Granny Klok: the woman who survived, and blessed, Barberton's golden days

At a time when few women would travel alone, one determined widow packed up her children and set her sights on the untamed goldfields of Barberton. What she created here would etch her name into the town’s history: Louisa Guthrie Klok, better known as “Granny Klok”, the woman who rose from chambermaid to hotel owner, midwife, nurse, and mother of a community.

It was 1884 that the Guthrie couple decided to leave the Free State and seek their fortune at the Barberton Gold Fields. Unfortunately, disaster stuck at Charlestown when the wagon broke and in attempting to repair it, Mr Guthrie was fatally injured. This did not stop Louisa and although being a newly widowed mother of six, she climbed back unto the ox wagon and continued the long journey to the malaria-ridden valley where Barberton had just begun to take root. She was determined to make a life for her and her children. With no financial support or family to lean on, she chose to start a new life, on her own terms.

Louisa found work as a chambermaid at the very popular Phoenix Hotel. She married Mr Klok, a Hollander who owned a beer hall at the Corner of General and Natal Streets. With the outbreak of the Boer war, he returned to Holland where he, unfortunately, passed away. During this time Louisa started to work at Fountain Baths Hotel, which was also one of the first hotels in Barberton. It was run by the British and became a very busy place. Within a few years, she had saved enough to purchase the property herself. She took it over on July 1, 1898. It would become her life’s work.

The Fountain Baths Hotel was more than just a place to sleep. During the horrors of the Anglo-Boer War, Granny Klok’s hotel became a sanctuary for the sick, children from concentration camps, and wounded soldiers, both Boer and British. She cared without prejudice, nursing the sick and offering comfort where few others would. Stories tell of her using her last pennies to buy medicine during epidemics.

Granny Klok never considered herself a heroine, but it was precisely her humility and devotion that made her a legend. As a self-taught midwife, she helped deliver countless children. She cared for poets, mine bosses, drunkards, and servants with equal compassion.

Her role extended far beyond that of a hotelier. She became a central figure in a fledgling community, a mother figure to a town in search of roots.

Louisa Klok lived and worked at the hotel until her death, aged 75, in 1919. She raised nine children (three born after her arrival in Barberton) and left behind a legacy of 54 grandchildren. Though the hotel later fell into disrepair, it has since been restored and is now part of the Barberton Heritage Walk.

Stand today on the veranda of the Fountain Baths Guest Cottages, among the bubbling spring water and fragrant Lowveld air, and you can almost hear Granny Klok’s voice: firm yet kind, with a baby on her hip and a medical satchel in hand.

She was not a politician or a pioneer in the traditional sense, but like so many women of her time, she built, cared, endured, and kept Barberton’s heart beating while everything else changed.