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Name: GARVIE, Donald Sutherland (Senior)
Nee: son of Lawrence Garvie 1845-1918, of Scotland, bro of John Sutherland Garvie and Ebenezer George Garvie
Birth Date: 3 June 1873 Edinburgh
Death Date: 22 Oct 1912 Nairobi
First Date: 1902
Last Date: 1912
Profession: Arrived with his wife and started a newspaper and Bioscope in Nairobi; hotel owner
Area: Parklands, Nairobi, Nandi
Married: In Johannesburg 3 Sep 1903 Cornelia Gertruida Steyn 'Nell' b. 28 Oct 1880 Barkly East, S. Africa, d. 1975 Dover, buried in Deal, Kent
Children: Dorothea Irene 'Poppy' (19.2.1905 Kapsabet, 1st white child b. in Nandi, m. James Riddell son of ex Mayor of Nairobi, went to Australia); Louisa Margaret Jeanette (Gledhill) (16.7.1906 Johannesburg-1998); Donald Sutherland (28.11.1907 Nairobi-1992 Perth, Australia)
Book Reference: Gillett, SE, Sorrenson, Kenyatta, Playne, Drumkey, Web, Land, Advertiser, Colin Garvie, Harmony, North, EAHB 1907, KGF, Barnes, Red Book 1912, Habari 2009
War Service: October 1899 involved in the Relief of Kimberley (medal)
General Information:
Died in 1912 but his family remained in Kenya until 1965.
SE - D.S. Garvie - Jul 1907
Sorrenson - It was the Garvies, a family of South Africans who had originally settled in the Nandi country in 1904. Return of land grants for the half year ending 30th June 1911 - This showed that 5 members of the family were granted a total of 15,070 acres at 'Nandi'. They applied for land on 2nd March 1904; their deeds were registered on 16 March 1911. Garvie then turned round and invited the Nandi to graze their stock on his land, on payment of rent.
Kenya Diary - Apr. 1904 - Nandi - the only European settlers in the whole of the Nandi country are 2 Boer families called Garvie and Steyn. They have recently come from the Transvaal and are related to the ex-President of the Orange Free State. They all seem terrified of the Nandi and have been applying for a guard of my men. .......... The two families were living in filthy grass huts without any attempt to make them either comfortable, sanitary or weatherproof. There is no excuse for this, as grass is plentiful and the men are not badly off. It is simply the Boer standard of life. ....... These Boers are indeed slippery customers ....... It is absurd that settlers should be allowed in Nandi at present, as the country is by no means safe. .......... These Boers came up here without anyone's permission and are squatting on Nandi-owned land for which they pay no rent. I asked Mayes if they had any right to be there; he said no and that they squatted at their own risk. Seems to me a pretty poor arrangement.
Kenyatta - At Garvey's Rooms in Government Road, on hard wooden seats, Europeans could enjoy shadow play and music-hall acts, smoking concerts and amateur theatricals.
Playne - The 'Times of East Africa' - ' ...... in February 1907, Mr D.S. Garvie was appointed manager and continued to act in that capacity until June of the same year, when the company sold the plant to Messrs D.S. Garvie, G.W. Cearn, and R.B. Taylor. The name of the paper was then changed to the 'Advertiser of East Africa', with Mr Garvie as manager and editor. Many alterations were made in the business policy of the new company. ......... In June of 1908 the 'Advertiser' Company was dissolved, and Mr D.S. Garvie, buying out his partners, continued to run the business on the same lines, with Mr MacLellan Wilson, who had been engaged in the preceding month of May, as editor.
Colin Garvie - Donald Garvie of Nairobi was one time editor of 'The Advertiser' and started "bioscope" in British East Africa. The Garvie brothers settled in Nandi territory before the arrival of the Van Rensburg trekkers. Donald Garvie who was born in Scotland and fought in the Anglo-Boer war on the British side had married a Cornelia Steyn! Ironic. They settled in Nandi …. Donald Garvie, himself a one time British soldier, was now counted with the Boers.
Land 1909 - D.S. Garvie - Buildings, 1 acre - Nakuru - 21/9/05 - Leasehold for 25 years from 1/5/09 - Registered 27/9/09 Land - 1911 - D.S. Garvie - Grazing and agricultural, 2914 acres - Nandi District - 2/3/04 - Leasehold for 99 years from 1/10/10 - Registered 21/7/11
Advertiser - 12/6/1908 - Advertiser of East Africa published every Friday under the sole direction of Mr D.S. Garvie, Manager of the Advertiser Company.
Advertiser - 10/7/1908 - The partnership between Donald Sutherland Garvie, R.R. Bladen Taylor and George William Cearn as the Advertiser Company is dissolved. D.S. Garvie is now sole proprietor - 26/6/08
Advertiser - 4/9/1908 - Subscribers for St. Andrew's Church Building Fund - D.S. Garvie - Rs. 50
Advertiser - 27/11/08 - Nakuru Agricultural Show - donation from - D.S. Garvie
Colin Garvie - Donald Garvie arrived in South Africa with his parents when he was seven and grew up in Knysna and Kimberley. In the late 1890s Donald undertook a safari into Central Africa. He was involved in the Relief of Kimberley in 1899. In 1902 he settled in Kenya. Meinertzhagen refers to him in his Kenya Diary. He was among the first White settlers in Nandi. Initially it appeared the Garvies had illegally settled in Nandi. Later it came to the attention of Meinertzhagen that they were fraudulently rented the farms by a government official. This later came to be known as the "Garvie Concession".
Donald himself moved to Nairobi. Donald was a well known townsman of Nairobi who had contributed much to the entertainment of the early pioneers of Kenya by means of his bioscope. They met all the leading visitors to Kenya such as Churchill and were invited guests to most of the functions at Government House. Donald was involved for a short time in the newspaper industry of Kenya.
E. Rodwell of Coastweek writes: "The East Africa and Uganda Mail was the first newspaper produced in Mombasa. The plant from this concern was later purchased for the Times of East Africa, a sheet published in Nairobi by Mr Frank Watkins from July, 1905, which had four editors within the space of 18 months; the last of them disappeared into thin air and was never seen or heard of again. The publication was continued without the assistance of an editor for seven months until Mr D.S.Garvie was engaged. Four months later the sheet folded. Another company bought the plant and produced the Advertiser of East Africa. A year later that company in turn was dissolved." A newspaper obituary states that Donald was "formerly the leading spirit of the newspaper the ADVERTISER...He belonged to the quiet and unostentatious sphere of true gentility". He was a Freemason of long standing.
Donald died at the age of 39 after taking ill with pneumonia. His niece, May Garvie was the chief mourner. The service was conducted by the Rev. G.Burns, later Archdeacon of Nairobi. The pall bearers were members of the Royal Arch Chapter and Lodges Harmony and Scotia. A sprig of acacia tied with a blue ribbon was placed on the coffin prior to it being lowered into the grave. Donald's family continued to live in Kenya until the 1960s.
Dorothy Garvie married James Riddell, the son of a former mayor of Nairobi. The family eventually moved to Nigeria, England and were settled in Australia by 1965. Nell Garvie, his wife, died at the age of 94 years. She is buried in the cemetery in Deal, Kent, England where she had been living with her daughter Dolly. "Although amateur theatricals were the mainstay of pre-war entertainment, celluloid had made its debut thanks to J.Garvie (sic). If films were little more than flickering shadows thrown across a screen, many paid to sit on wooden forms at Garvie's Rooms to watch them. When the quality was very bad, the performance was interspersed by jeers as disapproving members of the Travellers' Club nearby threw empty bottles and more vulgar things on to the tin roof of the little theatre." - Errol Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers.
Member of Lodge Harmony - Initiated 2/3/08, age 70 ???, Printer, Nairobi
North - arr. EA from SA with wife, Cornelia 'Nellie' Gertrude née Steyn (S. African) & wife's brother, Stephen Steyn 1902; daughter born, Dorothee Irene, Nandi 19-2-1905; Firearm registered Nairobi Oct-Dec 1905
Nairobi South cemetery - D.S. Garvie, buried 22 Oct 1912. 'Landed in Kenya 1902'. Farmer and Hotel owner.
Red Book 1912 - D.S. Garvie - Naivasha
Habari 2009 - Elgeyo Reserve on the Plateau - 1903 - At that time , a Scot named Donald Sutherland Garvie (b 1873), his wife Cornelia (neé Steyn) and her brother Stephen were also living on the Plateau. Unfortunately, the area was affected by tribal hostilities, resulting in the frequent rustling by the Nandi tribe of cattle belonging to the Van Breda brothers and in the Garvies having to seek protection from the authorities against Nandi agression. The Garvies later moved to Nairobi and Stephen Steyn to the Lupa Goldfields in GEA
Gazette 1/12/1912 - Probate and Administration in respect of the estate of Donald Sutherland Garvie who died at Nairobi on 22/12/1912 - applied for by Cornelia Gertrude Garvie
Old Africa - 21-3-15 - Christine Nicholls - Who were the Garvies and why did they come to the Uasin Gishu Plateau? The first white residents on the Plateau were the van Breda brothers – Bon, Dirk and Piet, who arrived in 1902. In the same year two more families arrived – Donald Garvie, a Scotsman, and his wife Cornelia (Nellie) Gertrude Steyn, and her youngest brother Stephen Steyn. The Steyns were a Boer family resident in Orange Free State. Donald Sutherland Garvie, born in Edinburgh on 3 June 1873 to Laurance Garvie and his wife Johanna Sutherland, had travelled to South Africa from Scotland as a boy, in 1880. He grew up in Knysna and Kimberley. An adventurous young man, he undertook a safari into Central Africa in 1899, and he was also present at the relief of Kimberley, because he and his four brothers all served in British regiments during the Boer War.
When they arrived in East Africa, on 2 March 1904 five members of the Garvie family applied for land and were allowed to rent, illegally, 15,070 acres at ‘Nandi’ (on the Uasin Gishu Plateau). This land, four miles from the government fort at Kaptumo, was allocated by an official, James Walter Mayes, an Assistant Collector in the Kisumu district. Mayes was later dismissed for this transgression. Garvie then turned round and invited the Nandi to graze their stock on his land, on payment of rent. (DO, Kapsabet, Nandi Political Record Book, p.23). Unsurprisingly, the Nandi were unhappy with this arrangement, and the government hurriedly established boundaries for a Nandi Reserve, so that more land could not be alienated. In 1912 it was said that the Nandi had still not got over the Garvie land deal. In fact, the Garvies acquired 20,364 acres in all (Annual Report of Uasin Gishu District).
In April 1905 Donald was visited by Richard Meinertzhagen, who reported: ‘The only European settlers in the whole of Nandi country are two Boer families called Garvie and Steyn…They all seem terrified of the Nandi and have been applying for a guard of my men…I went over to them to have a look at their camp, which is some four miles distant. They had, of course, taken no steps to guard against attack, in spite of the fact that they were told that they could only remain at their own risk…[They were] living in filthy grass huts without any attempt to make them either comfortable, sanitary, or weatherproof…It is simply the Boer standard of living.’
The Garvies were given a guard, but when they housed him in their pigpen he left. They were then invited into the protection of the fort at Kaptumo, until a peace settlement with the Nandi in December 1905, after which they received an allocation of land on the Plateau. By now they had been joined from South Africa by Donald’s brothers John and George. John’s son James Stuart Garvie took part in Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting expedition in 1909-10 as a tracker. Donald sold his land to his brother John, stationmaster at Nakuru, and with his wife and three small children went to live in Parklands, Nairobi, probably in 1907.
Donald began new ventures. He opened a boarding-house and a picture house or Bioscope, known as ‘Garvie’s Rooms,’ opposite Madame Rowe et Cie in Government Road, Nairobi. It showed entertainment every evening at 9 pm. The programme was changed twice a week, and on Wednesdays there was a matinee for children; the cost was 3 rupees a chair, and half price for children. Donald’s youngest brother George often played the pianola during performances and his daughters Dolly and Louise were fine singers who took part in Nairobi concerts. If the quality at the Bioscope was poor, there were jeers from the audience and bottles would rain down on the tin roof from the Travellers’ Club next door. Garvie also edited the Nairobi newspaper The Advertiser and became a freemason. His daughter Dorothy married James Riddell, later mayor of Nairobi.
Donald’s stay in Nairobi was to be short, because he died from pneumonia aged thirty-nine on 22 October 1912 and was buried in Nairobi South cemetery. The service was conducted by Rev G Burns and the pallbearers were members of the Masonic Royal Arch Chapter and Lodges Harmony and Scotia. A sprig of acacia tied with a blue ribbon was placed on the coffin before it was lowered into the grave. Donald’s obituary in the local newspaper said ‘he belonged to the quiet and unostentatious sphere of true gentility.’ His wife Nellie and his two daughters and son Donald Sutherland, born on 28 November 1907, stayed on in Kenya. In the 1930s Nellie moved to England and lived with her daughter in Kent. She died there in 1979. As for Stephen Steyn, no one knows what happened to him, except that he moved to the Lupa goldfield in German East Africa, but tradition has it that he died and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Central Africa.