Gerrit van der Linde in South-Africa

This is the story of Dutchman Gerrit van der Linde who settled in South Africa. Gerrit was baptised on May 25, 1692, in Charlois (now part of Rotterdam) in The Netherlands as a younger son of Leendert Rooken van der Linden and Soetje Leenderts Vermolen. 

Charlois

Gerrit likely left The Netherlands on January 18, 1714, as one of 63 soldiers onboard a ship called “Zandenburg”, but I don't know how he ended up early 1717 in South Africa.

Gerrit was married on February 7, 1717, in Drakenstein, Cape of Good Hoop, to Geertruij Putter. Geertruij was baptised on September 14, 1692 in Cape of Good Hoop. Witnesses were Zachrias Wagenaer, Diderik Putter and Maria Jansz Visser. Geertruij's parents were Dietrich Putter from Germany and Zacharia Jans Visser whose family originated in The Netherlands.

Gerrit & Geertruij were the parents of:

1. Barbara van der Linde, bapt. January 2, 1717 in Stellenbosch, 
2. Soetje van der Linde, bapt. May 28, 1719 in Stellenbosch. Soetje was married on March 22, 1744, in Drakenstein to François du Preez, son of François-Jean des Prez and Marie Cordier. They had a daughter Maria du Preez who was bapt. on July 10, 1746. 
3. Leendert van der Linde, bapt. December 21, 1721 in Cape of Good Hoop. Leendert was married on April 9, 1751, in Cape of Good Hoop to Sara Lubbe. She was bapt. on December 19, 1728 in Drakenstein, Cape of Good Hoop. Her parents are Hendrik Lubbe and Catharina van Wyk. They had a son Adriaan Nicolaas van der Linde who was bapt. on August 3, 1760.

Stellenbosch

Sources: Cape of Good Hoop Records, rotterdam.digitalestamboom.nl.

Tuesday's Tip - Check The Women's Ages

The genealogical software I use, Aldfaer, can produce a report showing the women in my genealogical file who gave birth to a child above the age of 44. With approximately 4150 ancestors in my file, it produced a list of 99 women.

What caused those - likely erroneous - ages?

• Often the cause was that the woman's baptism was missing in the records, leading to a bad guess for the birth year, that could simply be improved to a more likely birth year.
• A few times I had made typos - causing the birth year 10 years earlier than it actually was.
• In another case I had to remove the parents: not only was the birth too early, but the children's names didn't match the grandparent's names either, nor was the source a reliable one.