ZEEDERBURG P.R. 1823-1905
The Zeederberg Coach Company was a South African horse-drawn mail and stage coach service operating during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and founded by four Zeederberg brothers: Lewis, Pieter, Roelof and Christiaan, who were of Swedish descent. Roelof Abraham Zeederberg, their grandfather, arrived in Cape Town in 1798 from Sweden. A vessel carrying a cargo of coffee had been wrecked off the Cape coast, and sensing a business opportunity, Roelof bought the rights to the wreck and salvaged the coffee. Railways had got off to a very slow start in South Africa; at the beginning of 1884 there were only 1,318 miles (2,135 km) of track in operation, of which 1213 were in the Cape Colony. This was the position in 1884, when two of the brothers, Lewis Andries (Louw) Zeederberg and Pieter Frederick (Piet) Zeederberg, who had been operating a wagon transport service south of the Vaal River, decided to extend their operations into the Transvaal. With six wagons in their fleet they decided to send for their older brother Roelof Abraham (Dolf) Zeederberg, who had given up a career as a chemist due to ill-health. Dolf joined them at Kimberley and they put him in charge of two ox-wagons carrying much-needed equipment and supplies to the mining settlements as far north as the Limpopo ('crocodile') River. Meanwhile they operated a fleet of ten ox-wagons to Potchefstroom (Orange Free State), Pretoria and the Eastern Transvaal routes. Their success led them to send for their younger brother, Christiaan Hendrik (Döel) Zeederberg, then aged 23, to assist them in coping with the expanded operations. In 1887 the partners started the first mail-coach route between Johannesburg and Kimberley. In 1890 they added a service between Pretoria, Pietersburg and the gold rush town of Leydsdorp. At the height of its operations Zeederbergs were using coaches made by the American firm of Abbot-Downing, which had space for 12 passengers inside and 6 more clinging to the roof straps.[4] Two original Zeederberg coaches are known to survive. One from 1888 was sent in 1964 to the National Museum at Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) for repair and exhibition, and was still there in 1974. One from 1895 (the only original one left in South Africa) was moved in 1995 from the Africana Museum to a new home at MuseuM AfricA in Newtown, Johannesburg. (Source: Wikipedia)
contributed by: Johan Viktor
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