Page 138 - Bulletin 19 2015

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The Moltenos at Kalk Bay

Sir John Charles Molteno is well recorded in local history and, indeed in South African
history, as Premier of the Cape and as a farmer and trader. (Fig. 3.27.) Known as the Lion of

Beaufort, the Dictionary of National Biography adds "Sir John Molteno was a man of

commanding presence and great physical strength. In private life, he was of most simple and
unostentatious habits."

Molteno was married three times and had a total of nineteen children, founding a large and

influential South African family. His immediate descendants included politicians and
members of parliament, shipping magnates and exporters, military leaders, suffragists and

anti-Apartheid activists. His third wife was Sobella (Minnie) Blenkins, whom he married in

1875, when he was 61 and she was 29. (Fig. 3.28.) Eyebrows were raised as his second wife
had died 15 months before. His oldest daughter Betty (then aged 23) struggled to come to

terms with the fact that Minnie Blenkins, a childhood friend, was now her stepmother. The
couple had four children. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1882. Apparently it was not

an honour that he greatly valued and he had already refused three previous knighthoods. Sir

John died in 1886.

Caroline Molteno was the second daughter of Sir John’s second wife and she married Dr
Charles Frederick Kennan Murray in 1876. (Figs. 3.29 & 3.30.) The couple had 9 children.

Murray was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, his home country, and a
leading member of the Cape medical profession. Aside from his significant contribution to

the field of medicine he was also at various times a major investor in this part of Kalk Bay.

The Anderson Family at Kalk Bay

As Thomas Johnson Anderson and his family were so integral to this area some background
is given. He was born in Cape Town in 1844, the son of W G Anderson, a prominent