THE KRUGER FAMILY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2391, 28 December 1899, Page 60

THE KRUGER FAMILY.

(An Extract from " Paul Kruger and His Contemporaries," by F. Reginald Statham, in the-English Illustrated Magazine.) w The history of Paul Kruger, it has been .well said, is the history of the South 'African Republic. Born 'in the year 1825, in the Colesberg division of the Cape Colony, he was a motherless lad not much over 10 years of age when he went forth Jnto the wilderness with one of the parties of emigrant farmers who found it impossible to continue living under British rule. 'At a distance of more than 60 years it is possible to discuss with some degree of impartiality the causes that led up to the '^remarkable movement into the interior of South Africa which is now universally jspoken of as "the Great Trek." That those f" auses have at times been misrepresented here can be' no doubt, and it is only by turning to such a careful and judicious authority as Dr Theal that a proper conception can be formed of the whole circumstances. It is enough to say that, examined in the light of the facts which Dr has collected in his valuable " His/to.ry of South Africa," the causes that led .to " the Great Trek," when scores of {Qutch families left their farms in the Cape .Colony and crossed the Orange River into jvha't was then an unknown wilderness^

were nut " such 'as reflected discredit upon themselves. On the other hand, an examination of these causes leaves room for regret that the British Administration then established at the Cape did nbt take more pains to understand those with whom it had to deal. This kind of regret applies to the case of the " emigrant farmers " just as it applies to the c-se of the " Pilgrim Fathers " who laid the inundations of civilisation on the other side of the Atlantic. And just as their pilgrimage led to the building up of civilisation in New England, so the emigration of the Dutch farmers from the Cape Colony led to the laying_cf the foundations of civilisation in the greater part of what is to-day knowii as South Africa.

As much as this, which is hardly now a , matter of political controversy, may be ad- j mitted. Coming back to the lad of 10, ! who in 1836 set out on the perilous pil- ! grimage, and who was destined 60 years j later to occupy so remarkable a position I before the world, we find him a member.; of a family which had for some generations | held a leading position among the Cape j settlers. Like many of the founders of j Dutch families in South Africa, the original ancestor, so far as South Africa is concerned, of the President of the Transvaal went to the Cape in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Jacob Kruger, the son of Frans Kruger (whose name in his will was spelt "Cruger"), was born in Berlin in the year 1686 ; and his widowed mother, whose maiden name was Hartwigs, was still living at Sadenbeck, in the Potsdam district, in 1720. It was in 1713, that Jacob Kruger took service with the Dutch East India Company, in what capacity does not appear. It seems, however, to have been the policy of the company to attract into its service capable men irrespective of nationality — France, Portugal, Holland, Germany, and even Scotland contributing towards the consolidation of the little .colony under the snadow of Table Mountain — a colony regarded by the Dutch then, as it has been regarded by the English since, as forming a convenient half-way on the route to India. Four years after the arrival of Jacob Kruger at the Cape, he married, and a year later — that is, in 1718 — he successfully claimed from the company the right of burgherghip and a grant of land. Five^ sens and three daughters were born to Jacob Kruger, and of these Hendrik, the sixth child and fourth son, married into the Cloete family, still one of the oldest and best-known families in the neighbourhood of Capetown. Hendrik's eldest son, Johannes Jacob, born in 1748, lad an eldest son, Hendrik, whose second son, Caspar Jan Herdrik, bori in 1796, married one of the i Steyn family (to which the President of j the Free State belongs.) and became, in j 1825, the father of Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger. Some time before the close of last century the several families of Kruger were living far away from Capetown, in what was then the extreme northeasterly district of the colony, where, according to existing records, they occupied a pesition of considerable social and political importance. Three families of Kruger weie j included in the second party of " Voortrekkers," consisting of farmers from the Tarka and Colesberg districts of the Cape Colony, who, in 1836, made a start into the wilderness under the leadership of Commandant Andries Hendrik Potgieter. Proceeding more cautiously than the Triechard party which preceded them, , and which had hurried on towards the semi-tropical regions that now form the north-eastern districts of the Transvaal, the Potgieter party were more disposed to study the resouroes of the table-land which is now known as the Free State. Here, in return for a grant of land, they formed an alliance with the chief Makwana, who saw in these newcomers valuable allies against the oppression of the great chief of the Matabele, Mosilikatze, by whom the whole country had recently been laid waste, and whose headquarteis were then not far from the modern town of Zeerust, in the western part of the Transvaal. In their ignorance ! of the paramountcy claimed by Mosilikatze, the new settlers took no trouble to secure I his goodwill. The consequence of this neglect was speedily felt in the massacre by the Matabele ot two entire hunting-parties, while another detachment of the emigrants, including, ibere is reason to believe, the boy Paul Kruger, only succeeded in repulsing a Matabele attack after six hours' nard fighting.