11th April 1846 a census was taken to determine the population of Port Elizabeth, back then called “Little Bess’.

Males 727, Females 662, Children 1006 and Servants 10, a total of 2405 including Fingoes, Hottentots and Bechuanas.

J.J. Redgrave writes in his book, Port Elizabeth the Bygone Days:

Port Elizabeth in that year was a dirty, ill-scented, ill-built hamlet with only a few hundred houses and some miserable huts.  The Main Street, or High Street, ankle deep in sand and strewn with boulders, extended roughly form the Commissariat Buildings on the Market Square in an irregular line of houses an stores, with frequent gaps, past Hyman’s Kloof (now Russel Road) as far as the Toll House, an octagonal building on the site of the present Baptists Church in Queen Street.  Beyond that was “outside the Bay”, with only tow or three properties The Tees, Cooper’s low red-tiled roof at Cooper’s Kloof, Reids’ large house, and then one was well out on the Frontier Road, or the Uitenhage Road.  On the town side of the Toll, standing back from the Main Street, was Hartman’s house.  Evatt and Alice Street, with a few low disreputable houses and tin shanties inhabited by the lower class of Irish and Malays, was known as Little Irish Town.  Russel Road, then called Hyman’s Kloof, had steep rugged slopes with a stream of water running through in which the native woman performed part of the town’s laundry.  A footpath led up to a Hottentot location, and about a mile further on was a Fingo Kraal.  Returning along Main Street, on the south side, was another small ravine (Donkin Street) with a trickling stream and a public well.  The Union Chapel erected by the Reverend Mr. Hobson stood on the corner of Chapel and Victoria Streets.  St. Mary’s Church had re-opened again, having been closed whilst the hideous triple red-tiled roof was being replaced by a more serviceable slate roof under the direction of the builder, Mr. Slater of Grahamstown.  A cemetery close to the Baaken’s River had just been surveyed and burial plots marked off for sale in connection with St. Mary’s Church, hence the name St. Mary’s Cemetery.  The churchwardens and many of the residents expressed regret at having to extirpate much of the naturalness and picturesque shrubbery which originally covered this hitherto secluded spot on the bank of the river.