John Gauntlett Chaplin was a bookkeeper in Port Elizabeth around 1890. He became a member of the Eastern Province Naturalists Society (founded at Port Elizabeth in January 1882 and active to 1923) on 23 February 1882, was elected a member of its management committee in January 1888, became honorary treasurer in January 1889, and was re-elected to this position for the following two years. At a meeting on 6 December 1889 he exhibited some British shells. In 1905 he donated a collection of local and foreign shells, representing 126 species, to the Port Elizabeth Museum.

Chaplin was married to Hester Grace Sargeant. He died in 1917. The next year a collection of his poems, Stray verses by a bruised reed (Port Elizabeth, 1918) appeared. The poems were written from 1878 onwards, mainly, it seems, in Port Elizabeth.

List of sources:

Cape of Good Hope. Report on the Port Elizabeth Museum, 1905.

Eastern Province Naturalists Society. Minute Book 1, meeting of 23 February 1882; Minute Book 2, pp. 64, 95, 107, 159, 162. (Port Elizabeth Public Library, Africana Collection).

Eastern Province Naturalists Society. Ninth Annual Report, 1890, p. 1. Port Elizabeth: James Kemsley, 1891.

FamilySearch: John Gauntlett Chaplin. https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.givenName=John Gauntlett&q.surname=Chaplin

General Directory of South Africa, 1890/1.

Geni: Hester Grace Sargeant. https://www.geni.com/people/Hester-Chaplin/6000000023731301252

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Chaplin, John Gauntlett.

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

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2023-11-24 09:41:18