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Shiloh Moravian Mission Station
Whittlesea district, Eastern Cape
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| During the tumultuous period on the eastern frontier from 1809, the London Missionary Society work amongst the Xhosa was disbanded by the authorities. Before his departure from the Cape in 1826, Lord Charles Somerset suggested to the Moravians that they should expand beyond the frontier, entrusting to the Moravians all missionary work beyond the frontier. Consequently their first mission station, called Shiloh, was established in 1828 between the Klipplaat and Oxkraal Rivers in the vicinity of today’s Sada and Whittlesea. The locals slowly trickled in to be converted and the first baptism was conducted in 1830. As the number of converts increased, Meyer realised the time had come to consider building a small church. A beginning was made after the family had travelled into the Cape Colony, where they had to take leave of their small daughter, Mathilde, who had to be educated in Germany. Two previous attempts to erect a church in Emtumasi had had to be abandoned as a result of episodes of war. Shiloh developed into a neat and well laid-out village on the banks of the river with a water conduit of about 5 km in length, well-cultivated fields yielding harvests of vegetables, fruit and tobacco and a population of about 800 people by 1868. On one of his visits Governor sir Harry Smith commented “I wish I had ten such stations along the border; this would be a better protection than all our military posts”. It was destroyed during the Eighth Frontier War (1850-53). MEYER was sent out from Genadendal to restore the station in 1854. The establishment of Shiloh led to that of Goshen Moravian Mission Station. [Extracted from 'Moravians in the Eastern Cape 1828-1928' (abstract) in Historical Texts of South Africa] References:
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