John Fannin

Full name: John Eustace Fannen

Lifespan: 1834 England - 1905 Belgium

Occupation: Natal pioneer, surveyor, magistrate, advocate, judge.

Family: Married Etheria Goldwina Gower (c.1848 - ?) in 1868. They had 12 children. Brother of  land surveyor, Thomas Fannin. Brother of Marianne Edwardine (Edda) Fannin (1845 Ireland - 1938 Heidelberg, Transvaal, naturalist and artist.

Young Fannin (Geni)

Photo from the cover of "The Fannin Papers"

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Timeline

 

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Biography

In 1845, the Fannin family emigrated from Dublin to the Cape. After two years in Cape Town (1847) they moved to Natal and settled in the midlands, some 30 km north-east of Pietermaritzburg, on a farm which they renamed The Dargle, after a place which his father had known in Ireland. They were one of the earliest settler families in the region and derived their income mainly from cutting timber on the farm.

John became a clerk and interpreter at the Magistrate's Court in Ladysmith, and later at Richmond, Natal. In 1857 he qualified as a surveyor and worked in Natal and the Transvaal. At the time of the Basuto incursion in 1865 he joined the Natal Volunteers.

In 1875 he was appointed Magistrate for the Umlazi region. By 1878 he was listed as a land surveyor in Wakkerstroom.² When the Zulu War of 1879 broke out, he joined the Durban Rangers. In 1894 he became an advocate, by 1899 he was serving as a judge in the Native High Court.

The Fannin Papers

In 1932, his granddaughter, Natalie Fannin, published his papers posthumously.

"The intimate family papers from which the following pages have been compiled are, so to speak, a window of history from which the curtains of the years have been drawn aside for us by the sympathetic hand of a daughter of the household. As a journal whose own roots are embedded in the early history of Natal." (R. Kingston Russell)
"The Natal Mercury counts it a good fortune to have been able to print these extracts from the voluminous letters of John Eusace Fannin, treasured for so many years by his wife and now edited by his granddaughter, a valued member of the "Mercury" editorial staff." (The Natal Mercury)

The Fannin Papers: A Pioneer's Story of the Diamond Fields and the Zulu War. 1932. Fannin, N.

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Sources

1. John Eustace Fannin
2. Guide to the Transvaal. 1878. Becker, C.J.
3. S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science