Port Elizabeth of Yore: John Geard – Ironmonger with a Social Conscience

Two members of the Geard family gained prominence in Port Elizabeth – Charles Geard and his son John Geard.  Despite the blog’s title, it will encompass the lives of both Geards. The death of John Geard was an “inconvenient” loss because at the time of his death he was compiling a biography of their lives. Such a loss inevitably reduces the depth of the resulting end product. So it is in this case.

This blog encompasses the two segments of John’s life; first the autobiographical section and then the rest of his life recreated by the author of the biography A Memoir of the Late John Geard from “scraps of paper, correspondence and newspaper clippings“.  

Main picture: John Geard

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Port Elizabeth of Yore: The Legacy of Henry Fancourt White

Like all the major roads up from the centre of town to the top of the hill, these roads were originally kloofs with streams, jagged rocks and steep cliffs. So it was with White’s Road. The original steep embankments on either side precluded the construction of buildings except for the Opera House. Except in historical circles is the engineer in charge, Henry Fancourt White, today remembered for his legacy. Even his name has been obliterated, being replaced with the name, John Kani. Despite this iniquity, he will be recalled by golfers in an elite manor house in George, renamed in his honour as Fancourt.

This is the story of this significant road in Port Elizabeth’s history.

Main Picture: This is the earliest extant photograph that I can find of White’s Road. It shows the devastation after the torrential rains of 20th and 21st November 1867. 

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