Jan Smuts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts

Born at Bovenplaats, near Riebeek West on 24th May 1870 and died at Doornkloof, near Irene on 11th September 1950), statesman, soldier and philosopher, was the second child in a family of four sons and two daughters. His parents were Jacobus Abraham Smuts(16.4.1845 – 25.8.1914), afterwards member for Malmesbury in the legislative assembly of the Cape Colony, and Catharina Petronella (Philippina) Gerhardina de Vries (May 1845 – 13.2.1901), a sister of the Rev. Boudewyn Homburg de Vries, then the minister of the N.G. Kerk at Riebeek West. He was of the seventh generation of a family predominently Dutch in descent whose founder, Michiel Cornelis Smuts, emigrated from Middelburg, Zealand, in Holland, some time before 1692. Of 105 forbears on both sides since the seventeenth century, eighty-five were Dutch, eighteen French, and only two of German origin.

But the Christian names of Smuts derived from his maternal ancestor, Johann Christian Davel, a German from Bautzen who arrived in 1734, through his grandfather, Jan Christiaan de Vries, who was a witness at his christening and after whom he was named. His genealogy shows his descent on the paternal side from the Cape families of Van Aarde, Van der Bill, De Vlamingh, Dreyer, Slabbert, Mostert and De Kock, and on the maternal side from the families of Davel, Pas, Du Plessis, Hartog, De Vries and Niehaus.

His Smuts forbears first settled as farmers in the Swartland region of the south-western Cape in 1786, The farm Ongegund, on the upper portion of which, called Bovenplaats, he was born, was acquired in 1818. His father and grandfather farmed Bovenplaats together for a time, but in 1876 his father moved to Klipfontein, thirteen miles north-west of Riebeek West. On this farm Smuts spent the greater part of his boyhood and here many of his lifelong interests, tastes and values were formed. His happy childhood implanted a deep love of home and family; his solitary wanderings in the veld, the magnificent presence of the distant Winterhoek range, the proximity of the mountain called Riebeek Kasteel – the first he ever climbed – instilled in him an almost mystic love of nature. From Ancestry 24.com

• http://www.greeff.info/tng01/jansmuts.php

Baptism: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSK6-B92B-R

Marriage: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSK6-PSH9-L

Civil Death Notice: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BY-PJ13