Aberdeen is a small town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, situated at the intersection of the N9 National Route and the R61 Provincial Route.
Aberdeen lies approximately 32 km south of the Camdeboo Mountains, 55 km south-west of Graaff-Reinet, and 155 km south-east of Beaufort West.
Aberdeen falls within the Dr Beyers Naudé Local Municipality and the Sarah Baartman District Municipality.
With its numerous examples of Victorian architecture, Aberdeen is one of the architectural conservation areas of the Karoo.
Laid out on the farm Brakkefontein as a settlement of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1856 (now the NGK), Aberdeen became a municipality in 1858. It is named after the Scottish city of Aberdeen.
In 2023, it was proposed that Aberdeen be renamed to Camdeboo. In 2024, this was rejected by the Minister of Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie.
History
Aberdeen began as one of six congregations established in 1855 in what was then the Cape Colony, and the penultimate of the year.
On 10 September 1855, the church council of the NG congregation of Graaff-Reinet, the oldest congregation in the Eastern Cape, considered a request for the separation of a new congregation in the vicinity of where Aberdeen would later be established. Like many towns in the former Capeland, Aberdeen was founded as a church town.
On 16 October, the Presbytery of Graaff-Reinet, the so-called third precinct (after Cape Town and Swellendam), formally separated the congregation during a session at Cradock. The Brakkefontein farm was selected as the location for the town and church. Reverend Andrew Murray Sr. was appointed as a consultant. The farm, owned by Jan Vorster, was purchased for £4,875, and on 16 October 1855, the Presbytery signed the congregation’s establishment. The locality’s name was changed from Brakkefontein to Aberdeen, after Murray’s birthplace in Scotland. (The following year, the town and congregation of Murraysburg were also named in his honor.)
Lots were surveyed and sold, while the church council retained control over the town land and the right to levy the inheritance tax. Nearly a century after its founding, in 1949, as was the case with Steytlerville (another Eastern Cape church town), the church council transferred all its rights to the town council, which had been established in 1858. From this arose the later municipality.
A small church building was erected, but the town grew very slowly. On 21 January 1856, a man named Swarts was appointed as the first reader, sexton, and schoolmaster of the town at a salary of £50 per year. After years of unsuccessful searches for a minister, the congregation’s first minister, Reverend Thomas Menzies Gray, accepted his post on 21 September 1862.
