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- [S6] SABIODIC.
He belonged to a Scottish family of Anglo-Norman origin, descendants of the De Bigors who left southern France during the twelfth century to settle in the Clyde valley, the family name assuming the intermediate form of De Biggar.
At the age of fourteen B. was commissioned as an ensign in his father's regiment at Martinique in the West Indies on 16.12.1795, and was promoted to lieutenant while stationed in Scotland in 1799. On 3.3.1799 he eloped with Mary Straton (1781-1855), daughter of the Rev. George Straton, rector of Brechin, Scotland, and his wife, Margaret Graham. They were married at Gretna Green. Thirteen children were born of the marriage from 1799 to 1824, ten daughters and two sons reaching maturity, and one child dying in infancy. B. served with his regiment in England and Scotland, was appointed captain and paymaster of the 85th regiment in London in May 1813, and served in the Peninsular War before embarking in 1814 with his regiment for America, where he took part in the Anglo-American War (1812-14). He was present at the capture of Washington in August 1814 but during the campaign was wounded in the leg, this handicapping him for the rest of his life.
His military career as paymaster of the 85th regiment was ended when he was held nominally responsible for a shortage of supplies worth £1,300. He was cashiered by general court martial at Plymouth on 5.5.1819, being ordered to make good a shortage of stores caused, it would appear, by subordinates for whose actions he, as their superior officer, was penalized.
Availing himself of the scheme for emigrating to the Cape initiated at this time by the British government, B., as leader of a party of fifty-five persons from Hampshire, sailed with his wife, nine daughters and a son in the Weymouth from Portsmouth on 7.1.1820, a second son being born on the voyage. On arrival, in May 1820, the Biggar party were settled on land allotted near Lombards Post, east of the Kariega river, where B. for two years sought to make a living on his farm, Woodlands. To supplement his unsuccessful farming B. soon took to stevedoring at Port Frances (Port Alfred), and to transport riding. By 1821, he was a member of the first Kowie Navigation company to attempt to establish a port at the river mouth, and became involved, in 1824, in Settler politics in Grahamstown at the time of the Grahamstown riots, being arrested (4.2.1824) for his attitude to the military authorities. During the tension between the Settlers and the government at this time B. became a violent critic of the governor, Lord Charles Somerset,* and of his son, Col. Henry Somerset.*
Despondent because of his disastrous efforts at farming, B. at one stage seriously considered emigrating to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), but changed his mind on acquiring, in 1826, a formal grant of extensive lands at the original location, as well as two other properties, some 12,000 acres in all. Having sold Woodlands, he moved, in 1828, to his property at Mill river, which, twelve miles west of Grahamstown, was more conveniently situated in relation to his business of conveying goods by ox-wagon on the old military road between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown.
During the Sixth Frontier War (1834-35) B. served on the equipment board for the burgher forces, but met with final ruin during the war through heavy losses of farm stock, buildings and equipment, being obliged to move with his family to Port Elizabeth. Embittered and disillusioned after failing to obtain from the governor, Sir Benjamin D'Urban,* either employment or a farm secure from attack by the Xhosa, he decided in May 1836 to leave with his younger son, George, for Natal, where his elder son, Robert, had settled in May 1834.
Contemporary assessments of B.'s character and disposition vary: he is described by some as fine and kindly, by others as truculent and aggressive. He proved in his years on the frontier that he was a man of courage and determination, at times stubborn in holding to his convictions. Towards the end of his life he maintained that British administrative methods in the Cape Colony and Natal were weak and vacillating, and he distrusted missionary influence on the Bantu. After his arrival in Natal he acquired property in 1836 in the settlement of Port Natal, which had only recently been named Durban. When there was a threat to the town by Dingane* in May 1837, he was elected commandant of the Port Natal volunteers, and he headed the group of settlers who, on 23.10.1837, welcomed Piet Retief* on his first and only visit to the bay. He identified himself with the cause of the Voortrekkers in Natal, becoming in time, friendly with Karel Landman* and opposing the authority assumed in Natal, at this time, on behalf of the British by Captain Allen F. Gardiner.*
The year 1838, which was a year of tragic events for the Voortrekkers, proved disastrous also for B. and his two sons. George Biggar (20.2.1820 - 17.2.1838), the younger son, who had been born on the Weymouth on her voyage to the Cape, was only eighteen when he died at the Voortrekker encampments on the Bloukrans river during the Zulu assault that followed the murder of Retief and his men. Though his father and family believed that he had died at the hands of the Zulus in defending the Liebenberg laer, he was, in fact, shot by a Boer who thought that he was assisting the Zulus.
Two months later B.'s elder son died fighting against the Zulus. Robert Biggar (12.9.1812 --17.4.1838), was born in Edinburgh and had grown up on his father's farm at Woodlands. He had gone to Natal to join a brother-in-law, the merchant, Charles Maynard, and, with James Collis, had erected the first stone buildings in Port Natal. After taking part in the war of 1834-35 on the eastern frontier, he had returned to Natal with another brother-in-law, Robert Newton Dunn, and had settled on the present Umgeni (part of the city of Durban) as a trader selling to the kraal of Dingane and getting to know every part of Natal and Zululand as an escort to missionaries and visitors. Leading a force of seventeen Englishmen and 1,100 armed Bantu in an expedition against the Zulus, Robert Biggar was killed in a fight (known as the first battle of Ndondakusuka) at the Tugela, near the scene of the second battle of the same name which was to be fought there in 1856 between Cetshwayo* and his brother. The motives behind the expedition on which Robert Biggar died, six days after the disaster that befell Piet Uys* and A.H. Potgieter* at Italeni, have never been clearly established.
In Durban in the course of the year, B. remained in touch with the Voortrekkers. Following the death of his son Robert, a Zulu attack on the bay forced him to take refuge with the other settlers on board the Comet in Durban bay until 11.5.1838. He met Gerrit Maritz* and Landman on their visits to the bay and in May was appointed landdrost of Port Natal by Landman on behalf of the community of South African Emigrants. He held office until he resigned in October, acting meanwhile, with J.P. Muller, as the agent of the Cape Town relief committee for the Voortrekkers in Natal.
To avenge the death of his sons, B. joined Karel Landman's contingent, which, early in December 1838, journeyed northward to form part of A.W.J. Pretorius's* Wenkommando, about to take action against Dingane. It was on this journey that the Biggarsberg range of mountains, in the present district of Dundee, where B.'s cart overturned, was named after him. B. took part in the battle of Blood river on 16.12.1838, and accompanied the victorious commando to Dingane's abandoned kraal at Mgungundhlovu. In the course of a running fight along the White Umfolozi, B. was killed with five others while trying to escape from the ambush into which the Zulus had led the commando.
There is a portrait of B. and a commemorative plaque in the B.E.S.L. Hall at Dundee (Natal), a portrait in the Voortrekker museum, Pietermaritzburg, and a miniature in the possession of his descendants, prints of which have been published by E. Campbell and Hockly (infra). A street in Glencoe (Natal) is named after B., and, in memory of his son, Robert, there is a cairn on the battlefield where he died, and a plaque in the Old Fort museum, Durban.
With the death of B. and his sons the surname disappeared in South Africa, except for collateral relatives who may have immigrated later. Except for one, all B.'s daughters married, and there are thus many descendants on the distaff side belonging to the Dunn, De Villiers, De Smidt, Maynard, Willis, Back, Eaton, Krohn and Strickland families. B.'s widow tried without success to obtain the title deeds to the land owned by her husband and son in Natal. Later she was for some time the postmistress at Port Elizabeth. She died in Grahamstown at the age of seventy-four.
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1781 - 1838 (57 years)
