Campbell is a small town situated on the edge of the Ghaap Plateau in the

Northern Cape The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. It is located 48 km east of

Griquatown Griekwastad is a country town in South Africa. It is sometimes still called Griquatown (the meaning of the town's name in Afrikaans), a name which is now considered historical. The town is in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa by road we ...

. It was originally known as ''Knovel Valley'' and then ''Groote Fontein'', but was renamed in honour of the Reverend John Campbell who visited the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...

in 1813.

Origin of the settlement

The history of modern settlement of Campbell dates back to 1805 when a group of

Griqua Griqua may refer to: * Griqua people * Griqua language or Xiri language * Griquas (rugby) Griquas (known as the Windhoek Draught Griquas for sponsorship reasons since April 2022) are a South African rugby union team that participates in the an ...

, including Captain

Andries Waterboer Andries Waterboer (c.1789 - 1852) was a leader ("kaptijn") of the Griqua people. He founded the Waterboer dynasty of Griqualand West, and led to a split of the Griqua people, as the factions of the Kok and Barends dynasties migrated to the south ...

, travelled with missionary

Jan Matthys Kok Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...

from Klaarwater (now

) to the territory of the

Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Bophuthatswana, the former ba ...

near the modern town of

Kuruman Kuruman is a small town with just over 53,000 inhabitants in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It is known for its scenic beauty and the Eye of Kuruman, a geological feature that brings water from deep underground. The abundance of water ...

. Encountering strong springs in a valley at the edge of the Ghaap Plateau, they gave the place the name of ''Knovel Valley'', noting its potential for future crop cultivation. It was only in 1811 that the Reverend Lambert Jansz, accompanying the traveller

William Burchell __NOTOC__ William John Burchell (23 July 1781 – 23 March 1863) was an English explorer, naturalist, traveller, artist, and author. His thousands of plant specimens, as well as field journals from his South African expedition, are held by Ke ...

, revisited the place, taking possession of the springs, by now known as ''Groote Fontein'' (Great Fountain), in the name of the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

. Before long the name of the place would be changed again: when the Reverend John Campbell, on a tour of inspection in 1813, reached the nascent village and asked its name, he was told it was Campbell.Humphreys, A.J.B. 2010. The destruction of the Griqua Mission Church at Campbell – the ultimate irony. ''The Digging Stick'' 27(2):9-10. In 1816

Cornelis Kok II Cornelis is a Dutch form of the male given name Cornelius. Some common shortened versions of Cornelis in Dutch are Cees, Cor, Corné, Corneel, Crelis, Kees, Neel and Nelis. Cornelis (Kees) and Johannes (Jan) used to be the most common given na ...

(1778-1858) was declared Griqua ''Kaptyn'' (Captain) of Campbell. Other members of the Kok family had resided there from the beginning of the settlement. The Reverend John Bartlett was stationed as a missionary at Campbell from 1825 and supervised the construction of a mission church there between 1827 and 1831. Many missionaries and travellers of the nineteenth century passed through the valley and the settlement – including

, George Thompson, Andrew Smith, Robert Moffat,

David Livingstone David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...

and G.A. Farini.

Cornelis Kok II and 34 others re-interred

The remains of

(1778-1858) were exhumed from a grave, which was threatened by agricultural encroachment, on 19 April 1961, with the intention that the remains should be reburied at the historic precinct near the mission church. ''Kaptyn'' Adam Kok IV presided over the disinterment by Prof P.V. Tobias and Dr G.J. Fock, following three years of community consultation by Basil Humphreys. Subsequently, 34 other

skeletons were exhumed by Tobias and his students and all were removed for study at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...

. The exhumed remains of Cornelis Kok II and the 34 other Griqua individuals were re-interred alongside the mission church on 23 September 2007. A letter from Phillip Tobias to

Adam Kok V Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as ...

was read at the ceremony which was presided over by Northern Cape premier

Dipuo Peters Elizabeth Dipuo Peters (born 13 May 1960 in Kimberley, Northern Cape) was the Minister of Transport of the Republic of South Africa from 10 July 2013 until 30 March 2017, in the Zuma administration, and former Minister of Energy from 2009 to 201 ...

.Coetzee, Frans. "Cornelis Kok II en 34 volgelinge herbegrawe" ''Volksblad'' 24 Sep 2007

References

{{Authority control Populated places in the Siyancuma Local Municipality