06. Hertzog Church & Phillipton School History
From the earliest times of colonial settlement, Balfour very quickly became a cultural melting pot. Close by, at Fort Armstrong, the Xhosa and Khoi had joined forces against the British. After the passage of Ordinance 50 by the Cape Government (1828) granting people of mixed ancestry limited land rights, Coloured communities began to congregate in the Hertzog area of Balfour? and the Kat River valley was used as a government-driven social experiment to see whether Hottentots and their descendants could be "diligent and could live in a civilised manner, under their own leadership". As soon as the different black groups began to organise themselves, they reproduced the institutions they had known at the mission stations. By the 1830s, Sunday services were being conducted in the shade of trees, people were meeting daily to worship and schools were organised. Together the various groupings sent a petition to the region's senior missionary, Dr. Philip, requesting that Reverend James Read be appointed as their minister on the payroll of the London Missionary Society. Read duly became the leader of the new church Hertzog in 1834 - and from the outset he ministered to a racially mixed congregation. Reverend Read established the Phillipton Primary School, of which in 1833 Mr. Mes?er, minister at Uitenhage said: "The Phillipton Infant School, very efficiently conducted by Miss Read, is in a flourishing state. The day school is also in an excellent condition. The system which Mr. Read has introduced can scarcely be improved. The children say their lessons with the greatest ease and pleasure, and there is no stiffness as there was formerly in the most of the (missionary) schools. In 1835, Dr. Phillip commented about other missionary schools established in the Kat River Valley: "At another location, we met a boy, with scarcely clothes to cover him, who had been brought up at Theopolis, and who was much prized by the people as a teacher. At a third, we found a school of sixty taught by a Theopolis Hottentot, who only requires a little assistance to enable him to devote more time to his vocation. The schools are in fine order."
contributed by: Christopher Fitchet
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