Clarkson, Eastern Cape

A Moravian Mission Village in the former Humansdorp District, 26 km South-East of Assegaaibos Railroad Station, located in Cacadu District Municipality.

It was established by Bishop H P Halbeck in 1839 and named after Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson was a local hero. A red haired man who stood over 6 feet tall, he spent his long adult life working to abolish the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery itself. Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire in 1760, the eldest of 3 children of the local headmaster and minister, he studied at the local grammar school and then St John's College, Cambridge. From 1786, he lived and worked in London, in the Lake District and then moved, with his wife Catherine, to Bury St Edmunds in 1803. Finally, in 1816, he came to Playford Hall near Ipswich in England, where he died in 1846, aged 86. 

 In 1875 the census indicated that the station had a population of 340.