History is often like detective work – you never know what
you will find, but if you scratch just a little beneath the surface skeletons
are bound to come flying out. If there is one key thing you have to have when
researching the past, it’s patience. Days can go by with you trawling through
endless lists and volumes of the hard-to-read handwriting of a person who
penned something 300 years ago, in a form of Dutch that is no longer spoken and
that certainly wasn't standardized. When you come across a story that relates
to the people you are looking for it is like finding the leprechaun’s pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow. You have to stifle the urge to scream out with
joy in those quiet rooms filled with ancient volumes and sometimes even more
ancient fellow researchers working diligently alongside you.
It is probably because of this that I will always remember
the day when past met present for me in the archives. One of the owners of the
farm I had been researching was Jurgen Hendrik Engela, who had married into the
farm so to speak. 300 years ago it was custom in Cape Dutch law that should a
woman marry, all the property she owned (including slaves) would automatically
become that of her husband. Hailing from Pruisies Minden in Germany, J.H.
Engela settled at the Cape in 1738, as a soldier. He became a freeburgher in
1746, coincidentally in the same year that he married the wealthy widow of
property, Anna van Staden. Engela’s wealth must have increased considerably
from that of a man surviving on a company soldiers’ wage to that of one owning
a farm that came with 18 slave men, 3 slave women, 900 sheep and 9,000 wine
stocks (according to the census records of 1751). In fact this period in the
ownership of Delta (then known as Zandvliet) really characterized what life at
the early Cape was all about: remarriage and short life expectancy. Engela was
indeed Anna’s second husband. Her first, Johannes van Niekerk, had died in
1744. He had himself been married previously to Engela du Plooy, who had died
in 1738, possibly from childbirth complications, as her household inventory was
drawn up just one month after the birth of her second daughter and last of five
children.
After the death of Anna in 1753, Jurgen continued to
prosper, as the census records of 1767 indicates that he owned 500 sheep, 30
horses, 70 heads of cattle, 30 leaguers of wine and 25,000 wine stocks. Not
that all was easy going for him, though; in 1751, Abraham van Bengalen (aged
50), a slave belonging to Engela, was one of a group of 12 fugitives captured
by a commando. Abraham was accused of desertion, stealing two sheep from his
master’s flock (his contribution to feeding his fellow deserters) and - far
more seriously - of partnering with a gang that was guilty of subterfuge,
conspiracy, and the premeditated murder of other slaves. Abraham was found
guilty by association and hanged. In 1771, Jurgen Hendrik Engela transferred
Delta to Jan (or Jean) de Villiers, in what was to begin half a century of De
Villiers ownership of the property.
Sometimes when in the throws of researching it is hard to
get these people out of your head, which is probably why I had to re-read the
sign-in register at the archives one morning before I would believe what I was
seeing. Just before I had arrived there, somebody named H. Engela had signed
in, and he was now apparently sitting at table 22. On introduction it turned
out that I had all along been working in the same room as a direct descendant
of Jurgen Hendrik Engela, who had owned Delta over two and a half centuries
ago. And let me tell you, if there is someone who knows about patience in
researching the written record it is this gentleman, Happy Engela. For the past
thirty years Happy has painstakingly recorded documents relating to 86,000
individuals in addition to recording some 23,000 graves and numerous
transcriptions of registers for the Overberg region. Happy has now retired from
his retirement project, and who could blame him for wanting a little rest. The
Genealogical Society have since produced a CD titled “Overberg Families”, which
makes his work available to the public. And guess what?: it includes the rump
of the early South African genealogy of the Solms family, the current owners of
Delta.
It felt like a strange act of cosmic fate when Happy
returned to Solms-Delta in 2005, to walk the ground that his ancestor had once
lived on. And since so many of the owners of Delta were the stamvaders of other
Afrikaans families, Happy is not the only one who has experienced this meeting
of past and present at Delta. The Cape really is a beautiful place, where we
can walk in the footsteps of our ancestors, be they people who lived here a
million of years ago or just a couple of centuries.
Tracey Randle, historian at Solms-Delta
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