Vincent VAN GOGH, famous Dutch painter, had a younger brother, Cornelis Vincent (aka Cor), who fought in the Anglo-Boer War on the Boer side. Cornelis arrived in the Transvaal in 1890. He worked for the Nederlandsch Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatskappij at the Cornucopia Mine in Elandsfontein near Germiston, where he helped build trains. He is said to have also helped build the railway track to Lourenço Marques. When war broke out, he took leave and joined the Hollanderkorps, a commando unit under Cmdt. J.S.F. BLIGNAUT's command.

Not much is known about his whereabouts during the war. He may have joined as an ambulance driver. He was taken risoner by the British in March 1900 near Kroonstad, fell ill and put in a makeshift hospital in Brandfort where he died on 14 April 1900. He was buried in an unmarked
grave in the Brandfort churchyard.

The cause of death is a mystery – some people believe that he committed suicide, like his brothers
Vincent and Theodorus, as there was one bullet wound. The official report stated it was an accidental shooting. Others believe he died of malaria or tuberculosis. In the Dutch Reformed Church in Pretoria, Cornelius's name (C.V. van Gogh) is on the memorial plaque which
commemorates the Dutch who died in the war.

Cornelis was born 17 May 1867 in Zundert, North Brabant, to Theodorus VAN GOGH and Anna Cornelia CARBENTUS. He married Anna Catharina FUCHS in February 1898 but the marriage did not last long.

Sources:
Discover Pretoria, by Henie Heydenrych & Abrie Swiegers, J.B. van Schaik, Pretoria, 1999
Nederlanders in Transvaal 1850-1950, by Jan Ploeger, J. L. van Schaik, Pretoria, 1994
Cornelis Vincent van Gogh in Transvaal, by Dr. Jan Ploeger, Lantern journal, Dec 1981
Newspaper article: De Volksstem 26 Sept 1906

Written by and with kind permission Anne Lehmkuhl

Over 3300 records from 1892 – 2004

Common surnames that appear in this register are Arendse, Bennett, Carelse, Collins, Daniels, Davids, Erasmus, Fisher, Fortuin, Fredericks, Hendricks, Isaacs, Jacobs, Jones, Lawrence, Manuel, Petersen, Ross, Samuels, Smith, Solomons, Thomas, Titus and Williams.

The Parish of St. Philips was built by the Cowley Monks who came from a village near Oxford in England. This order was founded by Fr. Richard Meux Cowley in 1866, and where Viscount Nuffield first made his Morris Cowley and Morris Oxford cars.

The parish community was a very mixed one but St. Philips was a church of the people and a church of the poor and the mortality rate was high.

It is interesting to note the number of “sick houses” that were in District Six where many people opened up their homes to the dying as a large percentage were not admitted local hospitals and the social infrustucture did not cater for the poor.

Slave woman Lydia Williams was one of the founding members of the church and helped the Cowley Fathers with their work. Information on Lydia can be found in the Cape Town Archives in the documents of the Cowley Evangelists.

Harold Cressy’s wife Caroline had her burial service performed by the Rev. Smart in this parish. She was buried on the 15 October 1918 after she had died in the great flu epidemic.

Laughing at Kurt’s Family. In June 2009 we joined Kurt Schoonraad on a journey into his past on  SABC 2. This extraordinary passage with Kurt will revealed some amazing stories in the comedian’s life that might or might not have be a laughing matter…   We found out what military background his  ancestors had and questioned “Did the family really come from the Island of St. Helena?”  And what part of his family is of German descent?

During an interview with Kurt he said: “it’s like the Cape Flats on some other part of the planet, apparently the whole culture mix happened there already”; On whether he is really African or not, Kurt says “I think it’s a question that’s becoming obsolete at the moment” adding “I’d like to believe I’m a citizen of the world”.

Kurt was born in District Six, Cape Town and moved to Mitchell’s Plain when South Africa’s apartheid government forcibly removed families from the District Six area. Kurt started school at Zonnebloem Primary in District Six, transferred to Duneside Primary in Mitchell’s Plain and fell in love with the stage at age 10 when he joined the Creative School of Speech And Drama. His love of acting and entertaining continued in High School where he was inspired by his teacher Mr. Keston at Rockland’s Senior Secondary. In 1999 one of his friends suggested he try out for the Smirnoff Comedy Festival’s New Faces search, he took their advice and was accepted to perform as part of the festival’s stand-up comedy line-up. Without any regrets Kurt is today one of South Africa’s most successful stand-up comedians.

Bartholomew Dias

Over 1500 burials have been transcribed from these parish registers. The majority of the deceased persons were listed as living in Mossel Bay and the were given as “Aliwal”.

Surnames included are Arendse, Bayman, Cameron, Cunningham, Damons, Domingo, February, Frans, Hendriks, Isaacs, Jantjes, January, Karelse, Losper, Lukas, Maart, Malgas, Maori, Marais, Mathews, McBean, Meyer, Michaels, Muller, Olkers, Pamplin, Pickering, Pieterze, Roman, Roode, Smith, Tobias, Waites, Welkom, Wiggett and Williams just to mention a few.

Mossel Bay was one of the earliest towns visited in Southern African when Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape in 1487 in an attempt to find the sea route to the East. The town was orignally called Golfo dos Vaquerios meaning “bay of herdsmen) in Portuguese.

On 8 July 1601 another Dutch navigator, Paulus van Caerden, named the bay Mossel Bay, as, according to tradition, he could only find a bed of mussels with which to replenish his ship’s provisions. The present town was founded in 1848 and was named Aliwal in honour of the victory of Sir Harry Smith, Governor of the Cape Colony (1847-51), over the Sikhs at Aliwal in India on 28 Jan. 1846. This official name never became popular and, to avoid confusion with Aliwal North, the old name of Mossel Bay was restored.

This database of Voters for the town of Potgieterus including images not only highlights remnants of the old Voortekker families but also displays an amazing number of English families such as Acutt, Braithwaite, Cawood, Clayton and many others in this once very dominant Afrikaans town. This amazing collection also provides maiden names of women voters too.

After the Voortrekker leaders Hendrik Potgieter and Andries Pretorius had become reconciled in 1852, the former established a town at Makapan’s Poort, between the Waterberg and the Strydpoort Mountains, which he named Vredenburg (`town of peace’) to commemorate the reconciliation. On 25 Sept. 1858 the Volksraad renamed the town Pietpotgietersrust after Pieter Johannes, the son of Hendrik Potgieter, killed at the entrance of Makapan’s Cave during the punitive expedition against Chief Makapan. Because of fever and trouble with the Bantu, the town was abandoned and deserted for twenty years, but after 1890 it was re-established. Subsequently the town, which was known as P.P.Rust for short, abbreviated its name to Potgietersrust, which was modernised to Potgietersrus in 1939. A village council was constituted in 1904, and in 1935 it became a municipality.

In September 1854 Willem Prinsloo’s party, consisting of 18 men, women and children, were massacred at Moorddrift (16 km south of Potgietersrus on the national road) by followers of the chiefs Makapan and Mapela. In 1937 the spot was marked by a small monument. Apart from Makapan’s Cave, which has been proclaimed a historical monument, the valley in which the caves are situated is of so much archaeological and palaeontological interest that part of it has been proclaimed a natural and scientific monument. A group of ana-trees (Acacia albida) in the Vaaltyn Makapan Location, 16 km from Potgietersrus, was proclaimed a natural monument in 1949. According to tradition, Livingstone camped in the shade of these trees, which are some 20 metres in height, and the Voortrekkers held meetings under them.

Acknowledgement: Standard Encylopedia of South Africa

Congratulations to Justin Crossley for wining our photo competition. Justin added 124 fantastic images on his family history to our image gallery. Esme Van der Westhuizen was our runner up with 104 stunning Pienaar family photos.

He has also provided us with a brief story of his Crossley family history to share with everyone

Our gallery is a splendid way of sharing and archiving your documents and family photographs that can easily be share with family and friends around the world. This platform also provides a wonderful place for other people researching the same family as you to connect and help one another.

The Maps of Africa to 1900 digital collection contains images of maps listed in the bibliography Maps of Africa to 1900: A Checklist of Maps in Atlases and Geographical Journals in the Collections of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Bassett & Scheven, Urbana: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 2000). As such, this collection mines not only the Library’s map collections, but also its extensive collection of 19th century atlases and geographical journals, including the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (United Kingdom), the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris (France), and Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen (Germany).

Bassett’s and Scheven’s original bibliography lists 2,416 maps of which nearly 78 percent date from the 19th century. Africanists and historians of cartography are drawn to this century because the map of the continent changed so rapidly in the wake of European explorations, conquests, and colonization (Bassett & Scheven, p. iii). About a quarter of the collection dates from the sixteenth century, 9 percent from the seventeenth, and 13 percent from the eighteenth century.

The Library is digitizing as many of the maps as possible, condition permitting. Maps are added to the collection as they are completed.

The African Film Library is an M-Net initiative showcasing the best of the African film industry – making the movies easily accessible for movie aficionados around the world.

The African film industry is one of the oldest – with its roots in Ain el Ghezel (The Girl of Carthage), which was produced in Tunisia by Chemama Chikly in 1924. M-Net has spent the last three years negotiating the rights to almost 600 works in English, French, Arabic and Portuguese and digitally remastering them.

The library forms an important archive of the continent’s cultural cinematic heritage, and also, for the first time, makes the African artists’ works easily accessible by a wide viewership around the globe – creating a new audience for existing and emerging filmmakers.

The library consists of award-winning works from more than 80 producers including Senegalese Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Mambety, Yousef Chahine from Egypt and Haile Gerima from Ethiopia. This is great source for Heritage enthusiasts.