Settler Forefathers

There is no doubt in my mind at least that the rainbow nation did not start miraculously in 1994 with the advent of the ANC government in South Africa - we have always been the rainbow nation, at least from the very first settler to the Southern tip of Africa.

Most people take this to have taken place in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck landed at what is now Cape Town in his three tiny ships, the Drommedaris, Reijger, and Goede Hoop with a party of hardy souls who were tasked with building a fort and planting a garden to serve as a way-station for the VOC trade route between the Netherlands and the East Indies.

Upon his arrival, Jan van Riebeeck came accross the Khoikhoi people or Khoi, who were originally part of a pastoral culture and language group found across Southern Africa. The Khoi had originated in the northern area of modern day Botswana and the ethnic group steadily migrated south, reaching the Cape approximately 2,000 years ago, where they found the regions original inhabitants, the San or Bushmen who were hunter gatherers. Archaeological evidence suggests that they have lived in southern Africa, (and probably other areas of Africa) for at least 22,000 years but probably much longer. Genetic evidence suggests they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, peoples in the world.

Migratory Khoi bands living around what is today Cape Town intermarried with San. However the two groups remained culturally distinct as the Khoikhoi continued to graze livestock and the San subsisted as hunter-gatherers. The Khoi initially came into contact with European explorers and merchants in approximately AD 1500. The ongoing encounters were often violent, although the British made some attempt to develop more amiable relationships. Local population dropped when the Khoi were exposed to smallpox by Europeans. Active warfare between the groups flared when the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, enclosed traditional grazing land for farms. Over the following century the Khoi were steadily driven off their land, which effectively ended traditional Khoikhoi life.

When the early Portuguese sailors rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the 1400s very few Bantu speakers were found there, with the predominant indigenous population around the Cape made up of Khoisan peoples. Following Jan van Riebeeks, settlement at the Cape in 1652 European settlers began to occupy Southern Africa in increasing numbers. Around 1770 European Settlers migrating north encountered land permanently occupied by Bantu speaking peoples (in particular around the Fish River) and frictions arose between the two groups. This began a pattern in which the new (white) settlers used superior force to subdue and/or displace the Bantu speaking peoples they encountered, much as had been done with the aboriginal Khoisan peoples the white settlers had previously encountered at the Cape.
From the late 1700s and early 1800s there were two major areas of frictional contact between the white settlers and the Bantu speaking peoples in Southern Africa. Firstly, as the Settlers moved north inland from the Cape they encountered the Xhosa, the Basotho, and the Tswana. Secondly attempts at large coastal settlements were made by the British in Xhosa territory and in Zululand.

The original European white settlers who came out to Southern Africa originated mainly from the Netherlands and Germany, while French refugees began to arrive in the Cape after leaving their country following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685. Individual French Huguenots settled at the Cape from as early as 1671 however and an organised, large scale settlement of Huguenots to the Cape took place during 1688 and 1689.

To ease Cape labour shortages slaves were brought from Indonesia, Madagascar and India. Furthermore, troublesome leaders, often of royal descent, were banished from Dutch colonies to South Africa.

In 1795 the British siezed the Cape from the Dutch and returned it to them between 1803 and 1806, following which the British annexed it, after the VOC declared bankruptcy.

Further Settler parties came out to Southern Africa including the 1820 Settlers from Great Britain, the Byrne Settlers between 1849 and 1851 and the German Military Settlers to the Eastern Cape in 1857/57 amongst others.

It is of course fair to say that there was some degree of intermarriage between the various groups living in Southern Africa both before and after the arrival of settlers of European origin and I will write more about this in later posts.

One can see however that the origins of the Rainbow nation is not a recent development.

Why trace your roots?

Every human being has within himself the desire to know where he comes from.

Yes obviously he may know who his parents are and the town or city of his birth. He may even know the time of his birth, if his mother remembers it and tells him when he took his first breath. He may know his grandparents names and there may be old sepia photographs on the walls of his parents or grandparents home, of perfect strangers, posing in stiff formal poses who, he is informed, are his great-grandparents.

Who were these strangers whose names are lost in the mists of time? Who were their parents and grandparents? What sort of life did they lead? What forces made them leave the land of their birth and make them come to South Africa? What did they find when they landed on these fair shores and what trials and tribulations did they experience? What joys and successes visited them and their descendants?

Should one decide to embark on the quest to discover the answers to these questions and the multitude of others that arise during the quest, that tracing ones roots is like being a detective, trying to discover clues that are spread across time and distance. The pleasure comes in unravelling the mystery and discovering the answers that lead one to more questions and or course, more answers.

During the quest the history of our family and of the world, comes alive. What to us may be history was to our ancestors current affairs. Other lessons learned during the quest could and often do lead to a greater knowledge and understanding of such diverse subject as old writing, archival sources, photography, naming patterns, church records and history, geography, migration patterns, military history, old professions, census records, the law of succession, heraldry and so on.

At the same time one meets and makes many new friends and often times one makes contact with relatives that one didn't know one had - distant relatives none the less but interesting all the same because they spring from the same source that one does too.

At the start of the quest one should determine what it is that one wants to achieve:

Do you want to trace your roots in the paternal or male line only, back to a common ancestor, which is generally the method used by Afrikaans speaking South African researchers who want to trace all the descendants of the first person of a particular surname who arrived in South Africa, regardless of when that arrival occurred?

In South African genealogy the first person of a particular surname arriving in the country is considered to be the 'stamvader' or progenitor of the family in South Africa and all his descendants, those people bearing the same surname as him, are considered to be important.

What about the female descendants you might ask and the answer is relatively simple - they get married to a person from another family and their descendants are recorded in that family.

Another choice may be trace both paternal and maternal lines back to a specific point in time or as far back as it is possible to find information, regardless of where the line takes you?

Using this method it must be remembered that in each generation the number of people doubles up. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight grandparents, sixteen great granparents and so on. In each generation half of the people in that generation are female which brings in a multitude of new surnames to investigate.

If you decide to trace your family back ten generations, which is about 300 years, assuming that each generation is about thirty years, you would have the names of 432 people in the tenth generation and 883 people in total. Go back one extra generation and the number in that generation rises to 864 and the total to 1747 people.

Go back thirty generations or 900 years and the number of people in the thirtieth generation number in the millions.

Of course this doesn't take account of the names of all of the children and the children's children that are revealed during such research, should you choose to record their details, which is at a guess a combination of the first and second choices in the questions I asked about deciding what choice you need to make in determining what route your research should follow.

The amazing thing to note is that should any one of the multitude of personal ancestors identified as you trace back in time had died young or had never married the person that they did or had never married, you would not have been alive today as the person you are. Each and every one of those personal ancestors is vitally important to who and what you are.

You may want to prove or disprove some family legend, say for example that great great uncle Charlie fought at Waterloo or that great great aunt Nellie was the maid of Queen Victoria or that an ancestor discovered and owned a gold mine and that by rights your family should be wealthy.

You may want to connect your family to some historical grouping like the 1820 Settlers or the French Huguenots or you may have another reason which is personal to you. Whatever the reason, know that the first and most important step is to make the decision to get started. Don't leave it for someone else to do, get stuck in right away yourself.

You will find the quest interesting, informative, surprising, frustrating from time-to-time and quite satisfying most of the time. You will probably answer the question of where you came from more fully than prior to starting. You will increase your knowledge, keep your mind active and make friends.

What more could you ask for?

Introduction

Greetings and Salutations Visitor!

I trust that you are here because you are interested in South Africa, its history and its people. If so, you are at the right place.

The intention of this blog is to communicate with one another - not one way communication either but rather two-way communication in which articles are published either by myself or by you, with the intention of expanding our knowledge, and that of other visitors to the site, about the country people, history and any other related topics, such as heraldry, culture, photography, biography, etc.

It is not my intention to rehash information readily available elsewhere on the internet however where such information advances our knowledge, I will publish links and/or summaries. I will also answer questions as far as I can however I rely on your assistance to answer questions that I have not answered fully or to which I do not know the answer myself - we are all here to learn from one another.

Should you have ideas to improve this blog feel free to share your ideas and your knowledge.

Please feel free to ask your questions, share your insight, your experiences, your links, your lists, your photographs and in fact anything else that will be of benefit to other visitors to this blog.

Don't hesitate - let us get started on the road to knowledge and I am sure that it will be an interesting journey for all of us.

Regards,

Murch