Joseph Benjamin Robinson
Overview
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n mining magnate and Randlord
Randlord
Randlord is a term used to denote the entrepreneurs who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries in South Africa in its pioneer phase from the 1870s up to World War I....
. Born in Cradock, Cape Colony, died Wynberg, Cape Town
Wynberg, Cape Town
Wynberg is a southern suburb of the City of Cape Town in Western Cape, South Africa. It is situated between Plumstead and Kenilworth, and is a main transport hub for the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town.- Geography :...
.
The son of an 1820 settler, he fought on the side of the Orange Free State
Orange Free State
The Orange Free State was an independent Boer republic in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa. It is the historical precursor to the present-day Free State province...
in the Basuto War
Basuto War
The Basuto War may refer to either of two conflicts*The Free State-Basotho War*The Gun War...
, and later became a general trader, wool-buyer and stock-breeder at Dordrecht
Dordrecht, Eastern Cape
]Dordrecht is situated in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Dordrecht was founded in 1856 by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and named after a city of South-West Netherlands. The name Dordrecht comes from Thyre, the name of a river, and Middle Dutch drecht "channel", meaning "Thure...
. On the discovery of diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
s in South Africa in 1867 he hastened to the Vaal River
Vaal River
The Vaal River is the largest tributary of the Orange River in South Africa. The river has its source in the Drakensberg mountains in Mpumalanga, east of Johannesburg and about 30 km north of Ermelo and only about 240 km from the Indian Ocean. It then flows westwards to its conjunction...
district, where, by purchasing the stones from the natives and afterwards by buying diamond-bearing land, notably at Kimberley, he soon acquired a considerable fortune.
