Gardner F. Williams

Gardner F. Williams (14 March 1842 – 22 August 1922) was an American mining engineer and author, and the first properly trained mining engineer to be appointed in South Africa.

Gardner Frederick Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the oldest son of Alpheus Fuller Williams, who served for many years in the American frontier forces and rose to be a colonel. Alpheus became a civil and mining engineer and, even prior to having moved his family from Saginaw to California, became well known in the mining camps.

Gardner grew up in the Californian mining camps of Sierra and Yuba counties, surrounded by mining activity. His higher education began at the College of California (later to become the University of California), where he obtained a BA degree in 1865, and was completed in Freiburg, Saxony, Germany at the Royal School of Mines ("Frieberg Bergakademie": Freiberg Mining Academy – he helped Alfred Nobel refine techniques of blowing up rocks with Alfred's new invention, dynamite). His mining degree was conferred three years later and, in 1868, he returned to California and rounded off his education by gaining an MA at the university (the 1st such degree conferred there) in 1869.

His mining experience began with a survey of the salt deposits on Carmen island off the coast of Mexico, followed by appointment as engineer to a syndicate in search of gold and silver in northern Nevada. (About this time, he took part in a gun battle with the Apache near what is now Tombstone, Arizona – the main casualties were two of the white men's horses). He then (before June 1873) became an assistant assayer in the US branch mint in San Francisco, and spent 3 1/2 years as superintendent of the Meadow Valley Mining Company at Pioche, Nevada. Early in 1875 he opened up a silver mine at Cherry Creek, and was later appointed manager of the Leeds Mining Company at Silver Reef, Utah. In 1879 he became the consulting engineer to a New York firm interested in hydraulic mining in California and, as a result, became superintendent of the Spring Valley Hydraulic Gold Company at Cherokee at the age of 37.

With such a varied career and with experience in so many areas of mining, particularly quartz and hydraulic mining, it was not unexpected that he should have been recommended to manage the properties known as The Transvaal Gold Exploration and Land Company at Pilgrim's Rest, Mpumalanga, Africa. He left America in 1884 to take up this position, travelling from Cape Town by train to De Aar and took the rest of the journey by coach.

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