Pierre Cronjé, SV/PROG 1 - Pierre Cronje's birthplace

Very interesting, thank you.
It seems to come from Boucher: "Pierre, born about the year 1671, and his brother Etienne considered themselves Normans and may perhaps have come from the Thimerais. The abjuration of a Francois Cronier of La Ferte-Vidame at Leyden in September 1687 provides a possible clue. p118-9"

Googling Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais, Eure-et-Loir.... :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymerais & https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teauneuf-en-Thymerais : "Located on the borders of the Ile-de-France , Normandy , Perche and Beauce" which is where it is shown on the map from Boucher on the project.

It does seem that it should either be Thymerais or Normandy?

I'm going to go with "Pierre,..and his brother Etienne considered themselves Normans" and remove the Thimerais bit, for now.

The Town is Rouen in Normandy

Do you have Sources for that, Pieter?

There is another Pierre Cronier (his date of birth is totally different to our Pierre's dob) that comes from "Fontaine-le-Borg" which falls under the municipality (Maire as they call it) of Rouen. This is very far away from Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais or just plain Thimerais. It could possibly be that they are related and that they come from the same area???

I have been to both places, and I am not convinced it is not Rouen. By the same token, I think that Thimerais is a red herring. First of all, the spelling is not right. The closest place I could find with a name similar to it in France is Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais. I think Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais is the totally wrong place. I may be wrong.

Pieter Carel Cronje is correct, Rouen is in Normandy, on the Seine River, downstream from Paris.

PS Normandy means "Man from the North". This was called such because so many Germans (known as Normans by the French people living in France already) had settled there is trough the centuries.

Boucher is a translation - hence spelling difference. Not significant in itself.
Cronier is a French surname, so the fact that other Frenchmen have it doesn't pin point place.
We need a source for our Pierre born in / living in Rouen.

In response to Sharon's references to Wikipedia above, the commune of Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais was once an important stronghold reigning over the whole natural and historic PROVINCE of Thymerais (i.e. it was not a town, but a province). the area used to form financially and administratively part of the Généralité of Alençon (99 kilometres away), which was part of Normandy. We must also take into account that the area's borders have also only changed during the years around 1790 -1800. If you take e.g. South Africa pre-1994 with only 4 provinces, which were re-zoned into 9 provinces, where some people still refer to "Transvaal". If you take a town like Christiana, it is on the border of the Free State and the North-West Province and very close to the Northern Cape and it depends which farmer you ask in which province they stay, what answer you'll receive. It might be that they were born in Normandy, but that it has changed since, therefore I think that we can maybe stick with the resources available (or take their word for it ;-))

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymerais)

When many Norman towns (Alençon, Rouen, Caen, Coutances, Bayeux) joined the Protestant Reformation, battles ensued throughout the province. In the Channel Islands, a period of Calvinism following the Reformation was suppressed when Anglicanism was imposed following the English Civil War. In the 1780s, the economic crisis and the crisis of the Ancien Régime struck Normandy as well as other parts of the nation, leading to the French Revolution. Bad harvests, technical progress and the effects of the Eden Agreement signed in 1786 affected employment and the economy of the province. Normans laboured under a heavy fiscal burden.
In 1790 the five departments of Normandy replaced the former province.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy)

Many thanks for that - I'll add it back.

Hi,
I've found this in Wikipedia- maybe the reason why they went to Delft was because the church has conducted it services in French (I was wondering why the piece on his confirmation into the reformed church in Holland was written in French, but now I realised that the church was a French-speaking congregation.

Netherlands
Some Huguenots fought in the Low Countries alongside the Dutch against Spain during the first years of the Dutch Revolt (1568–1609). The Dutch Republic rapidly became a destination for Huguenot exiles. Early ties were already visible in the "Apologie" of William the Silent, condemning the Spanish Inquisition, which was written by his court minister, the Huguenot Pierre L'Oyseleur, lord of Villiers. Louise de Coligny, daughter of the murdered Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny, married William the Silent, leader of the Dutch (Calvinist) revolt against Spanish (Catholic) rule. As both spoke French in daily life, their court church in the Prinsenhof in Delft held services in French. The practice has continued to the present day. The Prinsenhof is one of the 14 active Walloon churches of the Dutch Reformed Church (now of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands). The ties between Huguenots and the Dutch Republic's military and political leadership, the House of Orange-Nassau, which existed since the early days of the Dutch Revolt, helped support the many early settlements of Huguenots in the Dutch Republic's colonies. They settled at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and New Netherland in North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenots

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waalse_kerk_(Delft) probably their congregation in Delft

So interesting. Thank you. Add to the About as well.