Sammy Marks: The uncrowned king of the Transvaal by Mendelsohn, Richard

Sammy Marks: The uncrowned king of the Transvaal by Mendelsohn, Richard

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Collectors Copy-dated and signed by the author Richard Mendelsohn.

Softcover, ISBN 9780864861887
Publisher: David Philip Publishers, 1991
Used - Very Good.

First Edition; The covers are a little shelf rubbed and edge worn. The text within the book is clear and bright. The binding is excellent.

Samuel Marks (11 July 1844 – 18 February 1920) was a Lithuanian-born South African industrialist and financier. Born the son of a Jewish tailor in 1844 in Neustadt, Russian Empire, Marks was endowed with integrity, courage, astonishing business acumen and immense vitality. Hearing news of the diamond discoveries in Kimberley, he arrived at the Cape in 1869 and was shortly followed by his cousin Isaac Lewis, also from Neustadt-Sugind, with whom he forged the enduring partnership of Lewis & Marks.

Marks started his career as a peddler in the rural districts of the Cape, but soon headed for Kimberley where his rise to prosperity began. They made a modest living supplying goods to mines and diggers, and later branched into diamond trading. Moving to Pretoria in 1881 he gained the confidence of President Kruger and the government of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR). His friendship with Kruger became close and enduring and they had in common humble origins and a ready wit. Marks advised that Kruger build a railway line from Pretoria to Lourenço Marques. Marks contributed generously to Jewish communities all over South Africa. The Pretoria synagogue was built in 1898, for which he donated all the bricks and paid for the electric light installation and chandeliers. At the end of the Anglo-Boer War, he presented a cast-iron fountain to the city of Pretoria, shipped from Glasgow and very Edwardian in design, it stands at the Zoological Gardens in Pretoria. Marks commissioned the statue of Kruger on Church Square in Pretoria – sculpted by Anton van Wouw and cast in bronze in Europe, it carried a price tag of £10,000.