Mervic to Merwe 16 Centuries

By Cobus van der Merwe

A descendant of Dutch Settlers who docked on the Cape Of Good Hope, South Africa in 1652, Cobus van der Merwe has been an American for the past twenty-two years.

He is an electrical engineer , a viticulturalist ,does jail ministering and is an inventor recognized by Who's Who of American Inventors and Who's Who World Wide. Most of the stories in this volume are recollections of people he knew or stories told to him by South Africans and Americans. They are realistic, interesting stories that make enjoyable reading but also have a sobering effect.

Cobus van der Merwe is married to Reta Rood. They have three sons, one daughter and seven grandchildren

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 11, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465321817

Cobus van der Merwe

About the author Cobus van der Merwe is married to Reta Rood. They have three sons, one daughter and seven grandchildren. He is a native of South Africa , a descendant of 1652 Dutch Settlers to the Cape Of Good Hope, and is now a U.S. Citizen. He is an electrical engineer , a viticulturalist ,does jail ministering and is an inventor recognized by Who's Who of American Inventors and Who's Who World Wide.

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Copyright © 2007 by Cobus van der Merwe.

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Contents

Family: van der Merwe [Or Merwede]

A foreword to the van der Merwes at large.

Preface.

Appendix on Page 108 ET cetera

Language.

The Dutch Language:

Antecedents

Merwe.

Van clan over 1000years in chronologically.

[Jan] John I *1284-1299, Count 1296-1299

History of Holland in a glance from 900-1568

From the Tour: The Netherlands and France in the 1500s.

Mozes Juda Rood’s antecedents

Rood family Immigrants to South Africa.

EULOGY IM MEMORIAM

PETRUS BENJAMIN VAN RHIJN.

Foot note:

Family: van der Merwe [Or Merwede]

Written for and dedicated to our seven grand children from the youngest: Philip, Andrew, Chris, Preston, Loandi, Lize and the oldest, Cornelius.

A foreword to the van der Merwes at large.

Soon, I suppose, even I will forget. When I was a boy, I listened to my parents and uncles talking about the tough times growing up and the wars they had to fight to preserve the freedom that we so easily take for granted. And I can remember when, we saw war as a gallant, chivalrous adventure, in our foolish, romantic minds. Already those great Afrikaner regiments are being forgotten; all we have left are stories and pictures.

So that, before all this is forgotten, I have written this book of van der Merwe antecedents. In my own way—myself, the poorest perhaps, the humblest certainly of the hierarchy of writers, I may have the privilege of doing something for my people. The knowledge of that is sufficient reward, and if there is added to it, from the reader, a blessing on the hand that writes, I am so much the richer.

Cobus van der Merwe.

Image543.JPG

Lucas Cornelius van der Merwe, brother of author, 1984. Photo taken only months before he passed away.

Stallion Prinz.

Preface.

Compiling a background for an ancient family tree is not the easiest thing in the world. Over a period of circa 40 years, I have accumulated as much info as I could, being a sentimental paper collector. I attribute credit to the late Ds. Carel P. van der Merwe, a great theologian who had done extensive research into the ancient family antecedents. Also the Africana Museum provided valuable info. Thanks also to Daan Hamman and Janet Melville of the South African genealogical society/ Familia, for their contribution. My friend and distant cousin, Baron George van der Merwede of the noble lineage deserves a big thank you for his help from time to time. The Dutch Archives made a substantial contribution. Thanks to L.C. Geerts and thanks to ALS on the net. Last but not least, my late father Lucas Cornelius and his brother Petrus contributed a lot about the South African branch of the family. Also for the legends handed down. Without the records in family Bibles dating back as far as the sixteenth century, this task would have been impossible. As for the ancient history and military successes, I relied heavily on history books on Western Civilization.

Why a family history? so that you may know whence you came. As I always say, How can you know where you’re going if you do not even know where you are coming from. As for the many other different branches in the South African tree, those van der Merwes may refer to Janet Melville of the genealogical society Familia for their respective information; This book primarily gives detailed information that relates to my own lineage. Dating as far back as 1650 years; the marking of ancestral paternal and maternal parents of all branches of South African van der Merwes are contained in this volume.

I have also added towards the end of the van der Merwe volume, the lineage of my wife i.e. the Rood family and as related van Rhijn family. My thanks to Cousin Pearce Rood Esq. of Surrey U.K. for his valuable contribution to this tree.

As for guarantee that all written in this volume is without error? Well, I have put down on paper the results of many years of research; I cannot guarantee all the finest details.

NB. There is another family that calls themselves Van de Merwe, of such I could trace no connexion to our clan. However, they are not so numerous and are sparsely scattered in Holland and South Africa. I did meet with two families in Salt Lake City that migrated there some thirty years ago. They are all very nice people and are sure to be related. After all, what concerns us is the name "Merwe’. With the migration of people, misspellings frequently occurred on the official documentation. Oft at a port of entry a name is jotted on paper according to the phonetic sound to immigration officials with a different accent; ergo a new spelling is created.

Appendix on Page 108 ET cetera

Genealogy of the Rood family in South Africa.

Then there is the genealogy of the Rood family whence my wife is. Her cousin, Pearce Rood, a retired lawyer of Surrey in the U.K. made a wonderful contribution in providing me with the results of his research into the family history.

This family intrigued me so much by their contribution to the advancement of the South African Culture, especially in the area of academics, where they produced several professors and teachers also in politics where they produced a Governor, several cabinet ministers, senators and M.P.s. And judicial, in providing judges, lawyers, some chief justices and some ad-hoc justices in World Court at The Hague; in the field of medicine, where the very Stem father Mozes Judah was a surgeon, and Dr. Willie Rood was chairman of the SA.Medical Board for over two decades.

Now you can read more about this lustrous family of your Grandmother Reta on pages 108 and further.

Image550.JPG

Photo taken 1936 at dawn, on the farm Excelsior, birthplace of the author. The man on the right, in his bedroom robe was called out of bed for the photo-opt. Left to right: Francina b.1920. [Sister] Bettie b.1885 [mother] Lucas b. 1885 [father] Charles Harold Roberts [brother in law] with son Charles Harold. The horses are left to right: Baby, Vos, WW1 vet. and Moscow. The behind of Starlight is seen protruding behind Moscow. After all, how can one be a van der Merwe without a horse?

Language.

It is the people of an area that makes a language and not an institute of learning. When you meet a van der Merwe in Holland you can expect him to speak Hollands or when you meet a van der Merwe in South Africa he would speak Afrikaans and when you meet one in America, he of course would speak to you in English. Yet they are all of the same ancestral family. A language is an important tool that is extensively used for communication. We know that ere the time of the building of the tower of Babel, all the people on the earth spoke Hebrew, [alien] which was the language spoken by our common ancestors: Mr. and Mrs. Noah. Well, the descendants of that famous couple blew it while constructing the tower with their wrong motives and God Yahweh changed their languages so that they could not understand each other. Well that created mass confusion and led to the separation of the people and the start of different ethnic groups. The Japhethites settled to the north of the Mediterranean; the Shemites remained in the region of Iraq, while the Hamites settled to the south and East Coast of the Mediterranean.

From Japheth’s descendents developed various dialects of which the Latin and Greek tongues were predominant to the west of the Balkans. Eventually German developed. German is used as the official language of Germany and of Austria. It is also used as one of the four official languages of Switzerland along with French, Italian, and Romanish. German is also spoken in dialect form throughout Luxembourg and by much of the population of the regions of eastern France, formerly known as Alsace and Lorraine. It is further spoken in the north-Italian border regions of Tyrol and Ticino (formerly parts of Austria), and in isolated communities widely scattered throughout eastern Europe, notably in Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania (Transylvania), and Russia (Volga region).

Modern German beIongs to the group or so-called Germanic languages (including also the Scandinavian, Dutch, Flemish, and English languages) that are descended from a common prehistoric ancestor referred to by linguists as Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic is itself a branch of the Indo-European family of languages that also includes the Celtic, Italic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Baltic, Armenian, Iranian, and Indic language groups.

Earliest archaeological findings establish that around 700 BC Germanic tribes were concentrated in southern Scandinavia and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts from what is now the Netherlands to the Vistula River. Over the following 500 years, some of them under the leadership Mervic spread southward along the Rhine and Elbe rivers and into the Danube River valley; conquering territories formerly populated by Celtic and Slavic tribes, while others remained in Scandinavia; still others wandered southeast along the Vistula River, ultimately to the shores of the Black Sea. The increased geographical dispersal of the Germanic tribes brought with it, over time, variations of pronunciation and grammatical usage that resulted in the emergence of separate Scandinavian, German, Gothic (now extinct), and later also Netherlandic (Flemish, Dutch) and English branches of the Germanic language group. And out of the Hollands developed the Afrikaans language.

After the captivity of the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel in 722 BC. These captives gradually migrated to other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Now by this time there were people, descendents of Japheth settled in the greater Europe and as far as the hinter parts of Russia. In the NT, Yahshua is called the carpenter or worker in wood Mark 6:3 because He was fulfilling Ezekiel 37:15-23, to go to the dispersion and gather in his companions (referred to as trees in Hebrew), and begin a one-house building project. This naturally attracted lots of attention such as in John 7:35: where the Pharisees muttered concerning Yahshua’s ministry: Where does this man intend to go that we shall not find him?