Anna Maria Nell (van Tonder)

Lee Cahill, 2 December 2010 (Last updated: 29 April 2016):

• This entry is based on two records: a baptism record accessed at the Genealogical Society of South Africa in Stellenbosch by Jan Jakob de Klerk in December 2015 and a death certificate accessed in the Barkly West Death Register by Anton Nell on 22 April 2016.
• The baptism record indicates that Jacobus Hendrik Louw Nel(l) (JHLN) and his then wife, Anna Maria van Tonder, baptised a son called Jacobus Willem Adriaan Nel(l) on 6 November 1887. Witnesses to the baptism were JWA Nel(l), Anna Hendrina Helena Maria Visagie and Frederik Johannes van Tonder.
• In 1887, JHLN would have been 22, so this son was possibly his first child. If so, the child - according to tradition - would have been named after JHLN's father, JWA Nell, who may be the witness mentioned in the baptism record.
• The child died in 1900 of typhoid fever.
• According to my grandmother, Maria Petronella Nell Wallace (the third child and eldest daughter from JHLN's second marriage), he and his first wife had seven children together.
• Nothing was known of this first wife until the two records on which this entry is based were discovered.
• She died on the farm Schietpan in the Barkly West District after a short illness lasting only two weeks.
• Her death at the young age of 38 was as a result of typhoid fever, probably contracted from drinking contaminated water. There was a major typhoid epidemic during the Boer War, as this extract from the South African Military History web site indicates:

"After the battle of Magersfontein, there was a long period during which (British) troops were static at Modder River and, later, at Paardeberg. The situation in which vast numbers of troops were massed using a contaminated water supply created ideal conditions for a massive outbreak of typhoid fever. The army was already stricken with this disease when it had to march on to Kimberley and Bloemfontein in Lord Roberts' flanking movement away from the Orange River and the Kimberley railway line ...

When it entered Bloemfontein, the British Army became paralysed by typhoid. Within a month 4 000 - 6 000 troops had succumbed to the disease ...

The official figures reveal that of the British Force of 556 653 men who served in the Anglo-Boer War, 57 684 contracted typhoid, 8 225 of whom died, while 7 582 were killed in action."

More at: http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol063jc.html

• Some of the names of JHLN and Anna Maria's children given here were obtained from the Barkly West Death Register, as indicated. Other names are from my own memory and that of my aunt, Hilda Wallace Keyte.

From Anton Nell, 25 April 2016: "I was speaking to my brother Joseph (Boetie) over the weekend and he told me that my father used to talk about his “half brother” (much, much older than him), by the name of Hans Van Tonder and they used to call him “Hansie”.

This might mean that Oupa JHL Nell’s first marriage could have been to a widow / a previously married woman or a woman who had a child out of wedlock - hence the half brother that they called Hans Van Tonder. This could also mean that the name Van Tonder might not have been the maiden name of the first woman JHL Nell married but the name of her first husband." 