An American Family on the African Frontier: The Burnham Family Letters, 1893-1896

In 1893, American prospector Frederick Russell Burnham involved his family in a three-year effort searching for new riches in the Southern African goldfields. His letters, as well as those of his wife and other family members, provide an interesting picture of their sojourn in the British province of Natal and their trek north through Johannesburg in the Boer Republic of the Transvaal; their search for riches in Mashonaland and Matabeleland (now Zimbabwe) was interrupted by war. Burnham's observations of the natives (``it takes about four blacks to equal one good person'') were an unfortunate product of his time, but he expresses grudging respect for a King Lobengula as an adversary. Though he exhibits plucky enthusiasm for ``a united Africa,'' he too quickly predicted the growth of connections between Cape Town and Cairo. His wife, meanwhile, wrote home about such things as the attempt to establish polite society in the bush. Mary E. Bradford is director of Institutional Research at West Virginia Institute of Technology; Richard H. Bradford is professor of history there. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)