George Blaine

George Blaine was born in Kent in 1848. It is not known when he emigrated to the Cape Colony but he appears at East London in the 1890s as the owner of a grocery store in Oxford Street.

This was the decade of East London's golden age. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand saw a massive increase in trade, and the town took on a most positive face, indulging in large scale street construction, the introduction of electricity and the construction of a tramway system.

Blain became interested in municipal politics and was elected to the Town Council as a representative for Ward 3 in February 1895 but resigned in February 1896 because of a rather puerile dispute. Mayor William Christie Jackson had requested him to withdraw certain "objectionable words" which he declined to do, and he promptly addressed the Mayor as "my good fellow". The Mayor thereupon refused to chair a meeting in Blaine's presence.

The Council became paralysed for several weeks until Blaine tendered his resignation, but he was promptly re-elected. He eventually retired from the Council in February 1901.

He died on 1 February 1909 at the age of 60, 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.