Sir Thomas Cullinan (12 February 186223 August 1936) was a South African

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

magnate. He is renowned for giving his name to the

Cullinan Diamond The Cullinan Diamond is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found,Scarratt and Shor, p. 120. weighing (1 lb 5.92 oz), discovered at the Premier No.2 mine in Cullinan, South Africa, on 26 January 1905. It was named after Thomas Cull ...

, the largest diamond ever discovered, and as owner of the

Premier Mine The Premier Mine is an underground diamond mine owned by Petra Diamonds in the town of Cullinan, east of Pretoria, Gauteng Province, South Africa. Established in 1902, it was renamed the Cullinan Diamond Mine in November 2003 in celebratio ...

, now renamed the Cullinan Mine, from which the famous gem was extracted on 26 January 1905. He also gave his name to the nearby

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 ...

n town of Cullinan. He was honoured by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tembisa which named their church after him (Sir Thomas Cullinan AME Church).

Life and career

Thomas Cullinan was born in Elands Post near Seymore, Cape Colony on 12 February 1862. He moved to Barberton in 1884 and married two years later. In 1887, he moved to

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

.Regimental Headquarters: The View
/ref> There he became a bricklayer, and after he earned some money, he turned to prospecting. In 1897 he moved to Parktown, the up-and-coming suburb of the Randlords and had The View, his home, built. He discovered the Premier diamond fields in 1898. They lay a considerable distance from the existing diamond fields, but from the find of a diamond on the surface near a farm fence, he deduced that the diamond (found in

alluvial Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...

soil) must have been washed from some higher diamond-bearing geological position. Such a position presented itself in the shape of a nearby

koppie An inselberg or monadnock () is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In Southern Africa a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, a ...

, which concealed a diamond-bearing

blue ground Kimberlite is an igneous rock and a rare variant of peridotite. It is most commonly known to be the main host matrix for diamond, diamonds. It is named after the town of Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of ...

pipe. The owner of the mine,

Joachim Prinsloo Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Tetragrammaton, Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Bibl ...

, had sold land to both gold and diamond prospectors before, and would not sell. However Cullinan succeeded in purchasing the land for £52,000 from Prinsloo's daughter, who inherited the farm after her father's death.Hahn, Diamond, Chapter 4, p.125ff on Farlang.com
/ref> Cullinan was one of the co-founders and chairman of what became the Transvaal Chamber of Industries.
/ref> He was a member of the Transvaal Legislative Assembly and the first Union Parliament of 1910, representing the Pretoria Western district. He was

knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...

in 1910, at the inauguration of the Union of South Africa, in recognition of his contribution to industrial development in South Africa. The investiture was carried out by the

Duke of Connaught Duke of Connaught and Strathearn was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom that was granted on 24 May 1874 by Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to her third son, Prince Arthur. At the same time, he was also ...

, representing King

George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until Death and state funeral of George V, his death in 1936. Born duri ...

.Sir Thomas Restaurant
/ref> Sir Thomas Cullinan died in 1936, aged 74.

Family life

He had a family of ten children, and was the grandfather of

Patrick Cullinan Patrick Roland Cullinan (21 May 1932 – 14 April 2011) was a South African poet and biographer. He was born in Pretoria into a significant diamond-mining family (his grandfather, Sir Thomas Cullinan, a diamond mine owner, gave his name t ...

, a prominent South African poet.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cullinan, Thomas 1862 births 1936 deaths Diamond dealers South African people of Irish descent South African mining businesspeople Randlords South African Knights Bachelor

Life and career

Family life

See also

References