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From: "Keith Meintjes" <>
Subject: Re: Re[4]: [ZA] Opklim
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:51:30 -0400


Richard wrote:

"I believe there is considerable confusion in the reported discussion
on André's web page between at least two, and probably several,
different women named Catharina van Bengale.I believe there is considerable
confusion in the reported discussion
on André's web page between at least two, and probably several,
different women named Catharina van Bengale."

If you look at FW de Klerk's ancestors,

www.members.aol.com/kmeintjes

you will see two Catherines from Bengale: Catherine "Opklim" x Vermeurlen,
and "Groot Katrijn", stammoeder of the Snyman family.

Keith

------ Original Message ------
Received: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 02:42:47 AM EDT
From: Richard Ball <>
To:
Subject: Re[4]: [ZA] Opklim

Hello Henri,

HF> So it's either a gloss by Pama, or apocryphal.

So it would seem.

HF> Descendant (actor) Pieter Dirk-Uys is proud that it refers to her
HF> trade as a harlot.

It takes all sorts, I suppose, but I have never seen any suggestion
that she was a harlot. I doubt very much that any woman would have
been allowed by the (very all pervasive) government at the Cape to set
up as a harlot at this date. I also doubt, unless she could find a
male protector, as this Catharina presumably found in Jan Willemsz
Vermeulen, a single non-european woman, slave or free, would have had
much control over her own sex life.

There seems, judging from André van Rensburg's web page to which I
made reference, some considerable confusion about her, but picking
through what is written there, it seems to to me that the evidence
shows that she arrived on the VOC return fleet in 1682 with a newly
born child and presumably, like so many slaves who had to accompany
company officials on the return home, but were not allowed to go all
the way to the Netherlands since there they would have been freed and
their value lost, she was either sold to a new owner at the Cape or
possibly even set free there (always assuming she was a slave at that
time).

I can see no statement in the baptismal records either that she was a
slave or that she was a free woman. She would have had to have been a
free woman in order to marry Jan Willemsz Vermeulen in 1694, and is
stated to have been so in the marriage entry, and her children, had
they been born into slavery, would have had to have been freed as well
since they later all married as well.

I am afraid I don't know what the legal procedure was to free a slave
at that time. nor do I know what, if any records were kept, or whether
any such records have survived to the present day from this period.

What evidence there is (very little from what I can see) suggests to
me that she lived a very respectable life with Jan Willemsz Vermeulen
as his wife, before and after marriage.

I believe there is considerable confusion in the reported discussion
on André's web page between at least two, and probably several,
different women named Catharina van Bengale.

The above is purely my personal opinion on reading the page I referred
you to - I have done no research myself on these people.

Cheers,

Richard
--
Richard Ball,
Norfolk, England

http://www.ballfamilyrecords.co.uk



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