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: Mrs. Chase, Mr. Tee and the Toll Saga

Both parties to the dispute over payment of toll fees at the Toll outside the Baptist Church in Queen Street in 1840 were well-respected residents of Port Elizabeth. Mrs. Chase was daughter of Frederick Korsten, the wife of the late John Damant who died in 1825 and then the wife of John Centlivres Chase while the Toll Keeper clerk was one Richard Tee junior, the son of a property mogul and a founding member of St. Paul’s Church in Albany Street, also called Richard Tee.

It was while he was the “toll keeper of the Toll of Port Elizabeth” that Richard was involved in one of those cases which never should reach court (the sum involved was one shilling and four pence!), but which even reached the Circuit Court. As is so often the case in matters of this nature, each party no doubt felt that a matter of principle was at stake.

Main picture: The original toll used to be on the opposite side of Queen Street to the Baptist Church which hosted its final service in 1959  

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