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- Quote from Some Frontier Families by Ivan Mitford-Barberton, pg 101.
"Henry attended the Salem Academy and was later induced to come into Grahamstown by the Rev. William Shaw. He became a librarian and a Sunday School teacher and also took on the work of shoe repairing, etc. He can be considered as a self-educated man with his assistance received from the Methodist ministers in Grahamstown and his access to the library, but most probably he received his greatest help from the Shaws of Salem. In 1839 he became a minister of the Wesleyan Church, as it was called in those days. He was also connected with the Commemoration Church in Grahamstown where there is a memorial window in his memory. He was author of "Reminiscences of an Albany Settler", (Grahamstown - Richards and Glanville & Co, 1871). This is one of the best and also one of the rarest of Settler Africana. Dugmore also delivered a lecture at the Jubilee Celebrations in1870. This was reprinted in Grocott's daily Mail in serial form from 15th january to 5th February, 1919. A sermon preached on the occaision of the celebrations of the Settler Jubilee was printed by the Mount Coke Mission Press, 1871. The same press also published a memorial discourse on the death of Rev. Willaim Shaw, delivered in Grahamstown, 1873. The Rev. H. H. Dugmore was also responsible for a number of other lectures, papers and some poems, translations of the Scriptures into Xhosa, and also some Xhosa hymns."
Excerpted from Reminiscences of an Albany Settler, by Rev. Henry Hare DUGMORE, Printed and published by Messrs. Grocott and Sherry, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1958 (I believe this is a reprint of the original). Introduction, pp. 2-3.
"Henry's father, Isaac DUGMORE, a clerk of Birmingham, came to South Africa aged thirty-four in the ship Sir George Osborne with GARDNER's party, and with his wife Maria and six children was "located" in the Kariega valley. The site of their home was the present farm "Mosslands", close to the National Road about 14 miles west of Grahamstown. There were three boys and three girls: Henry, aged nine at the time of the settlement; William, aged six, and John, who according to family tradition was born during the voyage; Ann, aged seven; Louisa, aged four, and Caroline, aged two. The family knew hardship and hunger, and finally Isaac DUGMORE took employment as a book-keeper to Messrs. WOOD Bros. in Grahamstown. Maria DUGMORE willingly accepted her part, cared for the family, and ran the farm with the aid of her two elder boys, barely in their 'teens. There was no schooling for the children. From his parents Henry learned to read and write and count; and the stories his mother told him at night were stored in a remarkably retentive memory, and nourished a vivid imagination as he watched the sheep by day.
At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to Mr. WRIGHT, a saddler in Grahamstown. "Seven precious years" is his rueful description of the time he spent working long hours without pay, and lodged in the bare discomfort of a loft. Yet here was born the love of learning that lasted all his life. His attendance at the little Wesleyan Chapel drew the attention of the Rev. William SHAW, and when a night school was opened by SHAW and BOYCE, Henry DUGMORE was there the first night, and every possible evening thereafter. SHAW was quick to see the promise of his pupil, and secured for him an appointment as Acting Librarian of a small church library, in which DUGMORE made the most of his opportunity.
On New Year's Day of 1831 there came an experience which determined the course of his life. He experienced religious conversion after the pattern that made the Methodist Revivial so important an influence in the Eighteenth Century. "I distinctly heard three clear notes as from a trumpet, and since all was now changed and I was assured of forgiveness and acceptance, I interpreted the triple trumpet as a direct divine intimation to preach to the three great races by whom I was surrounded". Received as a Methodist minister on probation in 1834, DUGMORE was appointed to the Mount Coke
Mission. He soon mastered BOYCE's recently published Grammar of the Kaffir Language, conducted services in Xhosa after three months, and was able to dispense with an interpreter after six months.
Being stationed at Mount Coke, he found himself in enemy territory on the outbreak of the Kaffir War of 1834-5. His detailed account of this episode, written in 1889, is given in Part 2 of this volume. He chose to write in rather humorous vein of this experience, which must have been alarming enough to a youth of 23. Elizabeth Simpson, whom he was to marry three years later, has left a description of his appearance when he visited her family on his return to Grahamstown. Never had a more unclerical looking gentleman been introduced to them. They could hardly suppress a smile when he entered the room, dust-stained, hot and dressed in corduroy trousers, white jacket
and coloured waist-coat. "It was certainly not his courtier attire that first drew me to him. What struck us most was the evident earnestness of the young man in his work, also the massive forehead which already showed beneath a mass of red unkempt hair."
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