence in Taung and Pudimoe. As early as 1891, a W. Golstruter (possibly Jewish) obtained permission from Chief Molala (of Taungs) to open a retail store at the Pudimoe siding. After eight years, he sold the rights to Cohen Brothers.

​​

Archival material from the Cape Town National Archives (LND, Vol. 1/845, Ref: L15241) records that the building was destroyed during the Boer War and later rebuilt and leased to Lewis Rosenthal, a German Jew who successfully applied for trading rights in 1904. Rosenthal and his wife, Paula Jankelowitz, had married in Kimberley in 1895. Lazarus Solomon later owned the store jointly with his wife Annie.​ Additional Jewish figures in the region included J. Solomon (Jacob), who served as a Justice of the Peace in 1910, Leopold Brenner, and families such as the Falowitz (who moved from Christiana), Solomon Lipschitz (married Betty Falowitz), and Wolperts.

​

Society, Economy, and Crisis on the Northern Cape Frontier

According to Max Sonnenberg (p. 26), Vryburg had a European population of approximately 1,000 by 1890. He observed that “nearly all the townsmen were English, and Afrikaners were comparatively rare.” The English character of the town was still visible in 1906, when S. Solomon placed an advertisement mocking Paul Kruger's hat, four years after the end of the Second Anglo‑Boer War.

​

Sonnenberg also recorded that approximately 2,000 Africans lived in Vryburg at the time. Over the following decades, this demographic balance shifted dramatically, with the white population becoming both smaller and predominantly Afrikaans‑speaking.​

​

War, Memory, and Contemporary Encounters with Vryburg

The local economy was further boosted by stronger ties to the Cape. In 1891, the South African Customs Union was extended to include British Bechuanaland. The period of prosperity came to an abrupt halt in 1896 with the outbreak of rinderpest. 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 resulting depression “affected every facet of farming society.” Rinderpest precipitated the Bechuana Rising (also referred to as the Langeberg Uprising) of 1896, led by Chief Galeshewe. The deteriorating economic and political climate fed into the outbreak of the South African War in 1899.

​

Impressions of Vryburg

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

​

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 echo Max Sonnenberg’s recollections of his first arrival in 1891, when he described Vryburg as “a bleak little town… 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.”

​

Lady Sarah also recorded that on the night before reaching Vryburg she was “kindly entertained… by the proprietors [of a roadside store], a respectable Jewish couple,” likely at Pudimoe. Following her release from Boer captivity, she spent six weeks at Maribogo with the Sonnenberg family.

​

The postcards collected by Keith Brodovcky offer visual testimony to the Vryburg encountered by these early settlers, preserving the memory of a frontier town shaped by empire, railways, trade, crisis, and war.​

​​