Ansela Campher (van de Kaap), SM/PROG - The mother of Ansela Campher (van de Kaap)

June - I've finished inputting the line. For the most part they were already there on our tree. Only Petrie's immediate family had to be added.
But, as June says, sources for all of them are important.

Private User, I've just found you on Geni. As the discussion includes your research, perhaps you'd like to chat to Petrie? I'll message you two privately as well.

Dear All,

The likelihood that Ansela van de Caep - recorded mother to the children that became known as Campher's children - is not the same person as Baauw van Timor, I have never completely discounted as a possibility - even if only in terms of accessing the available recorded evidence. This likelihood - based on DNA testing revealing Haplogroup LOa1b2 - was also previously brought to my attention by two other individuals after my article on Pai Timor appeared on FFY.

I quote below the salient parts of my response to these two individuals at the time as I think that it is still relevant. I need, however, to add a proviso: I have been revisiting this conundrum again and again and I now have - I would like to believe - a more compelling explanation - also thanks to DNA testing appearing to conflict with my initial (now more seemingly likely incorrect) assumption that Baauw and Campher's wife Ansela were indeed one and the same person ...:

QUOTE
" ... I have again looked at my unearthed data and revisited (yet again!) my article on Pai Timor. Although there is strong circumstantial
evidence connecting Mrs Campher to Inabe (the unusual name Anthoinette interchanged with Angneta and Agnitie and Van Wijk's business partner being Inabe's de facto husband), at least seven things still concern / disturb me about Mrs Campher:

1. Her Company slave status - Pai Timor & family were clearly not
enslaved even though the ambiguous wording of the initial letter of
banishment implies possible enslavement if the colony (Mauritius & the
Cape thereafter) was unable to utilise them as free people;
2. Her being recorded as "van de Caep";
3. That her daughter Jacoba is clearly recorded as being "castijs"
which would mean that she was "halfslag" - even though her sister
Agnitie is recorded as being "halfslag";
4. Her de facto marriage with Campher;
5. That Agnitie Campher names her eldest daughter "Anna" (curiously
also the name of Cornelis Campher's voordochter);
6. If indeed not Baauw van Timor & if indeed Cape-born (and
halfslag): why is there no recorded baptism?;
7. Why is there no record of her liberation and that of her children - if
Company halfslag she would have had to wait until majority at 22 years
of age and likewise her children unless they were all collectively and
prematurely purchased by an interested party?

There were only TWO contemporary women named Ansela van de Caep and they both appear in the Opgaaf of 1695 which confirms that they were not one and the same person: Mrs Campher and Mrs Silberbach.

Mrs Silberbach's baptism and manumission are on record and we know
that she was a privately owned slave.

As for Mrs Campher, if we are to dismiss any un/likely Timorean
descent, then I can already come up with a few suggestions to these
worrying aspects listed above:

1. If indeed halfslag, she may have been baptised in 1663 as part of
the 'missing' unnamed slave infants baptised collectively (see my
article on FFY "What can't be cured ...");
2. If indeed halfslag, her manumission (if meeting all the
requisites) would not necessarily be recorded and she could well have
even been married LEGALLY to Campher after liberation provided that
she was indeed baptised;
3. Campher - if Lutheran - explains possibly a civil marriage which
records are missing (see again my article on "What can't be cured
..." [see FFY]);
4. So far I am only aware of ONE contemporary heelslag slave woman
named Anna and she was from Angola.

Given the DNA results thus far and my revisited reservations listed
above, it seems to me that I cannot discount Anna or perhaps some
other African slave as a likely mother to Mrs Campher ...

I trust that my latest musings are helpful.

Certainly, again thanks to both your input, we may well be able to
disprove my initial contention. I hope, that Mrs Campher - also a
multiple ancestor of mine - will forgive me if have misallocated her
..."
UNQUOTE

Rereading the above correspondence, it strikes me now that when recently reworking my research on the slave woman who belonged to Christoffel Snijman's stepfather [Anthonij Jansz: van Bengale], there are equally compelling indications that Ansela could well be another daughter of Anna Van Guinea and half-sister to Maria Everts: van de Caep. I will be setting out my reasons for this in a forthcoming article about the Guinea slaves that came on the "Hasselt".

My limited understanding about haplogroupings - my research has been confined to trying to unravel as best I can the written record - is that LOa1b2 is also found in West Africa especially amongst the Balanta people:

"Haplogroup L0a is most prevalent in South-East African populations (25% in Mozambique).[3] Among Guineans, it has a frequency between 1% and 5%, with the Balanta group showing increased frequency of about 11%. Haplogroup L0a has a Paleolithic time depth of about 33,000 years and likely reached Guinea between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago. It also is often seen in the Mbuti and Biaka-pygmies. L0a is found in almost 25% in Hadramawt (Yemen).[9]" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_L0_(mtDNA)] [clicking on the link for Balanta is equally informative]

Allow me to re-iterate what I wrote in the past. I trust that my latest-latest musings are further helpful.

Certainly - again thanks to more recent inputs - we may well be able to
disprove my initial contention more conclusively. I sincerely hope, that Mrs Campher - also a multiple ancestor of mine - will forgive me if have mis-allocated her. There is another positive spin-off to this: finally - after so many many frustrating years dredging up the written record and getting to comprehend more fully the complexities and idiosyncrasies of 17th century colonial life and record-keeping - discovering that I, too, may now also be a multiple descendant of yet another formidable Founding Mother - Anna van Guinea - thrills me no end ...

Best wishes
Mansell Upham

Good day Mansell Upham,

Thank you for your enlightening and quite exciting comments on the possible origins of Mrs Campher. I am quite enheartened that you have never discounted the possibility of Ansela van de Caep not being the same person as Baauw van Timor and that she could be the daughter of Anna van Guinea is quite encouraging, particularly because I have but only recently become more and more convinced of the former and have begin wondering about the likelihood of the latter. These musings of mine have lead to me voicing this matter on Geni.

May I reaffirm, as I have previously done, my personal sincere appreciation for your continuing valuable and professional work on the genealogy of the early Cape, particularly also as reflected in the Remarkable Writings on Delia Robertson's Fifty Years Project. I believe most, if not all, would back me up on this: it stands out as a prime exemplar of genealogical work. I am looking forward with much expectation to your article on the slaves of the Hasselt.

My best regards
Petrie Coetzee

Sharon Lee Doubell,

Thank you for invoking Mansell Upham into this discussion.

I believe his comments have some implications for what we have been planning concerning solicitation of other people who's maternal lines lead to Mrs Ansela Campher. It seems to me now that before enquiring about such people who would wish to have their mtDNA tested, we need firstly to find people who have already done so. Let us then see what the collective results say. If the number of such people is high enough to be considered a representative sample in some sense, and if a substantial percentage of these show the same haplogroup, we might not have to go the second route, which is soliciting volunteers who have not yet been tested and who would like to so. Following this two-stage path can possibly be much quicker and much faster towards achieving the objective.

Thank you for inviting me to become a manager of certain of the profiles in my maternal line. I have not responded quickly, simply because I have been both rather pre-occupied with other responsibilities, but also because I need to clarify for myself what exactly I will be committing myself to (in the light of other present and probable future commitments.) I have started on the process of getting to understand the Geni structure and process - I must say it is quite interesting. I will be coming back to you on this shortly.

Kind regards
Petrie

Sharon Lee Doubell,

The main sources for the profiles on my maternal line have been the following:

In respect of Elizabeth Lessing Kruger (my mother) and my father: simply my personal knowledge of having known them and my grandparents personally.

In respect of the others on the line, starting with my grandmother, Anna Catherina Kruger *25-07-1877 up to Johanna Maria Venter *12-04-1810 the main source has been the "Kruger Geslagsregister/Genealogy" e-book by Barry Kruger and with corroboration by prof Barend Venter (prominent Venter specialist) who initially and by his grace supplied me with this information. If need be, I can let you have the particular record number in that book for each person (both male and female) in this part of the line.

As for the second part of the line: those profiles were initially also supplied by prof Barend Venter.

I later checked all the information against other sources, amongst others against those in Geni.

If you wish to have detail on all the sources for every line in every record for all profiles, I could perhaps have them printed or alternatively supply you with a Gedcom file for the whole branch (males and females).

Kind regards
Petrie

Thanks Petrie Coetzee and Private User. Really interesting stuff; and the historical detective story continues.... :-)

With regard to Petries’s mtDNA haplogroup L0a1b2 implying that “ the female line of my local female progenitor (stammoeder) is located in Africa (either East or West) and not in Indonesia.” – May I ask what is likely to be a couple of stupid questions:

1) How many generations is this result presuming, Petrie?
2) Aren’t ALL haplogroups traced back to Africa?
3) And if this result is within a closer range, should we not also be studying the slave trade route which might have brought Ansela BACK to Africa, from where her parents/grandparents could had been abducted initially and taken to Indonesia?

Sharon Doubell

Good morning

Do I call you Sharon or Sharon Lee?

Your Questions (1) and (2) are good questions. Answers to Question (1) is not simple and straight forward. I suggest you first get an overview of the meaning of mtDNA and its associated haplogroups and their interrelationships. Thereto I suggest you study the website http://www.worldfamilies.net/mtdnahaplogroups . As far as Question (1) is concerned, there you will amongst others see a map of how the various haplogroups originated in Africa and eventually branched off into various regions of the world. You will also see a map of how different haplogroups are represented in various regions of the world. You will also see comments on where and how long ago particular haplogroups originated from DNA mutations. You will also note that the answer to Question (2) is yes, but that the phenomenon of DNA mutations, which over long periods of time resulted in the various haplogroups emerging, does not imply that therefore everybody is to be considered as bearing haplogroup L0. You will furthermore note that L0 is an offshoot of L1. A popular description of L0 and its distribution is given on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_L0_(mtDNA) and
on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_L0_(mtDNA) (familypedia.wikia.com). On Question (3) I would say that it is highly unlikely that the parents of Ansela (or their forebears) were abducted from Africa to Indonesia, particularly given the status ascribed to them in Indonesia as described by Mansell Upham - but, of course, it is not necessarily an impossibility.

Do have a good day!

Kind regards,
Petrie.

So, Petrie - your MtDNA is of the oldest we have traced in the world. Your mitochondrial mother could be the original 'Eve' candidate. Wow!

I'm loving that map. Thankyou.

Lee is my middle name -I should probably take it out of my display name-it was just there leftover from a middle name discussion the S.A. Curators were having.

With regard to my generation query: - as I understand it then, the L0a haplogroup mother of Ansela (and Petrie) was in Subsaharan Africa about 150 000 years ago. And today – 7/8 generations after Ansel a - some of her L0a gggmother's descendants are in Mozambique (25% of the population); some in the Yemen; some in the Congo and some in Guinea, amongst, obviously, many other places. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_L0_(mtDNA)

So, to my mind, using genetics as an identifying factor does not disprove any of the hypotheses on the table:

*Timor is not automatically disproved as Ansela's birth place by positing her haplogroup as L0a, (especially as 25% of Mozambicans have it right up until today) because of the slave trade: "The Arab trade of Zanj (Bantu) slaves in Southeast Africa is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years. Male slaves were often employed as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners, while female slaves, including those from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab and Oriental traders as concubines and servants. Arab, African and Oriental traders were involved in the capture and transport of slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into the Middle East, Persia and the Far East."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
The question of her (quite ambiguous) status as a free woman does not necessarily prove that her ancestors were not freed slaves.

*Guinea is likely - less on the percentage of the L0a haplogroup population there now, which is small - and more because we have a possible Guinea born candidate.

*An Angolan slave - posited by the Muratie investigator, and possibly identified by Mansell as Anna - remains a good possibility as well, given the present day presence of the haplogroup in the Congo area.

Thoughts anybody?

Still on the Timor hypothesis (and not because this is my favourite hypothesis, just because I'm not sure the genetic argument is the reason to dump it):

L0a is still found in 25% of people in Hadramawt (Yemen), & Aden (Yemen) in this area was an Arab slave trade port in the Middle Ages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade)
Timor was part of that slave trade route in the 14th Century; as was South East Africa (also still 25% L0a in areas), from what I can see.

Good article on the Swahili coastline slave trade. http://www.academia.edu/4258609/Slave_trade_and_slavery_on_the_Swah... - just so I remember, not because it proves anything.

Good day Sharon

Thank you for the sound and interesting points you make:

* That the forebears of Ansela Baauw and her parents could have been landed in Timor because of the Arab slave trade from Africa and that she therefore could be L0. She could therefore have been the wife/partner of Lourens Campher.
* That the Guinean candidate (Anna van Guinea) could also have been L0 and the wife/partner of Lourens Campher
* An Angolan slave could also have been such
* I would add: even a Mozambican slave.
* That Hadramawt in Yemen, where L0 is also present, was a port of Arab slave trade in the Middle Ages

The genetic argument cannot place somebody in a precise spot in a particular period, because in general most areas on earth have a mix of haplogroups represented there during any period. Granted, the further back in time you go, the more probable the geographic concentration of any particular haplogroup.The reasoning involving haplogroups results in probabilistic outcomes - higher or lower probability is what matters here. It is therefore not definitive. But many mere possibilities can fade in their probability on basis of historical circumstances. Clearly, this cookie we are baking needs to be treated with some care before coming to conclusions.

It is getting more and more interesting, is it not?

Kind regards
Petrie

I also find this fascinating... Keep up the great work!

We presently have substantial uncertainty concerning the region of origin of Ansela Campher. Is it South East Asia or Africa?

I spoke to Christoff Erasmus of Genetics at UP this morning. He came up with an interesting suggestion. Why not get a couple of descendants who has the sister of Baauw van Timor (Ansela Baauw or Campher), namely Iba van Timor, as local progenitor/stammoeder and who has had her/his mtDNA determined? Then, compare the haplogroup(s) of the latter against L0a1b1. Assuming that both sisters are biological children of Inabe van Timor, both should have the same haplogroup. If Iba has a haplogroup different from Baauw van Timor, then the housewife of Lourens Campher could probably not have been Bauw van Timor . If both are the same, and therefore L0a1b2, then (i) Inabe van Timor must also have been L0a1b2.

He also mentioned to me that he has as yet not come across any record of L0 being present in South East Asia. This could then mean that their forebears could possibly have gone there through save trade from Africa.

Merely a point of interest at this time!

Regards.

Aha - the plot thickens :-) Great idea to chat to UP Genetics: Petrie Coetzee! and the idea of identifying a sister's MtDNA descendant is a good one, methinks.

I've been thinking I should ask the whizz Curator Private User (http://historylink.herokuapp.com/) if there's a quick way he could write a programme for doing it;
but Peter Dennis...Gone fishing! has also been doing some detective work tracking her MtDNA descendants on our tree. He has come up with one option - although the family is quite famous - so we're waiting before we put it in a public thread. At the moment she has no living kids on Geni to contact, so I'm trying to get a moment to go and take a look at MH...

Actually, I see that Jeff's fantastic circle graphs at http://historylink.herokuapp.com/ - already provide a way to map descendants. It gets so big though that I'm having to do in increments. Petrie - try yours out there too.

Thanks Sharon :) I've used the descendant view of historylink to try and track DNA candidates, but as you found out, it can be a tedious task given the many possible paths, particularly for a user that hits a privacy wall (though that in itself can be an indication of descendants on Geni in that family group). I could probably add an option for DNA, which might make this process easier by only displaying the possible MtDNA descendants or yDNA.

Would it be a relatively easy thing to do, Jeff? In which case that would be fantastic (The graph just keeps hanging once it gets to 6 generations - and I can't blame it - that is SO much info.)

If it would be time consuming (as I strongly suspect it would be) then it isn't fair to ask you - a volunteer - to do it. We will figure out a way to do it manually by dividing the work up between us.

I am just about halfway done so would like to finish it.
There are two issues however .
One has been identified by Jeff .. private and abandoned trees.
The other issue is that not all the trees have been completed so there are many dead ends.
It would help tremendously if Jeff could find a way to drill down to living descendants of a mitochondrial line.
Regards
Peter

Shew: Go Peter!

Peter, one thing you can do is switch the color view to Status. Claimed (Geni users) profiles will show as blue. So you can flip between Gender and Status and try to figure out the path to claimed profiles of a dna line.

As for time required, I'm not sure... It would be best to have it as part of the search criteria so that it reduced the time required, by either excluding all males or all females, depending on the dna line. I'll look at it. :)

As for the other problem - private profiles, theres not much I can do on that. If you get a curator to help, like Sharon, then she can overcome that issue and identify the descendants via the graph.

Sharon Doubell & Peter Dennis...Gone fishing!, I've pushed out an update to HistoryLink, which allows you to select a DNA filter for a Descendant graph.

Private User it works beautifully!
Sharon Doubell et al The only known living profile on Geni which fits is Elisabeth!

Just so your aware, Geni has been having some timeout issues today, so HistoryLink may be intermittent. Seems to be working fine now though.

Jeez Private User that's along the lines of a miracle from over here!! I'm speechless with awe.

The only two claimed female MtDNA descendants of Ansela on Geni are Loulette Laubscher and Sterna (Roux) Schreuder. I will contact them to check if they are interested in this Discussion.

There might be brothers of theirs who could help too. I will look.

Paul, Elisabeth - Iba's MtDNA descendant - isn't on Geni, so I think it's up to Petrie or Mansell to follow it up if it's useful for their study.

This has been so exciting!

Glad I could help :)

I've tweaked the filtering to display living males of the material line, but not their children. So the graph should accurately reflect males that could also be tested for mtDNA.