SOUTH-AFRICA-L Archives

Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 1999-11 > 0941587528


From: van Rensburg <>
Subject: Re: VAN DER SWAAN
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 11:05:28 +1100


Hi Mansell,
Thank you for your response and clarification regarding the untangling of the family connections or non connections.
Regarding the drip feeding of twenty years of work, Well Done! Your contribution to the understanding of the historical socio-mêlee, miscegenation, losbandigheid of the early Cape, has helped to dispel many a myth, and has breathed life in some of my ancestors.

Regarding your e-mail address, I must humbly confess that when I first saw it, my mind was more drawn to a particular kind of "wa". But soon my assumption was that it was with reference to "Eva", may I ask, how you came to this spelling, since I have not seen it before, and yet it seems rather obvious that it is the way it ought to be said and spelled?

O die lekker, lekker lewe in die Kaap, die Kaap het 'n lekker lewe,
Keep up the good work.
Andre van Rensburg

>
> Subject: RE: VAN DER SWAAN
> Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 14:57:31 +0000
> From: "Mansell Upham" <>
> To:
>
> This gives me some insights into how Claas Jansz: van Rensburg and Aletta=
> related
> to people from different racial backgrounds. This is confirmed when takin=
> g into
> account that Agnietie Camfer's mother was Ansela van die Kaap.

****
To what extent their 'racial' background was relevant at the time is not

> always easy to determine. There may have been 'ethnic' differences - the
> term 'race' could perhaps be used more restrictively as an argument could be
> made out that all parties concerned were of the same race... Other
> considerations are possible, eg respectability (or lack thereof, money,
> distant ties etc etc. I can find no proof in the records that Ansela was
> indeed Agnieties's mother. I suspect that she switched fathers at some
> stage and may not even have been part of the household at "Muratie" ("Drie
> Sprong").

****

> Another intriguing bit of information that helps one to look at the socia=
> l network,
> is a document which I found on my recent visit at the Cape Archives, in w=
> hich Claas
> Jansz: van Rensburg and Johannes Hermann Karstens became partners in a bu=
> siness
> venture which only lasted three months (Karstens was married to Catharina=
> van As)

*****

> Note: the thricely-wed Catharina van As is no descendant of Angela's son
> Jacobus van As but descends from Louis van As and his ruanaway
> cross-dressing wife.
>
> Unfortunately I was not able to get the whole saga of Angela and her fami=
> ly in your
> research which you strung out as long as possible, in as many issues of C=
> apensis as
> possible. That's what I call "genealogical drip feed"

*****

> You can only get "the whole saga of Angela and her family" once it is
> completed. Patience, dear fellow...it's taken more than 20 years before any
> of the information could find its way into your lap. A compilation of all
> the drips (droppings?) is planned in future...vasbyt...it's not easy trying
> to unravel a court case of 1688.
>
> Swaar dra, al aan die een kant, swaar dra....altyd...
> Groetjes
> Mansell Upham

This thread: