As a 93-year-old retired archaeologist with enough time on my hands to continue some family history research, I have restarted looking into my part-Dutch ancestry in Cape Town, especially during the VOC era. It is a work in progress, mainly for our family's interest, and it is simply aimed at building on our family's collection of memorabilia and hearsay, tempered with the valuable and scholarly assistance from my two very experienced researchers, Richard Ball and Maureen Rall. Membership of "Ancestry" with its linked DNA "Throughlines" facility has also been extremely valuable.
Overview
I have chosen to focus on the surnames Danielsz and Pool because they have traditionally been recognised as belonging to the ancestral line from which our Brine/Edwards families here in Australia have developed. Both Dutch surnames can be seen in the VOC mid-17th century shipping records of sailors and passengers, as well as among the surnames of the early part-Dutch Cape Town residents. If slaves, they had been brought mainly from ports along the sea route which was used by the Dutch ships travelling from the Netherlands to their major VOC trading settlement at Batavia in the "Indies." It is acknowledged, however, that some slaves who were resident in Cape Town in the very early days had come from West Africa.
In our family line, the Danielsz surname itself appears to go back among the very early settlement records of 1654, whereas the surname Pool first appears in 1808 when J.J. Pool is recorded as the acknowledged father...
