Cornelia is a town on the R103 road in the Free State province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. In 1875 DJ Steyn bought the farm "Mooiheid", after raising sufficient funds with his hit debut album, and J.D. Odendaal bought the farm "Sugarloaf" (known as

Tafelkop Tafelkop is a town in Sekhukhune District Municipality in the Limpopo Limpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. It is named after the Limpopo River, which forms the province's western and northern borders. The capital and lar ...

) for a sum of R2,000. They settled there in 1876. At that time it was in the Harrismith district. There were no boundary fences and wild dogs, warthogs and wildebeest were plentiful in the open grassveld. In 1886 the two farmers and other people formed the Afrikaans Baptist Church and J.D. Odendaal was the first preacher. The Odendaal family made an important contribution to the church. DJ Steyn donated a piece of land to the church to erect a church building. There was a need for an educational institution and the church founded the school of Cornelia in 1889. In 1894 it was named after the wife of former Free State President

Francis William Reitz Francis William Reitz, Jr. (Swellendam, 5 October 1844 – Cape Town, 27 March 1934) was a South African lawyer, politician, statesman, publicist, and poet who was a member of parliament of the Cape Colony, Chief Justice and fifth State Presid ...

. One of the previous pastors of the Afrikaans Baptist Church of Cornelia (1959 or 1960) was Jurgens Lambrechts, later well known for appearing in numerous quiz programmes on radio and television from the 1970s to the 1990s. The town is near the ''Skoonriver'' (Clean River).

Fossil discoveries

On the Uitzoek farm, 10 km north of Cornelia, fossils were discovered in

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

alluvial deposits by Van Hoepen in the 1920s and 1930s. These fossils include extinct mammal forms such as a donkey-sized pig ('' Metridiochoerus modestus''), the three-toed horse ('' Eurygnathohippus cornelianus'') only previously found in Tanzania, the giant buffalo (''Synerus antiquus''), Bondi's springbok (''Antidorcas bondi''), and the giant wildebeest (''Megolotragus eucornutus''). Acheulian Stone Age tools such as handaxes and cleavers have also been found here. Recent research document excavations of a fossil bone bed, possibly resulting from the accumulation by hyaenas and redepostion by dongas (i.e., gullies). Associated with the fossil bone bed were a human (''Homo sp''.) tooth and Acheulian artifacts. These deposits are dated to the Jaramillo subchron (1.076 - 1.008 Ma) by paleomagnetism.Brink et al. 2012

Education

Ntswanatsatsi township east of the town is home to several Early Childhood Development Centres (ECD Centres) and a primary and secondary schools serving children from the town and neighbouring farms. * Ntswanatsatsi Primary School * Bongani-Lebohang Secondary School

Notes

References

* Brink, J. S. (2005) The evolution of the black wildebeest (''Connochaetes gnou'') and modern large mammal faunas of central southern Africa. PhD Dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. * Brink, James S., Andy I.R. Herries, Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi, John A.J. Gowlett, C. Britt Bousman, John Hancox, Rainer Grün, Vera Eisenmann, and Lloyd Rossouw (2012) First hominine remains from a 1.07-0.99 Ma hyaena accumulation at Cornelia-Uitzoek, Free State Province, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 63:527-535. * Butzer, K. W. (1974) Geology of the Cornelia Beds. Mem. Nas. Mus., Bloemfontein 9, pp. 7-32. * Clark, J. D. (1974) The stone artifacts from Cornelia, OFS, South Africa. Mem. Nas. Mus., Bloemfontein 9, pp. 33-62. * Cooke, H. B. S. (1974) The fossil mammals of Cornelia, O.F.S, South Africa. Mem. Nas. Mus., Bloemfontein 9, pp. 63-84. {{Fezile Dabi District Municipality Populated places in the Mafube Local Municipality Populated places established in 1876 1876 establishments in the Orange Free State