James Cole (1842-1937) owned numerous farms and trading stores in East Griqualand, Southern Natal and Lesotho. The coins were colloquially referred to as "Ujim's money" by the natives.
They were believed to be first issued in the late 1890's. In the 1900's James Cole brought out other sets for his Cedarville, Franklin and Matatiele stores - all tokens are seen as being scares today and will fetch high prices for each token. You can read below at this link http://www.tokencoins.com/gr07.htm#james
James Cole, born in 1842, arrived in Durban in 1860 on the boat Oaks and first settled in Greytown before he moved to Nomansland. According to his great granddaughter Cole had to leave England because he was involved in cattle rustling.
James and his brother William battled to make ends meet at Donnybrook (near Ixopo in southern Natal) in the 1860s where they were illegally felling yellowwood trees.
In 1869 they devised a plan to start a business with the proceeds of a reward of £50 offered by the government for anyone providing information that led to the conviction of anyone stealing timber from reserved forests.
On the spin of a coin William became the informant and reported illegal tree felling by his brother James who was, as a result, imprisoned.
William claimed the reward but instead of keeping it until James was released he spent it. According to the family the two brothers never spoke to each other again - but it was James, the convict, who would later become incredibly rich.
Before this James worked as a farm manager for Cecil Rhodes on a cotton farm near Ixopo. Cecil joined him towards the end of 1870 as a young man of seventeen when he first came to South Africa.
In 1871 Rhodes left for the diamond fields of Kimberley and James moved to Creighton (up the Umzimkulu River) where he started his empire with just six acres and two cows taking Rhodes' extensive library of books which he pilfered after Rhodes had left.
His theft was discovered by accident many years later by Canon Horace Norton at James' Riverside farm in East Griqualand shortly after Rhodes' death in 1902. Sprung - Cole had no escape so the books were boxed and returned to Somerset House.
It was in 1871 that James Cole first started bartering with the local Africans exchanging beads, trinkets, tinder-boxes, blankets, cloth, needles, thread, hoes, horses and guns for cattle hides, skins and timber. Once he had accumulated enough cattle hides and timber he would take them by oxwagon and sell them to merchants in Pietermaritzburg. It was during one of these trips that he met his wife, Sarah Ann Lily Houston, a farmer's daughter - marrying her in 1872.
That year they bought the farm Riverside measuring 3,000 acres. They had just two ox wagons, two teams of oxen, seventeen head of cattle and five horses. They continued to trade with the natives opening their first store and butchery at Riverside in 1873. They had several children - but many died in infancy.
Interestingly, Cole's eldest daughter, Kitty, married Donald Strachan's son Robert in 1898 - so two great trading empires were joined by marriage. It could well be that Robert Strachan, who later became Chairman of the new Strachan and Co Company was the catalyst for the James Cole trade tokens.
James and Lily Cole built an empire which soon included eighteen trading stores across southern Natal, East Griqualand and Lesotho.
He also started buying up large tracts of land and eventually employed eighteen farm managers to run his farms which extended over 250,000 acres across East Griqualand, the Orange Free State and Zululand at the time of his death in 1937.
James Cole's favourite trick was catching out the sales reps. On the days the reps called he would sit on an old log near the gate to his Riverside store in tatty clothes with an unkempt appearance with days of growth on his face. The manner in which James Cole dealt with the reps who called depended on how they treated "the apparent tramp" Woe betide the rep who tried to belittle him before entering the store.... moments later after asking for "James Cole" they would be directed back to the "tramp" by the staff inside.
James Cole (known by the natives as Ujim) was a reclusive, eccentric and notoriously Scrooge-like millionaire who owned 18 farms and 18 native trading stores.
The story is told of a member of his staff at the Riverside store buying 2lb of screws then dropping them one by one from the door of the store, in the path, across the grass and a large paddock.
He then watched from a secret place as James Cole spent many hours following the trail of screws looking for them - satisfying his obsession to prevent waste or financial loss no matter how small.
He was said to have collected tufts of sheep's wool caught on barbed wire fences and to keep count of matches in each box in his stores. His grandchildren would tease the old man by dropping a nail between his office and the station knowing that he would stop to pick it up. James was renowned for working extremely long hours and ran his trading empire until his death in 1937 at the age of 96.
James Cole stirred many emotions in people. He was not well liked. He was known as "Rockefeller of Riverside", the "Laird of Franklin", "Old King Cole" and "Ujim" by the natives.
It was rumoured that James Cole hid his tokens under the floor of the butchery at Riverside when he had to withdraw the coins. Milner Snell of the Kokstad Museum reported the following in July 2006: The butchery at Riverside does still exist although it is in a bad state. Underneath the building is cellar where the meat was stored. The floor is dirt. I arranged a metal detector and did a quick sweep of the butchery, but alas I came across bits of metal but no tokens. This can lead to three conclusions: My source was wrong, the tokens are buried deeper than the detector I had could reach or that they were washed away in a very bad flood that went through Riverside in the 1980s. Riverside was once a very attractive but rather run down settlement. Unfortunately over the last two years a large low cost housing scheme has been built close to the old hotel and it has ruined it.
James Cole
Birthdate: January 5, 1842 (95)
Birthplace: Sandridge, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
Death: April 23, 1937 (95)
Ixopo, East Griqualand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Place of Burial: Ixopo, East Griqualand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Immediate Family: Son of James William Cole and Eliza Cole
Husband of Mary Ann Lilly Cole
Father of Hugh Cole; James Cole; Kate Strachan; Lucy Leroux; Lily Cole and 6 others
Brother of William Cole; George Cole; Ann Sophia Cole; Eliza Cole; Jane Clark and 7 others
“Even today in Kokstad, people still tell stories about Cole,” says Snell, “how he was a great character, incredibly wealthy and very mean. That he used to count his matchsticks.” Several such stories are related in Snell’s book, including a somewhat macabre one about Cole testing his custom-made coffin for comfort. “Comfort was of the utmost importance to Cole as once he died he would be in (his coffin) for a long time.” https://www.news24.com/Archives/Witness/Tokens-of-a-lost-world-20150430
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Ancell William Mckenzie Brown - just some info ,our family bought the James Cole company when we were W G Brown which became Independent Wholesalers , then Spar Natal and lastly Spar South Africa .
I believe the Riverside store is now derelict ,from photos my boet took years ago ,funny i was also at school with Scott Balson ,and we have just found out that my missus is a descendant of James Cole , amazing what we find out as we get older lol.
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