Main menu:
NEWS LETTERS
CONTENT
TITLE PAGE
1 A funeral with a difference
2 Monthly Meeting report back
3 Relative of Princess Diana
5 Census Humour
6 Chairman’s Report 2009
EDITORIAL
It is all there … somewhere!
We have all hit brick walls in our family research at some point or other. But after a few weeks (months and maybe even years) suddenly we find the information we had been searching for. Why? Because ‘It is all there … somewhere!’
The question is: how do we get it from somewhere out there to where we can use it? What has suddenly made it available? The answer is, of course, the work of many different individuals. So let’s offer our thanks to…
· The Librarians who besides stamping books with the due dates and taking our money for fines on overdue books also know where books can be found on the shelves. They also catalogue books so that they can be more easily found.
The reference library at the National Library of South Africa (Cape Town Campus) – I’m afraid it will remain the South African Library to me – always take my breath away. It is like a ‘Cathedral for Books’. I know it contains only a fraction of the SAL book collection but I always feel awe-inspired while I’m there. The issue is how do we know what information is in which book and then on which page. So…
· Indexers need our thanks too especially the good ones who include your family in their index!
And finally…
· Transcribers who copy data from primary sources (church registers, censuses, voters’ rolls, newspapers etc.) and place them in digital form on the Internet.
Yes it IS there… but spare a thought and give a warm ‘Thank You!’ to all those who make the ‘somewhere’ -‘right here’!
All-Time Greatest Genealogical Movies:
Census and Sensibility
A Fiche Called "Wanda to Zelda"
Lost in Transcription
All About Eve [parents not found]
Good Will Hunting -- Wrong Will Finding
Honey I Shrunk the Kith
Adventures in the Kin Trade
Ryan's Daughter [allegedly]
Dublin Indemnity
The O'Dea Hunter
Life of Brian - (aka Bryan, Brien, Breen, O'Brian, O'Breen, O'Brien, Ó Bríain, et al)
A FUNERAL WITH A DIFFERENCE [By Ann Smythe]
How many people in their fifties do you know that have been to their own great grandfather’s funeral? This is the sort of thing that comes from getting hooked on family history!
Some time ago I discovered the little private Kirsten cemetery behind the Kirstenhof police station. When I visited it, armed with camera and notebook, the very first gravestone I saw was Peter George KALIS (1845-1906) – my great grandfather. I knew that he had married a KIRSTEN by the name of Helena Catharina, but had long been unable to establish who her parents were. Here I was at least getting closer but Milton Kirsten, owner of the property and second last surviving male Kirsten of that line, was unable to help me place her in the family tree, so I started doing a lot of research at the Archives, going through all the hundreds of Kirsten Death Notices hoping her name would be listed as one of the children of one of the deceased. This was in the days when one was still allowed to take photos of the records, which made my life a lot easier. You have no idea how large that family is, but I did learn a fair amount of Cape history in the process! I gradually built up a fair-sized tree, without managing to find Helena, but it was at least a good basis for the Kirsten family to work from later when it came to unraveling the secrets of the cemetery as I gave them copies of all of them, as well as the family tree as far as I knew it.
The Kirsten family once owned the large tract of land stretching from Pollsmoor right down to the far side of Main Road Retreat. Before that, the farm Raapenkraal was owned by Hendrik VAN DER POLL (1817-1894), who had married Johanna Jacomina KIRSTEN (1820-1893) on 1 Jan 1838, but remained childless. In their joint will they left the property to three of Johanna’s nephews, Hendrik van der Poll KIRSTEN, William Ferdinand KIRSTEN and Jan Frederick KIRSTEN. I am surmising that the reason Hendrik was named van der Poll was because his mother was a van der Poll (Femma Classina VAN DER POLL, sister of Hendrik VAN DER POLL) and not necessarily because his parents had an eye on inheriting the farm!
The three heirs were: William Ferdinand Kirsten (b 1849 d 18 Aug 1912) who was already working as their farm manager; Hendrik van der Poll Kirsten (b 5 Jan 1850 d 4 Jan 1930) (later known as Pappie) and Johan Frederick Kirsten (uncertain whose son he was). Hendrik later bought his cousins out and became the sole owner. Sections of the farm were sold off, notably for Pollsmoor Prison and the Zwaanswyk Dutch Reformed Church on Tokai Road and many others.
I took photos and made lists of all the gravestones and their inscriptions and tried to fit them into a family tree, but there were too many gaps and a number of graves with no headstone or legible inscription. One of the anomalies was the fact that my great grandfather KALIS was buried there, but his wife, who was a genuine KIRSTEN, had been buried in the Plumstead Cemetery. However, as she died 30 years after her husband, her children probably made the decision and possibly did not even remember that their father was in the Kirsten cemetery.
The owner of the property with the cemetery then decided to exhume all the graves and move them to Plumstead Cemetery. This involved a lot of work and great expense, and by law, SAHRA, an archeologist, a genealogist and other experts as everything possible had to be recorded. A lot of additional unmarked and unknown graves were discovered. Eventually the work was done, a large double plot in Plumstead purchased, and I was invited to the burial service along with Milton, his wife and one daughter. Just picture me asking my boss for time off to attend the funeral of my great grandfather – a bit far-fetched, he would have been entitled to think!
It was all beautifully and tastefully executed, with all the individually cremated remains placed together in two large white coffins, flowers placed on top and the dominee saying a short service. I was a little startled to find the Doves attendant taking digital photos which were to be presented to the Kirstens on a CD. Is that the way they do it these days, or was that a group special for the 54 sets of remains of which 23 were unidentified? Later on a large slab was laid over the graves, listing the names of all the people interred there, as well as those “unknowns”.
In the meantime, I continued my search for proof of my great-grandmother’s parents and family, even though I had been told verbally by a 100 year old second cousin that I had found through my research, and befriended as she is such a lovely lady, that her grandmother Johanna Jacomina KIRSTEN (1858-1923), my great grandmother Helena Catharina KIRSTEN (1856-1936) and Hendrik van der Poll KIRSTEN (1850-1930) (he who inherited) were all children of Jan Frederik Kirsten. The two KIRSTEN sisters married two KALIS brothers, as so often happened – Peter George and Jan Wolfaard KALIS.
Incidentally, I did eventually find concrete proof when I managed to visit GISA in Stellenbosch and found their baptism records showing who their parents were, as well as various marriage records. Now I am satisfied!
MONTHLY MEETING REPORT BACK
APRIL 2010
A SAINT FROM ST HELENA
Mervyn Watson is a Saint - well, I don't know if he lives a saintly life but he is a SAINT because he comes from the Island of St Helena.
A large crowd attended our AGM (with all due respect to our Chairman and the Committee) not to ensure good governance of the Society but simply because so many Capetonians have a background from St Helena.
Mervyn told us a brief history of St Helena from 1502. It, like Cape Town, was affected by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 making many Saints leave (some 400 and 500 at a time) to seek work - often in Cape Town where Saint girls were popular as domestic workers as they spoke English rather than Dutch.
Mervyn then described St Helena today - the decision not to build the Airport and the joy of travelling on the RMS St Helena. His slides included many photographs of the island (more than just the tourist attractions) giving us a real feeling for the island and what it would be like to live there. He spoke on his own family research into the Watson family. He also brought many show-and-tell items from his family heirlooms.
During tea many in the audience spent time asking Mervyn questions. The Society really needs to follow-up on the subject of St Helena and perhaps assist those with ancestors from St Helena set up a St Helena Family History Society.
MAY 2010
GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO THE CAPE
We were very lucky to have Gunther Papendorff give a very interesting talk at May meeting. His brief was to present the background to German Immigration to the Cape especially during the time of the Dutch East India Company.
Gunther started by giving a description of the French Huguenots and their reasons for coming to the Cape and then he said, "Now, for the German Immigrants, whatever I said about the French Huguenots, just take the opposite." The Huguenots had come as a single group; the Germans came as individuals; the French Huguenots came at one time (1688) the Germans came steadily over the period; the French settled in one area- the Drakenstein area while the Germans settled scattered all over the colony and amongst the other settlers; the French came as families - wife and children and even the elderly; the Germans were mainly single men; the French came from one area in France while the Germans came from all over the numerous small states that later became Germany; the French left Europe on
principle as refugees; the Germans came for their own economic reasons after the Eighty Year War; the French were educated and cultured while the German were mainly from the peasant and labouring classes.
Because of these factors, the Germans were more quickly integrated with the other settlers. Although there were nearly as many German immigrants as Dutch up to 1806 (936 to 948), compared with only 154 French immigrants. However, also by 1807 some 54% of the population were of Dutch descendent 28% German and 10% French - this demonstrates how German immigrants seem to integrate and be absorbed into the Dutch settler community.
The Germans who came to the Cape came as individuals were young (17-30y), were unmarried and usually uneducated. Therefore they married into Cape society who were not German - Dutch women, slave women and indigenous women. The German names found among the people of the Cape Flats proves this.
Gunther then went through a few of the famous German immigrants at the Cape who included Martin Melck; Anton Anreith, Johan Augen, Nicholas von Diessen, Jacob Cloete and Wlhelm Adolf Krieger (Krige). A few of the German immigrants were violent criminals. Of the twenty-three Europeans found guilty of murder, some fourteen were Germans.
It was wonderful to have a broad sweep of Cape history and the German immigrants’ role in it described with such authority and with such humour that everyone was obviously fascinated and they loved having Gunther Papendorff among us.
JUNE 2010
Our speaker at the June meeting was Mbongiseni Buthelezi who is part of the Archival Platform Team and also a lecturer at UCT.
On the Archival Platform Blog site he makes this comment:
‘I am reminded of Mathieu Béluse in Eduoard Glissant’s novel, Le quatrième siècle (The Fourth Century) for whom what we call the past is “that bottomless sequence of forgetting with, every now and then, some hint flashing into our nothingness… [it is] that whirlwind of death from which we have to pull memory” (1964: 52). How do we pull memory from the whirlwind of death? Why do we need to, if we need to do so at all?’
That quotation has really set me thinking. And this is exactly what Mbongiseni is hoping to do. But not just thinking – also motivating us into action to ensure that archival material is available – preserved, catalogued and freely available - not out of our reach through the copyrighting of our information by large American universities or conglomerates.
Buthelezi is part of the team at Archival Platform [AP] (www.archivalplatform.org) who are striving to ensure that archives contain, as he said in his talk, ‘anything that holds meaning for people’; that records are digitized and available; that the different archival repositories follow the same standards; and that the public are made aware of the importance of archives.
The AP are also encouraging research by stimulating debate, networking across stakeholders and acting as an advocacy office in the public interest. They are achieving this by a monthly newsletter going out to more than 100 stakeholder; through websites, blogs, facebook and twitter and through conferences, campaigns and information meetings.
Mbongiseni’s own interest is in the ancestral stories of the Zulu nation in particular those smaller kingdoms whose people fled northward rather than be incorporated by the Zulu under Chaka. He explained how oral histories are adapted by each new generation to pay respect to the current ruler or his successor. He also explained the difficulty of finding the truth in oral history and how the nearest this could be achieved was by collecting the histories and comparing when and by whom they were originated in order to try and discern the bias therein.
Only when we see the difficulties faced by historians such as Mbongiseni Buthelezi do we give thanks to all those bored office clerks who made memos of everything and filed them away for posterity.
Mbongiseni Buthelezi has an excellent article entitled: Family history: An idea, a wound, or just details? at
the following website - http://www.archivalplatform.org/blog/entry/family_history/
A RELATIVE OF PRINCESS DI BURIED AT ST PAUL’S RONDEBOSCH
[Derek Pratt (with help from Calvin Andricus)]
I suppose that, genealogically speaking, we can demonstrate that we are all related to one another if we trace our ancestors far back enough. But as we research our family history many of us hope to find a connection to royalty or at least to a celebrity.
This is what happened as I continued my research into those buried in St Paul’s Graveyard. I began searching for the relatives of JESSIE WORSLEY BRODRIBB who died 1878. We are not sure if she is buried in the Graveyard but there certainly is a memorial for her on the MONTAGU grave. The reason for this is that she was the daughter of John Edward MONTAGU. She had married Samuel John BRODRIBB who died (1894) after the graveyard at St Paul’s was closed and so he was not buried alongside his late wife but at St Thomas’s Graveyard. That graveyard is now under the astro-turf hockey field at Bishops school.
Jessie BRODRIBB’s father, John Edward MONTAGU, was the oldest son of Captain John MONTAGU who had served as Colonial Secretary in Tasmania before being sent to the Cape also as Colonial Secretary in 1843. His son also became a civil servant in the Cape Colony. The baptism register entry for his children shows his occupation as ‘Civil Servant’ and later as ‘Register of Deeds’.
I searched for MONTAGU and BRODRIBB on Google and found a fascinating family tree which traced the family back to 1517. Jessie Worsley BRODRIBB’s great- great- grandfather was an Admiral in the Royal Navy and her great- grandfather a Lieutenant Colonel who had served in India — where grandfather Captain John MONTAGU was born. He had served at the Battle of Waterloo and his oldest son, John Edward MONTAGU was Jessie’s father. As I traced the MONTAGU family back eight generations from Jessie Worsley BRODRIBB born MONTAGU I found that an older brother of the eighth generation MONTAGUs had become the first Earl of Manchester.
The first Earl of Manchester had married a Catherine SPENCER, whose father, Sir William SPENCER, takes us back to 1555. Sir William’s had a brother John SPENCER and their father takes us back to 1515.
If we follow John SPENCER’s line forward eight generation we comes to another John SPENCER who was the first Earl Spencer. A further seven generations later we come to Lady Diana SPENCER who, of course, married someone the family tree on the Internet calls Charles Phillip Arthur George WINDSOR, who is needless to say Prince Charles.
So using a relationship calculator I found at a family history web page I could calculate that the late Princess Diana WINDSOR (born SPENCER) was the Ninth cousin six times removed from Jessie Worsley BRODRIBB (born MONTAGU). Agreed —not a very close relationship but we can claim to have a relative of Princess Diana buried at St Paul’s Graveyard, Rondebosch.
has hundreds and thousands cousins. In theory, a person could have 4 trillion 20th cousins.
This table is built on two major assumptions. First, it assumes that parents each had two siblings, who each had four children--for a total of 16 cousins. (In reality, the author of this table has a total of 28 cousins, so he was being conservative). He then assumes each of four grandparents had two siblings each who had 4 children (who survived to adulthood), who each had four children, for a total of 64 2nd cousins. So he uses this same assumption back to the 20th cousins. Again this is a conservative assumption because people in the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries had many more than 4 children survive to adulthood.
Second, the author assumes there is no inter-marriage among any ancestors, which is clearly not true. It is not true because there are not 4 trillion people living on the earth today, therefore there must have been inter-marriage. The alternative is that every living human on the earth is at least my 15th cousin or closer.
As Princess Di and Jessie BRODRIBB are 9th Cousins that means that each of them could have over a million cousins and so there is a very good chance you, the reader of this article, are also related to Princess Diana or someone else famous. As the author of the table Calvin Andricus says: One might ask, just for fun, what is the probability that one of my 20th cousins (or closer) is famous? The answer is 100%, since 4 trillion, plus 1 trillion, plus 274 billion, plus 68 billion, etc. is a pretty large number. What is the probability that you are related to someone famous? One hundred percent. “
CHAIRMAN’S REPORT TO AGM APRIL 2010
For the past 12 months I have had the privilege of serving as Chairperson of the Society. However the success of a society such as ours does not survive on one person and I certainly could not keep the wheels running without the assistance of wonderful working committee.
The following members served on the committee Lois Harley, Derek Pratt, Lucille Le Roux, Tony Allen, Ann Smythe, Jawn Goosen, Jeanette Goosen and Cynthia Winstanly
We have had a busy year with speakers at all our meetings which have been well attended.
Training Programmes – Lois Harley established a series of training courses organised and ran 5 courses last year and introduced 109 persons to Family History research. This almost single handed effort produced the most funds for the society’s coffers. Lois mans our ‘Help Desk’ during our meetings.
Newsletter - Derek Pratt – Portfolio for projects and editor of the Newsletter. Derek with the assistance of Sandra Cruywagen has produced a really high quality news sheet. However we do appeal to members to post news or articles however trivial they may appear to you others will be interested.
Public Relations - Lucille Le Roux – Our reception lady who looks after our PRO and membership an essential part of the team. The past year we had a membership increase of 53 to set the society’s membership to a healthy 120. We were featured twice on radio by Heart FM who with Angela Onia, we appeared on their morning show and interviewed by CTFM on their afternoon show.
Website - Tony Allen – Webmaster – our website is extremely popular and updated regularly, sponsored by RSA Web is an up to date information centre. We still require a DNA expert to look after a DNA slot.
Administration The society has been most fortunate in having capable persons to fill these tasks, Ann Smythe – Secretary and club reporter Jawn Goosen – Treasurer and guardian of our funds – a treasurer like a secretary is an essential part of any successful venture.
Refreshments Jeanette Goosen – who with Betty Nelson produces tea at every meeting,
Library Cynthia Winstanly – our librarian – Our library has grown in leaps and bounds during the past year with wonderful donations from members and purchases from the Library Funds – already we have moved from hand brought bags to the meeting to a cupboard which is now groaning with books and will soon need larger storage, an appeal however to our members please return the books the next month – books are requested by members and frankly its anti social behaviour to hang on to books and have to reminded and sometimes nagged to return the books
Conclusion – The Society has continued to operate successfully, growing in membership and expanding the interest in our hobby. During the year Annette and I accompanied by Jeanette and Jawn Goosen attended and manned a table at the GISA Heritage Day display held in Paarl. Our own Heritage Day Display attracted many visitors with many members participating. Due to attending numbers and sometimes softly spoken speakers it was resolved to purchase a P.A. System.
I attended a colloquium at U.C.T. along with various interested parties to determine a way forward to be able to photograph documents stored in the Archives and other local Libraries.
Christmas Meeting an informal outing was held in December arranged by Jeanette Goosen, although attendance and support from members could have been better for those who attended a very enjoyable outing was had.
Finally, I would like to thank you for your continued support and look forward to another successful year for the incoming committee.
D.J. SLINGSBY
CHAIR – 2009
April 2010