The Flemmer Family

Anyone dealing with genealogy is able to establish the facts of their ancestors' existence through birth and baptism certificates, marriage certificates, perhaps title deeds to show where they lived, or school and alumni records to show where they were educated. Government archives are sometimes accessible to show the career paths of employees and, of course, there is the finality of the death certificate. 

One of the frustrating issues they have is to try and put flesh on the bones of the ancestors they are researching. If they are lucky there may be a hoard of letters, perhaps a diary, sometimes photographs or portraits. In the case of the Flemmer Family in South Africa, there are some publications that give an insight into their lives. The Little Dane, an autobiography of Anna Louise Distin (nee Flemmer) and Reminiscences of Cradock are two such useful works.

With the future researchers in mind, the thought occurred to Steve Herbert that it would be a good idea to ask current family members to jot down some personal details of their lives as part of the 150 Year Reunion. Many responded and their stories - together with their photographs and a line of descents - were published in a booklet for the Reunion. We have not edited or altered the contributions, other than run them through Spellcheck! They are in the words of the family members.

The line of descent is a brief summary of the information held by Steve Herbert and Fay Lea on their ancestry files. In some cases there is a good deal of information; in others the information is sparse. For example, Ashleigh Flemmer has this line of descent information: Flemmer Ashleigh, ASHLEIGH LUIGINA9 FLEMMER (JOHN MARIUS8, OWEN JOHN7, MARIUS TOGER6, HANS CHRISTIAN5) was born on 31 July 1975. This shows that she is the ninth descendant in the record held for that part of the family, her father being John Marius, her grandfather Owen John, her great grandfather Marius Toger and her great-great grandfather Hans Christian, son of Dr Christian August Flemmer, the stemvader of the South African Flemmer family. Although, as this record shows, there is data back for four further generations, the decision was that lines of descent would only go back to Dr Flemmer's children.

Our thanks to everyone who contributed to what will be a unique record of enormous interest to future researchers. The entries in this section are all those in the booklet plus some which were submitted too late for publication and others that have been submitted since the Reunion as we find more and more family members. You can access the stories alphabetically by surname.

If you have a story to tell, or want to update your story or if you don't like your mugshot, e-mail Colleen on flemmerclan@gmail.com