Part 3

William Homan Turpin goes to South Africa

Water Thomas Turpin eventually joined the Plymouth Brethren and settled in Tunbridge Wells.  He married twice and had 7 children. He died in 1914 and is buried in Eastbourne Cemetery.  The Reverend Walter Thomas is the first known Turpin of whom a photograph survives.  I have also acquired a book in his name – “The Man Christ Jesus:” Being Addresses on The Gospel of St Luke, published by A.S. Rouse of Paternoster Square in London (date unknown).  The preface by Walter Thomas is signed W.T.T., 47 Upper Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells.

I would imagine that after he and his brother separated (maybe when William left Ireland, or when he went to South Africa) they never saw each other again, but I wonder if they were able to write to each other?  Postal services were increasingly available after the invention of the postage stamp in 1840, and stamps were used in the Cape Province from 1853 onwards.

After his parents died, William was sent by his uncle, Rev. William Peter Turpin, to the Phoenix Park Grammar School in Dublin for a year (he would have been just 8 or 9 years old at this stage), after which he was sent to the London Orphan School in Clapton for a further 6 years.  Presumably it was thought that he should go into business as he was apprenticed to an wholesale export company until the age of 21.  He didn’t enjoy the world of business and determined to become a missionary, as a result of which he was taken up by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) at the age of 21.  

On 3rd January 1857 William sailed for South Africa on the 300-ton barque Chieftain, destined for Grahamstown.  He was accompanied by Messrs Wilson, Hutt and their families.  Apart from some bad weather to start with, and being becalmed on the equator for 2 weeks, the journey was more-or-less incident free and they arrived four months later in Port Elizabeth on 4th April 1857.

The Eastern Cape & The Xhosa Wars

It is important to understand something of the geography, climate, flora and fauna of this part of the world to get a sense of the struggles of the early settlers and missionaries.  I make no apology from quoting at length from Mostert, who describes the region thus:

“Speaking of that whole region … from Algoa Bay to a point just south of Natal, one can say that, although one is still in an area of special and outstanding beauty, it is not long before one is conscious of something more; an impression, seemingly, of a distinct and plangent power deriving from forces occult as well as visible, from an inner component of the malign set within a landscape whose natural attractiveness has provoked more jealous antagonism and combat than any other in all Africa.

“Just past the Cape of Good Hope, the mountains that crowd right to the edge of the sea start drawing away from the coast.  They remain close and dominant, but with an ever-increasing band of lushly green land between themselves and the sea.  It is the start of the territorial gap between shore and the Great Escarpment that runs all the way up the eastern coast of Africa and forms its principal characteristic, alternatively narrow or wide, but green from the moisture-laden winds that break against the coastal mountains and spill their rain upon it.

“East of Algoa Bay the narrow fertile ledge is seldom more than around seventy miles wide in the region that concerns us, but within that confined space lies a country of dramatic physical contrasts and climatic unpredictability, its landscapes alternating between the idyllic and the harsh, reflective of a climate that shifts with cruel facility from green fertility to relentless drought.  Its grasses might fatten cattle one season, malevolently sicken them in the next.  Mountainous seashore dunes fold into grassland, desert scrub, thorn savannah, macchia or dense forest with trees of impressive height and splendour.

“The dividing line that one crosses here is obviously climatic rather than oceanic.  The mingling of the seas at the Cape has created, together with other factors, one of the distinct botanical kingdoms of the world…  Equally unique and extraordinary is the brief zone beyond Algoa Bay, where the winter rainfall region of South Africa blends into the summer rainfall.  It is a zone that, understandably, does not always seem to know what it is…

“The country east of Algoa Bay … is the confused meeting place on intermingling fauna from the central African forest families whose southward stream finishes here, and of the Cape flora whose northward progress can take them no further.  Its plants and flowers are a glorious confusion of the exotic and the ordinary: prehistoric cycads and geraniums and roses; proteas and euphorbias and lilies of every conceivable variety; strelitzia and plumbagos and arums; seashore pelargonmiums, exotic forest mosses and parastic creepers; orchids, pink, mauve and magenta; gladioli, freesias and the yellow chincherinchee.  But of all of them, it is the cacti and the bitter-juice aloes that are most famously characteristic of the region: the flowers of thirst…

“In this very narrow and confined part of Africa nature flowers and fruits in a willful and undependable manner, in a fantasy of colour, of feverish combinations, the soft and the delicate with the violently brilliant, blooms that poison and bulbs that feed the starving, all of it expressing the alternating bounty and generosity and malevolent caprice of the land itself.

These are the contrasts that convey that intimidating and disquieting impression of being surrounded by a mistrustful, malign design.  One moment it is a land that seems to be all English meadows, parkland.  Roses and carnations bloom, orchards hang with soft fruit.  Go some distance, not very far, and one is within an even cooler form of natural refreshment, the abrupt highlands.  Streams fall mistily from high ledges, spraying upon ferns, bracken, heathers, all the flowering entanglements of green tropical abundance.  Then, at no distance at all again from these, mere yards it can sometimes seem, one confronts the other side of it all: drought, dust, despair.  It is here that the aloes burn, among vast cracked granite boulders that radiate heat like furnaces, and serve as alters for coiled venomous serpents, which add a new aberration to their threat by spitting their poison unerringly into the eyes.  And all about, mile after mile, stretches thick mimosa bush, a hardy greenery, wielding massed thorns the size of small daggers, which stab and strike at whatever passes…

“As if all its violent and intimidating contrasts were still not enough, this country is endowed as well with disturbing natural phenomena.  Its thunderstorms and sudden winds are especially fierce and capricious… Men and beasts die frequently when hot by these rampant discharges, trees are split and great boulders shattered.

“The summer deluge that such lightening storms often precipitate creates yet another hazard by swift run-off into river bed. Many a traveler taking his wagon across a sandy river bed in summer in the rainfall seasons would look up to see a wall of water advancing bank to bank at great speed along a course that had looked forever abandoned by its stream.

“Equally menacing are the north winds that suddenly send a blast of searing air across the landscape.  These ‘berg winds’, mountain winds as they are called, can sweep down at midday and send temperatures flashing upwards…  …a torrent of overheated air pours down and gives … the impression of being close to a strong fire on a hot summer’s day.  But it goes as quickly as it comes…

“During the times of those travellers, the eastern zone of the Cape world that we have been describing was home to as exotic a gathering of fauna as Africa could offer.  All the continent’s big game and wildlife roamed these various habitats, and the animals were matched in their numbers and variety by the bird life which beat across the skies and through the forests, one of the most colourful and eccentric bird populations that natural world has known, and one that provided the indigenous human population through symbols and proverbs with much the greater part of its imaginative values.  Birds were messenger of death, of warning, harbingers of rain, and even providers of food…

“The eastern Cape … was one of such astonishing largesse, of so many splendours, that for those who made it their home the perversity of its climate and the whimsy of its natural phenomena, that impression of malign caprice lurking forever within the idyll, became simply part of the character of their lives.  It heightened their perception of themselves as people of exceptional circumstances whose lives were dominated and enlarged by the multitudinous symbols of fate and fortune, of the ever-existent shades within all the glories of existence that surrounded them in their extraordinary environment” (prologue, pp. xxi - xxv).

The settlers and missionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries who arrived in this land also arrived and made their place in a time of great conflict; this was the time of the Xhosa Wars (also known as the Frontier Wars) that took place over a period of around 100 years between 1780 and 1880.  These wars – there were nine distinct ‘wars’ – were essentially about land and cattle and were fought between the Dutch farmers, supported in the 19th century by the British army, and the indigenous Xhosa people.  

The missionaries played an interesting role, seeking to engage with Xhosa leaders on the basis that their salvation as a people would only come about through religious conversion, on the one hand, and engaging with the British military leaders and governers, on the other, with a view to ameliorating the worst effects of colonial rule and expansionism.  At least, on paper.  But missionary work is not carried out on paper, but by and with people.  Mostert describes how, through the course of the 19th century, the missionary movement in the eastern Cape was beset with adultery and inter-marriage with the local people, intrigue of different forms, and manipulative politics in which missionaries were played off against each other by local chiefs seeking advantage over rivals.

By the time of the conclusion of the 6th frontier war in the 1830s, the ambiguous situation of the missionary movement was such that Mostert describes the situation as follows:

“The entire missionary establishment itself, however, was regarded with great misgiving by civilians and military, who saw the missionaries at best as good-willed but deluded in their attempts to convert the Xhosa, at worst as prime instigators of Xhosa discontent and formenters of the war”. (p.699)

Mostert describes the impact of the wars on the Xhosa nation:

“In 1856, three years after the conclusion of the longest, cruelest and most penalizing of all frontier wars, the frontier Xhosa were in a severe state of spiritual, political and economic crisis after half a century of progressive land loss, strenuous assault upon their traditions and customs, and military defeat.

They had shown remarkable resilience in coping with the losses and consequences of each war, except the last.  The loss of the places they cherished above all and their overcrowded confinement to inadequate spaces had left them demoralized in a way that was more deeply affecting than anything yet experienced…” (p.1177).

This is now that point at which William Homan Turpin was setting sail for South Africa. The Xhosa were economically vanquished, but yet their tragedy was to take another turn.  In May 1856, it appears that two teenage Xhosa girls experienced some form of vision or visitation of ancestors, who advised them that a resurrection would take place for the Xhosa people, provided that all the cattle would be slaughtered, and farming should be abandoned.  A new people would arise, and the white man would be driven into the sea.

Somehow, and despite the best efforts of people like Charles Brownlee (see below) and others, the notion caught on and cattle killings started.  This was not just the result of superstition, as the Xhosa were shrewd and clever people in many ways.  The events need to be understood in the context of the times.  The Xhosa felt encircled and were seeking a way out.  Strong notions of ancestral belief, coupled with an epidemic of bovine pneumonia that had arrived from Europe, and awareness of British defeats in Crimea (and perceptions that the Russians (who must also be black) might also arrive in ships and defeat the British in Africa) led to a widespread belief that a ‘new people’ would be coming.

The cattle killings were for the Xhosa what Mostert describes as: “an act of faith in the belief that only thus would they save themselves from the crisis of survival that had beset them…  From this commitment there began to unfold what is probably the greatest self-inflicted immolation of a people in all history, the saddest and most overwhelming of all South Africa’s many human tragedies…” (p.1187).

Throughout the year and into 1857 cattle were slaughtered, as voices of reason amongst the Xhosa lost out to prophets and soothsayers.  On 18th February 1857, the sun was supposed to set as soon as it rose, heralding the new Xhosa dawn.  Great storms would occur, the colonizers would disappear and new herds of cattle would appear.

Of course, the sun set as usual that day, observed by the young catechist Robert Mullins at St Mark’s Mission.  With their cattle gone, famine struck the Xhosa people.  St Mark’s Mission, soon to be home to William Homan, set itself up as a feeding station.  Robert Mullins kept eighteen large pots cooking as desperate people arrived for food.

The Xhosa people suffered huge loss of life and displacement as a result of what happened, and those that survived had little choice but to offer themselves as labourers in the Cape colony.  This is the situation that prevailed on the arrival of William Homan Turpin into the eastern Cape.

Part Two

William Homan's Ancestors in Ireland

Of the sons of Reverend Thomas we are mainly concerned with the second son William.  His first son, also Thomas, produced an Irish line of the family that continued to the present day – a direct descendant Marjorie Turpin, daughter of Horace and Kathleen Turpin of Greystones, County Wicklow, passed away in Portlaoise on 8th February 1986, and various other Turpin family notices have been observed in the personal columns of The Irish Times.

There is less known of the second son William, of St John’s parish in Dublin. He married a woman called Jane, was buried in 1673 and had two daughters – Margaret and Jane – and one son – again a William.

This William was a hosier in Dublin’s Kevin Street, and a Churchwarden of St Bride’s between 1731 -1734, so as well as being in business he kept his options open with the Lord.  On 8th May 1711 he married Elizabeth Tomlinson, (recorded in the parish register of St Catherine), and they had 6 children (including another William!).  

Their first son, Thomas, was baptised on 16th May 1720 and also became a hosier.  He subsequently took up business as a china manufacturer at No.15 Aungier Street in Dublin.  He was a great grandson of our first Reverend Thomas Turpin, and the great grandfather of William Homan Turpin.  Thomas married twice, firstly Mary Baily, with whom he had 2 sons – Peter and William, and secondly Susanna Brunell, by whom he had a 3rd son – inevitably then another Thomas.  His eldest son, Peter, was sent to Trinity College Dublin and ordained as a Deacon in 1766.  Robert Brown describes his life thus:

The Rev. PETER TURPIN, matric. T.C.D. 2 Feb. 1761, B.A. Vern. 1765, M.A. Aest. 1781, ordained deacon 27 April 1766 at St Luke's, Dublin, by the bishop of Killaloe, celebrated marriages in St Andrew's 1772 and St Anne's 1783. It is apparent he became tutor to Charles William, son of John Bury of Shannon Grove, Co. Limerick, whose matriculation at T.C.D. in Oct. 1781 shows he was educated by Mr Turpin. Charles Bury was largely responsible for the development of Tullamore, King's Co., and was created Baron Tullamore in 1797 and Earl of Charleville in 1800. Peter Turpin seemingly became private chaplain to the Bury family; in 1785 Charles Bury granted him at least four annuities of £100 secured on certain rents, one of which was later converted into an annuity for the life of his wife… The Rev. Peter m. 19 Jan. 1790 Henrietta eldest dau. of the Rev. Philip Homan of Surock, Co Westmeath, by his wife Mary Anne…: legal documents at this time describe the Rev. Peter as of Killboy, Co. Tipperary. Killboy was the seat of the Prittie family, and Charles Bury's mother had married secondly Henry Prittie, later Lord Dunally, so it is possible Turpin had been chaplain to the Prittes and tutor to young Charles Bury. It is clear from Bury letters that Peter Turpin acted as agent to Lord Charleville and was also a personal friend; there is mention of Charleville guests staying at Brookville with the Turpins, and to Peter Turpin's severe gout preventing him completing the accounts. The letters also contain greetings to be passed on to the Turpins and condolences to Lord Charleville on the loss of his old friend when Peter died in Dec. 1809.

So this was the Homan connection, and it was also Rev. Peter who established the family in Tullamore, Kings County.  With his wife Henrietta Homan, he had 9 children in just over 12 years.  Two of the sons became clergymen – the Rev. Charles Bury Turpin (no doubt named after Charles Bury), and the Rev. William Peter Turpin (who was a sponsor of the young William Homan Turpin after he was orphaned – see later).  Rev Charles Bury was the incumbant at Rahan, just outside Tullamore, where the small church still stands.

The second son, Philip, was a Lieutenant and Quartermaster in the 16th Light Dragoons – he died aged 45 after being shot through the hip in a duel that sounds as if it could have been the inspiration for that well-known Irish ballad – ‘Whiskey in the Jar’.  

Another son, Walter Tully died as an infant.  The fourth son, Thomas Dawson, attended Trinity College, as did Charles Bury and William Peter, but there is no record of his having graduated.  In his favour he did marry Charlotte Alicia Conyngham in 1832 aged 30, thereby bringing the Conyngham connection into the family.  True to form they had 7 children, including William Homan Turpin.    William Homan had 4 brothers, including Walter Thomas (see later), Charles Conyngham Turpin (who became a magistrate in the Falkland islands), Robert Harrison Turpin, and Philip Alexander Turpin.  He also had 2 sisters – Matilda Janet Turpin and Henrietta Elizabeth Turpin.  Henrietta was a bit mad and ended up living in care.

Philip Alexander also entered the clergy, and like his brother, ended up in South Africa (although in Zululand rather than the Cape).  The story of the Rev. Philip’s work in Zululand is another day’s work – suffice to say that he established a mission at St Luke’s at Engabeni in Umzimkulwana between 1892 and 1912, and supervised a school at Isandlwana in the 1880s – short years after the British defeat there in 1879.

 

Early Life

Relatively little, if anything, is known about William’s early life in Ireland.  He was born in Middleton (?), near Tullamore, County Offaly (then ‘King’s County’), on 2nd October 1835.  Tullamore is in the centre of Ireland and was probably then green, wet and wind-swept, as it is still today.  Tullamore itself was a thriving agricultural market town.  Ireland was a more populous country then than even today, with probably a peak in the 1840s of around 8 million people, before emigration and famine took their toll.

Foster describes how “by the 1830s the confessional basis of Irish political identification had become highly accentuated” (p.302) – leading to a growth in sectarianism.  The early political drive for independence and growth of Irish nationalism was gathering pace, with Daniel O’Connell pushing for the repeal of the 1802 Act of Union between Britain and Ireland.  Although there was a concomitant growth in Protestant evangelicals at the time, the Protestant psychology “was that of a minority on the defensive” (p.303).

William’s brother, Walter Thomas, was born in 1834.  Their parents, Thomas Dawson Turpin and his wife Charlotte Conyngham, who were married in 1832, both passed away at a relatively young age in 1843 – could this have been in some kind of accident?  Walter, as the older brother, inherited the estate, followed his father through Trinity College Dublin and became a missionary.