The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
As I trawl through archival material I am constantly struck by the similarities that exist between the present and the past. Individuals have come and gone but the things to which they aspired and the things they got up to back then were, and are, essentially the same. Now I can almost hear you say that things couldn’t possibly have been as frantic and twisted then as they are today. No? Let’s make a few comparisons. Let’s start with families. I have come across many, many cases throughout the 19th Century where families were fragmented by desertion, divorce or death. Sound...
Read MoreEsau of Groot Constantia – a Slave in Trouble
On the morning of Tuesday the 28th February 1832 some two hundred people witnessed a rather unusual public spectacle in the leafy little village of Wynberg just outside of Cape Town. It took place in front of the premises of William Moore the local baker and such was the nature of this event that those who witnessed it probably never forgot that morning for the rest of their lives. The occasion was a public execution. To this end a gallows had been erected on an open space opposite 42 year old Moore’s home and business. Just before 9 am the prisoner, a slave by the name of Esau, was brought...
Read MoreA New Look
Welcome to the new look South African Genealogy website. The site has been online for 11 years now, which is pretty long in the tooth for any website, especially without any major changes. And it really showed. So I took a long hard look at the appearance, the navigation and the searchability of the data and it became clear that it was time for a serious make over. What’s new? Well, apart from the cleaner, less cluttered appearance, the biggest change is how we access the data in what I called the DataArchive on the old site. There you would have to trawl through every single list to...
Read MoreThe Last Voyage of the RMS Teuton
On the evening of August 30th 1881 the Royal Mail Ship Teuton was steaming at a steady 12 knots off the Cape south coast en route to Algoa Bay in South Africa. Since her departure from Table Bay at 10am that morning, conditions had been most favourable and many passengers had taken advantage of the mild winter afternoon to stroll on the sunny deck and enjoy the view of the coastline some 6 miles distant. By 7:20pm the passengers had already enjoyed a hearty dinner and were being served coffee. Captain Edward Manning and his Chief Officer Eugene Wardroper were still in attendance in the dining...
Read MoreAliwal Road Primary School
I cried on my first day of school. My Sub A teacher at Aliwal Road Primary School (ARPS), Mrs Blomerus took me by the hand and led me to the Sub A classroom where she sat me down, gave me a little wooden board and big dollop of green clay and in her kindly voice soothed away my sadness and helped me to make a little clay figure. She was amazing. The years that followed were the happiest of times. I have the fondest memories of Mr Haupt the headmaster, or ‘Hooftie’, as we called him and of Mrs Blomerus who were firm but kindly in their manner. The vice-principal, Mr Naude was a bit...
Read MoreHistory Matters
Winston Churchill once said: “The further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to see.” There is so much truth in that statement and yet it is almost impossible to get young people to read about history let alone enjoy it. Why? Where does it all go wrong? Hang on…I hear the philosophers among us saying maybe ‘the history haters’ are all ‘right’ and us ‘history huggers’ are all ‘wrong’; that history is just a boring old pile of stuff that happened in the past and we should all just forget about it and move...
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