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Alabama. They arrived in the 1840s, 1850s or 1860s. None of these theories can be dismissed

and they are probably all true to some extent.

The difficulty is that records have not been found for Kalk Bay in the 1840s/50s. No church
records have been found that start this early. A 1939 interview with the 91 year old sister of

the legendary Pedro (Petro) Fernandez was published in the Pictorial Magazine. There is
more detail about the Fernandez family below, but for the purpose of finding out when the

Filipinos arrived the article is invaluable.

‘Auntie Drina’ Fernandez’s mother was Irish and she herself was born in Kalk Bay in about
1848. Her father was Staggie (Eustachio) Fernandez and she says that he and a fellow

Filipino left their ship at Simon’s Town and walked to Kalk Bay ‘100 years ago’ – in about
1839 – they were ‘the first Manilas in Kalk Bay’. The article is an invaluable piece of Kalk

Bay’s history and to quote briefly from it:

‘Then one by one more came – a Hilario, a Padua, a Simonpong, a Menigo, a
Mozonki, the Erispes, the Franciscos, the Macranas. And we all lived together in

unity, all of us, the Manila folk, the White Afrikaner fisherman, the Cape Coloured.’

Further ownership changes at Die Land

W D Jennings died in London and in 1848 Johan Hendrik Wicht, Pieter Paul Marais and

Abraham Pieter Herholdt, Trustees of the Cape of Good Hope Fishing Whaling and Sealing

Company, bought all four erven owned by Jennings for a bargain £326 (Jennings had paid
£1135). This Company did not last long and by 1855 Die Land was owned by members of the

Wicht family. The Wichts were a prominent and wealthy Cape Town family and had invested

their slave compensation money, making a fortune as slum landlords and providers of
mortgages in Cape Town. By the 1860s the family owned 460 houses in Cape Town – many

of them slums. When J H Wicht died in 1867 his estate was valued at £122,000 of which only
£3,000 was cash. (Figs. 4.5 & 4.6.)

Die Land was bought by another brother, Johan Coenraad Wicht in 1851 by which time only

two small erven had been sold. When he died in 1878 it was subdivided but most of it was
sold only forty years later, in 1892. (Fig. 4.7.)