Willem VAN WIJK ARIESZ - WILLEM "NAMAQUA" VAN WIJK

Started by Private User on Sunday, April 29, 2018
Problem with this page?

Participants:

Profiles Mentioned:

Related Projects:

Showing all 8 posts

Willem Ariesz. Van Wijk's maternal grandparents are Lourenz Campher and the free-black woman Baauw Ansela van Timor (sometimes called Ansela van de Caap, and not to be confused with the several other "Ansela"s -- the name "ansela" derives from Latin "ancilla", meaning slave girl). His maternal great-grandparents are the Timorese exiles Amsoeboe and Inabe, not as it would appear currently on Geni, the Africa Ansela van de Caap.

Willem "Namaqua" van Wijk is the ancestor to the "ruling Van Wyk clan of the Rehoboth Basters," part of "a whole Van Wyk clan of Nama, Griqua, Koranna and Rohoboth Basters that ramify throughout the Northern Cape and Nambia - Namaqualand, Bushmanland, Namaland and Rohoboth. We now know that he is effectively an ‘accommodator’ of sorts and one of the key mixed race bridging folk instrumental in helping to prize open the frontier of an expanding Dutch colony in Africa."

See: http://www.e-family.co.za/ffy/RemarkableWriting/UL05PaiTimor.pdf

Willem van Wijk married the daughter of a Nama chief in a Khoikhoi ceremony, dressed and bore himself as a Khoikhoi”. [‘Richard Elphick & Robert Shell, ‘Intergroup Relations, 1652-1795’, The Shaping of South African Society 1652-1840 (eds. Richard Elphick & Hermann Giliomee) Maskew Miller Longman, Cape Town 1992, pp. 158-159 &228; C.P. Thunberg, Voyages de C.P. Thunberg au Japon par le Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1796), I, 143; Anders Sparrman, Voyage, I, 98 and note 251, 288; II, 21; Jacob Haafner, Lotgevallen en Vroegere Zeereizen van Jacob Haafner (Amsterdam, 1820), pp. 68-69; CA 4119, Resolutions of the Council of Policy (13 March 1739), p. 24v]

He married de facto, Lysje, a Khoikhoi woman; their daughter Elsje was baptised at Swartland 1768.

In order to do this, he had to be initiated into Khoi society. Mansell Upham describes and then translates from the Dutch as follows:

"The ceremony is described in graphic detail by Hendrik Cloete of Groot Constantia in one of his published letters to Hendrik Swellengrebel Junior (1734-1803)60. Although published verbatim in the original Dutch, this letter lacks an English translation like the other letters in the collection. This censorial omission is now rectified by the writer’s own translation into English:

'It is also customary amongst the Namacquas that if one wanted to do ‘t Kammi, so as to become one of their members, a piebald (swartbont) sheep is slaughtered at own cost and as the skin is often damaged when slaughtering, these are rejected until an undamaged hide can be got which the initiate ties all around his neck like a tie. That being done, he receives from some of the others a clout or punch with the hand on his ears, and so strong that he even falls down; meanwhile one of the elders pinches closed with both his fingers the skin in front of his ‘shame’ [penis] until bursting with piss, and immediately once he has emptied the ‘fly’ [foreskin] with piss into the mouth of the one clouted, pisses on his head and body the remainder of his piss from his filled bladder. That is when all the bystanders, of which usually there are a great many, all clap hands shouting ‘t Kammi! ‘t Kammi! That being done, the slaughtered sheep (or other sheep) is (are) picked up ceremoniously and the initiate has to keep it [the skin] around his neck just as long even until it actually rots off and then he may no longer eat rabbit considered by them to be impure. This happened some time before to one of our Cape burghers, with the name Willem van Wyk, who had a vested interest in a chief’s daughter, in order to take her as his wife, and in this way underwent ‘t Kammi. That is why he was called Willem Namacqua until his death about 2 years ago.'"

The mtDNA descendants of the woman who gave birth to Anna Putter, b1 have African not Asian mtDNA, unless you can prove that Willem 'Namaqua' van Wijk Ariesz did not share a mother with Anna, then you can rule out the van Timors as grandparents, I think.

I've added Lysje, of the Nama and Elsje van Wijk and updated Willem's profile. Thank you for finding that info.

As posted in https://www.geni.com/threads/6000000078107252297

Ansela van de Caap who married Lourensz Campher was the daughter of a slave from east Africa, and she and her 3 children appear in the Slave Lodge Census prior to her manumission, marriage to Lourens and life in Stellenbosch.

Her descendants are haplogroup L0a1b2 - in line with an East Afican origin.

I set out the facts as clearly as I could in her profile. She has nothing to do with Baauw van Timor and also is not the Drakenstein Ansela/Angela who was recorded with Hans Silberbach and one child.

It is irrelevant who commissioned the original research on Ansela van de Caap, it was done by a reputable historian Helena Sheffler and although she did romantisize the story somewhat, she did identify the correct Ansela.

My compilation of the facts was peer reviewed by several reputable researchers including Corney Keller and Rassie Rascher. I do believe the correct Ansela has been identified.

I see Mansell Upham addressed the question of the Anselas on the Facebook site of First Fifty Years (apparently also somewhere on Geni but I couldn't find that); and appears to retract his Baauw hypothesis:

Conundrum: Ansela van de Caep // Baauw van Timor
Below is a copy of my response featured on GENI to recent discussions on that site concerning the above topic.
The likelihood that Ansela van de Caep - recorded mother to the children that became known as Campher's children - is not the same person as Baauw van Timor, I have never completely discounted as a possibility - even if only in terms of accessing the available recorded evidence. This likelihood - based on DNA testing revealing Haplogroup LOa1b2 - was also previously brought to my attention by two other individuals after my article on Pai Timor appeared on FFY.
I quote below the salient parts of my response to these two individuals at the time as I think that it is still relevant. I need, however, to add a proviso: I have been revisiting this conundrum again and again and I now have - I would like to believe - a more compelling explanation - also thanks to DNA testing appearing to conflict with my initial (now more seemingly likely incorrect) assumption that Baauw and Campher's wife Ansela were indeed one and the same person ...:
QUOTE
" ... I have again looked at my unearthed data and revisited (yet again!) my article on Pai Timor. Although there is strong circumstantial evidence connecting Mrs Campher to Inabe (the unusual name Anthoinette interchanged with Angneta and Agnitie and Van Wijk's business partner being Inabe's de facto husband), at least seven things still concern / disturb me about Mrs Campher:
1. Her Company slave status - Pai Timor & family were clearly not enslaved even though the ambiguous wording of the initial letter of banishment implies possible enslavement if the colony (Mauritius & the Cape thereafter) was unable to utilise them as free people;
2. Her being recorded as "van de Caep";
3. That her daughter Jacoba is clearly recorded as being "castijs" which would mean that she was "halfslag" - even though her sister Agnitie is recorded as being "halfslag";
4. Her de facto marriage with Campher;
5. That Agnitie Campher names her eldest daughter "Anna" (curiously also the name of Cornelis Campher's voordochter);
6. If indeed not Baauw van Timor & if indeed Cape-born (and halfslag): why is there no recorded baptism?;
7. Why no record of her liberation and that of her children – if Company halfslag she would have had to wait until majority at 22 years of age and likewise her children unless they were all collectively and prematurely purchased by an interested party?
There were only TWO contemporary women named Ansela van de Caep and they both appear in the Opgaaf of 1695 which confirms that they were not one and the same person: Mrs Campher and Mrs Silberbach. Mrs Silberbach's baptism and manumission are on record and we know
that she was a privately owned slave.
As for Mrs Campher, if we are to dismiss any un/likely Timorean descent, then I can already come up with a few suggestions to these worrying aspects listed above:
1. If indeed halfslag, she may have been baptised in 1663 as part of the 'missing' unnamed slave infants baptised collectively (see my article on FFY "What can't be cured ...");
2. If indeed halfslag, her manumission (if meeting all the requisites) would not necessarily be recorded and she could well have even been married LEGALLY to Campher after liberation provided that she was indeed baptised;
3. Campher - if Lutheran - explains possibly a civil marriage which records are missing (see again my article on "What can't be cured..." [see FFY]);
4. So far I am only aware of ONE contemporary heelslag slave woman named Anna [other than Anna van Guinea] and she was from Angola.
Given the DNA results thus far and my revisited reservations listed above, it seems to me that I cannot discount Anna or perhaps some other African slave as a likely mother to Mrs Campher ...
I trust that my latest musings are helpful.
Certainly, again thanks to both your input, we may well be able to disprove my initial contention. I hope, that Mrs Campher - also a multiple ancestor of mine - will forgive me if have misallocated her..."
UNQUOTE
Rereading the above correspondence, it strikes me now that when recently reworking my research on the slave woman who belonged to Christoffel Snijman's stepfather [Anthonij Jansz: van Bengale], there are equally compelling indications that Ansela could well be another daughter of Anna Van Guinea and half-sister to Maria Everts: van de Caep. I will be setting out my reasons for this in a forthcoming article about the Guinea slaves that came on the "Hasselt".
My limited understanding about haplogroupings - my research has been confined to trying to unravel as best I can the written record - is that LOa1b2 is also found in West Africa especially amongst the Balanta people:
"Haplogroup L0a is most prevalent in South-East African populations (25% in Mozambique).[3] Among Guineans, it has a frequency between 1% and 5%, with the Balanta group showing increased frequency of about 11%. Haplogroup L0a has a Paleolithic time depth of about 33,000 years and likely reached Guinea between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago. It also is often seen in the Mbuti and Biaka-pygmies. L0a is found in almost 25% in Hadramawt (Yemen).[9]"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_L0_(mtDNA)] [clicking on the link for Balanta is equally informative]
Allow me to re-iterate what I wrote in the past. I trust that my latest-latest musings are further helpful.
Certainly - again thanks to more recent inputs - we may well be able to disprove my initial contention more conclusively. I sincerely hope, that Mrs Campher - also a multiple ancestor of mine - will forgive me if have misallocated her. There is another positive spin-off to this: finally - after so many many frustrating years dredging up the written record and getting to comprehend more fully the complexities and idiosyncrasies of 17th century colonial life and record-keeping - discovering that I, too, may now also be a multiple descendant of yet another formidable Founding Mother - Anna van Guinea - thrills me no end ...
Mansell Upham

Mansell is a real treasure. Without his careful and detailed articles on the slave grannies, we would be a lot poorer. Being prepared to piece together data and then revisit it once you have more facts is the mark of a true historian.

Apology guys, I accidentally wrote east-Africa in my posting above. It should of course be" L0a1b2 - in line with an WEST Afican origin!

Showing all 8 posts

Create a free account or login to participate in this discussion