[5] The town was a starting point for Great Trek groups led by Gerrit Maritz and Piet Retief and furnished large numbers of the Voortrekkers in 1835–1842.

Graaff-Reinet was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1786, after Cape Town in 1652, Stellenbosch in 1679, Paarl in 1687 and Swellendam in 1745.

The town is named after then-governor of the Cape Colony, Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff, and his wife.

In 1801, there was another revolt in Graaff Reinet, but due to the measures of General Francis Dundas, the acting governor of the Cape Colony, peace was soon restored.

In February 1803, due to the 1802 signing of the Treaty of Amiens, the British returned the Cape Colony to the Netherlands, then named the Batavian Republic.

Britain agreed on 13 August 1814 to pay five million sterling to the United Netherlands for the Dutch possession at the Cape.

In 1877, the government of Prime Minister John Molteno began construction of the railway line connecting Graaff-Reinet to Port Elizabeth on the coast.

[8] The town lies 750 metres (2,460 ft) above sea level and is built on the banks of the Sundays River, which rises a little further north on the southern slopes of the Sneeuberge, and splits into several channels here.

[2] In 1804, when the Cape Colony was ruled by the Batavian Republic, the government assigned armorial seals to each of the drostdyen, i.e. administrative districts.

The divisional council, i.e. the local authority for the rural areas outside the town, assumed its own coat of arms, had it granted by the provincial administrator in July 1966[25] and registered it at the Bureau of Heraldry in January 1969.