Asking the pikas politely…
The lure of gold in the great reefs of Johannesburg near the end of the 19th century not only attracted the famous mining barons such as Cecil John Rhodes, Alfred Beit and Barney Barnato: working men also came from far and wide to feed their families with their labour.Among them was my great-grandfather, the miner from the Isle of Man, William Cogeen.He arrived via the tin mines of Cornwall and the silver mines of Colorado, and was among those Uitlanders who flocked in those early days to the Transvaal as skilled artisans -wheelwrights, farriers, bricklayers and, especially, experienced hard-rock miners.It was their labour, as well as of black tribesmen from all over southern Africa, that laid the financial foundation for what became the rich city of Johannesburg.It was also their influx that was the excuse that precipitated the Anglo-Boer War.His wife and daughters joined him in what was still a rough boom town, and they stayed on, until forced to flee as refugees from Johannesburg at the start of the war in1899.Intrigued by the stories my mother and grandmother told me as a child, I began to research my family's history and travelled to the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Colorado to trace their origins -and my own.
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