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Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 1999-01 > 0915311779


From: robin volkers <>
Subject: New Member
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 21:16:19 +0000


Hello to everyone.

As a new member of this list I would like to introduce myself. My name
is Robin Volkers, and despite this I am not Dutch, but very English. I
am now living on the Island of Benbecula, one of the outermost of the
Western Isles of Scotland (next stop America!).

My main interest has been family history research in India, where I have
been living for five years or so (the "or so" is closely related to the
practical difficulties of getting long-term visas, about which I shall
not bore you).

The name comes from a GGGf who enlisted for the artillery of the
(British) East India Company at Rotterdam in 1804. Trying to pursue that
line will be difficult to say the least, and only by a great coincidence
could it involve South Africa, although I understand that the name is
not unknown there. But I have widened my researches in India far beyond
my own family and am engaged, eg, in making a full record of the large
Cantonment Cemetery in Agra, and inevitably finding myself going along
parallel paths.

Perhaps the most important result that I hope will come out of joining
this list is information about people who have stayed in South Africa on
the way back to England - I understand that they are known as Indians,
despite mostly being decidedly European. A noteworthy name that comes to
mind is Lady Sale who died in Capetown in the 1840s. I would much
appreciate any information that is available on this general subject, as
I find great difficulty in tracing people who left India, or even
confirming that they have left. This latter is usually a matter of them
ceasing to produce children, but without a recorded death. Picking them
up in England can be equally frustrating. Some, of course, did not go to
England, and South Africa seems to have been a favourite destination.

I will send separate messages on my particular names in order to avoid
this message becoming too long.

May I wish you all a very happy New Year
Robin Volkers

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