Ansela van de Kaap

Born: 1664, Cape Town, Cape Province, South Africa
Marriage (1): Lorenz Campher
Died: , Cape Province, South Africa

Family Links

Spouses/Children:

1. Lorenz Campher

Anthoinetta Campher+

(+ Shows person has known children.)

bullet Birth Notes:

http://www.geni.com/people/Ansela-Campher/6000000002486633225?through=4034167148560076001

bullet Death Notes:

http://www.geni.com/people/Ansela-Campher/6000000002486633225?through=4034167148560076001

bullet Sources of information or noted events in her life were:

• General Comment. Ansela was a former slave who was freed by Lorenz CAMPHER - they lived on the farm Murasie near Koelenhof.

Information from History of Muratie Wine Estate

Ansela was born in the Castle (Cape Town) - the child of a black Angolan girl and a soldier based at the Cape. Ansela met Lourens Campher whilst she was tending to the gardens in and around the castle. Campher moved out to the farmland given to him by Governor van der Stel. From 1685 - 1699 Campher used to walk on foot to Cape Town to visit Ansela in the slave quarters. During this time Ansela had 3 children by him. On the 28 June 1699, after having been christened, Ansela was set free. Campher fetched her the following day and together they were the first family to farm what would later be known as Muratie.

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A.M. van Rensburg lists her as a slave Stamouer (clan mother). Her maiden name is given by him in the Dutch format "van de Kaap" and not "van die Kaap".

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The story of Ansela van de Caab still resonates through the South African winelands as one of the most endearing chapters in the history of this country's wine culture.

When the Cape of Good Hope was established as a Dutch colony in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck, the international slave trade was in full swing. With a new port at the southern tip of Africa, slave ships trafficking people from African countries to a life of slavery at the Cape and other parts of the world were a common sight. Ansela's story begins during this dark period in history with the Dutch colonists capturing a Portuguese slave ship carrying slaves that had been forcibly taken from their home country of Guinea.

One of the slaves, a woman, was enslaved in the Cape's notorious Castle. Here the woman gave birth to a baby girl who was named Ansela. During those time slaves born in the Cape were only given Christian names, followed by Van de Caab \endash Dutch for "from the Cape".

Ansela spent her infant years as a child slave in the vicinity of the Cape Castle, the Cape Gardens and the market area of Greenmarket Square. Yet each evening she and hundreds of other slave children and women were locked up in the notorious slave quarters.

Having reached womanhood, Ansela fell in love with Laurens Campher, a dashing German soldier in service of the Dutch East Indian Company. They obviously had to keep their illicit love affair a secret and could not even afford to dream of getting married.

Laurens had a deep love for the soil and had always dreamt of becoming a farmer. So when the Cape Governor Wilhelm Adriaan van der Stel granted a farm to Laurens in 1658, he moved to this piece of land at the foot of the Simonsberg Mountains, some 40km from Cape Town and 6km from the town of Stellenbosch.

Whilst setting up his farming venture, Laurens was, however, committed to the love of his life. He would regularly set-off on the three day trek by foot to visit Ansela in the Cape's slave quarters. Three children were born to Laurens and Ansela, and Laurens's one wish in life was to see his family set free from slavery and to bring them home.

In 1699 Ansela was released after being baptised in the Castle. Laurens came to collect her and their three children \endash Cornelius, Jacoba and Agenetjie \endash and to take them to their new home of Muratie.

During her lifetime on Muratie, Ansela played a major role in building-up the farm into a successful enterprise where the family spent the rest of their lives celebrating their freedom in the shadow of the Simonsberg Mountains.

Today, Ansela van de Caab, Muratie's multiple award-winning wine, pays tribute to one of the most remarkable stories \endash and individuals \endash in the history of South Africa's wine culture.

http://www.muratie.co.za/index.php?id=41

http://www.geni.com/people/Ansela-Campher/6000000002486633225?through=4034167148560076001

• Web Based Info. http://www.geni.com/people/Anthoinetta-Campher-b2/4037620386570026945?through=6000000007720709668

Ansela married Lorenz Campher. (Lorenz Campher was born in 1660 in Danzig, , East Prussia and died in 1692 in Stellenbosch, Cape Province, South Africa.)

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There will inevitably be errors and omissions and the whole purpose of creating this online record, is to invite feedback and corrections.
The data is specifically for non-commercial use and my clear intention is to build family records. The data may, therefore, not be used in any way for the purposes of financial gain.

Caveat:- Throughout the project UK GRO birth, marriage and death index data appears. The GRO data appears in Quarters. Q1 = January, February and March, Q2 = April, May, June , Q3 = July, August and September and Q4 = October, November and December. Similarly, Mar Q = January, February and March, Jun Q = April, May, June , Sep Q = July, August and September and Dec Q = October, November and December. Where these dates occur, they represent the date of Registration of the event rather than the date of the actual event. Logically, registration occurs AFTER the event. In some cases this may be days or months or even years after the event. The important thing is that the event was recorded and a copy of the document of registration could be obtained if necessary. This also applies to South African NAAIRS records.

Similarly, the UK system is confusing to the uninitiated because registration districts can span several counties. Accordingly GRO locations may not record the true location of the event. They do record where the record is actually kept or recorded.

Caveat #2:- I have used URL's throughout the website as sources. The URLs are often from paid subscription sites so you may not be able to access them without an account. Inevitably there are broken URL's. I have been to every URL recorded here and at the time they were operational. In this regard, the Ancestry24 records are a problem. There are numerous references in the South African data citing Ancestry24 records. Unfortunately Ancestry24 has closed down and these records are no longer available on line.

The early South African records on this site would not have been as good as they are without the work done by Delia Robertson. Where there are website addresses containing http://www.e-family.co.za... I record the citation should read Robertson, Delia. The First Fifty Years Project. This website can be found at First Fifty Years