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Matthijs Greeff Data This page is a catch all file intended to hold all the data I have about Matthijs Greeff. It is unsorted and in no particular order. The main purpose of this page is that the data may serve as a starting point for any person who wishes to conduct research about Matthijs Greeff. If you have any information (including photographs of documents) about Matthijs Greeff, please email it to Francois Greeff at: Please add genealogical data you wish to submit in a gedcom file as an attachment to your letter. |
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The Hidden Slaves of a Stellenbosch Heemraadslid: On 1 December 2008 Natanja Greeff took part in a symposium on slaves at Stellenbosch University. She spoke about Matthias Greeff and his slaves in the context of the organisational structure of his business interests. The original text of her audio-visual presentation was read out while the audience saw a series of Power Point slides on a screen. The text and the power point slides have been adapted to make a combined PDF document that shows what she presented at the symposium. To see her presentation, click on the yellow link: Slave Symposium Combined File.pdf Several members of the Greeff family attended the symposium, which dealt with various aspects of slavery at the Cape. Here is a copy of the program for the day: Universiteit van Stellenbosch 08:30 Registrasie: Ouditorium: JS Gericke Biblioteek |
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Matthijs Greeff Basic Dates
It seems probable that Matthijs arrived at the Cape late in 1679. |
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Hoge, J. Personalia of Germans at the Cape, 1652 - 1806 GREEF, MATTHIAS (S in block letters). - Magdeburg. Mentioned as burgher on a receipt of 14.1.1680 in MOOC 14/1 nr. 56 under Greef. On 29.2.1680 he bought blacksmith tools from Joost Jansen of Rotterdam (ibid.), in 1682 he appears among the burghers, in partnership with the blacksmith Johann v. Eeden of Oldenburg (q.v.). Resident at Stellenbosch, heemraad (1697 and 1699), owner of the farm "Nooitgedacht" where he raised sheep for slaughter. Kolbe (I, p. 391) tells that he also made medicine and plasters from various plants. +1712 (MOOC 14/1 nr. 56 under Greef). ~12.11.1684 Susanna Claasen of the C.,who was confirmed at Stellenbosch 27.10.1690 "met belydenis". 8 children. (MR. Vrye lieden 1682; CJ 1124: 17; Bdlr. 1: 47; G.R. nr 143.) (S in block letters) = Signature exists, in
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Knechts http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/SOUTH-AFRICA/2005-03/1110639698
From:
"Heather MacAlister" <
heather@ancestors.co.za> Hello All, A "knecht" is an "overseer" or a "manservant" The primary seventeenth-century auxiliary to free burgher labour, the knecht" was either a Company knecht - subcontracted wage labour "On loan" from the Company or a free knecht who worked without a contract. Knechts were similar to earlier North American colonial indentured servants, but the Cape term of indenture was shorter than the equivalent contract in, say, Virginia, where the period of indenture varied between two and seven years. At the Cape, the knecht signed a renewable one-year contract with the head of household and received a cash wage of between seven and nine guilders a month,34 thus the Cape knecht was closer to a real wage labourer than was the Virginian indentured servant. Unlike his Virginian counterpart, the Cape knecht received no assisted passage in return for his contract. There was no headright system at the Cape, whereby plantation owners received grants of land in return for paying the passage of a servant. At the Cape, unlike in Virginia, there was no provision for female knechts or female partners for the male knechts. As one Company official put it, such people “should not be encumbered with families, but should be unmarried farm labourers from Europe.” The officials even proposed single-sex hostel accommodation for the urban knechts. Contracted European wage labour was the Company’s first choice for labour. The Company knecht, a soldier or sailor in the Company’s employ, was hired out to a settler for a year. The knecht did not have the right to refuse his “secondment,” nor was he a party to the terms of his own employment to a farmer. Such company knechts were listed as part of the settler’s household in the Cape census, occupying the same position in the census as they did in real life, sandwiched between the offspring of the householder and his slaves. The use of company knechts declined dramatically from the seventeenth century, when they made up not quite half of the household (excluding slaves), to the eighteenth, when from 1700 to 1765 they constituted 5 percent, and from 1765 to 1824, less than 1 percent of households. In the early nineteenth century only nine knechts were listed, for example, in the populous Swellendam frontier region. As Cape settler families grew, and more family and slave labour became available to successful plantation owners, the proportion of company knechts in households diminished. To protect its own servants, the Company insisted that after 1692 all contracts between Company knechts and colonists should be in written form and have a fixed wage. Free knechts, on the other hand, among whom there were free blacks, enjoyed no such institutional or contractual protection; they were single men who owned no landed property but were not employed by the Company. They could negotiate their own wage. Although they had no full year’s contract, they were paid much higher wages than were paid to Company knechts. In 1666, for example, they were paid twice as much. In 1692, they were the largest labour pool in the Cape population (excluding the native population). The Cape archivist G. C. de Wet has estimated that there were 424 free knechts between 1658 and 1707, more than a quarter of all free adult men who came to the Cape in that period. Not all Cape freehold farmers could afford to hire a free knecht, nor was such employment anything more than seasonal. One official scornfully noted that poor farmers “are also to be seen active enough, and grubbing in the ground like moles, late and early — but alas poor men! They can make very little of it, because they are too poor to keep one or two Dutch knechts in pay for the whole year (and such knechts are absolutely necessary for that hard work).” Both types of knechts were hired at different stages in the life cycle of the employer’s family. Shortly after the arrival of the Huguenot families (1688), the knecht began to be displaced from Cape households by a surfeit of family members. Many of the Company and free knechts in 1692 were hired instead by farmers just beginning their enterprises and their families. With no spare capital to buy slaves and too few family members to maintain the farm, novice farmers were often obliged to hire such wage labourers for a short term, especially on farms that required much clearing of land and building. Matthijs Greef appeared on the 1692 census in the Stellenbosch district with no adult children and no slaves and as cultivating a few vines and running a few sheep: this was a farm in the making. He had a Company knecht, and hired two free knechts, Pieter Andriesz and Pieter Meijer. Nine years later, the family reported 8 of their own children, 13 male slaves, 2 female slaves, 1 male slave child and 2 female slave children. The husband and wife were now presiding over an established and extremely productive farm; with the eldest son now 14 years old, and with a number of slaves, Greef could dispense with his Company and free knechts. By 1706, his eldest son, 19, was listed in a separate household, and Greef senior once again hired a Company knecht, this time keeping him on for a year before letting him go. On a Cape farm, the knecht’s labour was the most expendable and therefore the most flexible. Of the three sources of labour — the family, slave labour, and knechts — only the knechts’ labour could be terminated at will without repercussions. Another settler, Baerend Burgert, hired knechts for different purposes at different stages of the life of his household. Burgert married in 1690; in 1692 he was listed in the Drakensteijn district as a blacksmith, with an infant son, one free knecht, two slaves, and no crops. By 1701, he had purchased a freehold farm, and he reported owning six slaves and employing two Company knechts. When he died four years later, he left four children, all of whom went on to farm their own land and establish dynasties of their own. After his death, the knechts disappeared. The hiring of knechts was, therefore, a flexible and temporary convenience for a poor, novice, or struggling farmer, but mainly in the seventeenth century, when the few immigrant colonists had small families. The use of knechts in the eighteenth century declined for several reasons. Family labour became common as the original colonists established large families. Younger members worked on the family farm for expectations but no wages and on reaching maturity, established a new farm and a new family. If the new farm enterprise was successful, family labour was supplemented by “borrowing” slave labour from the parental farm (termed an inter vivos transfer), or by slave hiring from older areas, including Cape Town. with kind permission from Prof. Robert Shell author of Children of Bondage kind regards Heather From: Hetta Scholtz [mailto:hettascholtz@absamail.co.za] daar is 'n artikel oor die Nortier-broers in die nuwe bulletin (45) 2008 van die Hugenote vereniging. Melding van Mattijs Greeff word ook gemaak : "aan de drie Fonteinen- als knegt op de post van den Stellenbossen Heemraad Mattijs Greeff woonde...". Die vewysing is na Franken 1978:11, wat die boek "Die Franse Hugenote" deur J L M Franken uitgegee in 1978 deur die Staatsdrukker sal wees. Hetta Scholtz, Rooihuiskraal o ja die verklaring is op 20 Maart 1711 gemaak. |
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Matthijs Greeff, Slave Transactions Cape Slave Transactions – R Shell http://www.stamouers.com/Shell.PDF Slaves Bought, Sold and Owned by Matthijs Greeff. This is an obviously incomplete record. The only reference quoted at source was "TN&S" for all the purchases and "MOOC" (presumably MOOC 10/1. 74 & 75 & 77) for all the sales. It is clear from the table that 25 slaves were sold out of Matthijs' deceased estate, but the origin of 15 of them is unknown. A further ten slaves were bought at some time, but not sold after Matthijs' death. What happened to them is not clear. Only 10 slaves, of the total of 35 mentioned here, are recorded in both purchase and sale. Susanna Claasen, who bought the slave 'Diana', cannot be Matthijs' wife, who predeceased him.
The slave Domingo bought his own freedom from Matthijs Greeff for 100 Rds on 1 August 1689 (Boeseken p154. http://www.stamouers.com/Boeseken.PDF). Matthijs Greeff can be found in A J Boeseken, Slaves and free blacks at the Cape, 1658-1700 (1977), pp 147, 154, 165, 167, 169, 187 It would seem that Matthijs Greeff (which Matthijs I do not know) had another slave, Simon of Malabar, who was found guilty of desertion and theft, and was hanged for these offences (The only reference I have is CJ 782, 31 - Perhaps Courts of Justice, Vol 782, Page 31?).
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Declaration of assets and income Matthijs Greeff did not declare all his assets in the opgaafrollen, probably because they would form the basis for taxation. In the article, Knechts (above), we read that: "Matthijs Greef appeared on the 1692 census in the Stellenbosch district with no adult children and no slaves and as cultivating a few vines and running a few sheep". In 1692 he declared 5 horses, 52 head of cattle, 400 sheep, no pigs and 10,000 vines. In the list of slave transactions (above) it is clear that he had bought (at least) seven slaves prior to 1692, but he remains silent about them in his tax returns for 1692. A comparison of his opgaafrollen for 1712 and the inventory of the assets sold from his deceased estate in 1712 show that the Tax Returns and Estate of Matthijs Greeff the Elder do differ significantly:
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Who was Susanna Claasen? http://www.egssa.org/articles/SusannaClaasz/SusannaClaasz.htm This link takes one to a very important article about Susanna Claassen. The article proves conclusively that the denotation "v.d.K." did not necessarily indicate that the person referred to was a slave, or of non-european origin. Ball proves that Susanna was born at the Cape, of two European parents. "v.d.K." thus means that she was born at the Cape - no more and no less. |
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Dagboek van Adam Tas - Jochem Greeff http://www.moederkerk.co.za/bronne/Palma_November2006.pdf Die kosters was egter ook nie altyd so goed met die taak van Aanspreker nie. So teken Adam Tas op 25 Januarie 1706 in sy dagboek aan: ,,Deesen namiddag is de zoon van Matthijs Greef genaamd Jochem begraaven, onse knegt Jacob is eene der dragers geweest, ik ben van mening geweest om meede ter begraave te gaan, dog ik ben niet genoodigt, ’t welk een verzuijm van de kromme koster is, die lubbert heeft de meeste mensen niet genoodigt, en om mij en mijn vrouw te versoeken heeft die kruk ex presse ordre gehad.” Dus, as die Aanspreker jou nie uitgenooi het nie, dan het jy nie na `n begrafnis gegaan nie, al wou jy graag ! Die “kromme koster” het uitdruklike opdrag gehad om vir Adam Tas en sy vrou uit te nooi, maar hy het sy plig versuim en het die meeste mense nie genooi nie ! |
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MOOC Documents Click on the Reference to see the document contents in word format:
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Matthijs Greeff Real Estate
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Resolutions of the Council of Policy of Cape of Good Hope - Cape Town Archives Repository, South Africa Reference code: V.C. 12, pp. 331-332. Donderdagh 29 Decembris 1689. Presentibus omnibus, demptis E.E.Pad en Roodsteen. Op de nominatie van den Eerw. Kerkenraad aan Stellenbosch, nopende de diakonen dewelke dit jaar voor 't aanstaande bij Haar Eerw. zijn opgesteld, soo is na rijpe raadspleging verstaan en beslooten uijt 't dubbeld getal tot diakonen te verkiesen den vrijman, Lammert Hof, [1] sullende Jan Mostart [2] in sijn bediening als diaken nog voor 't aanstaande jaar continueeren; daarenboven sal de Eerw.Kerkenraad voornt. g'adverteert worden om verdagt te zijn op de nominatie der diakonen op 't einde van 't aanstaande jaar te stellen 4 persoonen om uijt de nominatie van dien het competent en convenabel getal te konnen formeeren. Verders authoriseerd d' Ed.Heer Commandeur en Raad den Eerw. Kerkenraadt voornoemt om met de bevestingen van den geeligeerden persoon ter behoorlijke tijd en plaatse voort te varen. Op de nominatie bij den landdrost en heemraden aan Stellenbosch gedaan, noopende de verkiesing der nieuwe heemraden, soo is eenpariger stemme beslooten in de plaats van Gerhard van der Bijl en Henning Huijsing als afgaande heemraden te verkiesen Hans Jurgen Grimp en Matthijs Greev, [3] dewelke na gedane eed ter behoorlijke tijd en plaatse, te weten den ln Januarij aanstaande, aan handen van den Ed. Heer Commandeur en Raad in hun respective collegie sullen sessie nemen. |
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Search Matthijs Greeff at NASA & NAAIRS, Results If anyone has a copy of any of the documents listed below, please email me a copy at Greeff@Greeff.info. DEPOT
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Reference no.: MOOC8/2.88 (1/STB 18/153, Notarial Declarations) |
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Greef, Matthias (Loan farms)
Greef, Matthias
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