Founding of The City of Pretoria
In an endeavour to establish a new town, he bought two farms named Elandspoort en Daspoort between 1854 and 1855, on which he founded the city of Pretoria in 1855.
He originally named the town Pretoria Philadelphia, in honour of his father and his father's brothers, but the name of the town was later shortened to just Pretoria.
Five years later the capital of the ZAR (South African Republic) was moved from Potchefstroom to Pretoria.
Read more about this topic: Marthinus Wessel Pretorius
Famous quotes containing the words founding and/or city:
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)