5 x (1874-1932) South Africa Strachan & Co. 2 Shilling | Bid Per Token | FUN SUNDAY |

(1874-1932) South Africa Strachan & Co. 2 Shilling

BID PER TOKEN - 5 AVAILABLE

The Strachan brothers came from Europe to Natal as young boysin the 1850s, and settled in Durban. Their father died not long after their arrival, falling from the rafters of a house he was building in Pinetown. The brothers, Donald and Thomas started as teenagers with a very profitable spell of transport riding to the Diamond fields and then decided to set up a business. They trekked South and crossed the Umzimkhulu River into what was previously known as "Nomansland", but at that time was inhabited by the Griquas under Adam Kok IV. A close friendship was formed between Donald Strachan and Adam Kok, through his business partner George Brisley who was the secretary of the Griqua Raad. The brothers opened a store at Umzimkhulu Drift on what is now the Transkeian side of the river, a venture which proved very profitable and was soon followed by several other stores that he opened across the region. The town of Umzimkhulu eventually developed around the first store opened by Strachan and Co. The first two sets of Strachan and Co currency tokens were minted in the 1870s when East Griqualand was a sovereign Griqua state - the British Governor of the Cape unilaterally annexed the region not long after in 1878. The first two sets (not those with the words "In Goods") were officially used to pay Griqua government taxes and were widely accepted as currency as there was no money of the crown in this remote region. The Standard Bank in the 125th Anniversary publication on their branch in Kokstad record that they started in a tent soon after annexation by the British and that Strachan and Co coins were the accepted currency of the region which they accepted and paid out as the regional currency. They did this because the coin of the crown was almost impossible to come by. In fact Judge Tom Mullins confirms that when he worked in the Magistrates Court at Umzimkhulu in the 1930s he bought several pounds worth of the Strachan coins from the court - coins which had been used previously used to pay court fines. These coins included some of the latest "In Goods" tokens reflecting the reality that the Strachan and Co were not only South Africa's first widely circulating indigenous coins but they continued to play a major role for over 50 years in the East Griqualand region.

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