I don't even know where to start on this one. So yesterday, we go to Franschoek for the day. I love cemetaries and museums, so we stopped at one called The Huguenot Museum etc. All very nice. There are amazing amazing pictures from what I could gather was a French family that moved to South Africa in the 1600's. Totally cool. The museum was too awesome. Super fancy family. So Graeme notices this big manuscript / poster thingy listing all the Hugenoots that came to South Africa etc. All the nice french folk. And there it was: Jean Prieur du Plessis.
OK OK wait. So (boys), my surname is Clark, yes. My biological father... His name was Eugene du Plessis. I remember my mom always telling me that the du Plessis name is French and is actually pronounced "du Play" or something. And I remember teachers at school etc sometimes commenting on my nose, the way the tip of my nose arches up, and commenting that my nose is very french. At the time I was just like whatever, leave me alone to read my Archie comics. You know? While at the museum, I noticed that a few of South African, Afrikaans surnames come from the Hugenoots. How did it go from French to Afrikaans? I don't know. I felt super fancy that my old surname was all over the place. Even that model of the ship, the Oosterhuis - My family came here on that ship man. I am totally a descendant of people that are in a museum. See boys. You are Huguenot descendants, and I'm not really a hundred percent sure what that means. It's going to be a super fun little research project for us, and I'll go back to that museum and that cemetary again later, once I know more about the history here. How exciting! Here is a little extract from a Wikipedia article called "Hugeunots in South Africa":
On December 31, 1687 a group of Huguenots set sail from France as the first of the large scale emigration of Huguenots to the Cape of Good Hope, which took place during 1688 and 1689.
This small body of immigrants had a marked influence on the character of the Dutch settlers. They were purposely spread out and given farms amongst the Dutch farmers. Owing to the policy instituted in 1701 of the Dutch East India Company which dictated that schools should teach exclusively in Dutch, that all official correspondence had to be done in Dutch, and strict laws of assembly, the French Huguenots ceased by the middle of the 18th century to maintain a distinct identity, and the knowledge of French diminished and eventually disappeared as a home language.
Many of these settlers were allocated farms in an area later called Franschhoek, Dutch for "French corner", in the present day Western Cape province of South Africa, with many of the settlers naming their new farms after the areas in France from which they came. La Motte, La Cotte, Cabriere, Provence, Chamonix, Dieu Donne and La Dauphine were among some of the first established farms-—most of which still retain their original farm houses today.
Then we went to lunch at LaMotte, which is my NEW favorite place in the Western Cape. Seriously. Thanks for the suggestion Candice lief! Franschoek has a really special meaning to me now. The French Corner. My ancestors! How special.
