Port Elizabeth of Yore: Arnoldus Dietz and his Patron Frederick Korsten

Arnoldus Bernhard Dietz was born in Holland circa 1768  and died on the 16th January 1832 aged 64 in Graham’s Town. Being of Dutch descent, on obtaining his majority, Arnoldus initially relocated to Batavia, a Dutch colony, and commenced trading. Later he became a Government Resident in Borneo where his two vessels were captured by the British and that is how he arrived at Cape Town in 1817.

Main picture: Arnoldus Bernhardus’ house in Graham’s Town

In order to survive in the Cape Colony, it is presumed that Dietz opened a trading business. It must have failed because later by chance he came into contact with Frederick Korsten of Algoa Bay who became his patron and established him in trading. Prior to 1820, there was a dearth of inhabitants in the Algoa Bay area which included what would later become the town of Port Elizabeth. The only people with whom trading was possible were the British soldiers stationed in the area, the local itinerant Khoikhois and a sprinkling of Trek Boers. As Dietz must have viewed the military stationed at Graham’s Town as a more viable and reliable market, he relocated his business there.

The market was the military
In his thesis entitled A Social and Cultural History of Graham’s Town,  Richard Marshall propounded that the economic opportunities of the town were limited, and almost entirely dependent on the military or the small civil establishment. These included above all construction and supplying the commissariat. Nevertheless there were evidently opportunities to accumulate wealth. By 1820 traders and contractors such as Piet Retief and A. B. Dietz had managed to acquire property in the town. The latter was the agent of Frederick Korsten, based at Algoa bay, who had attained considerable prosperity supplying the military on the frontier. Some of these merchants, such as Retief, took advantage of a few residual monopolies auctioned by the government and dating from VOC times. These privileges were extended by the British administration to the new provinces.

Business opportunities
Grahamstown was established as a civilian as well as a military settlement. Land was made available to civilian settlers as early as 1814, but the non-military population of the town remained very small until the 1820s. Most early white settlers were attracted by the economic opportunities presented by the presence of the military. However, they remained few in number. Typically for the period, they tended, for the most part, to be either discharged soldiers, such as the saddler W. Ogilvie and the merchant W. R. Thompson, or drifters and adventurers, such as Arnoldus Bernardus Dietz. The latter was a marked eccentric, an enthusiastic violinist who considered Paganini to be a “mountebank” and an inferior musician to himself. Any customer visiting his store while he was practising was unlikely to be able to make a purchase. He was also exceptionally argumentative and litigious. He ran a store on behalf of Frederick Korsten, who operated from Algoa Bay and possessed the most profitable business empire in the region. Piet Retief, an erstwhile farmer who found that exploiting commercial opportunities arising from the presence of the British army and administration was a surer career.

Slavery in Graham’s Town
Although slavery existed in Graham’s Town, it was never as significant as in the western Cape. In 1828 there were 49 male and 47 female slaves in Albany, a figure which, according to the Journal remained roughly the same until 1834. Technically, the new English arrivals were forbidden to own slaves. However, older Dutch settlers in the town, such as A. B. Dietz, Piet Retief and Johan Bertram, held slaves, and there are intimations that English settlers occasionally purchased them, despite the ban. J. Mandy, a successful trader, apparently owned a slave, as did John Norton, William Wright, and W. Ogilvie, all well-known figures in the community. Frederick Korsten at Cradock Place in Port Elizabeth also owned a number of slaves.

Later life
With Korsten’s guiding hand, Dietz’s business flourished and so he settled down in Graham’s Town, building a house, being one of the first to do so which is still standing. The local Graham’s Town newspaper of that era, the Graham’s Town Journal of 27th January 1832 claimed that his house was a “memorial to his good taste”.

On the website Artefacts.co.za, Dietz is listed as working as a contractor as well as at other jobs in the Cape around 1820. Dietz arrived at the Cape in 1817, he was a farmer and trader who set up as a building contractor in the Grahamstown/Oudtshoorn area around 1820. According to Lewcock (1963:195) in 1818 he built himself ‘a large single-storeyed Cape Dutch farmhouse dwelling and shop, with typical T-shaped plan‘ in Grahamstown. He favoured flat roofs, as did Retief and Pohl, and was apparently a more astute businessman than either of the others and successfully completed the prison building for the Albany District, designed by W.O. Jones.

This is how the Graham’s Town Journal of the period viewed his demise: Dietz won the contract to construct the New Prison in Graham’s Town but this project was to witness the decline of his fortunes and in all probability hastened his declining health and his death at age 64 on January 16th 1832.  

Source
Graham’s Town Journal 27th January 1832, Page 20
A Social and Cultural History of Graham’s Town Thesis by Richard Marshall in fulfilment of his Master of Arts degree
www.Artefacts.co.za
Lewcock 1963; Greig 1971

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1 Comment

    • Hi Bernard,
      Thanks. Some blogs I thoroughly enjoy writing and this was one such article. Even though there was a tenuous relationship between Dietz and Korsten, nevertheless there was sufficient meat on the bone to paint a picture of Dietz, the real and not imaginary person

      Reply

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