JAN
FLEMMER
RAGEL ESSEX
Just before we held the Flemmer
150 Year Reunion in Cradock in 2003 I was contacted by a descendant of this
couple. He was McDonald ‘McGyvir’ Flemmer, part of a big Flemmer family that had
lived in the Cradock and Middelburg area for generations.
We were happy to welcome McGyvir
and some of his family to the Reunion and subsequently
he spent some considerable time trying to establish whether in fact the ‘Danish’
Flemmers were related to the Jan Flemmers. Despite many attempts to track down
birth or baptismal records, no early trace of the family could be found. I quote
here something McGyvir sent me:
The Legend of the Coloured Clan of
the Family Flemmer
As the story goes the family had almost no memoirs of our direct ancestors.
The belief in the LEGEND purely is in the line of hearsay partly because there
is no written evidence for this clan to present their line of ancestry.
This
Clan were not educated people up until the 4th generation. The children of JAN FLEMMER – a white man with a rare English accent
as his grand children
who
knew him can fatedly remember, were bound to half education because of their father’s
marriage to a coloured lady by the name of RAGEL ESSEX.
This
whole episode begins at the beginning of the 1900’s.What I write here is information
I have gathered from the earliest memories possible. Unfortunately there is no
written evidence to verify this. At that stage JAN and his children were still
classified as white people before the coming of the Union of South Africa in
1910.
A sudden
twist will follow when JAN’S only son CHRISJAN FLEMMER married another coloured
lady by name of LIZA HOLSTER from Cradock. The children of CHRISJAN would become
(be classified as) coloureds. CHRISJAN became a bricklayer and builder by trade
and this skill would be passed on to his children and some of his grand children.
Although
not educated the children of CHRISJAN would be workers and labourers by art and
musicians by heart. No evidence
of the abovementioned people has been recorded i.e.: birth, baptism, marriage
or death and hence the family legend.
This family legend lies at
the heart of historical South
Africa with its racial divisions and all of the
misfortune and heartache it has brought. The only comments I make are:
- I have
traced no one with the name Jan Flemmer in the Danish family – which doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of them, but
it seems unlikely.
- As Jan
Flemmer’s grandson, also Jan Flemmer was born in 1911, I would estimate that Jan
Flemmer snr. could have been born in the 1870’s.
- Although
it is possible that the name Flemmer was assumed by Jan when he was working on
a Flemmer farm, it doesn’t explain the legend set out above. His grandchildren
were adamant that he was white. He spoke with a ‘rare English accent’ or do they
mean strange? As in a Danish/English accent? We don’t know and never will I suppose.
- Barring
finding documents I have suggested the only way to establish a connection is by
DNA testing.
I had the pleasure of going
to McGyvir’s wedding in Cradock in 2005. He is a Manager with the Lottery Company.
I also met Jacob a police officer in 2003 and have been in correspondence with
Jerome Flemmer, a cousin who is Marketing Manager with SAA.
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