Dear readers/ followers
Please see my heritage web site for latest pictures and researched information with regards to my family history.
Various followers / Facebook friends or e-mails reflect different roots of origin, such as Netherlands versus Belgium and Germany versus Wales etc. Yes, point taken However, the doyan of researchers on our South African de Beer's family history, Diwwie de Beer, from Centurion, Pretoria, also agrre that the specific roots back to Holland or Germany may be uncertain. Subsequently hits of the My Heritage Website come up with multiple variables.
As far as my personal line is concerned, the University of Pretoria's research on Afrikaner DNA's, indicates that I have ancestors in the Southern parts of Russia and Northern Germany. Obviously the forefathers migrated down to Belgium, most probably LAND VAN WAAS, in VLAANDERE. The ship building and maritime industry of Holland attracted many workers all over Europe as far as Russia in those years. (Cf. Dutch words in Russian for the respective part of a ship). The first De Beer who landed via a Netherland vessel in the Cape of Good Hope, was in the first instance a skilled woodworker. He started of with wagon building, however, also as a soldier and cum farmer in Drakensville during the government headed by Van der Stel.
The farm got too small for the family and eventually moved alongside the coastal region to Mosselbay where the Portuguese discoverers like Bartholomew Dias, have landed before. The de Beer's then found their way through the Swartberge near Oudshoorn to the other side of the mountain and started Qeeekvallei in the Klein Karoo. This establishment was renamed after Prince Albert, during the British colonial period. My specific forefathers first moved further on to Colesburg and Graaf Reinette whers some graves could be found. One part of the family trekked to Kimberley while the other settled in Fautresmith,. Eventuall my great great grand father settled on a farm INHOEK where he was later buried alongside the graves of his first and second wives. German references on the tombstones suggest that they might have spoken a lower form of German which was eventually also part of Dutch. (Europe's regional boarders in the previous millenium were not fixed as well as the migrant patterns which was constantly in flux.
The little town, Petrusburg, was started on part of the de Beer's farm. The graves of my grandfather( Karel Johannes de Beer) and his father (Barend Petrus de Beer) are prominent in the Petrusburg graveyard where a few graves of British soldier of the Anglo Boer War 1899-1902 could also be found. Some other de Beer are also buried on their former farm, DRIE HOEK, next to Voigtpos on route to Kimberley.
Barend Petrus de Beer, a cousin (nephew) of my grat grand father, was baptized in the first Seventh Day Adventist Churh in Africa, Kimberley (Beaconsfield). His name and the names of other de Beers who were founder members of the Seventh Adventist Church along with the Wessels family who donated the church yard. These de Beer's are the original owners of the farms where diamonds were found and who sold it to Cecil John Rhodes who established the well known DEBEERS DIAMOND industry. (For detailed information, please go to previous publications with photographs in http://www.kareldebrr.blogspot.com).
