Look away now, nerd alert
Have been far away from blogging, Facebook & Twitter for days now. It's been a good break.
Instead, I've been immersed in the sticky tangly venus-fly-trappy branches of my very neglected family tree.
Started research 8 years ago (wow) and have pretty much gone as far as I can go with the resources I have. To break down the brick walls I'm stuck with will require any or all of the following:
a) wads of cash to buy gazillions of (likely) useless online subscriptions to various genealogy websites
b) wads of cash to buy the services of a professional paid-by-the-hour professional genealogist who will just go and look in the same places I will anyway. All of the pain of paying for it, none of the satisfaction of discovering the info
c) wads of unbelievable luck when the 100th gazillionith time I search for the same names on the same site that I've been searching for them for eight years, they're ACTUALLY FRIKKING THERE.
That doesn't happen, ever. Except it did this weekend. And now I know that my 6x great-grandparents were probably called Moses Danielse van der Kaap & Anna Sophia Eermeyer / Neermeyer / Niedermeyer (John-Jacob-Jingleheimer-Schmidt and so on). They were (I hope I'm not premature in saying this) the parents of my 5x great-grandfather Daniel Danielsz. He and his wife Wilhelmina Magdalena Adamse had loads of children and vanished from the records without leaving much of a trace, besides a barely legible will in Dutch. Their daughter Petronella Maria married into the Boonzaaier family and from there on there is plenty of info to be had.
As poor fishermen, netmakers, ex-slaves and labourers living in the Riebeek Street area in Cape Town, there isn't much information left about their families. Not famous enough, not rich enough, not anything enough. Not worth remembering, to most people.
Years of painstakingly collating info on all the people with even vaguely similar names, living in the same area, got me to a point where I knew that Daniel's father was probably called Moses. Daniel is often referred to as "Daniel Danielsz Moses Zoon" (s0n of Moses). But no Moses of the right generation was to be found. And there I sat.
Until I checked FamilySearch.org for the gazillionth time to find it had changed completely, and now offers actual JPG images to download of the Dutch Reformed Church registers at the Cape of Good Hope. These jpgs are much better as you can also see the names of the witnesses to the event; names which are usually left off when transcribing docs. Witnesses are usually siblings, parents, cousins etc of the family in question. So you've got this whole other avenue of investigation to follow – names which can lead you back to the people you're looking for. This, in case you haven't caught on to my frantic raving, is a BIG FRIKKING DEAL. (To me. At least. Not to you, I'm sure. You just think I could use some fresh air and a nice jog, or something.)
So Moses & Anna were witnesses to the christening of some of their grandchildren, giving me a direct link from my known family to them. I'd love to post the jpg here but for Familysearch copyright and all, so I can't.
I guess it makes me a terrible nerd to get such a thrill from spotting the names of people 200 years removed from me.
I can live with that.
In case you're interested, this is where you'll find me lurking:
http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl
http://www.tanap.net/content/activities/documents/Orphan_Chamber-Cape_of_Good_Hope/index.htm
