HISTORY OF CAMISSA PEOPLE | Camissa People

HISTORY OF CAMISSA PEOPLE | Camissa People:

All over Africa and its Island countries in every port city there are populations of African-Creole people who are a multi-ethnic mix with the major part of their ancestral heritage and culture being African. But as a result of the slave trade and maritime traffic on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coastlines they also have in their genealogical and genetic ancestral-cultural heritage a mix of African, Indian, Arab, Southeast Asian, and Chinese and European roots. Under British colonial administration from 1911 people with this ancestry who have over 150 tributaries to their ancestral heritage were forcibly assimilated into one ‘race-silo’ labelled COLOURED and de-Africanised by colonial decree.

It should be borne in mind, however, that while all people described in this article as "Camissa" were labelled "Coloured", not all people labelled "Coloured" fit the Camissa description of the article, and that could lead to some confusion.

Confusion is also caused by the use of terms like "the Coloured community", as if labelling automatically creates community. It is also important to be aware of the distinction between genetic and cultural heritage. For example, "Camissa" does not appear to include people like the descendants of John Dunn, who are of Anglo-Zulu heritage, and though classified as "Coloured" during the apartheid era, would have had a different cultural heritage from the Camissa of the Cape.

 Also, a child born in Johannesburg 2001 of a Nigerian father and a Ukrainian mother might be classified as "Coloured" even in the post-apartheid era, but could not be said to belong to a Coloured "community", either culturally or genetically, and from a genealogical point of view, searching for "Camissa" ancestry for such a person could quickly lead to a dead end.

One of my wife's ancestors was a slave known as Francina van de Kaap, so she would probably fit the  Camissa description, but we haven't a clue about Francina's ancestry. "Van de Kaap" just means that she was born there, but her ancestors could have come from almost anywhere. Perhaps DNA testing could give a clue, but that is very expensive. Francina has many descendants alive today, most of whom are classified as "white", and wouldn't think of themselves as Camissa.

So from a genealogical point of view the Camissa description is a two-edged sword; it could help to clarify some things, but could also lead to more confusion.

Organizing your family history research with Zotero - Organize Your Family History

Organizing your family history research with Zotero - Organize Your Family History:

Zotero is great for genealogy for all of these reasons and more:

• It is free, with the stability and support of a university backing it up.
• Even if you are syncing to the Zotero cloud, you can do that for years on free storage, before you have to buy some. And when you do buy storage, it’s inexpensive and unlimited.
  
• It provides the structure missing from tools like OneNote and EverNote, but brings substantial flexibility, along with the structure.
  
• It can add most catalogued online source citations to your Zotero library with one click.
  It can organize and provide one-click access to the thousands of documents, spreadsheets, photographs, and other files you have saved to your hard drive. In essence, it can draw all those files together into a uniform, organized system.
• Zotero becomes your door to all you have collected.
  It allows you to create a record once but to file it in as many folders as you want without taking up significant extra space. You make a change once, and it changes in every folder.
  
• You can find things rapidly, even if you only have vague memories of having long ago found a document that might be of use in solving a new genealogical problem.
  It will sync to the cloud, allowing you to access your work at Zotero.org, wherever you have Wifi access.

At last I'm getting the hang of Evernote

I've had Evernote on my computer for several years, but haven't used it much until now.

It came on one of those discs that come stuck to the front of computer magazines, and I installed it, and when I read the description of how it worked I thought it must be useful, but I somehow never managed to do much more than write a few test notes. The description made it sound as though it must be useful, but I could never get the hang of using it.

But when, on genealogy forums, people asked, as they do surprisingly often, what you do with all the notes scribbled on bits of paper, I would sometimes suggest that they have a look at Evernote. Though I didn't use it much myself, it sounded as though it could be useful.

As recently a couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on that topic, Genealogy notes and news: Managing research data: hastily scribbled ideas, scraps of paper and sticky notes, and I forgot to mention Evernote.

But after writing the article, I thought I must really make an effort to get to grips with Evernote, and so I sar down with the book, and re-read it. And then sat down in front of the computer with it, and tried out everything. It worked.

So what is Evernote?

Do you know Microsoft OneNote?

It's a program that comes with Microsoft Office, but none of the books you can buy about using MS Office tell you how to use it (sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when softwere came with actual documentation). I couldn't even get a third-party book for using OneNote. But my daughter who is studying for a doctorate in Greece discovered it, and said it was very useful for taking notes.

Well Evernote is something like that, but it's free. And I found a book about it.

My Evernote by Katherine Murray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've read the book a couple of times, and some parts several times, and I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it now.

One of the useful things about Evernote is that it synchronises across all devices. That means that I can have a copy on my desktop computer, my cell phone and my laptop computer, and I can enter and access data in all three places. And you can also access it on the Web, as the Evernote server is where all the synchronisation takes place. And if that isn't enough, you can send entries to it by e-mail, or even by tweeting from Twitter.

So what does it do for genealogists who want to know what to do with all those notes scribbled on scraps of paper, and on paper napkins and the like?

My method, described in my other post, is to make notes in a text database program, which means that even if I lose the original scrap of paper, I can find the information again, which makes it much more useful. But some people, like this blogger, don't like retyping, Marian's Roots and Rambles: Taming all that Information! - Part 1:

Ok, I know some of you are thinking, how does she get those handwritten transcriptions into the computer?!! Most of the time, unless there is a very good reason, I will scan my original notes and capture them as a pdf or jpg. That way I can save time by not retyping them and I don't have to worry about introducing further errors.

But if you have a zillion pdf and jpeg files, how do you find them again? She does it by typing long descriptive file names. But how much easier to scan them directly into Evernote (Yes We Scan!) And Evernote claims to be able to read and search for text in graphic files (I haven't tried that yet).

Evernote lets you have up to 250 different notebooks (one for genealogy, one for recipes, one for gardening, one for your PhD notes etc.) And its free. If you really need more, there's a premium version you can pay for.

Evernote also lets you clip web pages -- either the whole page, or a particular article, or selected text. It even advises you on which way to do it, but you don't have to take the advice if you don't want to.

And what if you really like working with pieces of paper? I know some researchers do like that. Well Evernote can print out your notes for you, on 3x5" cards, if that's what you want, so that you can shuffle them and spread them out on the dining-room table.

So why not go to www.evernote.com and give it a try? There's nothing to lose, and it could solve your filing problem.

What about Microsoft OneNote?

Well Evernote can import that too.


View all my reviews

Update

I've just discovered that some other bloggers are also discussing the genealogical uses of Evernote, so check for more tims and resources here UpFront with NGS: Evernote -- is it part of your genealogical arsenal? Should it be?

Family history research in Namibia

On a recent trip to Namibia we did some family history research, which you can read about here and here. We spent two days in the state archives, which have moved to a spacious new building since our last visit 20 years ago, but did not find much that we didn't already know.

We had arranged to visit the Lutheran Church archives, but the archivist was away, and a retired archivist came over to help but was not able to find anything useful. Where we did find useful material that was new to us was in the library of the Scientific Society of Namibia, which had photocopies of the early Lutheran Church registers, and transcriptions of several more. We were interested mainly in the period 1840-1900, and we did not have time to look at everything properly, and so ended up madly photographing pages of the church registers to look at when we got home.

Once we have sorted out the material we have from this trip, we may possibly try to plan another, and allow more time for looking at the things we were not able to see properly this time.

Two people who were very helpful to us were Werner Hillebrecht of the State Archives, and Gunter von Schumann of the Scientific Society of Namibia (which is open to the public only in the afternoon).

The State Archives has deceased estate files, similar to the South African ones, and are probably the thing that most researchers should begin with. We had dealt with most of these in previous visits, which is why we did not find so much this time. There is a computer index, but, unlike NAAIRS in South Africa, it can't be consulted on line. With an online index you can go to the archives with a list of the records you want to consult, which saves some time. But the Windhoek archives index can only be consulted using terminals in the reading room, which meant that we had to spend 2-3 hours making lists of the things we wanted to look at before getting a chance to look at them. The archives staff were very helpful in showing us how to use the index, and how to order material (requisition forms have to be filled in in duplicate).Not all the material in the archives has been indexed yet, but what has been indexed was useful. Again, you can see some examples of what we found here.


The State Archives only has the older deceased estate files, which means that those for people born after about 1890 can only be found in the office of the Master of the Supreme  Court, and we didn't have enough time to go there.

The Scientific Society is also working on the publication of early written material. Some recent publications have been the papers of Swedish explorers and traders, which had previously been published in Swedish, but are now being translated into English.and republished to make them more accessible.

There is more information about the Scientific Society of Namibia here and here.

There is more information about the State Archives (part of the National Library of Namibia) here.

Where on earth is the Shoshongo Dum?

Edward C. Tabler, in his book Pioneers of South West Africa & Ngamiland makes quite frequent reference to the Shoshongo Dum. It does not, however, appear on modern maps of Namibia or Botswana (the area covered by Tabler's book). Nor does it appear on any ancient maps that I've been able to look at. So where on earth is the Shoshongo Dum?

Tabler says, on page 36, of the trader Axel Wilhelm Eriksson (who married Fanny Stewardson, a relative of my wife), that "Eriksson's party trekked down the Shoshongo Dum in October 1878, travelled up the Okavango to the Omuramba Ombongo, and returned to Omaruru by way of eastern Ovamboland."

Several books with the writings of 19th-century travellers have been printed or reprinted in the last 30 years, and they often provide a "Register" giving a summary of information about the people and places mentioned in the book. But none of those I have seen gives any explanation of the Shoshongo Dum.

Tabler's text suggests that the Shoshongo Dum might be a river, and might possibly be a tributary of the Okavango. But the Okavango is a pretty big river, and flows through three countries -- Angola, Namibia and Botswana, so, if the Shoshongo Dum is a river, where does it join the Okavango? And what is its modern name, so one can find it on a map?

Nowadays such things should be easy to find. We have the World Wide Web which has accumulated a huge amount of information since it started 20 years ago, and there are search engines to help you find it.

So I did a Google search for Shoshongo Dum, and when I had managed to convince Google that I was not looking for "Shoshone Dam" or "Shoshone Drum" it spat out just one reference: Oxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the Kalahari, an article in Current Anthropology published in 1991. Other search engines returned nothing at all, so Google is still the top search engine on the Web.

There was nothing on Wikipedia, so I thought I'd put a stub of an article there, just in case anyone else should be looking for the Shoshongo Dum and wondering what it was. But Wikipedia would not let me link to the one article Google found that contained the term (and even there, only in a footnote). Wikipedia had blacklisted it.

Still, I suppose if I'd tried to look for it in the 19th century it would have taken me several months, if not years, instead of a few hours.

So if anyone is looking for the Shoshongo Dum, and Wikipedia continues to block the article, maybe this blog post can help people to find it.

And if anyone knows the modern name for it, or why it was called Shoshongo Dum in the first place, I hope they will let me know.

Racism in South African genealogy

About a week ago someone remarked, on a South African genealogical mailing list, that he had found that some people were compiling "indexes" to some civil registers that had been made available for browsing online, But he had found that those indexes were not complete, and appeared to exclude those with obviously African names, and even those judged to be coloured. He queried this practice, and asked why an index should not be a complete index.

I had not consulted either the indexes or the records themselves, so I cannot say that I know for certain that indexers have been excluding entries on the grounds of perceived race, but I did say that, as a matter of principle, I thought that partial indexes would be worse than useless, particularly if there was no indication that they were partial, and no indication given of the criteria for inclusion or exclusion.

I was rather surprised by the the vehement response on the part of some participants, who saw this as an unfair attack on those who had so unselfishly given their time and energy to providing indexes for the use of researchers, and praised them for what they were doing, and said that they should not be deterred by those who questioned the exclusionary practices. Those who questioned these practices were labelled "grumpies", which seemed to be regarded as a sufficent defence of the practices themselves. It was basically an attempt to evade the issue, thus making it clear that there is a great deal of racism in South African genealogical circles.

The racism has been there for a long ntime.

When I first became seriously interested in genealogy, when I got married in 1974, I joined the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GSSA). It soon became apparent that the main focus of the society was was the genealogy of white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. That was the genealogy of "the South African nation". English-speaking South Africans were very much second-class citizens, and the attitude towards them was rather condescending. Including black South Africans was unthought of and probably unthinkable to those who ran the show. And it seems that those attitudes persist in some genealogical circles in South Africa even today, and they try to justify them by calling those who question them "grumpies".

Perhaps someone could write a doctoral thesis on racism in South African genealogy, and maybe do a comparison with the Nazi Sippenbucher in Germany.

Quite apart from the question or racism, however, there is the problem of being honest (or dishonest) with the historical record. Omitting records in a public index is a form of falsification, as is adding false records, in the way this article describes.


There has been some discussion of that article in the soc.genealogy.britain newsgroup, and one poster there said it didn't matter if the records were falsified because genealogy is "only a hobby".

It may be "only a hobby" to some people, but genealogy is also an ancilliary science of history, and the study of genealogy can reveal a great deal about political, economic and religious history. You want to know why such-and-such a firm in Port Elizabeth exported the products of such and such a town in the Karroo? Because the biggest shopkeeper in that town was the brother-in-law of the owner of the firm in Port Elizabeth. In politics, nepotism is rife and always has been. In religion, you can see missionaries go to a place and start a church, and as it grows, many of the new members are relatives of the first members.

The role of the Msimang family in the growth of Methodism in both Natal and Swaziland is of interest to church historians, and their activities had political and economic repercussions as well. Now if someone decides, on the basis of a personal whim, or racism, to omit members of the Msimang family from a public index, they could mislead historians who are interested in more than just genealogy for its own sake. It's more than "just a hobby".

I once, in the course of a historical research project, interviewed a lot of black Anglican clergy in Zululand, and I asked them about their family history. One of them said to me, "We Zulus think we know a lot about this, but we don't."

I would like to see more South Africans, of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, become interested in genealogy and see that "the South African nation" is indeed a rainbow nation, and if that makes me a "grumpy", then long live grumpiness.

South African archives computers down for a week

Researchers trying to consult the computers that hold the indexes to the South African archives have been greeted with this message since last week:

SITA Inverse Web Proxy Server

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL:
http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl
The following error was encountered:

Connection Failed

The system returned:

(60) Operation timed out

The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.
Your cache administrator is sitasc@sita.co.za. 

The computer systems are used by the archives staff, and by researchers in such topics as history and genealogy, either remotely via the web, or at the archives themselves.

When researchers began reporting that the system was inaccessible last weekend, there were some jokes about civil servants not working at weekends, and people expected the system to be up and running again by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

When it wasn't, people began looking a bit more closely at this "SITA", and discovered that it is not run by civil servants at all. It seems that a lot of the state's information and computer services have been privatised. SITA's web site tells us

SITA is committed to leveraging Information Technology as a strategic resource for government

SITA was established in 1999 to consolidate and coordinate the State’s information technology resources in order to achieve cost savings through scale, increase delivery capabilities and enhance interoperability.

It also tells us that it is SITA (Pty) Ltd, which means that it has been wholly privatised.

Perhaps it is time for some investigative journalists to start looking into SITA and how it operates, who it is responsible/accountable to, if anyone. Privatising an important strategic resource for government somehow doesn't seem like a good idea.

Preserving Your Family History Records Digitally

Here's an article with some useful tips on preserving family history records digitally.

Preserving Your Family History Records Digitally: While gathering family history records over the years, you’ve probably been preserving them physically. So why consider preserving them digitally now?

This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using digital preservation to both augment and enhance the preservation of your family history records. It also presents solutions to the challenges, identifies what types of family history records are suitable for digital preservation, and summarizes what is required to get started archiving digital records.

Why don't you SAY something?

One of the enduring mysteries of our family history research has nothing to do with descent, but it remains a puzzle that gets more puzzling with every month that passes.

In addition to our family history blogs, we have a family history Wiki, which we started in the hope of encouraging family members to join in writing the family history.

The site gets about 50-80 visitors a day, most of them from the USA, though most of our family are from other places.

But the mystery is that one page gets more than three times the number of visitors than any of the others. This page is the discussion page for Alfred William Green, and this month so far it has had 90 visitors.

The page that gives information about Alfred William Green, however, has had only 10 visitors. So it seems that no one wants to know anything about Alfred William Green. They are, however, drawn to discuss him. But they don't. Nobody says, or rather writes, a word.

If this was a once-off thing, it perhaps wouldn't be worth remarking on. But it isn't a once-off thing. It is consistent, month after month. The page with least information on it has more visitors than any other page on the site. Yet nobody seems to have anything to say.

Can anyone suggest an explanation for this strange phenomenon?

For what it's worth, Alfred William Green was born in Nova Scotia in 1839 and died in Queensland in 1886. His wife, Henrietta Goote, was born in Turkey in 1842 and died in Australia in 1904. They had seven children, and we'd love to know what happened to them. But we'd also like to know why so many people are interested in discussing him, but never do.

So if you visited the Alfred William Green discussion page before coming here, please leave a comment below to say what you were looking for, and whether or not you found it?

A fresh start for this blog

I'm revamping this old family history blog, which has been dormant for a couple of years, and turning it into a general family history and genealogy blog. Our personal family history research will still mostly be on our other blog, which is on WordPress, which is better for things like posting family photos.

This blog will be for more general posts on family and local history and genealogy. News, information about resources, family history software, or background interest about places of interest, and especially the areas we are interested in -- southern Africa, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The blogroll will reflect this, though I'll also be happy to link to any halfway decent genealogy blog that displays the "Recent Viewers" widget from MyBlogLog and/or BlogCatalog.