Smithfield (South Africa)

Smithfield
Smithfield
Coordinates	30 ° 12 '45 "  S , 26 ° 31' 53"  O Coordinates: 30 ° 12 '45 "  S , 26 ° 31' 53"  O
Basic data
Country	South Africa
province	free State
District	Xhariep
local community	Mohokare
height	1402 m
surface	34.1 km²
Residents	1195 (2011)
density	35  Ew. / km²
founding	1849
town hall

Smithfield is a town in the South African province of Free State (Free State). It is located in the Mohokare parish in the Xhariep district .

geography

Smithfield has 1,195 inhabitants (2011 census). To the east is the township Mofulatshepe with 3584 inhabitants. Smithfield and Mofulatshepe are immediately south of a 60 meter higher plateau where the Smithfield Dam is located. It is around 13 kilometers south to the Caledon , a tributary of the Orange River .

history

Boer farmers lived in the Caledon Valley from the 1830s . The place was founded in 1849 on the farm Rietpoort as the third Boer settlement of the later Orange Free State as New Smithfield and named after the then governor of the Cape Colony , Sir Harry Smith . At the time it was founded, the place belonged to the Orange River Sovereignty . Smithfield was the administrative seat of the Caledon District. The border to the Basotho under Moshoeshoe I in the east was still unclear; Not far from Smithfield was the Beersheba mission of the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris , which was a port of call for Basotho and Batswana . After the Senekal War and the Seqiti War , the border was moved eastwards.

From 1907 to 1939, Barry Hertzog was a member of the Smithfield constituency in the parliaments of the Orange River Colony and the Union of South Africa . In 1948 Smithfield received parish status.

Economy and Transport

The main source of income is agriculture.

Smithfield is on National Route 6 , which leads from Reddersburg in the north to Rouxville in the south, and on the R701, which connects Bethulie in the west with Wepener to the east .

Others

• Christiaan de Wet , Boer general, was born on the Leeukoop farm not far from town.
• The Wilton / Smithfield complex describes a period of the Upper Paleolithic in South Africa.

Web links

Commons : Smithfield, Free State  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Smithfield , accessed July 15, 2018
2. ↑ Mofulatshepe , accessed on July 15, 2018
3. ↑ Entry in Southern African Place Names (English; archive version)
4. ^ Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 75.
5. ↑ Portrait at sahistoey.org.za (English), accessed on July 21, 2018
6. ↑ Janette Deacon: Pattering in the radiocarbon dates for the Wilton / Smithfield Complex in Southern Africa. jstor.org, accessed July 20, 2018