Hello again Cousins, Family and Friends
“How time flies when you are having fun”. It’s been months since our last communication and it certainly has been an “interesting” period. I sincerely hope that this newsletter finds you all well and hearty despite the constrictions of the health climate.
Welcome to the latest update of our family report on the family site. Please visit; lots of new information to see at martensfamily.co.za. This has been a fairly significant update so go there and check your family details. If you discover omissions, additions or errata, I welcome personal contact by email to dewald.j.martens@gmail.com and will do my utmost to respond.
During this lockdown I have also made use of the time to finally edit, format and publish my novel. The description reads as follows:
“A young man escapes conscription into the army of King Frederick of Prussia. Indentured to the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands and bound for the spice-rich Java islands in Indonesia, fate decrees his landing and subsequent stay at the way station at the Cape of Good Hope. This historical novel portrays his life in a story sweeping the expanse of Southern Africa. Set in a time of change when new frontiers were being discovered and settled and a new nation forged, this is a novel of nature, adventure, strife and love lost and regained.”
This is the story (as it might have been) of our Patriarch Heinrich Joachem Martens who came to the Cape of Good Hope with VOC in 1747. Historically it is mostly true and accurate with the exception that in the novel I have given him a much more privileged life than he probably had.
The book portrays the lifestyles, customs and traditions of the era which will give life to our forefathers and give us an understanding of what it would have been like to live in those times. Interwoven in the narrative are descriptions of the unspoiled beauty of nature and animal life.
The story is rich in adventure and romance.
It is available from Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087SJSZL4?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860) both in e-pub and paperback. Unfortunately Amazon does not appear to ship to SA yet but I will provide an alternative after lockdown.The electronic version, however is available from Amazon.
Purchasing this book will also help ensure continuation of the family research and producing a book on the family.
For those who do not yet know, I do now have the capability (courtesy of a new software package) to produce an Ancestor booklet and a personal Ancestor Wallchart for your part of this large family. The booklet will contain detail on all your relatives plus pictures where available, as well as some historical data and, take your lineage back to at least our patriarch and matriarch (which in some cases will be more than 10 generations. If you wish to have family pictures, not yet in my records, inserted I do so. If you wish more detail you may contact me by email.
If you can assist at filling some of the holes in the latest report, please do so. If your family is not there, they will also not be in the book.
Finally I have to reiterate that there is copyright on the research (how can there not be). If you do use the material to build your own versions of the tree on other platforms such as Geni© or MyHeritage© etc., please give credit. I do! I have built in some traps into the reports and can readily identify those who just take information and do not share their own.
It just remains for me to wish you Health, Love, Peace and Harmony during these trying times. Things will never be the same again.
Fond regards
Dewald Martens
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