Moir, John William, d 1940 (Founder of African Lakes Co. )
Biography
John William Moir studied at Edinburgh University and in Switzerland and Germany. In the late-1870s, he went with his brother Fred L. M. Moir to East Africa - to the then Zanzibar coast, now Tanzania - to begin a road towards the north end of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi). Earlier difficulties that had been met with the Portuguese in the area had diminished by 1878 and so they were able to start the African Lakes Co. Ltd., of which they were joint managers. Their company steamers plied Lake Nyasa and the Zambezi and Shire Rivers trading with the people and with Arab merchants and slavers, and supplied the missionaries in the region. Disruption came to the area when some of the larger slaving interests tried to drive the colonists away. This was stemmed by recruited forces from Natal in southern Africa and after the Admiralty invested heavily on the Zanzibar coast, ending the slave trade through its presence on the Lake. In addition to his career in East Africa, Moir was a bee-keeper and he built up a large and renowned collection of books on bee-keeping including American works on the subject. John William Moir died on 13 March 1940.