Notes:
When it was visited by James Backhouse in December 1838 he wrote the following:
“On approaching Grahams Town, we were struck with the uninviting appearance of its site, which is in a naked country, at the foot of a low, rocky, sandstone ridge … The present town consists of a few streets, one of which is spacious, and serves as a market-place.
The streets are regularly laid out; and the houses are neat, and white, or yellow. The inhabitants are about 4,000, almost exclusively English. There are places of worship belonging to the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and Independents. Adjacent to the town there are kraals or villages of Fingoes and Khoikhoi.”
Thomas Baines visited the town in March 1848 and reported that: “… we entered the town by New Street which seemed, by far, more prolific of canteens and … retail stores, than of private dwellings … (Graham’s Town) contained at the time of my arrival a population of six thousand persons, of whom one-fourth were coloured, and houses to the number of seven hundred and fifty. Its principal streets cross each other at right angles, and at their point of intersection is placed the English Church, a plain Gothic building…”