Hercules Crosse Jarvis
Hercules Crosse Jarvis (18 June 1803 - 8 February 1889) MLC, MLA, was a mayor of Cape Town and a powerful merchant of the Cape Colony.
Born in Plymouth, England in 18 June 1803, he was a close relative of John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, the admiral who fought Napoleon. His father, also named John Jervis, was an army captain from Staffordshire who died young, leaving his wife and six children. After briefly visiting the Cape in 1816, he decided to move to the colony permanently, and arrived in Cape Town in 1821 with the intention of settling and making his fortune. He soon found a job as a clerk in the trading firm Hudson, Donaldson & Dixon and worked his way up to being its manager - a position he held until he retired from business in 1864. He was enormously influential in starting and developing the Cape's wine exports, and founded a distillery for that purpose in the vicinity of Paarl.
Jarvis married an Afrikaans woman, Elizabeth Maria Vos, joining the local Dutch Reformed Church (where he was later made an Elder) in order to do so. They had five daughters. One of them, Elizabeth Maria, met and married the young JC Molteno, who was later to become the Cape's first Prime Minister.
Hercules Crosse became a prominent fighter for the establishment of a representative Cape parliament, and when it was finally created he took a seat as the first minister to stand for Cape Town. In addition, the city of Cape Town was set up with a Board of Commissioners (later, Municipal Council) in 1840 and Jarvis was immediately elected onto it, soon becoming its chairman.
He went on to become mayor and first citizen of Cape Town from 1848 to 1860, making him the longest serving of any first citizen of Cape Town. He was an impartial and influential spokesman of the city during the Anti-Convict Movement (1848-1850), holding public meetings and presiding over debates. This local movement had developed in response to an attempt by the British government to turn the Cape Colony into a penal colony. In the end, it was Jarvis' resolutions on the matter that ended up being conveyed to the Governor and the Queen. He subsequently suggested a renaming of a portion of the Heerengracht to "Adderley Street" - now the central street of the Cape Town CBD - after the man who had championed the opinion of the Cape citizens in the House of Commons. As mayor, Jarvis was responsible for much of the early development of Cape Town's harbour and other local infrastructure. In the 1860s he joined the growing movement for responsible government that was led by his son-in-law John Molteno.
Later in life, he took an avid interest in mining. He unsuccessfully prospected for coal in the city bowl area before setting up a mining venture for Manganese, outside Paarl. He died in Claremont, Cape Town, in 1889 and was buried beside his wife at Claremont St. Saviours Church.
References
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Crosse_Jarvis
