Hope Valley evolves in Adelaide from William Holden, journalist; shorthand's Jacob Pitman; German settlers
Hope Valley gave hope to Adelaide's future when it reservoir was opened in the 1870s as the second major water source for the metropolitan area. William Holden (bottom middle), later hailed as the "father of Australian journalism", named the area Hope Valley in 1842. He befriended the famous shorthand inventor's brother Jacob Pitman, another Hope Valley settler. Pitman's headstone (bottom left) is inscribed in phonetic English that he and his brother advocated. Bottom right: The headstone of prominent Hope Valley German pioneer Hermann Friedrich Koch who started the Bremen Arms hotel.
Images courtesy SA Water and State Library of South Australia
The northeastern Adelaide suburb of Hope Valley started as a random settlement born out of a synchronicity of journalism and shorthand and being named by a German speaker with German-speaking settlers.
Hope Valley was named by William Holden, later hailed as the “father of Australian journalism”. Holden, born in Chichester, Sussex, England, in 1808 had come to South Australia with his family on the Trusty, arriving in May 1838. During the journey to Adelaide, Holden became a friend of Jacob Pitman, brother of the famous shorthand inventor Isaac Pitman.
The Pitmans were devotees of Immanuel Swedenborg’s New Church that Holden also joined. Holden helped Jacob Pitman set up a New Church in Hanson Street, Adelaide city. Pitman, also an architect and builder (his work included constructing South Australia's first Legislative Council building) bought 80 acres in what was later Hope Valley in Adelaide’s northeast foothills in 1839 and in the early 1840s he sold some of it allotments. His friend Holden bought one of those allotments and set up a butcher's shop and general store near the corner of later Grand Juction and Valley roads.
Holden is credited with naming the area Hope Valley after he remained hopeful about the future when he lost his house and business in a bushfire in 1842. Holden’s abililty to speak German was credited with many German religious refugees to South Australia moving to Hope Valley from Klemzig about six kilometres away. In 1847, Hermann Friedrich Koch bought eight acres and applied for a licence to open a public house – the Bremen Arms, venue for many early settler meetings, that survived though name changes to be the Valley Inn in the 21st Century.
In 1849, Holden, with a strong interest in literature, formed a committee to start a local school on Grand Junction Road, and an acre west of the Bremen Arms, was bought. The land was divided into a schoolhouse, cemetery and playground. Also that year, Hope Valley became part of the postal route from Adelaide to Mount Torrens and Holden took on the role of postmaster.
In 1851, Holden moved to Adelaide city to start as one of three journalists on the Register newspaper. He retired as the longest-serving and oldest journalist in Australia. Holden was one of the first Australian journalists to use phonography (or shorthand, as it was called from 1841). On the Trusty, Jacob Pitman had brought the first hundred copies of his brother's first manual of phonography that he circulated among South Australia’s leaders. He began teaching it in Adelaide in 1846 and later in Victoria and New South Wales.
Pitman eventually moved to New South Wales but not before founding the first society of the New (Swedenborgian) Church (with Holden also a member) in the southern hemisphere in Adelaide in 1844 and being its minister until 1859. He also continuted contributing to early Adelaide infrastructure as an architect and builder.
In 1872, Hope Valley gave hope for Adelaide’s future when the earthworks began for its reservoir that would be the much-needed second major water source for the metropolitan area.
