FAY'S REPORT BACK | STEVE'S PAPER | PICTURE GALLERY

The Millennium Meeting - the First Flemmer Family Reunion - came about after Terry and Anthea Herbert visited the East London Flemmer cousins in 1999. The occasion coincided with a visit by Margie and Duncan McBean, down from Zimbabwe to see their new grandchild, Caitlin Teeton.

As the evening wore on and the old stories were told and re-told, someone wondered aloud when last there was a critical mass of Flemmers together. After a good deal of discussion and rowdy argument, there was a consensus that it had been over the Christmas holidays in 1970 when about 35 family members had gathered in East London. The idea came together that it would be great to repeat the gathering and it was suggested that Christmas 2000 would be an ideal time, being 30 years since the last one and the end of the millennium.

When this idea was discussed with Steve Herbert, the family historian, he said that he and his fellow researcher, Fay Lea had already been talking about a Family Reunion - to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the family in South Africa. He and Fay then decided that it might not be a bad idea for a trial run and so the idea gathered momentum.

The original concept of a Christmas gathering was too difficult to handle but there was good support for the reunion to take place over the Easter weekend in Kalk Bay in the first year of the new millennium.

Steve and Fay put in an enormous effort to make the weekend a huge success and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended.

Fay's Report Back, Steve's Paper and a Picture Gallery are all just a click away.

FAY'S REPORT BACK | STEVE'S PAPER | PICTURE GALLERY

REPORT BACK

The Flemmer Family Reunion held on the 14th April 2001 in Kalk Bay was a wonderful success. Over 100 relatives attended.

The descendants of Christian August were divided as follows:

The descendants of ..Christian Ludwig had red stickers and Hans Christian's descendants had blue stickers. (Unfortunately these were the only two of CA Flemmer's children who showed any interest.)

All the blood relative's had gold stars and what competition between the crowd! We had a photographer take pictures of everyone together and then the blue's and then the red's and then the gold stars... Oh dear, it certainly got everyone going.

Unfortunately I tried to scan the picture of everyone, but the quality is so bad that I had to scrap it.

The little hall we were able to hire had a gallery upstairs where we had an exhibition of all the documents Steve and I have collected over the past ten years. Some as old as 1700's...(not originals unfortunately, but still very impressive). We divided it into the descendants and had quite a show!

I gave a short chat about the women of the family, Steve gave a wonderful talk on the family with a slide show. We had tea and cake to start and a magnificent fish finger supper with wine afterwards.

The Family Tree was printed out it took 11 hours to print, covered 144 A4 pages, (three deep and 48 across). It took hours to cut and paste and was 15 metres long when completed. The tree has the photographs of all the family members we were able to get....

It was a wonderful coming together of family, most who had never met, others who had been estranged and for the younger generation an eye opener to the bigger picture!

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