GRAND FATHER AND MOTHER KJ DE BEER

Grand father Karel Johannes De Beer as introduced earlier in my Blog publications, married Anna Van Rooyen in Petrusburg. This photo was preserved by my niece, Nellie, daughter of his son, Karel Johannes, the youngest brother of my father, Barend Petrus. Little is known about my grand mother, who died when I was about only one year old. After her death, my father weired her golden wedding ring until his last day. I took it off on his death bed and handed it to my mother before he was taken to the undertakers. My father respected his mother with all his heart and grew very silent when she came up in family conversations. All what we know is that she brought up two daughters and four sons during the economic depression of the thirties and the droughts that forced everyone out to earn a penny or a tickey (1 cent and two and a half cent). The boys went hunting hare and bush doves for the pot. Annatjie prepared it with great taste, as my mother recalled later after her marriage to my dad. Annatjie was also a midwife who assisted with births in the Petrusburg district. On both of the tombstones of Anna and Karel De Beer in the Petrusburg graveyard, the following inscription in Dutch are exactly the same: "Veilig by Jesus" ("Safely with Jesus"). And thereby hangs a tale to be told...