Herbert Melville Guest

Herbert Melville Guest (29 January 1853 – 29 June 1938) was an author, newspaper owner and politician of the Transvaal. He acquired the Klerksdorp Mining Record in 1889. He wrote several books on the Second Boer War in the area of Klerksdorp. In 1903 he became one of the first city council members and was mayor from 1910 to 1911. One of his sons was Ernest Lucas Guest, the prominent government minister of Southern Rhodesia.

Early life Herbert Melville Guest was born on 29 January 1853 in Kidderminster, England, the son of Herbert and Mary Guest. In 1861, Guest's father moved the family to Grahamstown, Cape Colony (in modern South Africa's Eastern Cape), where he was appointed manager of the Frontier Times. At the age of 13, Herbert was apprenticed to the Grahamstown Journal. The following year, Herbert Melville moved to Kimberley with the staff of the new Diamond News, published by the owners of the Grahamstown Journal.

In Klerksdorp, Guest participated in the local institutions and formed the Chamber of Mines and the Chamber of Commerce. Shortly before the outbreak of the Anglo Boer War, Guest ceased publication of the newspaper and took his family away from Klerksdorp. He returned in February 1901. During the last two years of the war, he wrote several short volumes about it. They had five sons and two daughters. he was killed in action on 6 November 1917 at the Battle of Mahiwa while checking the advance of a vastly superior enemy force. His gun crew had become casualties and he was handling the gun himself when he was killed.

Harold Herman (1880–1939) joined his father in the family printing business, and was, like his father, mayor of Klerksdorp, from 1923 to 1926. He wrote a history of Klerskdorp, Voortrekkerdorp, after the Voortrekkers who first settled there in 1837. It was published posthumously in 1939. One of his sons is the historian Ivor Forbes Guest.

Herbert Melville Guest died on 29 June 1938 and is buried in the Klerksdorp Old Cemetery.

(Vol. 2 (1938) by Reginal Steward Guest, one of his brothers)