Portrait of Sammy Marks

People/magnate, financier

Sammy Marks

Sammy Marks (1843–1920), magnate, financier, from Lithuania. Linked to gold, coal.

The lucky break

Moved from Cape Town to Kimberley and then the Transvaal, forming the African and European Investment Company, a major Rand finance house.1,2

Legacy

Founded the town of Vereeniging through a mining company, developed the Viljoen's Drift coal mine and the Witbank coalfield, and served as senator from 1910 to 1920.1,2

Story cards

Drag to turn the globe

Where next

Mines

Worked atKimberley Big HoleBefore the Rand he went into business at Kimberley.1

Sources

  1. Sammy Marks South African History Online
  2. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons

Pictures on this page: Sammy-Marks01.jpg, not recorded on the file page (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Underground mining equipment by Kaupo Kikkas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Pangkalpinang. Mijn 3b. Een reeks koelies bezig met het transporteeren van grond, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0).