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Fordsburg Reformed Church
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Fordsburg Reformed Church
The Fordsburg Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) that served the western Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg from November 6, 1896, to 1988.
The Cape Colony Vrouesendingbond (VSB, or Women's Missionary Society) was founded in 1889 in Wellington. In 1893, the first VSB deputies led by Mrs. Maria Kloppers arrived in Johannesburg and Fordsburg, where they ministered to the poor Afrikaners living in the "Brickyards" outside of town who made bricks for the growing city's buildings. The workers often had to clean the houses before serious conversation could be had with the residents. Mrs. Abbie Park Ferguson, who arrived in 1895 among by then five VSB volunteers, noted a significant workload including home visits, prayer hours, Sunday school, and children's rosaries, to say nothing of healing and helping the poor while helping them find employment.
Kloppers later wrote that "in Johannesburg, Afrikaners' fortunes first began to decline." The suburban slums introduced a poor white population (named in Afrikaans armblankes, armlastiges, or later minderbevoorregtes) that the state would subsidize at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Rands. In Fordsburg, where rents were low but wages likewise and food costs expensive, the poorest of this growing underclass lived, including blacks and Cape Coloureds as well as whites. Kloppers adopted many orphans and raised them in an orphanage that would later bear her name in Observatory.
Fordsburg seceded from the Langlaagte Reformed Church in 1896 with Rev. Abraham Kriel as consulent. Shortly before, he had arranged funds for building a small but elegant church in the neighborhood, which had opened in December 1895. He considered it one of the best congregations on the Rand.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 19, 1896, the Braamfontein Explosion occurred in nearby Braamfontein, in which a dynamite wagon destined for the mine exploded after three days sitting in the sun. The resulting four-story-deep crater leveled houses in Vrededorp, Fordsburg, and surrounding areas and severely damaged others.
Kloppers had just arrived in the new church to prepare for three o'clock prayers when she heard a great shock and "the roof sank on me. I struggle to get out. It is a wonder that anyone could come out alive. The doors and beams stuck out under the floor. Someone called out 'Mrs. Kloppers, are you alive! Ah, come here!' Destruction, lament, weep, wail!"
Corpses lay around, some maimed beyond recognition, and some of the injured were similarly wounded but able to recognize relatives. A row of heads of children and adults laid visible in the school, including a class of the VSB Sunday School. Two-year-old Francina was found a day later playing with a bucket under the remains of a stove. She was the first of thirteen children the VSB adopted to start their orphanage.
Soon, the Revs. Marthinus Daneel and Pieter Gerhardus Jacobus Meiring arrived in the area to set up a mess hall for the injured. The Rev. Kriel established the new congregation's cemetery by burying 127 bodies on its first day. Coffins, ten of which only contained partial remains, were carried on mules. Dozens died of their injuries, and a funeral procession wound its way to the cemetery. The Rev. Kriel wept the next day in the study of the Rev. J.N. Martins of Johannesburg.
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Fordsburg Reformed Church
The Fordsburg Reformed Church was a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) that served the western Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg from November 6, 1896, to 1988.
The Cape Colony Vrouesendingbond (VSB, or Women's Missionary Society) was founded in 1889 in Wellington. In 1893, the first VSB deputies led by Mrs. Maria Kloppers arrived in Johannesburg and Fordsburg, where they ministered to the poor Afrikaners living in the "Brickyards" outside of town who made bricks for the growing city's buildings. The workers often had to clean the houses before serious conversation could be had with the residents. Mrs. Abbie Park Ferguson, who arrived in 1895 among by then five VSB volunteers, noted a significant workload including home visits, prayer hours, Sunday school, and children's rosaries, to say nothing of healing and helping the poor while helping them find employment.
Kloppers later wrote that "in Johannesburg, Afrikaners' fortunes first began to decline." The suburban slums introduced a poor white population (named in Afrikaans armblankes, armlastiges, or later minderbevoorregtes) that the state would subsidize at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Rands. In Fordsburg, where rents were low but wages likewise and food costs expensive, the poorest of this growing underclass lived, including blacks and Cape Coloureds as well as whites. Kloppers adopted many orphans and raised them in an orphanage that would later bear her name in Observatory.
Fordsburg seceded from the Langlaagte Reformed Church in 1896 with Rev. Abraham Kriel as consulent. Shortly before, he had arranged funds for building a small but elegant church in the neighborhood, which had opened in December 1895. He considered it one of the best congregations on the Rand.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 19, 1896, the Braamfontein Explosion occurred in nearby Braamfontein, in which a dynamite wagon destined for the mine exploded after three days sitting in the sun. The resulting four-story-deep crater leveled houses in Vrededorp, Fordsburg, and surrounding areas and severely damaged others.
Kloppers had just arrived in the new church to prepare for three o'clock prayers when she heard a great shock and "the roof sank on me. I struggle to get out. It is a wonder that anyone could come out alive. The doors and beams stuck out under the floor. Someone called out 'Mrs. Kloppers, are you alive! Ah, come here!' Destruction, lament, weep, wail!"
Corpses lay around, some maimed beyond recognition, and some of the injured were similarly wounded but able to recognize relatives. A row of heads of children and adults laid visible in the school, including a class of the VSB Sunday School. Two-year-old Francina was found a day later playing with a bucket under the remains of a stove. She was the first of thirteen children the VSB adopted to start their orphanage.
Soon, the Revs. Marthinus Daneel and Pieter Gerhardus Jacobus Meiring arrived in the area to set up a mess hall for the injured. The Rev. Kriel established the new congregation's cemetery by burying 127 bodies on its first day. Coffins, ten of which only contained partial remains, were carried on mules. Dozens died of their injuries, and a funeral procession wound its way to the cemetery. The Rev. Kriel wept the next day in the study of the Rev. J.N. Martins of Johannesburg.