Greyling Family and Jan Greyling (stamvader)
Many years ago I received a gedcom file from Christo Heymans with extensive notes for many of the individuals in the file. These are the notes on Jan Greyling.
Jan Greyling is the progenitor (stamvader) of the Greyling Family in South Africa.
According to Pama (Die Groot Afrikaanse Familie Naamboek), the surname means “the shining, the radiant”. Another meaning is almost the opposite, namely “the frightener, the terrible”. Greylings are therefore privileged to be able to choose a meaning that in their opinion most corresponds to their character traits.
Johann Greyling’s surname was also spelled Grayling/Greiling. At the Cape, the name and surname soon became “Verhollands”. Johann Greyling became Jan Gryling (as written by himself) during his own lifetime. Over the years, different spellings of the surname have appeared, namely Greiling, Greeling, Kreeling and Greylingh, often depending on the writers’ writing skills. In the epitaph of Catharina HEYMANS in Klerksdorp (died 26 Feb 1951), her maiden name is indicated as Greeling.
Today, no Greyling writes their surname other than Greyling.
The ancestor arrived at the Cape towards the end of 1724/beginning of 1725. He was a German soldier in the Dutch garrison. Many Germans served as soldiers in the Dutch garrison.
The years 1724/1725 belong to the period after the reign of Willem Adriaan van der Stel (1699-1707) when the second, Jan de la Fontaine, temporarily acted as governor from 1724 to 1727 after the sudden death of Governor De Chavonnes. In 1727 the extremely unpopular Pieter Gysbert Noodt was appointed as governor, but after his equally sudden death in 1729, he was succeeded by Jan de la Fontaine, now appointed as governor.
During the reign of Governor Noodt, 13 men, mostly Germans, deserted from the garrison. They were severely punished. How Johann Greyling obtained his discharge from the garrison is not known, but he became a citizen and mason in Stellenbosch.
The family name was propagated in South Africa through the four sons of Johann Greyling.
The Greylings were people with large families and therefore the number of bearers of the family name increased rapidly. Today the surname is widespread in the Republic. The surname is also found in Namibia and Zimbabwe. After the Anglo-Boer War, Greyling families emigrated to Argentina. Some of them returned to South Africa in later years. It is possible that there may still be Greylings in Argentina.
Although in our modern times the trend is no longer to give children the old family names, typical Greyling names, such as Jan (Christoffel), Jacobus Frederik, Barend Christiaan and Abraham Carel, are still common, supplemented by the later names of Jan Barend Christiaan, Piet (for Petrus) and Paul, and indicate that the Greylings all stem from one and the same family tree.
Several Greyling descendants have made a study of their Greyling ancestors and family trees. More than one was interested in their relationship to the Voortrekker leader, Piet Retief and his Greyling step-sons.
However, the stepsons of Piet Retief were not the only Greylings among the Trekkers. There were several Greyling family groups that participated in the Great Trek. The historian A.J.H. van der Walt writes that during the murders along the Moordspruit and Bloukrans River on 17 February 1838, the Engelbrechts and Greylings, a total of 36 men, women and children, were all murdered together. This was just one of the family groups.
After the annexation of Natal by England in 1843, a few Greyling family groups settled in the Transvaal. Others settled along the Caledon River in the area of the later Smithfield and Rouxville, but also in the area of Reddersburg, Ficksburg, Winburg, Kroonstad and Hoopstad. In even later years, some of the Free State Greylings acquired farms in the Wolmaramsstad district.
How numerous the Greylings were in the Transvaal and Orange Free State by the year 1900 is evident from the number of 88 who, according to the War Museum in Bloemfontein, were taken prisoner of war by the British forces during the ABO. In the Diyatalawa prisoner of war camp alone there were 24 Greylings. It can be assumed that double the number of 88 remained in the field as fighters until the end of the war.
