This Day in History: May 19, 1901
Additional Date: May 19, 1901
Boer statesman, soldier and first president of the South African (Transvaal) Republic, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, died at his home in Potchefstroom at the age of eighty-one. He was elected as president by the Volksraad in 1857 and also served as president of the Orange Free State from 1859 to 1863, the only man to have held both offices. Despite that success, however, his plans to merge the two republics were unsuccessful. Pretorius was the eldest son of the Great Trek leader Andries Pretorius and his wife Christina Petronella de Wit.