Fort Jackson (H 15)

Name: Fort Jackson

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Historic fact:

In 1865 Mrs. Ball was born as Amelia Alice Elizabeth Adkins in Fort Jackson, East London, the same town where her Canadian parents were stranded in 1852 on their way to Australia. According to www.ballfamilyrecords.co.uk her father, Henry James Adkins, captain of the SS Quanza, and his wife, Sarah Spalding, left the coastal town, Nova Scotia in Canada for Australia. Although the boat was lost off the coast of East London, fortunately for future generations of South Africans, the captain, his wife and her chutney recipe survived.



According to Ball, it all started in 1852 when Henry James Adkins married Elizabeth Sarah Spalding in King William’s Town, settling in the nearby village of Fort Jackson to run a general dealership. He was a pretty humble man, Desmond says, not a ship’s captain, as the Unilever website claims, and the couple were never romantically shipwrecked together.

Sarah Adkins started making chutney commercially in about 1870. But she was no great shakes at brand-building, burdening her delicious condiment with the label, “Mrs Henry Adkins Senior, Colonial Chutney Manufacturer, Fort Jackson, Cape Colony.”

The Adkinses had seven sons and four daughters, one of whom was Amelia. Amelia married Herbert Saddleton Ball, a superintendent on the railways, and they moved to Johannesburg - taking her mother’s chutney recipe with her.

On HS Ball’s retirement the family moved to Cape Town, where Amelia started producing her mother’s chutney on a home-industry scale.



Read more: http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=926:mrsballs210109&catid=43:culture_news&Itemid=112#ixzz0Rfdpa4Lk



Other interesting info:
And even today in Buffalo City there are still traces of German influence. In East London automobile giant DaimlerChrysler has an automotive plant on the Westbank, while Rehau Polymer is based at Fort Jackson.

For anyone wanting to learn more about the history of the people of Buffalo City, the East London Museum can be contacted on (043) 743-0686.

The museum is in Oxford Street, with the entrance and parking in Dawson Road, and is open from 9.30am to 5pm on Mondays to Fridays, between 2pm and 5pm on Saturdays, and from 11am to 4pm on Sundays and public holidays.

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