Ernest Cohen

Full name: Ernest H.A. Cohen, EHA Cohen

Lifespan: ? London - 1935

Occupation: Mining engineer, adventurer

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Biography

He was nicknamed "Alphabetical" Cohen due to his initials and extensive list of professional qualifications (such as M.I.M.E. and many others). This was a point of pride, as he reportedly instructed people to address mail to him simply as "Alphabetical Cohen, Rand Club."

As a youth, he sailed around Cape Horn in 1876 to California, where he had an uncle. Expecting a bank job, he instead became the world's youngest bank manager at age 17 in a Wild West mining camp (amid the atmosphere Mark Twain captured in Roughing It - Twain was a personal friend). Popular with miners despite (or because of) his English accent, he was dubbed "the young sprig of British nobility."

He then traveled through U.S. gold diggings, especially Nevada's Virginia City in its heyday, witnessing shootings, feuds, Indian raids, and the fading Pony Express era. He had fair success as a gold miner before heading to South Africa.

In South Africa, he settled in Kimberley as a digger and later engineer, spent time in Barberton and the De Kaap fields (which reminded him of American ones), and became one of Johannesburg's earliest Rand pioneers.

• The De Kaap fields (De Kaap Gold Fields) refer to the historic gold mining area in the De Kaap Valley of the eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). Barberton is situated in the De Kaap Valley. Gold was first noted in the De Kaap area as early as 1874 (by Thomas Mac Lachlan), but major rushes hit in the early 1880s with quartz reef discoveries. It attracted thousands of diggers before the bigger Witwatersrand (Rand) boom in 1886 drew attention to Johannesburg.

"The discovery of the auriferous "banket" or conglomerate beds at Witwatersrand, which completely threw the Kaap Fields into the shade, occurred in 1885." (Noble)

In 1890 he married Henrietta Robson in Barberton.

He was involved in mining ventures in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he earned some of his professional reputation as a consulting or early mining engineer.

He later returned to the U.S., working from Alaska down to California, before accepting the role of Government Mining Engineer in the mulatto republic of San Domingo (now Dominican Republic, adjoining Haiti). He did valuable resource development work and became a leading authority on the country. As one of the few white civil servants there, he endured repeated revolutions, eventually fleeing with his wife and daughter under bombardment - rescued by an American cruiser amid shellfire.

Undeterred, he went to the West Indies, befriended Cuban politicians plotting a revolution, and was promised the State Mining Engineer post if successful - but the coup failed, forcing him and allies to flee assassins and secret police back to the U.S. During World War I, he contributed important geological work for the U.S. Government.

He appears in passing in lists or contexts of early Johannesburg/Rand pioneers, often linked to the Rand Club scene. He is mentioned in Reminiscences of Johannesburg & London by Louis Cohen (published around 1924).

• Louis Cohen was himself a notable early settler in Johannesburg - he arrived shortly after the gold rush began and wrote several books reminiscing about the pioneer era, with anecdotes about miners, adventurers, and eccentrics.

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Sources

• Shovel and Sieve. Rosenthal, E. c.1959. George Allen and Unwin: London.
• Reminiscences of Johannesburg & London. c.1924. Cohen, L.
• Rhodesian Jewry and Its Story. c.1950s. Rosenthal, E.
• Illustrated Official Handbook of the Cape and South Africa. 1893. Noble, J.