THE DU PLOOYS IN THE NETHERLANDS

The progenitor of the South African Du Plooys was Simon du Plooy of Krommenie in North-Holland.

The name Du Plooy was originally the Dutch name PLOIJER: a name indicating the trade of brushmaker. A "ploijer" was, in the dialect of the Zaanstreek, where Krommenie is, a brush or broom with soft, long bristles. The brushes were oval and often had handles of silver or horn.

Mr and mrs Henk Hendrikse and Ms Annie Hendrikse-Borremans did research in North Holland to discover whether the Dutch family Ploijer (of Ployer) of Krommenie and the South African Du Plooys are the same family, and they concluded that this was indeed the case.

I don't intend to go into all the details of their research here: it is available in Familia XIX 1982 no 3, obtainable from the SA Genealogical Society in Stellenbosch.

Note how the people didn't use formal surnames: their identity is indicated by a patronymic or by their place of origin or by their occupation.

 Willem Pieters or Pietersz indicates that Willem is "Pieter's son", or "Pieters-zoon". By the same token, Maria Willems, Willemsd of Willemsdr indicates that she is Maria "Willemsdochter" or "Willem's  daughter".

The oldest generations of  Ploijers in North-Holland that the Hendrikses could find, are as follows:

1. Claes PLOIJER (no record of his life story, but we know his name as his son's name is recorded as  "Claeszoon".)

2. Pieter Claeszoon PLOIJER, born about 1595 at Neck near Purmerend. He died before 1659.

He resided in "De Heylige Weg", Krommenie. His property was 11 roods in size and he paid  16 stuivers en 8 duite per year "verponding".

The word" verponding"  is an archaic one meaning rates, rent or mortgage. "Stuivers" and "duite" are something like ha'pennies and farthings. Interestingly enough, there is a saying in Afrikaans: "Dit is nie 'n duit werd nie", meaning it is not worth anything. Only now do I realise what a "duit" is!  

There is a record of a notarised document in connection with a dispute Pieter Claeszoon PLOIJER had with the neighbours, about the upkeep of a bridge between De Heyligland and Het Madt at Krommenie. The brush business must have been fairly lucrative!

Hy was married twice:

i.       Aftgen Christiaans,  married 26.12.1621

ii.      Ytje Simons (widow) married 5.3.1628

Pieter and  Aftgen had two daughters, Annetje (1622) and Trijntje (1624); and with his second wife, Ytje, Pieter had three more children, Grietje (1628), Marytje (1632) and lastly our ancestor, Pieter Pieterszoon PLOIJER.

3.  Pieter Pieterszoon PLOIJER was baptised at Krommenie 24.2.1636. His occupation was "borstelmaker" (brushmaker), and he died between 1673 and 1695.

i.       On 26.11.1656, when he was 20 years old,  he married Risje Willems. She was the daughter of Willem Jansz of Cnollendam and his wife Piryne Michiels. Risje died 23 Februarie 1668.

ii.      His second wife was Guurtje Claesdr, the widow of Teunus Arentsz. She was the daughter of Claes Pietersz and Geertje Taams. He was 33 and his bride was 27 when they were married in Krommenie on 14 April 1669.

Pieter en Risje had six children: two girls, Aafjen (1659) and Aagt (1661), and three sons: Willem (1657), Michiel (1662) and our ancestor, 4. Symon Pietersz, baptised at Krommenie 29 August 1666.

With his second wife, Guurtje, Pieter had 2 more children: Pieter (1671) and Risje (1673.

4. Symon Pietersz Plooijer (a.k.a. Simon Du Plooy) was next heard of at the Cape.

THE DU PLOOYS AT THE CAPE

According to De Villiers/Pama, the genealogy of the Du Plooy family in South Africa starts with Symon Ploijer ( a.k.a. Simon du Plooy), of Krommenie in North-Holland, bapt. 1666, died 1733. He was first married to  Adriaantje, (parents unknown) and secondly to Catharina Koopman, parents also unknown.

4.  Symon Pieterszoon PLOIJER, or

     Simon Pieters DU PLOOY

He was baptised at Krommenie 29 Augustus 1666. On 22.9.1715 he married Catharina Koopman, his second wife and our ancestress. At that time his age was 49. 

DeVilliers/Pama states that Simon's first child was a son: Pieter Simon.  No dates are given. This Pieter was probably the son of Adriaantje, Simon's first wife, because the second child, Willem, was baptised on 5 Januarie 1716,four months after the marriage to Catharina.

DeVilliers: "Geslachtregsiters van de Oude Kaapse Familiën"  gives Simon's children as follows:

          (i) Pieter Simon

          (ii) Willem, baptised 5 Januarie 1716, married 30.9.1742 Johanna Petronella Basson. They had 4 children.

          (iii) Michiel, bapt. 31.3.1717, married 25.5.1755 Aletta van Wijk. They had 10 children.

          (iv) Maria, bapt11.8.1720, married Johannes Frederick Botha.

          (v) Adriana, bapt 5.9.1723, married  Cornelis Vermeulen.

          (vi) Cornelis, our ancestor (see 5. Cornelis DU PLOOY  below).

5. Cornelis DU PLOOY: bapt 1 February 1744. He was a citizen of Stellenbosch and married  (i) Margaretha WILLEMSE 17 April 1768.

His second wife was (ii) Anna Sophia CAMPHER, whom he married 24 August 1788, when he was 44 and she was 19 years old. (SEE NEXT POST FOR HER STORY)

6. Dirk Wouter DU PLOOY married Catharina Susanna ROUX, a daughter of Pieter Hendrik ROUX and Elizabeth STEENBERG. She was born 31 July 1796 in Tulbagh, and died at Maartenspan, Hopetown, 23 October 1868, four days before her husband. (Why? What happened? There's a story here, if only we knew it!)

Dirk Wouter and Catharina had 4 children:

i.       7. Cornelis Willem DU PLOOY born 21 December 1813, Beaufort-Wes (our ancestor)

ii.      Pieter Hendrik Rudolf, born  5 December 1816, Beaufort-Wes

iii.     Catharina Susanna Petronella, born 28 Jan 1821, Beaufort-Wes

iv.      Willem Andries, born  22 Feb 1823, Beaufort-Wes

7. Cornelis Willem DU PLOOY:  born  21 December 1813 in Beaufort-Wes, baptised 13 Feb at 1814 Graaff-Reinet.

On 3 Februarie 1837, when he was 24 years old, he was offered the appoinment of field cornet for the Gamka District. He turned it down because he was about to leave the Colony. He left in July 1837, joining the trek of Jacob de Klerk. Hy was present at the Battle of Blood River.         

(source: Voortrekker Stamouers - J C Visagie, page 61.)

On 3 July 1837 at Beaufort-Wes (aged 34) he married Johanna Marguerite Jacoba Susara NEL, born 13 December 1820: a daughter of Jacobus Frederick NEL and Maria Johanna WILKERS. The bride was 17 years old.

He died on 2 June 1881 at Maartenspan, Hopetown, at the age of 68.

Cornelis Willem DU PLOOY and Johanna M.J.S. NEL had eleven children: 6 sons and 5 daughters.The third child and second son,  Jacobus Frederick, is our ancestor.

8. Jacobus Frederick DU PLOOY: born 29 July 1843, baptised 2 October 1843 at Colesberg. He married Cornelia Carolina DU PRE. Their children were:

i.       Cornelis Willem born about 1870 at Hopetown.

ii.      Jacobus Frederick

iii.     Rudolph

It is possible that there were more children, but we don't know of any.

Cornelis Willem is our Oupa Neels who married Ouma Annie de Villiers.

Anna Sophia CAMPHER

Anna Sophia was of French, Norwegian and German descent, and could also count a slave among her fore-mothers.

Her parents were Frans Hendrik CAMPHER and Johanna LEKKERWYN. Johanna's birth name was Jeanne LECREVENT: she was the daughter of the French Huguenot Ary LECREVENT.The name soon became LEKKERWYN among the Dutch at the Cape, "lekker wyn" meaning "delicious wine".  More of the LEKKERWYN / LECREVENT family history later.

Frans Hendrik CAMPHER was the son of Cornelis CAMPHER and Dorothea OELOFSE.

Dorothea was born  in 1695, the daughter of Andries OELOFSE of Norway, and his wife Sara VENGEYSELEN.

Cornelis CAMPHER's parents were Lorenz CAMPHER, born 1650 in Germany, and his wife Ansela van die Kaap. Ansela was a former slave who was freed by Lorenz CAMPHER - they lived on the farm Murasie near Koelenhof, and they had 4 children: the only son, Cornelis CAMPHER, was the eldest, followed by his sisters Agnetie, Anthonietta and Jacoba. 

Cornelis DU PLOOY had 19 children, eight by his first wife, Margaretha, and eleven by Anna Sophia CAMPHER.

Cornelis's ninth child and Anna Sophia's eldest, was our ancestor:

6. Dirk Wouter DU PLOOY: bapt. 6 Desember 1789 at Swellendam. He lived at Uitkyk, in the Gamka district of Beaufort. He was a Voortrekker and probably left the Colony in July 1837 with the party of Jacob de Klerk. He was present at the Battle of Blood River, and later settled in the Hopetown District, where he died 27 October 1868 on the farm Maartenspan.                                                 

(Source: J.C. Visagie: Voortrekker Stamouers, page 62)

EARLY DAYS AT THE CAPE

In our patriarchal society, our family trees always follow the male line and often we don't know a lot about the origins of our ancestresses. Here we also look at some of the women who married DU PLOOY men:

Our DU PLOOY heritage starts with Ary LECREVENT and Marie De LANOY, a Huguenot couple whose great-granddaughter married Cornelis DU PLOOY.

First generation

Ary (or Hary)  LECREVENT was one of the French Huguenots who came to the Cape to start a new life, little knowing that his new life would end in murder. 

He married Marie, who had arrived at the Cape in 1688 with her parents Nicolas and Marguerite DE LANOY, her three brothers Nicolas, Matthieu and Francois and her sister Suzanne. The family came from Guines, Pas de Calais, France.

In 1690 they settled on a property in the French Hoek district of Groot Drakenstein, built a gabled house and planted fruit orchards. Ary called his farm Lecrevent, but it soon became known as Lekkerwyn (Dutch for delicious wine).

The Lekkerwyn Estate is a guest house today. See the pictures of Ary and Marie's gabled  house at their website www.lekkerwyn.com.

 Ary and Marie's neighbour, on the farm Delta, was a certain SILBERBACH, a German immigrant of dubious background. SILBERBACH had had a rather chequered career but seemed to settle down to family life in Fransch Hoek.  His wife was a widow, Ansela, who had four children from her previous marriage to Lorenz CAMPHER. She was a former slave, known as Ansela of the Cape and owned by Campher until he freed and married her. Marrying SILBERBACH as a second husband probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

Ansela of the Cape is the ancestress of the CAMPHER family of South Africa, and our family is also descended from her, through her grandson Frans Hendrik Campher, as you will see below.

In the course of a violent disagreement,  SILBERBACH beat Ary Lecrevent to death with a  piece of wood and fled to escape punishment. He was declared an outlaw and banished in absentia. No trace of him was ever found. It is surmised that bushmen or wild animals got him. And serve him jolly well right.

Second generation

Ary LECREVENT and  Marie LANOY's eldest son, Nicolas LECREVENT (baptised 18 June 1696) was a burger at Drakenstein and married Johanna GERRITS, the widow of Hendrik WEYERS.

Third generation

Nicolas and Johanna had two children, a son, Adriaan (1739), and a daughter, baptised on  17 Nov 1743: Jeanne Marguerite LECREVENT,  or as she was known in the Dutch form of her name, Johanna Margaretha LEKKERWYN. She married Frans Hendrik CAMPHER.

Fourth generation

Their daughter, Anna Sophia CAMPHER, married 5. Cornelis DU PLOOY (see above),  a son of Simon Ploijers of Krommenie.

Sources: The French Refugees at the Cape : Colin G. Botha

Cape Dutch Houses and Farms : C. de Bosdari

 Geslachtregisters der Oude Kaapsche Familien : De Villiers and Pama

www.geocities.com/sa_stamouers

www.familysearch.org

NEELS and ANNIE

Cornelis Willem DU PLOOY, born Hopetown c. 1870, died Kimberley c. 1963.

married 10 January 1898 at Hopetown

Anna Catharina DE VILLIERS born 8 August 1880 Hopetown died December 1958 Kimberley

Ouma Annie had a gentle nature and very blue eyes. She was a daughter of Genl P.J. de Villiers. During the Boer War, the family saw little of him because he was away on Commando. They were constantly worried that he would be captured. Being a citizen of the Cape Colony, a British possession, he was officially a rebel and could be shot out of hand.

Ouma married Oupa Neels du Plooy in 1898, when she was 18 years old. On the marriage certificate his trade is given as "wagon maker", but on his daughter Nellie's marriage certificate, his trade is  "blacksmith".  In the early 20th century, the motor car was starting to take over from the wagon as a means of transport and Oupa had to find another way to make a living.

He later went into the building trade: there are still farmhouses in the Kimberley district that were designed and built by him. A gable at the front of the house was his trademark, and no two were alike. They are all dated, and bear his initials in an unobtrusive spot.

Gables became fashionable among the local gentry and Oupa's designs were the in thing. He was in great demand by the local landowners, or more likely their wives, who wanted something a bit swish.

Ouma had several miscarriages, but raised six children, three boys; Koos, Piet and Neels and three girls, Sue, Nellie and Ann.

They lived in Hopetown, then in Douglas and later in Kimberley, first in a rented house in Adam Street, and then in 16 Tapscott Street.

For their Golden (50th) wedding anniversary, December 1948, the Queen sent a telegram! I like to think of Her Gracious Madge scurrying into the Post Office at Sandringham during a break in the Christmas festivities.

Ten years later they celebrated their Diamond Wedding. The Queen went round to the Post Office again.

In October 1918, when the Spanish 'Flu swept the world like a twentieth-century Black Death, Kimberley did not escape. Between the middle of 1918 and the middle of 1919, the worldwide pandemic killed at least 21 million human beings -- well over twice the number of combat deaths in the whole of World War I.

The whole town was stricken. The streets were deserted. 15-year old Nellie was the only one in the family who didn't succumb. She hardly slept, spent her days and nights nursing her parents and her five siblings and washing the bedclothes which were constantly sodden because of the high fever of the patients.

They all pulled through. When they were a bit better, Nellie queued every day at the soup kitchen in the Town Hall with a milk can, which she lugged back home full of soup to feed them. Then she herself got sick, not with the 'flu, but "a fever" … today we would call it stress and exhaustion.

Shortly afterwards, the family moved to 16 Tapscott Street, where Ouma and Oupa lived until 1953 when they moved to a house at 28 Synagogue Street.

SHOPPING WITH OUMA

Ouma Annie was a notable cook, like her sister Auntie Nellie. But unlike Auntie Nellie who had the produce of a farm at her disposal, Ouma had to shop.

I liked going to the shops with Ouma. She would put her hat on, skewering it to her hair, which she wore on top of her head, with a hatpin. On our way to the shops, I got to carry the basket. Ouma carried it back, when it was full.

We went to the local butcher, or sometimes to Suzman's the fishmonger. They both knew Ouma and told her what was good that day.

Then we went on to the grocer, called Ho Bew and Co. It was owned by a Chinese couple, known to their customers as Joe and Mrs Joe. Why people couldn't just have called them Mr and Mrs Ho, which was no doubt their name, I don't know. Ouma asked for half a pound of tea and a shilling's sugar or whatever, and it was weighed out and put in brown paper bags. Ouma would get me a ha'penny stick of barley sugar to suck. Barley sugar is made from glucose and is good for you, she said, as long as you brush your teeth afterwards.

What I really wanted was a niggerball. (Shock, horror! ... but fifty-odd years ago we knew no better, that was just its name. In fact, as an Afrikaans child I called them "niekerbôls" and had no clue what it meant other than a candy).

It was a round black confection nearly the size of a ping-pong ball: you had to yawn to get it into your mouth.  As you sucked it, the layers of colour changed from black to pink, green, yellow, mauve, and so on. Every now and then you could take it out of your mouth to check the current colour, or if you had a friend with you, you could clench it between your front teeth, draw your lips back and ask "Wha' cull ishhi' nah?"

Ouma would never buy me a niggerball (four for a penny), on the grounds that I would get my fingers sticky taking it out of my mouth, or it would slip down my throat and choke me, or both. My mother, to my annoyance, also subscribed to this theory. Such is the irony of life that in due course I, too, avoided letting my small daughter have what was by then more acceptably referred to as bull's eyes, (two cents each) in case she should choke or get her fingers sticky.

We did not have to shop for vegetables or milk - they were delivered. Ouma left a metal milk can out on a little table on the front stoep. It was scoured until it shone like a mirror. The milkman brought the milk in 2-pint glass bottles sealed with cardboard disks that fitted into a slot running round the edge. He had a metal skewer which he thrust through the cardboard, flipped the disks out and poured the milk into Ouma's milk can. Ouma took 4 pints of milk every day. The can was kept in the back yard cooler and the milk decanted into a milk jug covered by a crocheted doiley edged with blue glass beads, as needed.

Out in the back yard, under a tree, Ouma had the "cooler". It was a cabinet on four sturdy legs, with double walls of chicken wire, which were filled with coke. Not the sort you drink or sniff, this was black like pieces of coal. Air could flow freely between the pieces of coke.

The chicken wire was covered on both sides with hessian. On top of the cooler was a shallow metal tray, always kept topped up with water. The tray had small holes round the edges, so water dripped down and kept the hessian wet. The whole thing worked with evaporation and was very effective. Even in Kimberley’s very hot summers, it kept the butter firm and the milk from curdling.

The vegetables were brought twice a week by the Indian greengrocer, in a horse-drawn wagon with sides that flipped down like a counter. There were scales with weights, and a whole lot of small wicker baskets hanging on hooks at the top. The housewives came out to make their choice, which was placed in the baskets and carried into the house by the assistant. The baskets were suspended from a pole across his shoulders.

Most greengrocers were Indian and all were known as "Sammy". The name eventually became a generic term for greengrocer: Long after the Sammys with their wagons were no more, people would still refer to the local greengrocer in the shopping centre as "the Sammy."

We had a skipping rhyme:

Sammy, Sammy, what you got?

Missy, Missy, penny apricot.

OUMA'S GARDEN

Ouma Annie liked to garden: she was often to be found on her knees, weeding the flowerbeds in front of the house or the veggie garden at the back. She had a potting bench at the side in Oupa's shed in the back yard.

Twice a year, when she needed a lot of digging and cleaning out to be done, she would get "the convicts". You could arrange with the local jail to send you half a dozen convicts for the day. They didn't send the serial killers; what you got were the ones who had copped thirty days for drunk and disorderly. They came trotting up the street on the appointed day, singing, with their warder.

The convicts wore red-striped shirts and khaki shorts and the warder wore a khaki uniform. They were all sorts, but the warder was always a Zulu. He carried a knopkierie and assegai (knobbed stick and short stabbing spear) but it was all just for show, they obviously enjoyed the outing and worked away diligently. Ouma gave them bread and jam and coffee for elevenses and at lunchtime they had a pot of stew and more bread and coffee. They brought their own tin plates, spoons and mugs which they rinsed under the garden tap afterwards.

OUPA'S TWILIGHT

Ouma died suddenly of a heart attack in 1958 and Oupa lived with Auntie Susie, his eldest daughter, until her death. After Auntie Sue died, Oupa went to live with his second daughter, Nellie, who was my mother.

Oupa came to live with my parents in the early sixties. I was away at University so I didn't see much of him. He was already in his nineties then, but still physically in good shape. He had cataracts and couldn't see very well, but he was used to the house and found his way around easily. He needed no help with his ablutions or dressing.

He had lost the plot a bit and always addressed my mother as Katie. He had a cousin Kate who kept a boarding house in Kimberley when he was young, and in his mind he was boarding there again.

He liked to sit on the stoep and listen to the birds: he could tell each kind of bird by its call. When I was home for the holidays, I would sit with him on the stoep drinking coffee and he told me very interesting stories about his world travels. Not that he had ever travelled very far, but all his life he was a keen reader of travel books, and now he believed that he had been to all those places. His descriptions were so good, you would think he really had been there in person.

He had no clue who my father was, just accepted him as a fellow-boarder. Every day when my dad came home from work, he would introduce himself to Oupa: "Van Tonder", he would say, or: "Papenfuss", and Oupa would say :"Du Plooy", and shake hands. This procedure offended my mother bitterly and gave my father endless amusement.

Oupa was 93 when he got a "cold on the chest". The next day he had pneumonia and two days later he died.

OUMA ANNIE AND AND OUPA NEELS' CHILDREN AT A GLANCE

Susanna Maria (Sue) m Billy Lineveldt   

Their son Ian Lineveldt m Pauline Coetzee (4 children)

          Cornelia Caroline (Nellie) m Jacob Rudolph Steenkamp. Three children:  

Anna Catharina Steenkamp m James Dickie McClelland (1 daughter)

Maria Johanna (Marie) Steenkamp m George Erasmus (1 daughter)

Jacob Rudolph Steenkamp  m Maxie van Eeden (1 son)

          Jacobus (Koos) m Tinkie: their only daughter Rentia du Plooy m Jan van Blerk

          Petrus (Piet) m Dorothy Bebington and had 2 sons:

          Dennis du Plooy m Ruth Williamson (4 daughters)

          David du Plooy  m Sandra Bebington (3 children)

          Anna Catharina (Ann) m Wiener Forget, had two sons;

          Louis Forget m Ria

          Andre Forget  m Chrisna

          Cornelis Willem (Neels) m Elizabeth (Bessie) had 2 sons:    

          Neels du Plooy m Isabel, had one son

          Don du Plooy

NEELS AND ANNIE'S THREE DAUGHTERS

The three Du Plooy sisters were very close. My mother, Nellie, was the middle one. Sue was only a year older than my mother: she was born in 1901. When they were little girls, they shared a bed. Sue was afraid of the dark and she used to go to sleep clutching a matchbox in her hand, two matches protruding so that she could easily strike one to light the bedside candle.

When I was three years old, my father was transferred to Kimberley, and we went to live with Ouma and Oupa du Plooy at 16 Tapscott Street until I was five, when my sister was born and we moved to a house of our own.

Ouma and Oupa had the extended family living in their house: besides us, there was my Auntie Sue, who was (whisper it!) divorced and had come back to her parents' house with my cousin Ian.

When Auntie Ann came on holidays from Pretoria, where she worked as a typist, the three of them would gather in the kitchen or in one of their bedrooms and chatter for hours. They laughed a lot. I liked to hang around and listen, and I soon learnt not to draw attention to myself, or they would send me out to go and play. Under the kitchen table was a good place for an inquisitive five-year old.

During the War cosmetics were scarce: they would scrape out the stubs of their lipsticks with a hairpin and melt the bits together in a spoon over a candle flame. There would be enough to pour into a tube and make a new lipstick. Auntie Ann usually donated four or five stubs to my mother and Auntie Sue's one each.

Auntie Ann was six years younger: she was a city girl and had lots of different colour lipsticks. Mum and Auntie Sue wore quiet pink lipsticks.

The matter of Auntie Sue's divorce was not mentioned, except in hushed tones among adults. Divorce was a bit of a disgrace in those days, no matter who was the "innocent party". Auntie Susie was once bitten, twice shy ... I never knew her to have a boy friend. She went everywhere with her friend Madge Bennie, who was a fellow-teacher. Madge wore suede shoes and smoked through a cigarette holder. Those were two new and fascinating things to me.

Auntie Susie was also a teacher and she was the headmistress of the Newton Primary School. The nail of her middle finger grew down like a parrot’s beak. She had slammed the finger in a door when she was young. She was a keen knitter and a keen reader - always doing intricate patterns, while reading from a book propped up on a cushion in her lap.

I, too, was a keen reader. I can't remember a time when I couldn't read. I don't think the grown-ups realised I could read, or at least how well I could read, so nobody cared what I had hold of. They mostly thought, if they thought about it at all, that I was looking at the pictures. This gave rise to the notorious sex maniac episode, after which I found gaps in the bookshelves and Auntie Sue started to keep her library books in her room.

THE SEX MANIAC EPISODE

No TV in those days, WW2 was in full swing and after dinner the family sat in the sitting room listening to the radio, reading and knitting and doing jigsaws. Sometimes friends came round and they played bridge. If I sat quietly behind the sofa they sometimes forgot to pack me off to bed.

The little table beside Auntie Susie's chair was a good source of reading material. She kept her little stack of library books there for the reading-cum-knitting sessions of an evening. One day I had one of Auntie Sue’s library books and I was reading it with great interest, until I asked my mother at breakfast: "What's a sex maniac?" (I pronounced it man-eye-ack)

"It is a kind of murderer", said my mother, "Why do you ask?"

I said there was mention of one in Auntie Susie’s library book, and my mother was right, he had indeed murdered someone. When I wanted to go back and finish the book, I couldn’t find it anywhere. My mother and Ouma and Aunt Sue all helped me look, but the book was gone, never to be seen again. One of life's little mysteries.

I didn't like to attract too much attention and did a lot of my reading behind the sofa. (From there I also heard a lot of interesting if often mystifying grown-up talk.) 

Auntie Sue also had a dog called Rex whom she dearly loved. Everybody else disliked him because his hobbies were jumping up against you and/or sticking his nose in your crotch. Ouma complained that Auntie Sue always had dogs but she, Ouma, had to feed and look after them. This was a lesson to my mother and we were never allowed a dog until I had already gone to boarding school and my sister Marie got her dachshund Cleo. But that is another story.

THE SCHOOL VISIT FIASCO

The tradition in primary schools was that on the last day of term, you were allowed to bring your little pre-school brother or sister. I was very keen to go to school and one end-of-term, when I was five, Auntie Sue took me with her for the day. I was so excited I couldn't eat my breakfast.

It turned out to be a disaster. Auntie Sue taught the eight-year-olds. The classroom had two-seater desks. Everybody wanted me to sit next to them. Auntie Sue got me to sit next to a little boy in the front row and introduced him as Heinie Bigalke. Consternation! I promptly burst into tears, and wouldn't say why.

 The truth was, I was terrified of Heinie Bigalke because I had heard Auntie Sue on many occasions telling my mother about him and how naughty he was. One of his exploits was to tie a string of fire crackers to the school cat's tail. The cat ran franctically and the next day the gardener found it under a bush with a burnt tail. It was still terrified and the vet had to sedate it.

The day I overheard that story, I couldn't sleep and threw up all night, as was my wont if something had frightened me during the day. I felt so sorry for the cat. My mother thought I had a weak stomach: I never let on about my fears.

When order was restored and I was sitting between two girls, a safe distance from the dreaded Heinie Bigalke, lessons started. At first I enjoyed myself: I called Auntie Sue "Miss" like the other children and I was pretending to be a real schoolgirl. We had Scripture first, Miss read a Bible story and we said Our Father (who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name).

Then we went to a bigger classroom and we had singing, together with another class. We sang "My Grandfather's Clock" and "Hansie Slim". Then the bell rang for "playtime" and we went outside. I basked in the attention of the "big girls": we shared our sandwiches and somebody had a skipping rope ... they let me swing one end while we chanted "salt, mustard, vinegar … pepper!"

After that, we went back to our classroom for sums. I could count, but "sums" was new to me. I sat quietly and admiringly between my two desk-mates, who enjoyed being "big girls" and impressing me. "Tables!" they said. "You'll find out about tables when you go to school!" I could hardly wait to go to school and find out about tables.

Then disaster struck again: after sums came spelling. Auntie Sue, a.k.a. "Miss", read out the ten words the class had had to learn for homework. My mentors smiled kindly at me and gave me a pencil and a bit of paper so I could also pretend to write the words.

Well, I knew nothing about sums, but to a reader of books about sex maniacs, spelling words like "pretty" and "elephant" was a piece of cake. I was the only one in the class who got all ten of the words right. Suddenly I was invisible. Nobody spoke to me. I learnt something about discretion that day. Nobody likes a smartass.

Auntie Sue didn't take me to school again.

AUNTIE ANN

Shorts, turbans, red lipstick and painted toenails ... oh, the glamour!

My mother's younger sister, my Auntie Ann, didn't live in Ouma's house, but she often came for holidays. She was a typist in the Landbank in Pretoria.

I thought her very glamorous because she painted her fingernails and her toenails red; she wore eyeshadow, and mascara which she put on with a miniature black toothbrush. She spat on the little tablet of mascara, rubbed the toothbrush vigourously over it and applied it to her lashes. How I coveted that little doll's toothbrush! She smoked through a cigarette holder; she had perfume called Evening in Paris, in a little blue and silver bottle; she wore slacks and shorts and sometimes she sat on a deck chair in the garden wearing a set of lounging pyjamas in green and black stripes, that tied in front and left her midriff bare. My mother and my Aunt Sue did none of these things.

Auntie Ann's boy friend was Uncle Wiener. She had a photograph of him on her dressing table, in his uniform. She told me his full name was Louis Maurice Wiener Forget, (For-zhay - Uncle Wiener was of French heritage). I used to chant it when skipping. It is a good name to skip to.

He was a Captain in the Army, serving in Egypt. Dealing with General Erwin Rommel and his tanks. Auntie Ann was always writing letters to "Uncle Wiener in the desert up North" which we then walked to the corner to post. I thought The Desertupnorth was the name of the town where he was.

Funny about that … my niece Belinda told me, years later, that when she was a little girl in Rhodesia, she thought Downsouth was a placename, because people always called South Africa "Down South".

In Pretoria, Auntie Ann lived in Eaton Hall. I didn't know that this meant she had a flat in a building called Eaton Hall. The only Hall I knew, was the Kimberley City Hall, a very grand edifice with an imposing flight of steps leading up to a portico with corinthian pillars. I thought it only proper that a glamorous person like Auntie Ann should live in such a building in Pretoria.

I gleaned from my mother and aunts' talk that she worked in a place called The Typing Pool with a lot of other ladies whom she referred to as "the girls". The head typist was Miss Itsy van Zweeten, who had been overseas several times and had a coat and skirt that she got in Belgium. I imagined them doing their typing at little tables round the pool, wearing swimming costumes and flowered bathing caps. (I had seen Esther Williams movies.) All except Miss van Zweeten, who was in the Belgian coat and skirt.

During the war, there were RAF and WAAF people stationed at the SA Air Force base outside Pretoria. What with Uncle Wiener being Army, Auntie Ann didn't think much of the Air Force. She spoke slightingly of the Raffs and the Waffs who spent their time swanning round town dancing and drinking cocktails while Uncle Wiener had to get on with the fighting in The Desertupnorth.

I had great admiration for the legendary Uncle Wiener who was single-handedly holding the enemy at bay. Every night when I said my prayers, I added "…. and please take care of Uncle Wiener in The Desertupnorth."

If I had met a Raff or a Waff swanning round our neighbourhood, cocktail in hand, I would have given them a piece of my mind.

NELLIE

My mother Cornelia Carolina (Nellie), born at Hopetown on 12 May 1902, was the middle daughter of  Neels and Annie du Plooy. She and Sue were just one year apart in age - Ann was five years younger. The three sisters were very close. Before her marriage Nellie lived with her parents in Kimberley and taught the kindergarten class at the Newton Primary School. Most of her class consisted of children from the Newton Orphanage.

Whether they were actual orphans or still had a parent somewhere, they were certainly starved of love and affection and my mother was frequently admonished for undermining the dignity of the profession, neglecting discipline and  "spoiling" the children. She saw nothing undignified in hugging parentless four- and five-year-olds and letting them sit on her lap. She had the best-behaved class in the school and they got the best marks, so her critics didn't have much of a leg to stand on.

She had a lot of artistic talent but her parents could not afford to send her away to art school. Instead she went to the Teachers' Training College and once she was earning a salary, she paid for art classes with Miss Sarah Reid, an alumnus of the Slade School in London.

She became well-known as a painter, and held her first exhibition in Cape Town in 1933.

She did not marry young: she was a 32-year old schoolteacher when she married my father, Jaap Steenkamp, who was five years her junior, in 1934. I was born in 1939,  my sister Marie followed five years later and my brother Rudolph two years after her.

She was a gentle and loving person and she never shouted at us nor smacked us. I never knew her to use even the mildest form of bad language. We all teased her for years afterwards about an embarrassing experience she once had at the grocer's. Those were the days before supermarkets: you bought your requirements over the counter. The upmarket grocer in town was Andrew Kiddie's. Mum was in Kiddie's on a busy Saturday morning and she wanted to buy a bottle of "Mrs Ball's Chutney". The saleslady asked her what sort of chutney she wanted. She had to raise her voice above the hubbub, when one of those moments occurred when there is a momentary silence, with only Mum saying loudly: "Ball's!"  Everybody looked at her, a few people sniggered and Mum was mortified.

 It was always her dream to have a "real studio", but that never happened and our house always smelt of turpentine - Mum would set up her easel in the dining room or in the sitting room or wherever the light was best.

She may have been an artist but she was also a very practical person. She was a good cook and she made all my and my sister's clothes when we were children. She could turn her hand to anything. My father was not much of a handyman and Mum was the one to turn to if anything went awry.

One day my brother, who was about fifteen at the time, was fooling around with one of Dad's hunting rifles, which he knew very well not to do, but he was showing off as boys his age will do. Next thing we knew, the thing went off and shot a dirty great hole in the wall. My mother saved him from a dreadful fate by patching that wall before Dad came home. She made a sort of papier mache paste and stuffed the hole, smoothing it over and touching it up with her oil paints mixed to just the right shade.

It was not until we were all in high school that she went back to teaching. She taught art at three of Kimberley's high schools. She also taught various crafts: pottery, pewter and batik, at the local Technical College.

Despite all her teaching commitments, her charity work and the many committees on which she served, she was always there for her family and held the reins of her household firmly. After she was widowed, she lived with her second daughter Marie until her death at age 92.

PETTICOAT PIONEER

In 2002 the Kimberley Africana Library published "Petticoat Pioneers", a book by Maureen Rall, celebrating the women who pioneered life on the Diamond Fields and in the early days of Kimberley.

In the chapter on artists, Nellie is featured and with the permission of Mrs Kokkie Duminy of the Kimberley Africana Library, I quote from the article:

Cornelia Carolina du Plooy

Cornelia Carolina du Plooy, known as Nellie, was born in Hopetown on 12 May 1902. Her artistic talents first came to the fore when, as a schoolgirl in the little riverside town of Douglas, she helped her father by drawing blueprints. A pretty village with the Vaal River lying at its feet, Douglas provided much for the artist to commit to paper and canvas and the young girl was able to sketch and paint to her heart's content.

Nellie attended the Douglas High School and subsequently the Kimberley Teachers' College which later became the Diamantveld High School. While teaching at the Newton Primary School, she studied fine arts with Sarah Reid, a graduate of the Slade School of Art in London and Paris.

After her marriage to Mr JR Steenkamp in May 1934, he was transferred to Cape Town and here Nellie's career as an artist blossomed. Four years after arriving in the Mother City, she held the first of eleven one-man exhibitions, followed by ten others held in Bloemfontein, Pretoria, Cradock, Douglas and Kimberley.

Kimberley was fortunate that the couple returned to the city in 1944, for her contribution to arts and culture was enormous. Here she staged one-man exhibitions and exhibited sketches, watercolours, pastels, oils and Batik at numerous group exhibitions. Public buildings also benefited from her talents: she was responsible for the windows in the Diamantveld Dutch Reformed Church (see left) , painted the backdrops at the McGregor Museum in Beaconsfield and the ten panels in the Kimberley City Hall.

She was commissioned to paint the portraits of many prominent figures, including Mrs Maria Malan, the wife of  Prime Minister D.F. Malan, in 1949; Dr J.B. Hertzog, Judge Bok, Judge Hugo, Mayor Jacobus Smit of Kimberley, and various others. She also painted portraits of various family members, and that of President P.W. Botha and one of her grandfather, Genl. PJ de Villiers, which is now in the Military Museum in Bloemfontein     

For the schools this teacher/artist had a special affection and she designed many school badges, including those of Newton Primary School, Diamantveld High School, President Swart Primary School and Adamantia High School.

Mrs Steenkamp, who worked under her maiden name, was one of the founder members of the Kimberley Arts Foundation and was a member of the Board of the William Humphries Art Gallery for 23 years until her resignation in 1984.

On the occasion of her 90th birthday in 1992 she reminisced: "I have been drawing and painting ever since I can remember, but I had to give it up in 1980, when I started having problems with my eyes."

Nellie du Plooy died in Kimberley at the home of her daughter, Marie Liebenberg, on 13th July 1993, two months after her 91st birthday. She was survived by two daughters, a son and three grandchildren.

The Nellie du Plooy Trophy for outstanding art work by a Year Ten student.

In Nellie's memory, her children donated a trophy to the Douglas High School, where she herself was a pupil, for outstanding art work by a Year Ten student. The annual award also includes a cash prize.

A second trophy, the Japie Steenkamp Trophy for entrepreneurial achievement,  memorialises Nellie's husband, who was born in Douglas and also attended the Douglas High School.

NEELS AND ANNIE'S THREE BOYS

NEELS AND ANNIE'S THREE BOYS:  KOOS, PIET AND NEELS

I wasn't as closely acquainted with my three uncles as with my mother and aunts, but here is a thumbnail sketch:

          My uncle Koos, Jacobus Frederick after his Du Plooy grandfather, was the eldest boy. He married "Tinkie" (I never knew her proper name) and they had one daughter, Rentia, who married Jan van Blerk and had four children.

          My Uncle Piet was the second of the boys: born in Hopetown in 1903, he was named Petrus Johannes after his mother's father, the old Boer War General Petrus Johannes de Villiers, also called Piet.

He married Dorothy Louise ("Bebe") BEBINGTON on 19 Apr 1930 in Cape Town. She was born 23 Sep 1905 and died 1965 in Cape Town. During the War she served in the SA Corps of Signals HQ in Potgieter Street Pretoria with the rank of Staff sergeant.

During WWII Piet was not allowed to be released for active service from his duties for the Dept of Postal Services. However, he was in the "citizens' force" as a sergeant.

He became Post Master at Durban.

They had two sons,  Dennis and  David. Dennis married Ruth Williamson and they had four daughters; David married Sandra Bebington and they had three children.

My Uncle Neels, Cornelis Willem after his father, was the youngest. I met him only once, at Ouma's funeral. He was a miner and lived in Nigel where he worked on the gold mines.

He had two sons, Neels and Donnie. His wife's name was Bessie and she wrote novels.