view all
Immediate Family
-
daughter
-
son
-
father
-
brother
About Abraham Duquesne
There are no documents to prove his existence
The surname is also not a common surname, and actually very rare.
Did Fritz invent his parents?
- Early life
- Fritz Duquesne was born to a Boer family of French Huguenot origin in East London, Cape Colony in 1877 and later moved with his parents, Abraham Duquesne and Minna Joubert, to Nylstroom in the South African Republic (now Modimolle, South Africa) where they started a farm.[4] Abraham made his living as a hunter who also frequently traveled to sell skins, tusks, and horns, and he hired local natives to work the farm.[20] He had two younger siblings, his sister Elsbet and his brother Pedro.[4] He was a descendent of the French Huguenot naval commander Abraham Duquesne (1610–1688), and claimed his uncle was Piet Joubert (1834–1900), a hero in the First Boer War and Commandant-General of the South African Republic, although his family relationship is disputed.[4][21]
- As a youth, Fritz Duquesne became a hunter like his father.[22] His hunting skills proved useful not only in the African veld, but also later in life when he would publish articles about and give lectures on big-game hunting.[22] It was during one of his early hunting trips that Duquesne became interested in panthers.[22] He observed a black panther patiently waiting motionless for the perfect time to strike while cautious African Buffalo approached and drank from a nearby water hole.[22] The panther became his totem and its hunting style also became his.[22] In the Second Boer War, Duquesne became known as the "Black Panther", and as a spy in the 1930s he stamped "all of his communiques to Germany with the figure of a cat, back arched and fur raised in anger."[22]
- At age 12, Fritz Duquesne killed his first man, a Zulu who attacked his mother.[4][23] He used the man's assegai short sword to stab him in the stomach.[4][23] Not long after the killing, a war party from a Bantu-speaking tribe attacked the area near Nylstroom and the Duquesne family was forced to retreat the nearby river.[23] The Duquesne family, along with six other settler families, fought a long gun battle against the Impi and Fritz Duquesne shot and killed several.[4][24] When the fighting ended, his Uncle Koos, his wife, and their baby were all dead.[24]
- When he was 13, he was sent to school in England.[4] After graduation, biographer Clement Wood states that Duquesne went to Oxford University for a year and then he attended the Académie Militaire Royale in Brussels; however, his attendance records at these two institutions have never been found.[25] Also, Duquesne himself writes that after he finished school in England he was sent to Europe to study engineering, but on the ship he met an embezzler named Christian de Vries and the two decided to take a trip around the world.
view all
Abraham Duquesne's Timeline
1877 |
September 21, 1877
|
East London, Amatole, Eastern Cape, South Africa
|
|
???? | |||
???? | |||
???? | |||
???? |