A resource list for those interested in the genealogy of the Meintjes family in South Africa, written by Keith Meintjes.

Introduction

The Meintjes family in South Africa is descended from a German, Johan Heinrich, or Johann Hendrik Meintjes van den Berg whose 1709 marriage to Christina Bastiaans Christina (Bastiaansz) van den Berg is recorded in the Stellenbosch register. He farmed in the Koue Bokkeveld, the area northeast of Tulbagh. By the last half of the 1700s, all his descendants who were to carry the family name forward were farming near Graaff-Reinet, particularly in the Agter-Sneeuberg, which is in the area of the Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock. Much of the family then migrated further into the interior of South Africa, during and after the Great Trek.

Johan and Christina's first child, Anna Dorothea, Anna (van den Berg) Hasse, married Matthias Lötter (see Stamouers), and is the female progenitor of the Lötter family in South Africa.

Genealogy

The Meintjes genealogy is outlined in the classic work, de Villiers / Pama, ^[1] but it is incomplete and contains significant errors in the second and third generations. Those errors are discussed in the WikiTree profile of c3 Johannes Petrus Meintjes van den Berg.

Johann Meintjes compiled and published the family genealogy in 1972 ^[2]. That work was reformatted and indexed by Keith Meintjes in 2004 ^[3] Other publications such as South African Genealogies ^[4] and South African Families ^[5] are simply copies of Johann's work (so far as Meintjes is concerned), and do not break new ground.

Prof. Jan Visagie has added much to the history of those family members who participated in the Great Trek in the second edition of his seminal work, Voortrekkerstamouers. ^[6]

Keith Meintjes corrected the discrepancies of de Villiers / Pama ^[1] in an article in Familia^[7] (download at WikiTree) and has also compiled a revised listing of the descendants of Johannes Petrus Meintjes (download at Wikitree or at e-family). Although many family members have documented parts of the family tree that pertain to themselves, there is no known effort to compile and publish a comprehensive update of Johann's work.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} "Genealogies of Old South African Families", CC de Villiers, edited by C. Pama, p. 547, Balkema (1981)
2. ↑ "Meintjes 1675 - 1971", Johann Meintjes, 1972
3. ↑ "Meintjes 1675 - 1971", Johann Meintjes, edited by Keith Meintjes, 2004. Download at e-family or at eGGSA.
4. ↑ "South African Genealogies", GISA, 17 Volumes, HSRC and GISA, (1986 - 2008)
5. ↑ "South African Families", GSSA, (May 2020)
6. ↑ "Voortrekkerstamouers, 1835-1845", Jan C. Visagie, 2nd Edition, Protea Boekhuis, 2010
7. ↑ "The Wives of Johannes Petrus Meintjes (1751 - 1827)", Keith Meintjes, Familia 48 (4) 2011

Keith Meintjes

Last Update: July 6, 2020

Link to this page: Meintjes Resources