Garvie and Steyn: Two Boer Families in Nandi Country, 1905

An overview of three items in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: a letter from the Rev Colin Garvie (Habari 1991), a note in Habari 1994, and "Donald Sutherland Garvie: Adventurer and Kenya Pioneer" by Colin G. Garvie (Habari 1995). This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text.

Before the big Afrikaner treks of 1908, a small group of Boer settlers was already living on the edge of the Uasin Gishu, in Nandi country. Their story was pieced together by the Rev Colin Garvie, who was researching his family and asked Habari readers for help.

The Garvie brothers

Five Garvie brothers came to Kenya between 1905 and 1912. Donald Sutherland Garvie, born in Edinburgh on 3 June 1873, had been a trader, hunter and explorer in Central Africa, and was at the Relief of Kimberley in the Anglo Boer War. He then married a young Boer woman, Nellie (Cornelia) Steyn, whom Habari describes as related to President Steyn of the Orange Free State. In 1902 they sailed to Kenya, lived in tents in Nairobi, and then went to a farm in Nandi with Nellie's youngest brother, Stephen Steyn. The family believed their first child, Dorothy, born at Kapsabet in February 1905, was the first white child born in Nandi. Colin Garvie adds that John and George Garvie had extensive farms near what is now Eldoret until about 1911.

Meinertzhagen's visit, April 1905

The British officer Richard Meinertzhagen wrote in his diary on 13 April 1905 that the only European settlers in the whole of Nandi were two Boer families, Garvie and Steyn, living about four miles from Nandi Fort (Kaptumo). He describes them as frightened of the Nandi and asking for guards, and dismisses their grass huts in harsh words. Colin Garvie answers that Meinertzhagen disliked the Boers after the war and did not understand the hardships of the early pioneers. Meinertzhagen also wrote that the families were squatting on Nandi land, but it turned out they were paying rent to an official named Mayes, who had misled them and was later dismissed. After that the families were taken under the protection of Nandi Fort. Dorothy later recalled that a Nandi leader, struck by her mother's long golden hair and the white baby, promised that no harm would come to them.

After Nandi

After the Nandi Expedition the Garvies returned to Nairobi. Donald sold his land to his brother John, built a boarding house and then Nairobi's first bioscope (cinema), and for a time edited one of the colony's early newspapers. He died of pneumonia in 1912, aged 39. Nellie lived to 94 and died in England in 1976. What became of Stephen Steyn is not known. Family tradition says he lies in an unmarked grave somewhere in Central Africa.

Why it matters

The Garvie and Steyn story shows that Boer families were living among the Nandi before the 1908 treks reached Sergoit, at the time of the Nandi resistance, and that the land question on the Nandi border was disputed from the very start. Colin Garvie hoped to locate the Garvie farms near Eldoret on old maps. Readers who know where they were are welcome to tell the archive.

Sources: Rev Colin Garvie, letter in Habari 1991, page 13 of the PDF; note in Habari 1994, page 16; Colin G. Garvie, "Donald Sutherland Garvie: Adventurer and Kenya Pioneer", Habari 1995, pages 12 to 14; Friends of East Africa. Read Habari 1995. See also the guide to settler stories in Habari.