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| The Kenhardt Lourenses |
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One branch of the Lourens family trekked from their Riversdale farms to settle in Kenhardt in the 1890s. Kenhardt is in the Northern Cape, about 110 kilometres south of Upington, on the banks of the Hartebees River. This is dry open range country, close to the Kalahari Desert, with extremes of temperature, both hot and cold. When it rains, which is not very often, this is rich, sweetgrass grazing country. The plentiful wild life such as Gemsbok and Springbok was well adapted to such dry conditions. In times of drought it is desolate. The annual rainfall can be as low as 75 mm or 3 inches, but there was ample water in the mighty not too distant Orange River. During the mid 1800s it was a tough frontier area, known for its rustlers and bandits. When the Border Protection Act was promulgated in 1868 to bring some law and order to this unruly frontier, magistrate Maximilian Jackson was sent to establish an official outpost at Kenhardt. He and his 50 men had to fight their way to the place, finding it consisted of 2 ramshackled shacks and a single kameeldoring (camelthorn) tree in Gibbons street, .around which a group of rustlers and outlaws lingered from time to time. Poor fellow: this intrepid magistrate finished up a hard tour of duty being deservedly commemorated by the name of a local farm. The farm name was Keelafsny, meaning throat-cut-off, where rebellious Korannas Hottentots took his life in this fashion. In 1884 settlers Jan Buckle and Henning Claassens were killed by poisoned arrows, and in 1902 police armed with machine guns were still required to deal with dangerous bandits in the mountains. But by the end of the century the former police post of Kenhardt was quite a prosperous farming community, based on Karakul lambs, sheep and cattle, stimulated by the diamond mining at Kimberley. This settlement was also encouraged in order to populate the border area close to German South West Africa, now Namibia, and farmers were required to be prepared for military service. The consequence was that the area bred some pretty tough and determined pioneers, who placed a high value on their independence and self reliance. The Lourenses were one such family of trekboers to settle at Kenhardt in the Northern Cape, having survived many dangerous times in doing so. Other Lourenses died on the way. The route taken was via the Karreeberge, used by pioneer explorers, traders and trekboers who traveled through the long, gaping valleys where not a tree or bush was to be seen, but which in season provided a sparse pasture for their stock following infrequent rains. |
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This story is about one line of the family which originated in the Cape when Johann Lorentz settled there from Rostock in 1698. Johann was a soldier, and later free burgher who settled in the Drakenstein and married Anna Michiels, giving rise to the extended Lourens family in South Africa. One of those descendents and farmer in Kenhardt is Jacobus Johannes Nicolaas (Laurie) Lourens, who was born on the family farm in Kenhardt in 1939, studied law at the University of Cape Town, was admitted as attorney, practised law at Keimoes, and became General Manager of the SA Attorneys Fidelity Fund. His story written in 1990 after much research, is in his home language of Afrikaans. Translated, it is titled "The Lourens Family of N'Rouigas -South", and goes like this: |
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" The early Lourenses concentrated on the area Drakenstein and Stellenbosch, and it is then also here that Jan Lourenses' son Matthys who was born in 1708 married Maria Beukis on 8 August 1734. He and Maria had no children, and after her death he married Dina Maria Uys on 19 December 1751, the daughter of Lieutenant Dirk Cornelis Uys who was born in Leiden who married Dina La Roux on 15 November 1722. Matthys must have been a very secure man, because the day after his wedding, namely 20 December 1751, in the afternoon at 7 o'clock, he and Dina appeared before a Secretary to sign a Will. His preparedness brought fruit, because in 1777 he made a will wherein he made two farms over, namely Soetendalsvallei (near Bredasdorp) to his eldest son, Matthys Johannes, (subject to an indicative sum of 1500 gulden), and Vogelstruiskraal on the Nuwejaarsriver, to his second son Dirk Cornelius. These farms were most likely in the Swellendam or Riversdal district.
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