Philip Caveney

In the article below, Philip Caveney from the Knysna Historical Society unpacks the history of various homes built by members of the famous Thesen family of Knysna. Click here to download a pdf version which includes footnotes.

The First Generation of Thesens - Mathias Theodore and Arnt Thesen of Stavanger and Knysna

Arnt Leonard Thesen was born in 1816. In 1845 he and his brother Frederick Wilhelm Thesen established the company AL Thesen & Co. in Stavanger. Initially they were merchants selling building hardware but later expanded to be general merchants and after 1857 were shipping goods to and from Norway with their own ships, notably grain from Northern Europe.

But this was not to last. On September 1868 an Economic Depression struck Norway and major clients in Stavanger defaulted on payments and business came to a standstill. AL Thesen & Co. was forced to close its doors.

Arnt Leonard Thesen decided to seek new pastures – immigration to New Zealand was considered. With help from the family and his elder brother Mathias Thesen, a sea captain, they managed to find enough money to buy the Albatros out of the insolvent estate and to load the ship with the supplies they needed to sail to their chosen destination plus a load of timber to trade to allow a new start.

They departed Stavanger on 20 July 1869, with a few calls to make at Tonsberg and Plymouth, but by the end of August they set sail for New Zealand.

They reached Cape Town on 16...

We are very pleased to publish this fascinating article on the Forester's Cottage at Deepwalls (located about 25km north of Knysna in the Knysna Main Forest). Thank you to Philip Caveney and James Paterson of the Knysna Historical Society for sending it through.

Until the late 1880’s the Cape Colonial forest officers and their families lived in crude and unhealthy wooden cottages in the forests.

Forester Dr. John FV Phillips, Assistant Officer, Silvicultural Research, at the Deepwalls Forest Station during the period 1922 to 1927, tells that the project to replace these mostly dilapidated wooden cottage homes was initiated by the Conservator David E Hutchins of the Midland Conservancy, who was based at the Concordia Forest Station near Knysna. This was most likely in 1888.

By 1890 the Conservator of Forests, Midlands Conservancy, could report that the first of these new stone cottages had been completed. These were located in the forests at Buffels Nek (in the forests on the Uniondale Road from Knysna), Woodville (north of Wilderness) and Fisanthoek (near Plettenberg Bay).

By 1891 more of the forest cottages in the Midlands Conservancy had been completed, whilst some were still under construction.

The stone for the Deepwalls cottage had been sourced, but construction work had not started.

Most of the new forestry cottages were built of stone, pointed in cement. The accommodation typically consisted of 3 or 4 rooms with a kitchen for the Forester and his family, a working office and an extra room as inspection quarters. As...

Stephanus Jesaias Ter Blans, eldest son of Heemraad Pieter Ter Blans (Terblanche) of the Reeboksfontein farm near Little Brak River, was the first colonist farmer to settle in the Knysna area. He named his loan farm Melkhoutkraal, which he established in 1770, on the east bank of the Knysna River. The farm stretched from the Indian Ocean to today’s Long Street in the town of Knysna. Stephanus Ter Blans died in 1794 after having had the loan rights for twenty years.

His widow, Hester Marx, remained on the farm and ran it with the help of her children. She subsequently married Johann von Lindebaum in 1798. In 1801 Lindebaum sold the farm to Richard Holiday, who died the following year.

The massacre of colonist farmers, on 15 October 1802, at a place known as De Poort, near the Garden of Eden in Harkerville, was a setback for settlement in the Knysna area. This event occurred during the Third Frontier War when a group of renegades plundered farms all along the Langkloof and entered into the coastal regions, harassing farmers from Plettenberg Bay all the way up to the Kaaiman’s River near George.

A group of Plettenberg Bay colonist farmers; Botha, Heyns and Wolfaart, with their families and retainers were returning to the Cape in fear of their lives when they were ambushed at De Poort. Four of the men were killed and the women taken hostage. The women and children were released later but many of the settled farms lay...