George Edgar Pennington, cleric and natural history collector, was the son of James Pennington and his wife Margaret. He was educated in Kendal, England, and came to South Africa in 1883. On 30 January 1895 he married Anne Susan Mission, with whom he had five sons. From 1897 or earlier he resided in Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal. He served as senior chaplain to the Natal forces during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and at some stage received the "Volunteer Decoration, Holy Orders, English Church". By 1918 he had attained the rank of archdeacon and in 1921 published a pamphlet, Common provincial fund: Proposed new method of assessing the Diocese. Around that time he still (or again) resided in Greytown, but from 1925 to 1930 he held the positions archdeacon of Pietermaritzburg and vicar-general of Natal.

Pennington's recreational activities included various sports, fishing, and collecting butterflies and birds' eggs. His book Trout fishing for South African boys was published in Pietermaritzburg in 1911. He also collected land snails in KwaZulu-Natal. These he sent to H.C. Burnup*, who named the species Gulella penningtoni (Pennington's hunter snail) after him in 1925. Pennington had collected the original specimens of this species, which is known from only a few localities along the KwaZulu-Natal north coast and southern Zululand. In 1916/7 he became a foundation member of the South African Biological Society and by 1920 had been elected an honorary member.

List of sources:

FamilySearch: George Edgar Pennington. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/G1LQ-HCL/george-edgar-pennington-1854-1937

Herbert, D. & Kilburn, D. Field guide to the land snails and slugs of eastern South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: Natal Museum, 2004.

National Archives Automated Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to G.E. Pennington.

South African bibliography to the year 1925. London: Mansell, 1979.

South African Journal of Natural History, 1918, Vol. 1(1), pp. 8-15: Roll of Foundation Members [of the SA Biological Society]; 1920, Vol. 2(2), pp. 293-301: Roll of members.

South African who's who, 1923/4, 1927/8, 1931/2.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2025-09-02 09:04:19