The Foundation stone of this building was laid by Mr. Walter Harvey on the 13th of June 1923. He was the Mayor at the time and also the local chemist. This building is built on the site of Mr Heinrich Julies Ueckermann’s shop, the founder of Heidelberg. The building was later used by the Municipality and is now used as the offices of Loubser and Co accountants.

HISTORICAL PROFILES: WALTER HARVEY AND HEINRICH UECKERMANN

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THE LIFE AND PRACTICE OF CHEMIST WALTER HARVEY (1861 - 1938)

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Walter Harvey was born in Verulam, Natal, on 8 July 1861. A prominent local pharmacist, he established a close personal friendship with Heidelberg's District Surgeon, Dr James O’Reilly. Both men were active members of the Red Cross society. During the Second Anglo-Boer War, their close association and humanitarian activities drew suspicion from the occupying British forces, leading to Harvey's arrest alongside Dr O’Reilly on 12 October 1900.

Following the declaration of peace, Harvey returned to Heidelberg and resumed his professional practice as a chemist. His business, Harvey’s Pharmacy, operated for decades from a prominent storefront located directly adjacent to the Old Standard Bank building on Ueckermann Street.

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Harvey also entered public service and was elected to serve as the Mayor of Heidelberg in 1923. He passed away in town on 27 October 1938 at the age of 77. His wife, Jessie Elliott Harvey, who was born in Scotland on 13 September 1868, survived him by fifteen years, passing away on 16 July 1953. Both are interred alongside one another in the family plot at the historic Heidelberg Kloof Cemetery.

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HEINRICH UECKERMANN: THE PIONEER TRES AND EARLY EXPEDITIONS (1827 - 1858)

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Heinrich Julius Frederick Ueckermann was born in Medenburg, Germany, on 20 July 1827. He immigrated to South Africa in 1849, establishing a successful cooperage business in Pietermaritzburg, where he married Elizabeth Mason in 1851. Following the birth of their first son in 1852, Ueckermann packed his family into an ox-wagon to explore the interior of the country. Their extensive trading route took them through Harrismith, Pretoria, Marabastad, Schoemansdal, Ohrigstad, and Lydenburg.

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While travelling through the rugged Zoutpansberg region in 1854, their daughter, Elizabeth, was born. The frontier expedition was highly adventurous and often dangerous; on one occasion, local tribesmen under Chief Zebediela ambushed and seized one of Ueckermann’s transport wagons, which was fully laden with valuable elephant tusks. Backed by a nearby party of armed Boers, Ueckermann staged a successful recovery of his stolen property.

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The family briefly returned to the security of Pietermaritzburg, staying there until after the birth of their second son, Charlie. However, the allure of the northern territories remained irresistible, and Ueckermann soon took to the trail once more. It was during this northbound journey in 1858 that his third son, Robert, was born inside a modest mud hut at Eendracht, situated on the northern slope of the Suikerbosrand.

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THE DISCOVERY OF LANGLAAGTE AND THE FIRST STORE

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While waiting at Eendracht for his family to recuperate, Ueckermann regularly scouted the surrounding hills in search of wild game. His travels brought him to the adjoining farm, Langlaagte, where a small group of emigrants from Uitenhage had established a settlement along the banks of the Blesbok Spruit.

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This farm was already a highly popular rendezvous for smousers (itinerant traders) and transport riders. It featured a reliable abundance of wood and fresh water, and crucially, it marked the exact intersection where the country’s two main arterial roads crossed: the route from Potchefstroom to Durban, and the highway from Pretoria to the Cape. Consequently, the farm operated as the natural communication exchange for news from across the subcontinent.

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In addition to the Uitenhage settlers, several families from Beaufort West had occupied neighbouring farms, with many regarded as long-term residents who had been entrenched in the area for twenty years. The commercial potential of this crossroads made a deep impression on Ueckermann. Burdened by the responsibility of a growing family and encouraged by his wife, he resolved to abandon his nomadic life.

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Recognizing that the Langlaagte intersection was an ideal site for a trading store, he secured formal permission from the farm’s owner, Mr D.J. Strydom, to open a Boere Winkel (farmers' store) at the crossroads. Moving down from the Eendracht heights, he constructed a small, temporary dwelling to shelter his family on the site later occupied by the old Post Office and Home Affairs building.

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In subsequent years, this original building was utilized as a local lock-up prison. Local lore notes that on one occasion when guards needed to secure a prisoner, no key could be found for the door. Because the structure lacked an external bolt, the guards barred the entrance simply by rolling a heavy transport wagon tightly against the outside of the door to keep it closed.

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Directly opposite this temporary shelter, on the corner of what is now Church Street (HF Verwoerd Street) and Ueckermann Street—the site of the Old Landbank—Ueckermann built his permanent store. Once completed, he added a more commodious family home adjoining the northern side of the shop.

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To secure merchandise, he embarked on another grueling wagon journey back to Pietermaritzburg, travelling south with a cargo of skins, ostrich feathers, and ivory, and returning with wagons laden with trade goods. He also recruited a young woman to return with them to serve as a governess for his children. Her tenure was brief, as she soon became engaged to be married. Because the young settlement possessed neither a resident clergyman nor a magistrate, Ueckermann personally transported the bridal party to Potchefstroom, where the wedding ceremony was performed by the Landdrost (magistrate).

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THE SURVEY, PROCLAMATION, AND DEVELOPMENT OF HEIDELBERG (1859 - 1883)

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Following the death of the senior Mr Strydom, ownership of the farm Langlaagte passed jointly to his children, Okker Strydom and Mrs J.L. Venter, on 26 June 1859. Eight months later, on 28 February 1860, Ueckermann purchased the underlying ground from them for approximately £25. On 27 August 1860, backed by the previous owners, he presented a formal petition to the Volksraad requesting the proclamation of a town. The petition was denied because the land had not been formally surveyed, and the matter languished for six years.

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In the interim, the hospitable Ueckermann home became a central social hub, hosting government officials, hunters, traders, and explorers who passed through the region. Many visitors were captivated by the natural beauty of the landscape and expressed a desire to settle there. In 1865, an Irish surveyor named T.W. Fannin arrived at the local outspan from Dargle, Natal, seeking surveying work in the Transvaal. Ueckermann hired Fannin to survey and map out a formal township grid surrounding the trading store.

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Tragically, Fannin had contracted malaria while travelling through the Nylstroom district. Shortly after driving the initial survey pegs into the ground, he succumbed to a severe attack of the fever. Despite being taken into the Ueckermann home and receiving dedicated nursing care from the family, Fannin passed away on 19 December 1865.

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On 28 March 1866, the newly surveyed township was officially proclaimed under the name "Heidelberg," chosen by Ueckermann in honour of the historic German city where he had received his education. The following year, in 1867, Ueckermann was elected to represent the young town in the Volksraad, later elevating to a seat on the Uitvoerende Raad (Executive Council).

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Ueckermann dedicated his final years to developing the infrastructure of his town. To encourage new families to settle, he employed local labourers to manufacture bricks on a large scale and erected a number of houses, which he placed at the disposal of incoming residents until they could construct homes of their own. The first of these temporary houses stood on the corner later occupied by the Royal Hotel (subsequently demolished to make way for the Old Mutual Building on the corner of Ueckermann and Jacob Streets). Another early house was built on the site later occupied by Mr Pagan, near the old OK Bazaars building on Voortrekker Street.

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The town's very first independent settler was Mr Thomas Smith, who initially built a small house directly alongside the Ueckermann homestead before relocating to a larger residence at the southern end of Ueckermann Street, opposite the Wesleyan Methodist Church (a structure later removed to allow for the extension of Ueckermann Street through to Merz Street).

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Once his initial housing projects were completed, Ueckermann dispatched a transport wagon to Philippolis to fetch his stepbrother, Carl Ueckermann, to come and live in the settlement. Carl settled permanently, eventually serving as the Magistrate’s Clerk and later rising to the position of State Solicitor of the Transvaal.

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The foundational era of the town drew to a close with the death of Heinrich Ueckermann on 24 July 1883 at the age of 56. He was laid to rest in the civic cemetery he had personally established at the entrance to the "Kloof," where his grave remains marked by a prominent memorial obelisk erected in his honour by his sons.

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Source: Derived from the personal tombstone inscriptions at the Kloof Cemetery, Ian Uys's "Heidelbergers of the Boer War," and the unpublished 1938 manuscript "Story of Heidelberg" by Reverend Noel Roberts, Minister of the Anglican Church, compiled from personal interviews with Mr. Robert Ueckermann.