John Arnold,

John Arnold was born in Belfast (Ireland) in April 1825 and came to the Cape Colony with the military in 1846 during the War of the Axe. He would retire from the army during the 1860s — the retirement age was about 45 — and thereupon would set up a trading business in the Fort Grey area near East London.

Arnold bought a farm at Amalinda but then moved to East London itself where he made a living as a hotelier, being at various times the owner of the Boarding Establishment and the Commercial Hotel on the West Bank, as well as the Railway Hotel on the East Bank.

In May 1873 he was elected to the very first Municipal Board as a representative for Ward 1 (West Bank) but resigned in August 1874 without serving a full term.

This was when East London was at the start of a rather short period of growth at the end a rather long era of recession. The discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1868 saw imports through East London increase rapidly when it was found that this port was the closest to the Diamond Fields.

The growth in trade was presumably accompanied by an increase in traders and wagon drivers who needed a place to stay at East London. This meant that John Arnold's hotels would have become very busy indeed. It is no wonder, then, that he could not find the time to continue sitting on the Municipal Board.

He died on 27 August 1905 at the age of 80, and was buried at East London.

See also: Knowledge4Africa.com Encyclopaedia East London The Really Useful East London Page

If you were to hunt for information on one of your ancestors who died at East London in the 19th or 20th century, where would you look?

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The best place to start your research would be at the Cape Archives where all birth and death certificates are housed through to about 1928. Thereafter, you would need to go to the Master's Office in Cape Town where documents later than 1928 are to be found. The death certificates usually present interesting facts like surviving spouse, children, and information on the estate. Of course, once one knows the precise date of death, one should look in the local newspapers where an obituary might have been published. These obituaries present an interesting synopsis of the person's life and career. If, on the other hand, you need information on the history of East London itself, then you will have to hunt far and wide, but mostly within the archives as well. But the best place to start, of course, would be on Knowledge4Africa.com.