Theunis Jacobus Nel

Theunis Jacobus Nel:

NATAL HUGUENOT CONNECTIONS: THE NELS
Stanley G M Ridge
My fascination with the Nels began with my grandmother. I was a little country boy from an isolated farm on a very rough road some 10 kms from Richmond, Natal. It was an exclusively English and Zulu-speaking neighbourhood. One day, my grandmother spoke to my mother in a language I did not know. I was both alarmed and interested. One does not want to be left out. But Mum and Gran clearly found Afrikaans useful for discussing things not meant for young ears. What really intrigued me in all this was finding out that my granny was not “English”! She was born Nel in Greytown. This led to lots of questions. Over time, I learnt we were closely connected with Voortrekkers, Sarie Marais (actually Maré), Pietermaritzburg’s first Landdrost, a member of the Natal Volksraad, a member of the Natal Parliament, the Chief Justice and last Acting Governor of the Colony of Natal, and a Senator in the first Union parliament - and all through the Nels.
Our Nels came to the Cape in 1688 as French Huguenot refugees who had lived in exile in Amsterdam long enough to have had two children. The elder one died there. Those were the days of high infant mortality. The younger child, Jean came to the Cape as a 1-yr old. Guillaume Néel of Rouen, tailor and farmer, and his wife, Jeanne de la Batte of Saumur, landed in Cape Town with their baby son on 5 June 1688 after a 3-1/2 month voyage on De Schelde. They settled in Stellenbosch, buying the farm Blaauwklip on 9 November 1690, and acquiring Bootman’s Drift in Drakenstein. The couple had 10 more children, and were more thoroughly woven into the social fabric of the Cape through this extensive family than their own best efforts could have achieved. The Nels after them epitomise the eastward movement which ultimately led to Natal.
Jean (Jan), the eldest child, married Susanna Fourie in Cape Town in 1816, and was established at Blaauwklip and later at Rustenburg and Keerweder, also in the Stellenbosch district. They had seven children. They must have acquired interests 200 kms to the east, because their third child, Louis, was baptised in Swellendam on 16 February 1721. However, he was a Heemraad in Stellenbosch the next year.
At the age of 25, Louis set up on his own, renting de Kwartel Fonteijn on the Hex, District of Swellendam in 1747, and marrying Maria Rossouw back in Drakenstein on 27 December of that year. Louis’s fatstock enterprises had him edging up to 250 kms to the east of Swellendam in search of the best grazing. By 1768 he had come to “de brake fonteijn aan deese sijde van de Cango”. But he seems to have made Swellendam his base, as he died there in 1791.
Louis’s eldest son, Johannes Petrus, was born in 1749 in Swellendam. He was one of 10 children. Johannes married Cecilia Johanna du Preez in 1769. She was a Swellendam woman six years his senior, the widow of Johannes Fourie, and she already had four children. They were to have eight more. Pressing 550 kms east of his birthplace, Johannes farmed on Klipfontein under the Sneeuwberg near Graaff Reinet, later returning 300 kms to Voorbedagt in Cango.

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What is striking is the physical mobility of these early settlers. Johannes and Cecilia’s fourth child, Louis Jacobus, was baptised on 15 February 1778 in Paarl, about 750 kms to the west of Graaff Reinet. In 1837 he was to become the oldest Voortrekker leader, travelling more than 1000 kms from Graaff Reinet north and east by oxwagon before settling in Pietermaritzburg at the age of 60. He died there in his nineties, sometime before February 1875.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Louis Jacobus married Johanna Margaretha Botha in 1802. They had 11 children and went to live in the eastern Cape near Uitenhage. He was a Field Cornet in 1609, but quarrelled with General Jacob Glen Cuyler, Landdrost of Uitenhage, and apparently then moved on to Commandofontein near Bedford. In 1837 he was in tussles about slaves. He does not seem to have been the most enlightened of men. Perhaps wisely, he decided to trek. His party met up with the Uys trek near what is now Bethlehem, where they heard of the massacre of Piet Retief and his men, and of the bloodshed at Blaauwkrantz and Weenen. In response, the combined group decided to send a party against the Zulus. It was routed at Italeni. Louis and Johanna lost their eldest son, Johannes, another son, Louis junior, and their son-in-law and cousin Gert Cornelius Nel. After all this it is hard to imagine Louis and Johanna settled in comfortable domesticity in the new town of Pietermaritzburg within a year. Louis became a member of the

Natal Volksraad, which sat until the British takeover in 1845, and their eldest surviving son, Philip Rudolph Nel, was elected Pietermaritzburg’s first Landdrost from 29 July 1839.
Two Natal Nel connections of wider interest must be mentioned here. The first is with General Louis Botha, South Africa’s first Prime Minister. Louis Jacobus’s sister, Cecilia Johanna Nel married Theunis Jacobus Botha and they had a son, Philip Rudolph. He married Anna, daughter of Louis Jacobus’s first cousin, also Louis. Anna and Philip Rudolph, both with strong Nel ancestry, were Louis Botha’s paternal grandparents.
The second connection is with “Sarie Marais,” or more correctly Maré. Louis Jacobus and Johanna
had a grandson by their daughter Elizabeth Frederika and Gert Cornelius Nel who was killed at Italeni. This
grandson, Louis, was later known as “Oom Vaal Lewies”. He married the 17-year-old Sarie Maré and took her to his farm between Kranskop and Greytown. Sarie had 11 children before she died at the age of 37 during childbirth. She was buried on the farm. One of her sons, the Reverend Paul Nel, who was chaplain to the Boer forces in the early 1900s, used to tell stories of his “beautiful mother” around the campfire at night. She soon became an icon to the Boers forces. He married the Sarie Maré, after whom the famous song is named. Their son, Ds Paul Nel of Ermelo, had the manuscript and passed it on to his daughter, Janie, wife of the first Natal University Vice-Chancellor, E G Malherbe.

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It is time to return to the line. Louis and Johanna’s fourth son was Theunis Jacobus Nel, my great great grandfather (1809–1884). He married Danie Johanna Martina van Aardt. Her case highlights the plight of women at the time: she died in 1841 at the age of 20, having already given birth to three children. Theunis Jacobus then married Maria Johanna Roux (1813-1880). They had 5 children, of whom the fourth, Theunis Jacobus Nel II (1851–1919), was my great grandfather.
Theunis Jacobus I and his wife Maria Johanna, taken in 1860.

This Theunis Jacobus, married Johanna Magdalena Aletta Hansmeyer (1856–1911). His younger sister Mag (Margaretha Cornelia Nel, born 1853) married Johanna’s brother, Hendrik Hansmeyer (1845–1925) – another example of intertwining family bonds 150 years ago.

 Theunis and Johanna in the year of their marriage, 1875

The Hansmeyer connection is interesting in its own right. Johanna and Hendrik’s parents seem to have conquered religious prejudice in life, but not in death. Joseph Hansmeyer (1813–1855) was a German Catholic, so is buried on the opposite side of Pietermaritzburg’s Commercial Road from his Protestant wife, Aletta (1816–1899). Aletta was born Maré, a relation of Sarie. She was a Voortrekker and a great survivor. When she was 21, she was stabbed 17 times at Blaauwkrantz and left for dead, but she lived 64 more years – to the ripe old age of 83. One of her granddaughters, Annie Berning, married Sir Henry Bale, Chief Justice of Natal and its last acting governor.
We return finally to Theunis Jacobus Nel II. He was a farmer in the Greytown district. However, an able cousin of Louis Botha and grandson of a Natal Volksraad member could hardly avoid political involvement. He was the only Afrikaans speaker elected to the Natal Legislative Assembly in 1892, representing Umvoti.

 Senator and Mrs Nel in 1910

He remained a member when the NLA became the Natal Parliament. In 1901, when Anglo-Boer War jingoism made the budget allocation for teaching the Dutch language vanish, he protested, but was defeated by a 17:16 decision to pass from the subject. His conciliatory approach was found valuable in the build-up to Union. In 1910 he was made a Senator, remaining so till his death in 1919. He was also a member of the first Council of the Natal University College in 1910, nominated, appropriately, by the Huguenot High School in Greytown.

NATAL HUGUENOT CONNECTIONS: THE NELS
Stanley G M Ridge