J.W. Spruyt
| Jan Willem Spruyt | |
|---|---|
| Government Secretary of the Orange Free State |
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In office January 1856 – 1862 |
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| Acting State President of the Orange Free State |
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In office 1860... – ...1862 (intermittent) |
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| Preceded by | M.W. Pretorius |
| Succeeded by | M.W. Pretorius |
| State Secretary of the South African Republic |
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In office November 1866 – 1869 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
4 July 1826 Uithoorn, Netherlands |
| Died | 8 September 1908 (aged 82) Inanda, Natal |
| Profession | schoolteacher, civil servant, law agent |
Jan Willem Spruyt (4 July 1826 – 8 September 1908), also known as Jan Willem Spruijt and Jan Willem Landskroon Spruijt (birthname), was a South African civil servant, lawyer and statesman of Dutch descent. Spruyt was government secretary (1856–1862) and several times acting state president of the Orange Free State, and state secretary of the South African Republic (1866–1869).
Spruyt grew up in the Netherlands, studied law, but did not complete his studies, and worked as a schoolteacher, before coming to South Africa. Here he practised as law agent in private practice in both Boer republics. Soon after his arrival he was also quickly enrolled in the administration of the Orange Free State, and attained a powerful position as government secretary. In this capacity he stood in for state president M.W. Pretorius several times in the period 1860–1862. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century several many Afrikaner politicians and government officials served in both Boer republics. So did Spruyt, who finished his career as state secretary of the South African Republic.
Spruyt was the son of Jacobus Spuyt (1796–1839), a Dutch medical doctor, and Antje Landskroon. Both the Spruyt and Landskroon families stood in a tradition of medical practice, and three of the four brothers Spruyt had were doctors in the Netherlands. Spruyt himself trained as a lawyer at Leiden University, but probably did not finish his studies. He went on to work as a schoolteacher in the village of Oosterwolde in the north of the Netherlands. It was here that professor U.G. Lauts recruited him for South Africa in 1851. Lauts was one of a group of Dutchmen, interested in the development of good education in the new Boer settlements in South Africa. As such, Spruyt was one of the many Dutch immigrants that settled in the new Boer republics around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Arriving in Delagoa Bay on a ship with J.A. Smellekamp as supercarga – he later became a well-known figure in South Africa – and his two travel companions and fellow migrants, Hendrik van der Linden and W.P.J. Poen, he travelled across the Lebombo Mountains in an ox-cart into the Transvaal. In March 1852 Spruyt was appointed schoolteacher in the town of Rustenburg. Because of disputes among the Dutchmen in the Transvaal, more specifically between Rev. Dirk van der Hoff and J.A. Smellekamp, who had now also settled there, Spruyt moved to the Orange Free State, where he established himself in Bloemfontein.
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