Mary Elizabeth Barber, Some Early South African Geologists, and the Discoveries of Diamonds

The second generation of those Britons who had emigrated to the Cape Colony of South Africa in 1820¹ included a number of people who had transcended the basic requirements of establishing a subsistence among the relatively inhospitable social, economic, and agricultural climate of their new homeland. They became interested in the scientific study of the nature of their surroundings and in their spare time became keen amateur natural historians, geologists, archaeologists, and ethnologists. Those more intrepid amongst them sought to explore the unknown interior and in the process discovered the vast mineral wealth of the country, in particular diamonds, gold, and coal.

This article seeks to show how one small group of people based around Grahamstown in the Eastern Province of the colony were involved in some of these discoveries, and especially the early discovery of diamonds in the Transvaal. Most of the group were connected in some way with Mary Elizabeth Barber (1818-1899), the daughter of a British gentleman sheep-farmer who arrived in South Africa in 1820. She became a well-known contemporary artist, poet, and natural historian, corresponding with several leading British scientists such as Sir Joseph Hooker and Charles Darwin. Her scientific papers were published, amongst others, by the Linnean Society of London, the Entomological Society of London, and the South African Philosophical Society.