Petronella Heymans

Many years ago I received a gedcom file from Christo Heymans with extensive notes for many of the individuals in the file. This is one of those notes.

Petronella Heymans is the 6th maternal great grandmother of Arnold Greyling the author of this website.

Exerpt from: ILLEGITIMACY AND FAMILY FORMATION IN COLONIAL CAPE TOWN, TO c. 1850, Vertrees C. Malherbe, Journal of Social History, Summer 2006

The partnership of Christiaan Roelofse from Norway and Johanna Petronella Heymans van de Kaap illustrates a woman’s passage out of slavery and the founding of a family, in and out of marriage, by her association with a European. In 1749, “Pieternella Heijman Bastert Hottentottin”–a description signifying that she was the offspring of a slave and a Khoekhoen–baptized her out-of-wedlock daughter, Elena Pieternella, in the country town of Stellenbosch. No father was named. In 1756, when she was cited as Petronella van de Caab, she married Roelofse who was, by then, the father of other daughters and a son. After their marriage (which legitimated their joint existing family) they produced six more children. (49) It appears that some, at least, of the ten children were not presented for infant baptism: in 1772 their vrijgeboren (freeborn) daughter Catharina Petronella’s baptism, as an adult, was recorded in the register for VOC and privately owned slaves. One week later Catharina’s out-of-wedlock child by Barend Barendse was baptized and entered in the separate register for “Christian” children. (50)

In 1777 the adult baptisms of two more sisters were recorded in the same slave register. The first of these, Maria Helena (apparently the person cited earlier as Elena Pieternella), baptized an out-of-wedlock child by Hendricus Bartels (of unknown origin) in 1780; after five years she presented two bastards by another father. Christina Elizabeth bore a bastard by Jacobus Bruyns whom she later married (she produced three more out-of-wedlock children after Bruyns died). In 1782 their brother, Hendrik, and Elisabeth Kras (or Grasse) presented an eight-year-old bastard son for baptism. At the same time, Kras baptized a three-year-old child by another father, Willem Barteling. Both of Kras’s families received the charity of the church (Behoort onder de Diaconie alhier). Meanwhile, the Roelofse’s daughter Cornelia had produced a child whose father was not identified. A fifth sister, Johanna Magdalena, and Jacobus Petrus Ryno baptized an out-of-wedlock child in 1786. Johanna was married twice, but not to Ryno. Both her husbands were Germans, as Ryno (Rynhoud?) may have been as well. (51)

Source: Malherbe, Vertrees C. “Illegitimacy and Family Formation in Colonial Cape Town, to c. 1850.” Journal of Social History 39, no. 4 (2006): 1153–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3790244 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Illegitimacy+and+family+formation+in+colonial+Cape+Town%2c+to+c.+1850.-a0149463680