Jonathan Board came to the Cape as a member of Richard Daniell’s party. Shortly after his arrival he met Henry Lovemore when partly rebuilding the main residence at Bushy Park homestead which had been destroyed in a fire. This friendship would serve him well and he would ultimately marry, Eliza, Henry’s youngest daughter by his first marriage.
Main picture: Rufane Vale
Jonathan Board, the son of Joel and Frances Board, was born during 1797 at Dalwood in Dorset and at the age of 23 disembarked in the Cape from the Duke of Marlborough with other members of Richard Daniell’s Party. A carpenter by training, his skills set would prove to be invaluable after landing as accommodation was scarce to non-existent. In fact, he was assured of an abundance of work from the first day.
Like the two other parties aboard the ship, Board’s Party was a Private Settler Party which implied that they were privately funded unlike those on the Emigration Scheme who were sponsored by a £50,000 grant from the British Parliament. The Duke of Marlborough sailed from Portsmouth on the 30th of March 1820 and made landfall in Cape Town two and a half months later on the 18th June 1820. How they were conveyed to their ultimate destination being Algoa Bay is unknown. They might have even sailed in the same vessel that had borne them from their homeland to an unknown land with deadly animals, intermittent droughts and unfriendly local people.
Young son without a mother
It is known that Board’s wife, Sarah, nee Nias, had died sometime prior to departure, and that they had a young son. Broad was in all probability conflicted. Simply put it might appear reprehensible to foist his young offspring onto a stranger to raise in England, but what option did a person possess in that era. Even remaining in England would not have resolved his child-minding and child raising conundrum. What would solve the problem was a brief affair and then marriage. This might seem to be cold and dispassionate, but life was tough and unforgiving in this era. By emigrating, this youngster would lose his father permanently as it was inconceivable that Board would pay him a visit.
Exactly what Board did initially upon arrival is unknown but what can be assumed is that he never joined the rest of the settlers in their trek to the frontier. Instead, he must have remained in the newly proclaimed town of Port Elizabeth and built himself some accommodation. How Henry Lovemore became acquainted with Jonathan Board is unknown, but we can assume that Henry required additional skilled building artisans to construct various buildings at Bushy Park such as a main house, servant’s quarters and farm sheds. According to Bernard Johnson in The Lovemore Story, Jonathan Board had already begun to make a name for himself in Port Elizabeth as a builder and he was later to become well-established as such.
Shortly after landing in Port Elizabeth, the Acting Governor Sir Rufane Donkin showed his appreciation for the efforts of Captain Fairfax Moresby and the crew of the Menai in assisting the passengers of the settler ships to disembark their passengers into surfboats bobbing in the waves. His acknowledgement of his gratitude came in the form of building a large double storey dwelling Markham House close to Military Road and north of Rufane Vale for Captain Fairfax Moresby. Lacking artisans in the hamlet, Board was in all likelihood recruited to assist in the building’s construction. Not willing to forego his naval career, in February 1821 Moresby was compelled to accept a posting to Mauritius in connection with the suppression of the slave trade.
On the 1822 schedule of Port Elizabeth residents, Jonathan Board is listed. Furthermore, his occupation was listed as a carpenter residing at 3X Street which later became Donkin Street.
In 1823 both of Moresby’s properties were purchased by Richard Hunt, who had established an hotel in Markham House. In 1828 Hunt was declared insolvent and the hotel passed to James Scorey and the land in the Baaken’s Valley known as Rufane Vale to Jonathan Board. Prior to acquiring Rufane Vale, Board was already being employed by Henry Lovemore in the construction of a large house on Herry’s estate west of Port Elizabeth. Also working on the estate were the artisans who had accompanied Lovemore from England.
Building frenzy
There was no shortage of building skills at Bushy Park. Most had come out together with Henry Lovemore including Thomas Hickman who was a carpenter and a plasterer. Also the Filmer brothers who were sawyers by trade must have known how to select and then cut the right woods so that there would be no future problems with warping beams or rot. The Filmers would have prepared lengths of timber for housebuilding. It must have been them who found the yellow wood for the floor – as sound and attractive today as when it was laid. Messrs Stow, Turkington and Watson were there to help with digging foundations, bricklaying and semi-skilled work. William Collen who had stolen the Bell from the settler ship, Chapman, may also have been there to help though it is more likely he was occupied with the farm and its animals. With Jonathan Board the others would have formed a useful team. Everyone, including the boys, would have been called upon to help when required with the assembly of materials and the construction work and one imagines that the new house was built and occupied in a matter of weeks. Sun-dried bricks would have been made from clay with straw serving as reinforcing as pure sun-dried clay bricks lacked the requisite strength. Bricks without straw had to be kiln-fired. An adept artisan was able to make up to 1500 bricks per day. The carpenters would have used yellowwood which was available west of Port Elizabeth.
During 1820, Henry’s 16-year-old daughter, Eliza, from his first wife, Sarah Jones, who died in 1897, would have noticed the nineteen-year-old Jonathan Board sweating and straining as he worked on the Bushy Park farmhouse. Before the house was finished, a romance between Jonathan Board and Eliza Lovemore had been kindled and had begun to develop, culminating in nuptials in 1824.
A Family Matter
The nebulous matter which the family simply referred to in conspiratorial terms as the unspoken family matter concerned Henry Lovemore’s eldest daughter, Eliza. Sometime in the early months of 1824 she married Jonathan Benjamin Board. Their romance had developed fast from the time when Jonathan Board was engaged with the rebuilding of the homestead at Bushy Park. Eliza was only 19 and her father must have given his consent to the marriage. On the two occasions when suitors approached him for the hand of one of his daughters – Eliza in 1824 and Ann in 1838 – Henry seems to have allowed the young lady to make her own choice, even when he may have had doubts about the wisdom of Ann’s headlong rush to get married in 1838. With Eliza he must have been satisfied that she was genuinely in love but, more importantly, must have envisioned in Jonathan Board a suitable husband for her.
Jonathan Board and Eliza Lovemore were married in the Dutch Reformed Church at Uitenhage on 28 February 1824, the only church in the district where a pastor, or chaplain, was in residence. The Rev. Francis McCleland was at that time residing at Clanwilliam and would only be transferred to Port Elizabeth in late 1825. The Boards’ first child, Agnes Frances Arabella, was born on 13 January 1825 and baptized on 25 November 1825 at St. Mary’s Church in Port Elizabeth, being amongst the first names to be entered in the register.
The substance of the Family Matter is set out in the book Lovemores, Then and Now June 2000 in which it is alleged in an apocryphallic comment on page 29 that “Erica, by making a runaway marriage with one of the carpenters in building her father’s house, was disowned by her family and never after had any communication with any member of it. On her father’s death [Henry], Charles Lovemore made an attempt at reconciliation with her but without avail and the breach remains to his day.”
In his scholarly tome, The Lovemore Story, Bernard Johnston provides an almost diametrically opposed story. He contends that “A story that has been passed down the family contends that Henry Lovemore disapproved of the liaison and that Eliza was ‘disowned’. No evidence to support this belief has been found; rather what indications there are point to the contrary, though perhaps it might be thought unusual that Henry Lovemore was not a sponsor to any of Eliza’s children when they were baptized (Register of St. Mary’s Church, Port Elizabeth). Henry Lovemore and Jonathan Board had business contacts and common interests in community matters over many years. It may be that a clause in Henry Lovemore’s will, which we will come on to in the year 1851, gave rise to the story; in the will Henry directed that Eliza shall receive ‘such amount according to the valuation of his Estate she shall be entitled to receive and no more” (CAD, MOOC/7/1/209 folios 48 to 50). The clause can be interpreted in different ways, especially the last three words. Lawyers like to be exact when drafting wills – or any other legal documents for that matter – to make a testator’s intentions absolutely clear and it may be that this was the purpose here. Eliza Board was to challenge the provisions of the will but without success. When Henry Lovemore made his joint will with his third wife, Mary Ann in 1846, Jonathan Board had become a successful builder and the owner of several valuable properties, including two large houses in Port Elizabeth. He had built up much more personal capital than any of Henry’s sons. The marriage of Eliza and Jonathan seems to have been a happy one and four children followed Agnes Frances Arabella.
To provide further evidence to substantiate his view, Bernard Johnson cites the following issue: “
The second fact, which provides a more positive pointer to the relationship between the Hickmans and the Lovemores, was the sale of the farm six years later on 22 December 1837. How, and to whom, was the farm sold? Not by public auction, which would have been the obvious way if Thomas Hickman wanted to maximise the capital value of the farm. It was sold by private arrangement to none other than Henry Lovemore’s eldest son, Robert Henry. And to whom did Thomas Hickman give a power of attorney to handle the transfer? Not to a lawyer but to Jonathan Benjamin Board – keeping it in the family as it were. On the document Hickman’s signature is added in a very shaky hand due possibly to ill-health. And the sale price? Seven shillings and sixpence (Deeds Office, Cape Town, 1837, Volume T19
In his will Hickman appointed Jonathan Board his sole executor, and he bequeathed to his “dear friends Mr. Jonathan Board, Mrs. Board and family the whole of my property”. The Boards and their five children shared £377 0s 0d between them. Hickman’s main asset, as entered by Jonathan Board on the death notice, was a “small plot of ground with two small tenements thereon being a portion of Erf No [no number was inserted in the copy of the will in the Cape Archives Depot] in Port Elizabeth”. The plot and buildings were valued at £150; though in the Liquidation Account when sold three years later on 13 August 1847, Board obtained a price of £441. Thomas Hickman signed his will on 22 June1844, about the time he became ill. The Liquidation Account, in addition to the usual doctor’s fees, included the cost of a nurse for 25 days.
Interests, properties and occupations
By occupation, Board was a carpenter and builder and was appointed a Field Cornet in 1843. For a period he was also an undertaker and a photographer. In 1831, along with several others, Board was granted one of the erven between Cyler and Bird Streets. In 1850, shortly before his death in 1853, he proposed building a line of houses across this plot which overlooked the brand new mansion of merchant William Fleming. One can only assume that Fleming was horrified at the prospect for the deeds show that Board’s erf was transferred to Fleming that year. Today a stout wall surrounds the two erven.
The original Algoa House, home of Mrs Eades’ boarding school for girls and later a popular hotel, also belonged to Board at one time as well as other properties.
The largest piece of property that he owned was the Moresby or Rufane Vale estate which Board purchased from the insolvent Richard Hunt in 1829. Early drawings and paintings show the lone Baakens River House which Board must have built for his family and in which, according to a sales advertisement in 1898, was once the first piano to be found in a house in Port Elizabeth.
Victoria House
This house is situated at 31 Constitution Hill.
For Sir Rufane Donkin, Port Elizabeth and its growth were especially important. Not only had he named the new settlement after his beloved wife, but he felt that the development of a town and a coasting trade were a vital part of the future of the whole area in whose colonisation he had assisted. Accordingly he encouraged those settlers who had a little capital to build in Port Elizabeth. As the amounts at their disposal were small, he granted about thirty lots on the same terms as offered by Cradock in 1813 when he tried to induce people to settle there, namely a payment of 30 Rixdollars and an annual rent of two Rixdollars. The surveyor, Swan, surveyed and divided the land to be made available and made a chart of the whole area in June 1820. Donkin said that “”the most desirable and the best-selected lots” were not granted initially but left to be sold later by public auction, at a stage when the highest possible price could be paid for them. Donkin added; “Most of the persons who reveived my grants had built or were building houses at Port Elizabeth before they left the colony”.
Lt. Col. Bird, in a letter written in 1824 referred to “certain inferior allotments directed to be appropriated to mechanics and inferior tradesmen, both at Bathhurst and Port Elizabeth” and added that, “those at the latter place were situated on the Hill near the pyramid”.
According to Swan’s map, Jonathan received one of the four erven between what are today Consritution Hill and Victoria Street. The L-shaped house which he built can be clearly seen in the 1832 lithograpth by WJ Huggins, and in May 1833, Board advertised the sale of “a commodious house and carpenter’s workshop on the face of the hill“, but to suggest a date for the building of the house can only be speculation. However, Board was a builder and he had to live somewhere. He owned a plot and, even if a bachelor’s needs are few, a carpenter needs a place to work and a married man with a family certainly needs a house. As Board”s eldest child was born at the beginnig of 1825, it seems reasonable to suggest that the house was built at the end of 1824. It is possible that Board was one of those referred to in Donkin’s statement as building around the end of 1821, but the latter date seems a better one.
Sources
The Lovemore Story by Bernard Johnston. Privately published
Lovemores: Then and Now 2000. Private family history
Jonathan Benjamin Board and his Family by Margaret Harradine [Looking Back, Volume 25, No. 4, April 1986]