These were my ancestors
winning letter
In the Spring edition, you featured a snippet on “Herrie’s coin” (page 56). I have no idea where you got this information from, but much of it is wrong. The people you write about are my ancestors, so I have to point out the errors. (Just a note: I know nothing about Herrie’s coin – it’s the first I’ve heard of it.)
First, Pieter (Havgard) van Meerhof was never Jan van Riebeeck’s ship’s doctor. Van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape on 6 April 1652; Van Meerhof arrived on the Princess Roijael on 22 March 1659.
Second, he was never a doctor. The honorific Dr title was reserved for physicians, who had studied medicine at a university. He held the position of junior “chirurgijn”, or barber-surgeon, a very different kettle of fish. Not much is known about his life before his arrival at the Cape, although it is recorded that he was from Copenhagen, and probably born there. Whether he had served an apprenticeship as a chirurgijn or had gained the relevant experience during some war is unknown. Ship’s surgeons mainly treated wounds and ulcers, set broken bones, lanced boils, and could bleed a patient to get rid of “evil humours” (the traditional red-and-white barber’s poles represent the blood and bandages associated with this practice).
It is a sad anomaly of how history is taught in schools (or was in my day) that the story of Herrie the Strandloper is better known than Van Meerhof’s far more important role as an explorer in the early Cape – most people don’t recall ever hearing his name. He went on six exploratory expeditions up the West Coast, quite possibly passing really close to where Koringberg is today on some of them. He was second-incommand on two expeditions, and leader of one. He named Riebeek-Kasteel in Van Riebeeck’s honour. There’s plenty more one could say about him, but I just want to correct the main errors in your story.
Third: Eva. You give Herrie his proper Khoi name, Autshumao, but not Eva, who a servant of Van Riebeeck’s, as so many people seem to think. The Van Riebeecks also had a slave woman called Eva, so perhaps the confusion is understandable. Herrie was Krotoa’s brother, he was her uncle, and probably her maternal uncle, which gave him some rights over her. Herrie could already speak some English, because of a return trip he’d done from Bantam (Java) on an English ship, but Van Riebeek wanted an interpreter who could speak Dutch, so they prevailed upon Herrie to bring his about 10-year-old niece Krotoa to them, to be raised and educated in their household. And so she became fluent in Dutch. Van Riebeeck refers to her in his Dagh Registers as a “tolkienne” (interpreter). She did indeed marry Van Meerhof in the very first legal mixed marriage at the Cape, but it was on the orders of Van Riebeeck’s successor, Wagenaar, and the decision was entirely political, to keep relations with the Khoi sweet. And they wouldn’t have been allowed to marry if Krotoa hadn’t been the first Khoi to take Christian baptism. At the time of their marriage, they already had a few children. I am a descendant on my mother’s paternal side from their daughter Pieternella, who married Daniel Zaaijman, through their son Pieter Zaaijman, and also on my mother’s maternal side through two of their daughters. So, Pieter van Meerhof and Eva/Krotoa are simultaneously my 9X, 11X and 13X great-grandparents.
