Emma Krogh

Emma Krogh (b. **/**/1884 - d. Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, **/**/1960) was a music teacher, the first female head of a school in Pretoria and could claim to have been the first identified actress in a South African film.

She was the daughter of a Deputy State Secretary in the administration of Paul Kruger’s Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, and clearly had musical training. Though a document in the National Archives Repository identifies Emma Krogh as "very anti-British", she nevertheless married English-born Captain Percy Blakemore, who came to South Africa as a trooper in the ranks of the Strathcona Horse, but ended up as officer commanding the 1st Squadron of the Kings' Colonials during the South African War. He remained in South Africa to become a farmer near Lindley in the Orange Free State, but later deserted his wife and daughter Stella to return to England, reportedly to become a professional gambler (others sources claim that he was last known to be peddling Bibles in Australia)

Her daughter, Stella Blakemore, would become the author of some plays and a number of extremely popular Afrikaans children's books, notably the Maasdorp series for teenage girls, and the Keurboslaan series for boys, the latter written under the pseudonym of Theunis Krogh, which was the name of her maternal grandfather.

Emma's acting career consisted of a role as the heroine in The Great Kimberley Diamond Robbery, filmed and directed by R.C.E. Nissen for Rufe Naylor's Springbok Film Co., first shown on 11 December 1911 at the Tivoli Empire Theatre(afternoon) and the Orpheum Theatre (evening) in Johannesburg.

For some time Emma ran a music and drama school in Pretoria where her daughter, who had married David Owen, a Welshman in the British colonial service in Swaziland, later took over some of her duties. When Owen was transferred to the Gold Coast (today's Ghana), the couple's adopted children were sent to school in Wales, where their grandmother joined them. In 1954 they all moved to Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland, where Emma died in 1960.