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Matching family tree profiles for Francina Voorman, b1
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About Francina Voorman, b1
Symington - Voorman Marriage Record The bride is "Francina Christina".
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The following article comes from Des Lynch who is married to Elizabeth Joan Petronella Symington, a descendant of James Daniel Symington and Francoise Voorman (Hendrik Benjamin (ggrandfather), Hendrik Benjamin Humphries (grandfather), Leslie Alexander (father).
The Way We Were - Affair ends in jail terms for 3: By Jackie Loos
The prickly German land surveyor Johann Heinrich Voorman (1762-1825) was 23 years older than his wife Eva Rosina Wolff. Although little is known of the family's domestic life, Voorman admitted to having an irritable temper and his relationship with his teenage daughter Francoise Christina (known as Seyntje) may not have been close.
In 1819 Voorman employed a Khoi labourer named Witbooi, born near the Swartkops River, to work on his smallholding near Swellendam and assist with his surveys. Six months later Seyntje, 14, began a secret relationship with Witbooi (aged about 25) that landed them both in prison. According to the trial record, Seyntje "conducted herself extremely unbecoming" towards the young man, sometimes pulling him by the flap of his breeches, which induced him to ask whether she wanted to have "carnal conversation" with him. In those days, it was illegal for unbaptised men to have sex with white women, and at first she declined. She soon changed her mind, however, and began to visit the kitchen, where he slept, at midnight. Voorman and his wife occupied the back bedroom and were oblivious of these nocturnal meetings, but when Witbooi was seen trying to kiss Seyntje in December 1819, he was sent to the local jail to be flogged. On his return, Eva scolded him and told him such conduct was the surest way to the gallows. After returning from a three-month survey to the Gouritz River with his master, Witbooi observed that Seyntje was pregnant, and she admitted that it was by him. She gave birth to a still-born full-term infant on the evening of September 12, 1820 with her mother as sole midwife. However, the family's old slave Wilhelmina claimed to have seen a dead child in a leather sack when she delivered a tub of hot water to the bedroom.
Seyntje later instructed Witbooi to retrieve the sack from the loft and bury it. When he examined the contents he saw that it contained a male child whose head bore the characteristic "donsjes" or curls of a person of mixed Khoi parentage.
He buried the child in a shallow grave 300 paces from the house, but it was disturbed some four weeks later by a dog accompanying three men who were looking for honey. The remains were soon uncovered and several heemraden arrived to conduct an inquest. Voorman was present at the inquest but feigned ignorance. Eva's answers were unsatisfactory but Wilhelmina implicated Witbooi, who made a voluntary statement. He was immediately arrested for seduction and secretly burying the child. Witbooi appears to have been the only honest witness. Seyntje pretended that the child's father was an unidentified white known only as "Jan", and Eva declined to answer any incriminating questions. The Court of Justice condemned Witbooi to 15 years' hard labour in chains, but Sir Rufane Donkin reduced the term to three years. Seyntje and Eva were sentenced to six months and six weeks in the Swellendam jail respectively. In January 1821 Eva, 35, wrote to Donkin protesting her innocence. She asked him to consider what she, as a mother, had already suffered "by the ill behaviour of a criminal daughter", and begged him to remit her punishment. Although Eva's name does not appear in the Swellendam prison records, she suffered the humiliation of seeing it in the English and Dutch law reports that appeared in the Gazette on October 20, 1821. Seyntje spent six months in the white section of the Swellendam jail, across the yard from rooms housing about 30 slave and Khoi prisoners. Corporal punishment was administered at a whipping pole in the yard, but women of colour who were pregnant or too old or sick to be flogged were thrust into a "black hole" instead. Although Seyntje had spoiled her chances of marrying up the social scale, she soon found a husband. She married James Daniel Symington in the DRC at Swellendam on January 6, 1822, just short of her 17th birthday. The couple moved to Tulbagh and raised seven children. Johann Voorman died in October 1825, aged 63.
Francina was my great great grandmother. She was my first ancestor born on African soil.
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Francina Voorman, b1's Timeline
| 1805 |
1805
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| 1823 |
January 28, 1823
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Swellendam, Overberg DC, Western Cape, South Africa
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| 1825 |
August 19, 1825
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Tulbagh, Breede River DC, Western Cape, South Africa
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| 1827 |
August 16, 1827
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| 1829 |
July 6, 1829
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| 1831 |
May 14, 1831
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Worcester, Cape Winelands, Western Cape, South Africa
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| 1835 |
March 11, 1835
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| 1838 |
June 10, 1838
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Worcester, South Africa
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| 1839 |
1839
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