Anderson Davel History in Africa:

According to Genealogy

Introduction

I got the genealogy bug from my Dad who was the author of GiquatownAndersons.com. Much of what is in this short treatise is based on that work.

I intend to cover the Davel, Pretorius, Anderson and Blyth, families. I will add a few other names where they impact in a major or interesting way. I have sort of ordered the information in line with the date the first of that line entered Africa usually the Cape, and moved on from there. Of course I would be remiss if I don’t include the Symons and Kable families as they too have a history in early African settlement. So here goes:

 I believe it was a Pretorius who first arrived in South Africa during the time of Van Riebeeck’s administration, so Pretorius comes first.

The Pretorius Line

My mother’s mother was Helena Elizabeth Pretorius (1897 – 1963). She was born on Dec 28, 1896, in Nylstroom, Northern Transvaal. (South Africa was yet to be unified.)

The name Pretorius is derived from the Latin title Praetorius, which means 'Leader of a community' and was customarily added to eminent folk during the Days of the Holy Roman Empire.

The earliest Pretorious I could find was Barentsz Schout who was awarded the title Paetorious to become Barentz Praetorious. He was born in October 1614 in Leiden, Zuid-Holland, Nederland. He died in 1664 at was then the grand old age of 49 in Emmerik, Hertogdom Kleef, Heilige Roomse Reijk (Holy Roman Empire in English). He was the father of our ancestor Johannes Pretorious.

Joannes "Johannes" Pretorius formerly Schout aka Praetorius, born 26 Oct 1642 in Ouddorp, Zuid-Holland, Nederland. He died 30 Apr 1694 at age 51 in de Caep de Goede Hoop. He is considered the original Pretorius in South Africa and probably our earliest ancestor in Africa. Johannes became a sailor in a merchant fleet and did several voyages to the Orient mainly what is now known as India. However in 1666 he settled in Mauritius as an administrator.

The Dutch landed on that island in 1598 and named it after their stadtholder Maurice of Orange (Nassau). In 1638 the United East Indies Company (VOC) decided to settle the island for the first time as it is strategically located approximately halfway between the Cape and Batavia (Jakarta) on the way to the East Indies. In 1657 Jan van Riebeeck who was at the time Adminitrator of the Cape was informed that it was planned to place Mauritius under the Cape administration. I am not sure Johannes moved directly to the Cape from Mauritius or returned to Holland in between but in 1666 he moved to de Caep de Goede Hoop as the Cape area was then called.

Those of you who remember your South African history know that a couple of centuries later the English took over the Dutch colonies in Africa in 1795 after the  war with France and the original Dutch settlers (now colloquially known as “The Boers”) were unable to accept the English administration and gradually moved east and north, culminating in the Great Trek of 1835. Several Pretorius descendants were important in the Boer community including a Transvaal President after whom the city of Pretoria is named. I have been unable to connect the dots between our Pretorius line and that famous man, but as will be seen, other connections of our family to other important historical figures will emerge.

 The Davel Line

My mother’s maiden name was Davel, her father being Willem Marthinus Davel born 7 Oct 1886 in Middleburg Transvaal.

The earliest Davel I could find was Johann Christian (Johan Christiaan) Davel aka Dafel, Taaffel Born about 1720 in Bautzen, Dresden, Sachsen, Heiliges Römisches Reich (spelling now in Geman), Died about 1768 at about age 48 in Stellenbosch, de Caep de Goede Hoop. He married Johanna Katharina Nel in Stellenbosch on 24 November 1748. The picture shows the marriage register and the Davel wedding is the 4^th one down. Johan Christian came from a line of carpenters specializing in wood-frame wall-panel fabrication and installation. Like many Germans at the time he left Saxony for the Netherlands in search of a future, in a country that was neutral and prosperous. As the Dutch had established a garrisoned trading station at Table Bay forming the first permanent European settlement in South Africa on 06 Apr 1652, he was recruited as a solder and took up VOC service employment on 08 Aug 1733 in North Holland. He was soon posted to the Cape and set sail on 08 Aug 1733. On the arrival at the Cape on 26 Nov 1733, Johan left the ship with 26 other soldiers. (This arrival date cements his position as the earliest of our ancestors arriving in South Africa.) Probably during his VOC service he became known as DAFEL to more easily identify himself with his Dutch comrades, as was the common practice. On 03 Sep 1736 he terminated his employment to become a free citizen. A note of interest is that a few generations down one finds Jan Christian Smuts as one of our ancestors through the Davel line.

The Anderson Line.

My Dad got hooked on genealogy when he began to research his Dad’s parents and became aware of the linkage to William Of Griquatown, a major link in the missionary history of South Africa. William was born in London in 1768 but his origins go back to Inverness, Scotland, and it was here that Dad and Eddie found our ancestry back to the 1600’s. They found a Thomas born in 1645, but more reliably, a George Anderson, a weaver in Inverness who was born in 1663.

However, the first Anderson to enter South Africa was William born December 1^st 1769 in London. He became a missionary and came to the Cape in 1801 and established a mission in Griquastad in the northern Cape. He married Johanna Schonken and they had at least 10 children. William died in Pacaltsdorp near George in 1852 at the age of 82. There is lots more about William in Peter’s book “Weapons of Peace”. It is also interesting to note that Johanna was probably a slave descendant, a fact uncovered by Noreen which could actually make her line the earliest in South Africa. I will come back to this a little later.

The Blyth line.

My Dad’s mother was Sheila Blyth. The Blyth family lived in Beaufort West, in the Cape. The furthest back I could go was again to Scotland where James Blyth was a flax weaver some time before 1807 when John Balfor Blyth was born. He had five wives and amassed 13 children before dying (exhausted I am sure) in 1891 in Beaufort West. Just incidentally, his son, David Henderson Blyth also had 11 children. That’s a lot of Blyths!

The Symons Line.

In my first iteration of this story I said, “Penny’s Dad was a Symons, and because the earliest South African Symons was an 1820 Settler, there is quite a lot of information about him and his arrival in the Cape.”  Further examination of this reveals that, technically, it was a subsidiary line that was actually classified as 1820 settlers, through Edith Brown. Her Great Grandfather Stephen Brown was an accredited 1820 settler, indeed was a group leader of one of the many groups. Anyway, the earliest Symons was William Symons who was born in 1815 in Cornwall, UK, was christened on 8 Jan 1815, died in  1918 in King Williams Town, Cape at age 103. He arrived with his eight children all under 18, and it seems that the mother of those eight kids, Mary Dobson, had died a few years earlier. The one of those eight kids best known to this family was Penny’s Grandfather Robert Symons who was 4 when he arrived on the Lady Kennaway in what is now east London in1857.

The Kable Line.

Penny’s Mom was born Jessie Kable, and the Kable line is also very interesting. The earliest ancestor I could find was Joseph Keubel who was born in 1810 in Germany. The interesting part is that he died in Rochester, New York, which is directly across Lake Ontario from Toronto. His son Gregorius was also born there in 1847. I can’t be sure when he came to South Africa, but he married in King Williams Town in 1872. It was his son George who married Penny’s grandmother Jessie who was a much loved member of her parents household for many years.

The Cadle 1820 connection.

Just before ending this voyage into our family’s part in Southern African history I must mention Gwenda Cadle. She married my Dad's brother Ian. While researching the Brown line and their part in the 1820 settlement, I came across a William Cock, born in Cornwall in 1793. Every time I checked his profile on wiki it told me I was related to this eminent guy who also led a party to Kafraria in 1820. I could not work out the connection until I found that Gwenda was a descendant by marriage which discovery led me to find that her x-times great grandfather John Cadle born 1795 was also an 1820 settler. Proof how deep the genealogical tentacles grow.  

Slave heritage!

I promised to come back to Johanna Schonken, William of Griquatown’s wife. Both her parents, Bartholomeus Schonken and Elizabeth Marie Ellenwee have ancestors who were designated “van de Kaap” a designation given to descendants of slaves. Both Alan and Noreen have written extensively on this topic. I have a personal opinion that William’s choice of Johanna as his partner was partly driven by her heritage as the people he had chosen to minister to, the Griquas, were themselves “van de Kaap” and had escaped out of the reach of the authorities in the Cape.

So much of the history of Southern Africa is tainted with intolerance, from the Boers and the English settlers, the 1820 settlers and the Xhosa, and even the Griquas, just trying to be free. And yet the courage and resilience of the survivors remain an inspiration and we should not forget them.