Tribute to a remarkable PE go-getter
Founder of Grey Institute, Standard Bank and The Herald to be honoured in lecture
JOHN Paterson, one of the most colourful characters to ever grace the shores of Port Elizabeth, is to be honoured when Old Grey author John Young delivers the second annual Grey Foundation Memorial Lecture, “Go-getters with a conscience”, tomorrow. The foundation committee decided to honour Paterson, the man whose achievements include the founding of the Grey Institute (original name of the Grey schools), The Herald and Standard Bank, and who was involved in the starting of Port Elizabeth’s municipality and many other activities.
“I love history and I’m delighted Paterson is getting recognition all these years later,” Young said.
“Paterson was the most remarkable man, from whom we should all learn.
“I saw a little bit of my father, John Graham Young, and grandfather, John Stewart Young, in Paterson.
“The greatest thing that comes through from the story of his life is his public-spiritedness.”
The governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Grey, described Paterson as “industrious, enterprising and intelligent”.
Originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, Paterson, 19, arrived in Port Elizabeth in 1841 and started as a teacher at the Free Government School.
In 1854, he was elected as a member of parliament and in 1856 he introduced an act which allowed for the establishment of schools in Port Elizabeth under the Grey Foundation.
“That’s a very short space of time, from when he was a teenage schoolteacher, [until] the time when, as a parliamentarian, he was able to introduce the act whereby the Grey Institute bases its founding date,” Young said.
“When he was in England he was part of the committee which interviewed the first rector, Johnson.
“He founded the EP Herald while he was still a schoolteacher with John Ross Phillip, the son of Dr John Phillip, the famous missionary.
“He had to keep his involvement secret for a few years because he was on a government salary.”
Paterson bought Phillip out and eventually sold the newspaper to Robert Godlonton in the 1850s.
“The newspaper was [Paterson’s] real way into politics. He used it as a sounding board to get the message across to the citizens that they needed to improve the roads, get a proper town board of commissioners, and they needed a harbour and so forth,” Young said.
These were all the issues he later took up as a politician.
Earlier, he was a shareholder in Port Elizabeth’s first two banks.
“One of the things I’ve learnt about Paterson is the extent to which he understood that for the colony to grow it needed capital,” Young said.
“And so by starting Standard Bank he made a huge contribution to other entrepreneurs to borrow money and to build either a business or a house or whatever it was you were building.
“He started the Guardian Assurance and Trust Company, the Aegis Trust Company, the SA Mortgage and Investment Company, Standard Bank . . . all were related to either making capital available or making the investment of capital safer through insurance products.
“Paterson became a town commissioner [at the age of 31] and by 1853 he was chairman of the management commission of Port Elizabeth. “The next year he was elected to parliament. “It’s almost certain that if Paterson had been present in the Cape in 1878 he would have been offered the prime ministership of the colony.
“Whether he would have accepted it, I don’t know,” Young said.
The lecture at the Grey Junior School’s new pavilion at 11am is free and open to the public.