KIRSTINE
CATHINCA FLEMMER 1846 –
Kirstine
Cathinca is the mystery child of Christian August and Betty Flemmer. Why I say
this will become clear in what follows. She was born at the family home in Kørsor on the 17th January 1846. She
was apparently healthy as her baptism was delayed until the summer, when the family
celebrated her baptism on the 30th June 1846. The 1850 census records her
as Kirstine Katinka aged four, along with the rest of the family. This is the
last mention there is of her.
Family
accounts of the trip to the Cape in 1852 always mention that ‘Dr. Flemmer, his wife and seven children’
left for the Cape. This shows that Kirstine
who was six when they left was still alive. Newspaper reports of the Flemmers’
arrival at Algoa
Bay record ‘Dr. and Mrs. Flemmer, seven
children and servant’ so she didn’t die on the voyage. I feel sure that if she
had died on the trip to Cradock this sad event would have been mentioned in family
accounts of the trip.
I
have not found her death recorded in any church or government record, nor has
any gravestone been found in Cradock. When my grandfather MT Flemmer was putting
together a rough family tree he records her as Kirstine Katrinka Flemmer. No husband
is shown, but it does show that he had been told about her, probably by his own
father. And that’s all there is. It’s strange to me that this close knit family,
who kept quite good family notes make no other mention of her at all.
In
writing the Flemmer History I have avoided speculation but the mystery of Cathinca
calls out for some! The most obvious answer is that she died as a young girl in
Cradock or when the family lived for a short time in Bedford and that for whatever reason we have
not found the records. The other possibility is that she became estranged from
the family for some reason and whatever oral history there was within the family,
died with the generations. We just don’t know.
Finally,
I found a telegram in the Pretoria Archives which I have never been able to link
to a Flemmer family member. Dated 1898 it is handwritten and a poor copy but is
from what looks like ‘C G’ Flemmer, school secretary at Roodekoppen near Hiedelberg.
Addressed to the Transvaal Republic Education Department it is an order for more
desks. Could this poor copy actually be from C K Flemmer who would have been aged
52 then? It seems unlikely that we will ever know the answer.