John Gaspard Gubbins (6 January 1877

Upham, Hampshire Upham is a small village and civil parish in the south of England located in Hampshire approximately 7 miles south-east of Winchester . The village There is a small post office and a local Primary education, primary school. The village is divide ...

- 12 November 1935

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

) was an Africana collector and writer. He was the son of a rector Richard Shard Gubbins (1 December 1826 St. Marylebone, London - 23 October 1884 Herne Hill, London) and Ellen Rolls (30 August 1845 Monmouthshire, Wales 1902 Kensington, London) who were married on 21 November 1865. Gubbins was educated at Haileybury and

Clare College Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. He came to

Transvaal Colony The Transvaal Colony () was the name used to refer to the Transvaal region during the period of direct British rule and military occupation between the end of the Second Boer War in 1902 when the South African Republic was dissolved, and the ...

in 1902 and started farming near

Ottoshoop Ottoshoop is one of the small towns in the Mahikeng Local Municipality in the North West Province of South Africa, situated 20km from the city of Mahikeng on the way to the town of Zeerust. Residents serve the scanty needs of a few locals, underw ...

on a farm he called Malemani aka Malmani after the original

seTswana Tswana, also known by its native name Setswana, is a Bantu language indigenous to Southern Africa and spoken by about 8.2 million people. It is closely related to the Northern Sotho and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalaga ...

name of the area, "Molemane", which means "place of much water".

Fluorspar Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF2. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon. The Mohs scal ...

was discovered on his farm. Gubbins spent his life assembling Africana in the form of old books, pictures and manuscripts. A disastrous fire on Christmas Eve 1931 at the

Witwatersrand University The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The university has its roots in ...

destroyed 35,000 books, and half of Gubbins' Africana collection. Fearing for the safety of his collection on the farm due to grassfires, Gubbins had started with its relocating to Johannesburg. Undeterred, Gubbins and his patrons immediately started on a new collection which eventually became the Gubbins Library and the nucleus of

Africana Museum Museum Africa or MuseuMAfricA (formerly known as the Africana Museum) is a historical museum in Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa. History The museum was established in 1933, when the Johannesburg Public Library bought a large quantity of ...

. He was director of this Museum until his death. The University conferred an honorary

D.Litt. Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or '), also termed Doctor of Literature in some countries, is a terminal degree in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the United States, at universities such as Drew University, the degree ...

on him.

Works

*''Raven's fire: a novel'' by John Gaspard Gubbins (2013) *''Profound river'' - John Gaspard Gubbins (2011) *''Three-dimensional thinking'' - John Gaspard Gubbins (1924) http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n78001345/

References

External links

John Gaspard Gubbins Papers 1877-1981"A Place That Matters Yet: John Gubbins's MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World" - Sara Byala"Two Worlds Collide: John Gaspard Gubbins in South Africa, 1902–1924" - Sara Byala
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gubbins, John Gaspard Museum founders South African male novelists 1877 births 1935 deaths South African non-fiction writers Male non-fiction writers British emigrants to Transvaal Colony