James (Sonny) Kasner

Kasners http://boards.ancestry.com/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=2&p=surnames.kasner Paul Kasner (View posts) Posted: 25 Jan 2003 5:39AM GMT Classification: Query

There are a number of Kasners ( also spelled "Käsner") in South Africa, descended from one Ferdinand Käsner, originally from Zwinemunde, East Prussia) who died in Saldanha Bay, South Africa in 1895. One of them, a Ferdinand's son, James, a fisherman, collaborated with a Latvian Jewish tinsmith named Ellis Silverman, to establish the Saldanha Bay Canning Company in 1905 and which became a major pilchard and mackerel cannery business in South Africa.

James died childless, but his brother Henry and his wife, Elizabeth Wilsnach, produced several children including sons Ernest and John Henry . John Henry Kasner and his wife, Elizabeth Aletta Veer, had one son, Walter Henry. John Kasner worked all his life in the mechanical division of Saldanha Bay Canning Company which was wholly-owned by the Silverman family. His only son, Walter Henry Kasner, worked in the accounts office of for a rival fishing company in Saldanha, the Southern Seas Fishing Enterprises Company.

Walter Kasner married Giuseppina d'Ammora, whom he had met during his service in the SA Air Force in North Italy in World War 2 and they had one son, John Henry Kasner, who now lives in Brescia, Italy. John Henry Kasner has two sons, Henry and Fabrizio.

After the divorce, Walter Kasner married Elaine Elizabeth Boyce and they had 4 children: two sons, Paul Spencer and Glenn Patrick, and two daughters, Charmaine and Jeanene.

Paul Kasner married Vicki Lynn Keightley and had a son, Julian John Kasner in 1996 . They emigrated to Wanganui, New Zealand in 1998, while Glenn Kasner married Maritha Muller and they had a daughter, Jacqueline and continue to live in Cape Town, South Africa