Philippolis
WHERE THE SETTLER'S CHILDREN GREW UP, on the word of a man writing in 1868 who knew them. The obituary of Commandant John Gerson Eliezar Kolbe says his father “became a MISSIONARY TO THE GRIQUAS AT PHILIPPOLIS, and most of his family, we believe, GREW UP THERE”. This archive had reached the same conclusion from the children's baptism places — Harriet Hachilah Machilah born here in 1831 — and this is a fourth, independent source for it. Philippolis was the London Missionary Society's Griqua station; George Augustus Kolbe was an L.M.S. missionary. AND THERE IS A PICTURE OF IT. On Dr Andrew Smith’s expedition CHARLES BELL painted a church service here with Kolbe preaching — catalogued as the original at MuseumAfrica and as a photographic copy at the University of Edinburgh, CSWC 60 item 3. NEITHER HAS BEEN SEEN, and it would be the only likeness of anybody in this archive born before 1850.
The place
| Name | Philippolis |
| Kind | Mission station, later town |
| Region | Southern Orange Free State |
| Standing | Documented |
Why it is here
WHERE THE SETTLER'S CHILDREN GREW UP, on the word of a man writing in 1868 who knew them. The obituary of Commandant John Gerson Eliezar Kolbe says his father “became a MISSIONARY TO THE GRIQUAS AT PHILIPPOLIS, and most of his family, we believe, GREW UP THERE”. This archive had reached the same conclusion from the children's baptism places — Harriet Hachilah Machilah born here in 1831 — and this is a fourth, independent source for it. Philippolis was the London Missionary Society's Griqua station; George Augustus Kolbe was an L.M.S. missionary. AND THERE IS A PICTURE OF IT. On Dr Andrew Smith’s expedition CHARLES BELL painted a church service here with Kolbe preaching — catalogued as the original at MuseumAfrica and as a photographic copy at the University of Edinburgh, CSWC 60 item 3. NEITHER HAS BEEN SEEN, and it would be the only likeness of anybody in this archive born before 1850.
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 1831 | Harriet Hachilah Machilah Kolbe born here |
| 1830s | “Most of his family grew up there” — the 1868 obituary |
| 1834 | Charles Bell draws him in the pulpit here |