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