Ansela van de Caap, b2 SM - Timor link disproved by genetic evidence.

It works well thank you very much Johann!!! ☺

As per Em Lo's request, I added an item and link to the Afrkaans podcast to Ansela's profile.
Please feel free to improve the placing.

Hello Ian,

I am unfamiliar with Joan Austen's database. Can you post a link to it please?

I doubt if two such respected and experienced historians as Dr Sheffler and Dr Heese would just pluck this idea out of mid air - they would have been very well aware of all possibilities at the time.

My understanding is there were only 10 slaves at the Cape (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_South_Africa ) including only 4 females from African descent, before the Amersfoort and Hassalt arrived from Angola and Guinea with several 362 west Africans:
1653 Abraham van Batavia
1654 Eva and her son Jan Bruyn from Madagascar
1654 Anthony
1656 Catharina van Bengale
1657 (Feb) Angela van Bengale with daughter Anna de Koning
1657 (Mar) 2 slave girls Cornelia (10) and Lysbeth (12) from Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
1657 (Mar) 1 slave girl kleine Eva (5) from Madagascar
[http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/first-slaves-cape]

The likelihood of Ansela's mother being one of the 362 west Africans rather than the only 4 other black females at the Cape is seems very high.

Haplogroup L0a1 is prevalent albeit in low frequencies amongst west Africans (Guinea and Angola), so genetically it fits fine too.

I am however investigate further....

Sorry - I just realised I made an error above - there were only 10 slaves at the Cape by April 1757.

It would be another 11 months before the Amersfoort arrived in March 1758, so yes I agree a few more would have arrived in that time, who could potentially have been Ansela's mother.

But I do believe this would have been taken into account by Dr Sheffler and Dr Heese and that there is a reason why they decided on the west African option. I will investigate.

Hi Ian, sorry - I now understand you were referring to Ansela's descendant's result, sorry - I did not recognise the database name at all.

DNA testing is not like getting a copy of someone's passport that tells you exactly where they came from. Haplogroups distribution can span vast areas. It's a great extra resource - it does indicate a broad area and exclude others. But if a particular haplogroup distribution spans half a continent, one will need to fall back on historic data or documentary evidence to narrow the search to a more confined area.

If I understand correctly that the report stated the same haplogroup has been detected in 67 "bantu speaking people" in SA, it does not mean 67 of Ansela's descendants, it just means 67 descendants of numerous African people of the same haplogroup.

This will make good sense to me actually. It means numerous ancestors of 67 black people currently on that database, shared this haplogroup.

Of for example the 362 slaves who arrived from Angola and Guinea for example, only 190 stayed in the Cape, the rest were sent on to Batavia. If about 100 of them were women, only 5% belonged to this haplogroup, and these 5 ladies each had many children and grandchildren (which they probably did!), it is possible after 300 years and many generations later for them to have many descendants.Of course there may have been others that arrived at other times from other areas that also shared this haplogroup - so there is a large possibility of them having many current descendants.

Unlike male Y-DNA that can be tracked along paternal surname lines, mt-DNA remains 'hidden'. Any offspring between Africans will of course result in black "bantu speaking" descendants (like the 67 mentioned). Offspring with European fathers as was the case with Ansela, often resulted in descendants getting absorbed into the European gene pool as Ansela was.

I suspect as people of all colours start testing their DNA, more and more 'white' South Africans will discover their hidden African or Asian roots!

As for Ansela's mother, I guess it is an ongoing investigation. Maybe we can have an open mind, place her as being from one of the most likely places (Angola or Guinea - maybe we can call it West Africa even??) - ie let's not be too specific until we have exhausted all avenues of enquiry.... I still have a thing or two to follow up on... ☺

P.S. Her baptism record does exist - she was baptised as an adult on 19 June 1695 a few days before her manumission on 28 June 1695.

Alert me when you've followed up the thing or two.
The source of the original Guinea attribution would be first prize :-)

Ok Sharon. One of my lines of enquiry is unavailable until May, so it may take a little time....but I will not forget.It is now firmly on my radar...☺

Hello Ian, I think there is a little misunderstanding. ☺

I did not say the 67 bantu speakers' are related to Ansela, I said "67 descendants of numerous African people of the same haplogroup." - ie they shared the same haplogroup as Ansela, from wherever their ancestors may have been.

So yes the 67 bantu speaking people could have come from local sources as well. I was just illustrating that they could have come from a handful of ancestors 300 years ago, for example women on board the Amersfoort and Hassalt - ie a few females having many children could have many offspring today after 10+ generations.

Since the interest for private people to test their DNA varies a lot country to country in the world, we have a huge amount of DNA data in databases from some areas (eg Europe) and very little from others (eg Africa, Indonesia) - there are millions of people in many 3rd world areas where genealogy is not a hobby or even affordable, and their DNA never make it into databases.

But just because their DNA is not well represented in number, in reality there may be very large numbers of particular haplogroups in that area. So we can not use the number of contributors to a database to judge how many people in various areas belong to particular haplogroups.

It is more reliable to find out distribution data generated by geneticists in scientific studies. For a general overview, see http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v16/n9/fig_tab/nrg3966_F5.html

This is quite a good Africa haplogroup distribution map: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_... - you will see L0a (bright green) is quite abundant in the west central area (above Angola and below Guinea) than in either of those places or South Africa. L0d and L0k are the predominant southern African haplogroups (red).

The articles I quoted earlier about L0a1 more specifically was just to show that this haplogroup has been found in scientific studies in both Angola and Guinea, albeit not in large frequency.

But as useful as this haplogroup distribution info is in indicating that Ansela's mother was African, it still can not tell us where she came from specifically. The best thing for us to find is a primary source document naming Ansela's mother's place of origin. So I think let's search for that! ☺

Can I interject a question?
Ian - can you explain the difference you are indicating here: "they don't just share Haplogroup L0a1....they share exactly the same SNP sequence or Haplotype"?

Hi Ian, the article Pai Timor claimed Ansela van die Kaap was the same person as Amsoeboe van Timor's Timorese daughter Baauw. DNA results have now clearly confirmed this is not the case at all.

Dr Sheffler's research, supported by Dr Heese seems sound and ties in perfectly with the DNA results obtained. I am quite happy with Ansela's baptism on 19 June 1695 and her manumission 9 days later on 28 June 1695, before accompanying Lourens Campher to his farm on Stellenbosch. It makes good sense.

I am not a DNA expert either but do not quite understand your reference to haplotype vs haplogroup. People's haplotypes determine which haplogroups they belong to. I think there is a good explanation at http://www.kerchner.com/haplotypevshaplogroup.htm

I would call haplogroup L the "major branch" of the tree and L0a1 a sub-haplogroup (if you prefer to diffferentiate in this way) - one of many ever smaller "twigs" on that branch.

There would indeed be millions of parent haplogroup L people in Africa, fewer of L0, even fewer of L0a and much fewer of L0a1. Each successive sub-haplogroup involve specific additional mutation/s that has occurred over time since diverging form the parent haplogroup L.

Haplogroup L0's origin appears to be in east Africa, and it has spread south-westwards towards the central west coast of Africa with some mutations taking place en route. The result is for example L0a frequency being highest in the central west coast of Africa, reducing in frequency along the coast northwards towards Guinea and southwards towards Angola. (ref previous references)

There may have been only 78 people of sub-haplogroup L0a1 in the databases consulted by Joan's testing company, but there will most definitely be MANY more people in Africa with this haplogroup. They just aren't represented in DNA databases because MOST people in the word and especially in Africa have not had their DNA tested.

People with the same mitochondrial sub-haplogroups eg L0a1 are not necessarily closely related, there could be many generations between them.

Joan would have to have autosomal DNA tested in a test such as FTDNA's Familyfinder to determine if any of the 78 people you are mentioning are closely related to her or not. I have no knowledge of Joan's test other than it identified her mitochondrial DNA haplogroup as L0a1. Did she have additional autosomal DNA tests done which showed her being closely related to the 78 people you mention?

Hi Ian, I’d like ask you more about your own mt-haplogroup. You say it is M. My mt- haplogroup is also M - and that is all that could be indicated when I first had it tested, because it was a simple HVR1 test only. I had to have a Full Genomic Sequence (FGS) test done in order to determine my more detailed sub-haplogroup M66b.

Mitochondrial macro (“parent”) Haplogroup M spans a MASSIVE area as indicated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_M_(mtDNA) - from the middle east to the far east and Australia. So I’m struggling to understand when you said yesterday: ‘My own mtDNA which is Haplogroup M produced only 7 matches in the world-wide database, all in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The paper trail which I researched after the test led exactly there. My closest mtDNA relatives had not spread beyond one state in over 200 years.”

I may be misunderstanding, hence I would like to clarify what you meant.
1) M is the single most common mtDNA haplogroup in Asia. Most Indians belong to haplogroup M but so too large % of populations in other countries in this area. (Ref above article). So if the database that your matches were compared with contained only 7 mt-DNA haplogroup M contributors, it is indeed very small and did not paint the mt haplogroup M picture very well at all to you if it left you under the impression that haplogroup M is only found or concentrated in one state Andhra Pradesh in India. Is this what you meant?
2) I am curious, how did your paper trail lead you to Andhra Pradesh specifically? Who is your earliest maternal line ancestor? Usually slave origins are not documented in such detailed format down to eg a state in India - in fact I wish they did – hence my curiosity! ☺

Hi Ian, haplogroups conveniently track broad areas or corridors in which the distribution frequency of particular haplogroups are greatest. I agree it does not mean it does not exist anywhere else along various lines of migration for whatever reason. [Of course today people move at an unprecedented rate here, there and everywhere, which will scramble what we see now. But geneticists deliberately try and exclude modern day migrations by working with ancient stable populations when tracking historic haplogroup distribution.]

What is certain is that L0a1 will exist in various countries in Africa. Ansela’s mother could have come from any of them, irrespective of whether the local L0a1 population was large or small. But this is where we have to link DNA analysis with history and genealogy to complete the picture.

Angela would likely have been born about 1665. After the arrival of the west African slaves in 1658, slave trade stopped for 2 years and only resumed in 1660 [W Blommaert, Het invoeren van de slavernij aan de Kaap, argief jaarboek vir Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis, 1938]

I have looked through all the slave transactions recorded by Dr Boeseken and Robert Shell. From 1658-1662 they include ONLY west African slaves from Angola and Guinea, except for 2 Creoles recorded in 1661 by Robert Shell. Between 1662 – 1676 there are still west African slaves being traded, but they are joined by others from the East - Ceylon, Batavia, Bengal, many areas in India and Indonesia. The first time a slave transaction from east Africa (Madagascar) is recorded by both Boeseken and Shell is in 1676 – likely a decade after Ansela’s birth!

The oficially recorded slave transactions are of course by no means a complete list – but it paints a very clear picture. As far as African slaves went, those from the west coast predominated until the mid 1670’s, well after Ansela’s birth.

Since 1658 these west African slaves have been having offspring in SA, with one another (resulting in present day black SAcans) and sometimes also with Europeans (resulting in ‘white’ SAcans) and probably various shades inbetween too. So the occurrence of any of these in present day SA is totally expected, especially since finding their roots using DNA-genealogy is becoming more and more popular with people and the frequency with which SAcans do DNA testing is likely MUCH larger than most of the rest of sub-saharan Africa. (Testing frequency not to be confused with actual haplogroup distribution frequency).

I am absolutely convinced Drs Sheffler/Heese, knowledgeable and well respected historian/genealogist would have taken all this into account when they agreed the most likely place of her mother’s origin is west Africa. They may even have found more tangible proof – I intend finding out. But considering the above plus the mt-haplogroup ID that we now have, west Africa certainly looks like the most likely option at this stage to me.

Unless we can find more tangible proof in the archive such as the mention of a specific place, the MOST LIKELY place may be the closest that we will get. With so little recorded about slaves, we will not be able to ever know everything. The aim is to find every possible scrap of evidence and build up the most logical and valid picture that we can.

It is indeed like puzzle building, and we may not always find all the pieces. But we can still get a very good idea of what the picture looks like even with a few missing pieces.

LOL... OK, let's see how the story unfolds! ☺.

I am really not saying every one of the 67 matches will trace back to the 1658 west coast slaves, remember in the 358 years between then and now there has been a lot of people movement, so some now living in the south could of course have different ancestors.

But I think there will be a high possibility that many of them would be able to trace back to those arrivals.

It will be very helpful if as many people as possible who do testing join DNA-genealogy projects where their earliest known SA ancestor is declared and such data properly compiled such as this Geni project and FTDNA projects such as Jaco Strauss's Cape Dutch Stamvader project [ https://www.familytreedna.com/public/CapeDutch?iframe=mtresults ] and others like the Cape Coloured project [ https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/cape-coloured-dna-project/dna-... ] or the mtDNA project [ https://www.familytreedna.com/public/SouthAfrican-mtDNA/default.asp... ]

On the latter website you will see a person descending from Regina VAN GUINEA being haplogroup L0a1b2a!!! So there is no doubt Guinea contributed to the L0a1b2 gene pool in SA - like Ansela!

As per http://stamouers.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&... …African "kings" were raiders of their African neighbours to supply the Hasselt and other traders. Ransford states that "domestic slavery flourished in Guinea long before the arrival of white men. People could be enslaved through debt, capture in battle, or inheritance of the status". The Europeans exploited an existing evil social system and/or found willing African accomplices/middlemen who imposed slavery on their fellow Africans.

Slavery was so endemic in this area, the coast surrounding Guinea was called the SLAVE COAST! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Coast Researchers estimate between 2-3 million slaves were exported out of this region – most of course to the Americas.

Here an example of a monument to the many people who left Guinea forcefully under such adverse circumstances – a door or no return (for most)….. http://theincidentaltourist.com/post/2745163778/benins-ouidah-trade... ….very sad....

A positive side is that thanks to the strength and tenacity of many of these slaves who survived the ordeal and made the very best they could of the bad situation they found themselves in, they now have many prosperous living descendants (of all colours!) in SA 350 years later.

I descend from two of Lourens Campher and Ansela van die Kaap’s children – Cornelis and Agnietie. So like the Ansela van die Kaap contributors to the Geni mt-DNA project, I too descend from Ansela’s granddaughter Anna, but not in my direct maternal line. So I am very thankful to them for having contributed their mt-DNA to confirm Ansela’s African origin.

It is amazing how genealogy connects one in a very real way to events that took place so very long ago! According to W Blommaert [Het invoeren van de slavernij aan de Kaap, argief jaarboek vir Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis, 1938] the Amersvoort loaded 500 slaves and the Hasselt 271, only about half of them - 174 and 228 respectively (405 total) - survived these journeys. There may have been a few more deaths after arrival and I believe a few slaves did also run away. Only 362 of the 771 slaves loaded were eventually recorded as having been utilised (60 in the lodge, 172 sent to Batavia, 79 sold to officials 51 to vryburgers).

One can not imagine the horror of being captured, transported against one’s will, wrenched from ones homeland and family, and seeing so many fellow slaves die all around one day after day! Even if one survived such a traumatic voyage, continuing to live enslaved in a strange country would have been very difficult.

But they soldiered on and it is positive to discover that for their descendants there has been a happy ending. Here we are 350 years later, transporting fragments of her genes into the future…most of us totally unknowingly …..truly fascinating!

Indeed. And a great discussion, you two.

If I click on Ansela van die Kaap of haplogroup L0a1b2 in the DNA Mapping of the Slave Routes to Southern Africa project, it links (seemingly incorrectly) to Inabe (Ansela) van Timor.

Is it possible to correct this link so it correctly links to Ansela van die Kaap, wife of Lourens Campher?

I have managed to read a copy of Dr Sheffler’s original 1991 paper on Ansela van die Kaap who married Lourens Campher (Chapter 1 of her research on the “History of Muratie”).

In the document she thanks Dr Hans Heese for help provided in researching the Ansela/Campher history.

I have placed a copy of comments in it that may be usefuI or additional to what we already know in "Sources" for everyone's perusal.

This was one of two main source documents I wanted to double check, I still have one to go...

Oops, thanks for catching that. I'll change it when I go onto computer, unless someone is kind enough to do if first. We need both women on the project, I think.

Thanks for the work you're adding on this, Em. You're a star researcher!

I have received the information I was looking for from a 2nd source (1693 Lodge Census taken on 1/1/1693). On this day Ansela and her 3 children were still in the lodge – so her sale to Mrs Diemer would have happened after that:

Ansiela , locally born, half-cast from African origin, labourer. (unfortunately her mother’s name is not mentioned; I was hoping might be – presumably she was already deceased at this time)

Cornelis and Angenitje are listed as children – scholars. Castijs (3/4 European)

The baby Jacobje are listed as a dependent female baby – “suigeling”.

Thankyou. Please update where applicable. Yell if you need help :-)

OK Sharon, but will only be able to get to it tomorrow night again...nearly midnight now...Must get some sleep...day job waiting... Too much to do and too little time! ☺

:-) Ewww get to sleep. :-)

OK I have added a research review in Ansela's profile page. Lourens and Ansela's "Muratie" story is a very romantic one. It is very possible that all unfolded as suggested (Sheffler, 1991), but in my review I have tried to stick to verifiable facts.

This is by no means a final chapter - in time we should be able to refine the details as/when more facts come to light.

Please feel free to comment/add ☺

Go you!

Em Lo, I've just taken a quick look - I will print out and read later; but it looks like one of your well researched and well illustrated pieces of work - so I'm really looking forward to reading it. Thank you for adding it.

Sharon I tweaked it some more and made a few more improvements...rather read the latest. ☺

Well done, Em. Uitstekende artikel - lees ook lekker!
I wish every progenitor could have such an excellent profile... Something to keep working at.

Thanks Johann, Rassie and Corney also contributed valuable constructive criticism - more heads are better than one! ☺

Thank you, Em, for a well formulated and clearly presented exposition and argument concerning Ansela van de Caab (or van die Kaap). Believe me, we appreciate what you have achieved. Kind regards.