MOTHER WITH YOUNGEST SON: FONNIE DE BEER

My brother, nick named Fonnie, enjoys a chat with "Ma Meisie" in Bloemfontein. Fonnie lives in Pretoria and is a draughtsman at Transnet (the former South African Railways and Harbours). He travels a lot to assist with the computrer linkages between the various big centres of Transnet all over the country. Fonnie is married to Heléne (néé Botha). The have two sons (Nel and Tinus) and one daugther (Ané) and three grand children. Tinus runs Bluetub and develops e-books for Africa (tinus@bluetub.co.za)

DE BEERS ARE FROM UTRECHT IN HOLLAND

(Google; Familiy Crests. Retrieved on 2009-11-25 under Creative Commons recogntion)

Though my previous research on my specific South African De Beer family roots back to Europe predominantly shows the "Bear" insignia, there are also other designs of the respective De Beer families in Utrecht, Holland. Subsequently readers of the De Beer blogs have to distinguish between the respective familiy roots and how each branch of the family may adopted a new crest.

EUROPEAN SEARCHES FOR DE BEER FAMILY ROOTS

(Respecting the Creative Commons reference acknowledgement to Open Education Resources, this map was downloaded from Google, Cf. Rugen, on 2009-11-03)

In my research visits to family graves, I found German inscriptions on my great, great grand father's grave, on the farm "Inhoek" next to the town, Petrusburg, in the Free State province of South Africa. His name, Barent Petrus De Beer later became "Barend" with a "d". This name perpetuated also to my own father's name, Barend Petrus. The names of his first and second wives on the graves next to his, are also German orientated. Although they spoke Dutch, some researchers on the De Beer origins are not very clear about the roots back to Europe. Some speculate about the Rugen roots from Waase. Due to the vague boarders of the European past, the De Beer families were scattered all over the German and Dutch territories. It may be very interesting to conduct deeper research into the German roots which also lead to "Berna", the capitol of Switzerland. The familiar "bear" were also found on the old logos of Bern.