Top SA family's colourful origins

REBECCA of Bengal and her children Jan and Apollonia were freed in the winter of 1744 in terms of the will of their owner, a former slave named Carel Jansz of Bengal. He had enjoyed 32 years of freedom after being manumitted by the Stellenbosch burgher Jan Harmensz Wolteringh, whose partner was Lucrees of Bengal.

Carel Jansz and his wife Flora of Bengal lived at 2 Church Street, now a stylish city precinct – the block bounded by St George’s Mall, and Church, Burg and Wale streets. He is thought to have made a living from fishing or fish processing.

After Flora’s death in 1736, Carel shared the premises with Rebecca and her children (born in the 1730s), plus Anthonij of Cochin and Slamat of Souma. Anthonij was bequeathed to Rebecca (presumably to provide her with an income) and Slamat was sold with Carel’s household goods.

His heiresses were two minor daughters of the duijkelaar (diver) Zacharias Eijkenstroom (d.1753), a Swede who’d married Johanna Jansz or Jansen van de Kaap in 1735. Could she have been a relative of Carel’s, possibly a daughter? One of the beneficiaries, Catharina Barbara, married burgher Floris de Kock in 1754.

Once Rebecca was free, she added Elizabeth to her name and gave her children their fathers’ surnames. Jan/ Johannes de Jager van de Kaap, a mixedrace lad, trained as a tailor. Apollonia Jansz van de Kaap, Carel’s daughter, was the offspring of two Bengali exiles.

Both married in the Dutch Reformed Church within a week of each other in October 1751. Apollonia’s husband was Friedrich Simon Plagmann, a German baker, while Jan married a free woman, Elisabeth Pieterse van de Kaap, whose parents have not been traced. Jan died of smallpox four years later, leaving Elisabeth with a 1-year-old son named Fredrik Simon de Jager.

Fredrik taught himself law and became a Cape Town agent and self-proclaimed solicitor. His illegitimate son, Fortunatus Johannes, whose mother was Johanna Ziegelaar, was baptised in 1786 and later apprenticed to a tailor.

The Plagmanns had two daughters, Elisabeth (born prior to their marriage) and Sophia Rebecca, born in 1752, but the little girls were soon deprived of their mother, who died in 1756.

Elisabeth Rebecca of Bengal died in 1759. Her husband was Andreas Meijer of Danzig, who arrived at the Cape in the service of the VOC (The Dutch East India Company) in 1748. Common soldiers were not allowed to marry, so theirs was delayed until his discharge in 1755.

The motherless half-Indian Plagmann daughters both wed German founders of well-known South African families. Elisabeth chose Ferdinand Christiaan Geyer, who arrived in 1764, and Sophia married Johan Godfried Mocke, who arrived a year earlier.

More about this interesting Indo-German family next week.