Hans Christoffel Snijman, SV/PROG - Origin of the Snyman surname

I know of two families currently in Goch, district of Kleve, in North Rhine-Westphalia, with the name Schneymann. There is another family named Schneimann.

Title

Hans Forstenbergk der Ältere, Hans Stokeleff, Hans Pollenen, Hinrick Witzenhusen, Clawes von Sneyn, Hinrick Gyseler der Ältere, Marten Weckenesell, Hans von Dransfelt der Jüngere, Tilemannus Borchardes der Ältere, Hinrick Swanflogell, Marten Dorman, Herman Witzenhusen, Hinrick Droven, Hinrick Helmoldes der Ältere, Cort Hardenbergk, Hinrick Mundeman, Hans Hoppener und Cort von Siboldeshusen, anders genannt Gercken, Ratsherren zu Göttingen, bezeugen, dass Hans Sneyman der Jüngere, Bürger zu Göttingen, mit Willen seiner Erben, besonders Hans Sneyman der Ältere, Bürgers zu Göttingen, Ludolff Segeboden und Bartold Theigeler, Bürgern zu Göttingen und Vormündern des Hospitals St. Bartholomeus, 2 Mark Geldes jährlicher Gülte Göttinger Währung für 36 Mark der gleichen Währung, die eine Hälfte zu Ostern, die andere zu Michaelis zahlbar, von seinem Haus und Hauswort in Stertzhagen zwischen Herrn Johann Munther und Jasper Moldenhawer verkauft hat.

Aus: II, 4,1 (Olde Bok).

Film Nr. U 40 Life span 29.09.1518

https://www.arcinsys.niedersachsen.de/arcinsys/detailAction?detaili...

Konrad Sneyman from Magdeburg, Tylemannus Sneyman, and Bertold Sneyman.

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=Yvk8AAAAIAAJ&dq=Konrad+......

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=81pHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA247&a......

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=H0PZAAAAMAAJ&q=Tylemann......

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=mspfAAAAMAAJ&q=Bertold+......

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=uMFHAQAAIAAJ&dq=Sneyman......+

Geremias Snijman, in the service of the Dutch East India Company in 1686. Geremias Snijman (uit Dantsig) joins as soldier with chamber Amsterdam. Thursday, March 13th, 1687 Arrival of the ship Salland at the Cape of Good Hope. Monday, March 31st, 1687 Departure of the ship Salland from the Cape of Good Hope. Monday, May 26th, 1692 Arrival of the ship Moerkapel at the Cape of Good Hope.
Wednesday, October 15th, 1692
Resignation Geremias Snijman (Moerkapel)
Reason: repatriated
Remarks: Gestraft (disciplined)

https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000064084449825&

Private User

I think that there is a potentially simpler resolution to our difficulties with Snijmans and Snijders. It is something that has been niggling at me for a week or so and I have been waiting for my researcher to come back to me regarding the monsterrolle as I want to check some details. He is taking some time so I thought that I would use what we have. The information is on page 52 of Upham’s Cape Mothers.

In the body copy he states “First enumerated in the muster rolls (1666) as Hans Christoffel Snijder van Heydelberg soldaat he is a soldier under the Chamber of Enckhuizen …”. He has a footnote to this sentence - number 134. That footnote says, “Hans Christoffel Snijman appears to be enumerated erroneously twice. On p. 66 he is recorded as Hans Christoffel Snijman van Hartsb. Sold:[ae]t.”. I have searched around and think that Hartsb. is an abbreviation for Hartsburg/Hartsberg which these days gets spelt Harzburg. I can find quite a few references to Hartsburg in older texts, but nothing today.

My supposition is that the enumerator for the monsterrol did not make a mistake as claimed by Upham, and that, instead, there were two soldiers called Hans Christoffel. Snijder from Heidelberg and Snijman from Hartsburg.

This also helps with the other issues. The Snijder who is a lidmaat at the church is the guy from Heidelberg. Upham was curious as to how and why a lowly soldier with Snijman’s reputation would get listed as a member. Snijder from Heidelberg doesn’t solve the lowly soldier issue, but does solve the reputational issue. The listing is clearly from the very early days probably 1666 as for the monsterrol.

The Snijder changed to Snijman in the Attestation for the 30/7/1667 trial can also be explained as a simple slip up by the deponents getting mixed up (given two Hans Christoffels) which was corrected with the later reference in the deposition being to Znijman.

Two Hans Christoffels as soldiers is an unusual/unlikely occurrence, but both Hans and Christoffel (Christoff) are fairly common German names and the two guys are shown as coming from different places. And unusual events do happen - just not often.

Snijder from Heidelberg does not appear to have hung around at the Cape for long.

What do you think?

Snijder is a Dutch name. For this reason Hans Christoffel Snijder is an unlikely combination of names.

Hartsb. is a misspelt Heidelb.

They are too similar to suggest anything other than an error (in transcription).

Private User
Alex

I am well aware that Snijder is the Dutch version of Schneider and that someone from Germany would be called Schneider at home. In our context, we have Dutch officials writing down the name and they would be highly likely to use the Dutch spelling - especially in the 1600s when all of these spellings were all over the place.

Also in our context, we have no Schneiders only Snijders and Snijmans. Someone from Heidelberg (Heydelberg) would have been German(ic) and undoubtedly had the name Schneider at home, but his name is recorded as Snijder in what seems a clear case of a Dutch official using the Dutch spelling. I agree that a German having the name Hans Christoffel Snijder would be unlikely, but a German having his name recorded as Hans Christoffel Snijder in 1666 by a Dutch official is pretty much what one would expect.

Dutch spelling was the norm. The German, Jacob Cloete is similarly universally recorded as Cloeten at the Cape, but as Klauten in his marriage record and the baptismal records of his children in Cologne.

The transcription leading to 'Hartsb.' is one of the issues I alluded to in my opening paragraph above. I am keen to see a photograph of the actual document. I still await a response from my researcher.

Private User
Sharon Doubell
Johannes Hendrik Snyman

I have over the last two weeks received photographic copies of the Monsterrolle for 1666, 1667, 1668 as held in the Cape Archives. These complement the copies I have of the court cases involving Hans Christoffel Snijman.

I have transcribed the rolls for 1666 and 1667 and put them in a spreadsheet so that I could analyse them in detail. I have written up my analysis and conclusions and have uploaded them to Sources as a PDF document - it was too long and complicated to be uploaded as part of the discussion.

Please have a read.

In summary:
• Mansell Upham was incorrect when he indicated that Hans Christoffel was entered into the 1666 muster roll twice in error.
• There were two soldiers at the Cape in 1666 with the given names Hans Christoffel. One was called Snijder and came from Heidelberg. The other was called Snijman and came from Hartsburg.
• Upham's transcription of 'Hartsb.' is correct. The writing is quite clear.
• The abbreviated form of Heidelberg is provided in the 1666 roll for another soldier and it is clear that it couldn't be confused with Hartsb. or vice versa.

There was only one Snijman around at the time so, in my opinion, Christoffel Snijman's father was Hans Christoffel Snijman a trouble-making soldier from Hartsburg (Harzburg) on the Lower Saxony - Saxony border of Germany. I believe that Snijder is a distraction to the story.

If anyone would like copies of the documents, I am more than happy to share them with you. They have cost me R1 860 so if anyone would like to make a contribution, I will be able to provide a Dropbox link so that you can download them. I am not expecting to cover my costs, just some contribution.

If anyone is interested, can you please contact me directly outside the discussion. The transaction will be able to be concluded within South Africa without foreign exchange margins or bank fees. I can also do this in Australia and the UK.

I was not referring to the town of Bad Harzburg. The mediaeval castle in the area - still extant in the 1600s, but now a ruin - is called Harzburg. The name came into being, by all accounts, around the 900s. When Neustadt changed its name, it changed it to reflect the name of the castle nearby.

The references I can find in old books treat the area around the castle as Harzburg - ie the district of Harzburg rather than the town of Harzburg. One refers to "Harzburg (Unterharz)". Unterharz would appear to be a municipality in the area.

The Harz mountains (hills) are to the SE and there appears to be a Harzberg too.

I was therefore meaning the district of Harzburg. Some early Cape inhabitants are shown as "van Ceulen/Keulen" (Köln in German or Cologne in English) when they came from a village in the Cologne district so I am not uncomfortable with this, but open to other suggestions.

There is a city of Hartberg in Austria.

Private User

I should have added that this is explained in the PDF.

Cheers

Alun Peter Stevens

I have studied the pdf doc.

I am having difficulty finding any mention of a settlement known as Hartsburg / Hartzburg during the 17th cent.

The tanap database has no listing of it in its database of placenames either.

http://databases.tanap.net/vocrecords/

Alun, could you have a look to see if there may have existed such a place at the time?

I am going to wait and see on this one.

Private User

I don't think that the VOC records at TANAP will be of much use for this. The settlements they deal with are VOC settlements. They have only two references for Heijdelberg and they are to Heijdelberse and Heijdelbersche catechisms in Sri Lanka and not about the town at all. The references also contain nothing about Köln/Ceulen/Keulen despite quite a few Companje employees and vrijburghers coming from there.

My proposition was not that there was a settlement called Harzburg, but that the district associated with the castle of Harzburg carried its name. Quite a few of the toponyms were district rather than town based. The name for that area was clearly extant into the 19th century because Neustadt changed its name to that name and incorporated Bad because of its spa and probably due to spas being very popular amongst the rich at the time.

This reference shows that the area name was in use in 1868 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=G85OAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA61&a... Blankenburg is a bit further East in Saxony.

The castle was in use during the Thirty Years War that lasted from 1618-1648 and then fell into ruin and was demolished. See Later History at the bottom of this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harzburg .

I have found a reference to a village called Hartesborch in the area from the 14th century which was later incorporated into what is now Bad Harzburg (previously Neustadt unter der Harzburg). Can't tell how long it lasted.

We also have to be flexible with the spelling as it was highly fluid. Names for the place appear to have included Hartesborg, Hartesborch, Hartesburg, Hartsborg, Hartzburg, Harteesborch and Harzburg. And could also include these Hartesburc, Hartdesburc, Hertesburg, Hertesburh, Harzesburg, Harzesburc, Hartzesburg.

Mine is only a proposition, but I can't find anywhere else that fits with Hartsb. so it is my best bet at the moment.

Gents, as I said before, I find this absolutely fascinating.
I'm also completely gobsmacked at the level of research and your knowledge of and access to reference material.
As a side note, and a topic for a new discussion, can you share your methods for research, please? I reckon that a number of us amateurs will be able to benefit from your expertise.

Yes, I support the suggestion of Johannes Hendrik Snyman. I am sure there are many seeking ways, means and methods to get good information beyond the obvious sources.

My primary process is the very simple one of getting the primary documents. Some examples: My wife and I have spent 10 full days (9 to 5) over a couple of years at the State Library of Queensland just photographing letters and farm records from her great-great-grandparent's sheep station on the Darling Downs. Result: close to 3,500 documents plus photographs and maps. We have also spent a week in the Tasmanian Archives in Hobart downloading and photographing documents from the Van Diemen's Land Company where said great-great-grandfather worked before going to Queensland. Result: about 1,000 documents, photographs and maps.

For South Africa, the Family Search DRC and other church records are invaluable. Needs a subscription and some sets are not indexed so I have had to make my own - for instance the death register records do have an index, but it is full of holes. The National Archives and Record Service, NARSSA, is very good too. Unfortunately very little is online so, like with this case, I have to pay someone to photograph the records I want. The biggest problem is that there are separate repositories for the Cape, Natal, Free State and Transvaal (yes Gauteng hasn't got there yet) and one therefore needs different people across the country. Fortunately everything I have wanted of late has been from Cape Town because my contacts up north have died. A few hundred documents to date.

For the UK, The National Archives (TNA) is the place for the UK and any colonial stuff regarding South Africa, Australia etc and there are a lot of researchers available who can get you copies and TNA itself will make electronic copies for you provided you tell them exactly what you want. I have a most excellent A3 hand drawn map of Mauritius from 1819 scanned in high resolution by TNA.

The British Army and Navy Lists are also good for finding Brits who served and quite a few did.

For research on Australia, we, and anyone anywhere, can use the National Library of Australia online service called TROVE. It is a digitised record of all Australian newspapers from the early 1800's with an extremely good search function. My wife also has a subscription, via the State Library of Victoria, to British Newspapers Online which is a similar resource for British newspapers. We have many thousands of newspaper articles and advertisements. Both sources also contain quite a lot about South Africa because the papers published information from around the Empire.

You need old dictionaries. There are some useful ones online, but sometimes one has to buy them. These are important because some words are not used anymore so some documents are difficult/impossible to interpret. For instance some old Dutch words - 'dispoost', 'ardelboost' (not always a midshipman), 'landtspasseat', 'hooplooper'. Also English where the words have changed. Facetious in the mid-1800's, for instance, meant exactly the opposite of what it does today which rather spoils some old letters if one doesn't know.

Having a wife who is an historian and has spent close to 30 years digging into family and related matters helps a lot. We have a family database with 16,500 people in it with the bulk cross-referenced and verified by documentation. We also have a database of 3,000 people who were interesting acquaintances, business partners etc of the family group. Her family are hoarders so we have quite a trove of old documents, pictures and photos and we also bought some from an antique dealer in Devon who found our web site and offered us a deal we could not refuse.

Membership of Geni, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find My Family, eGGSA, Zulu War and a whole range of localised family history and local history sites around the world.

These days when we travel, we have a family history theme so we visit relevant historic places and take photographs especially of gravestones. Never know what will be useful so go snap-happy. Again we have a few thousand photographs. Last trip to the UK, we visited the Archives at King's College Cambridge and transcribed (no photos allowed) a letter to John Maynard Keynes from the wife of the recently deceased Alfred Marshall (look him up) who was my wife's g-g-grandfather's nephew. Only time in my life I have been told to stop whispering by a librarian.

And then there is the inter-web. There is an enormous amount available via Google, but one sometimes has to work hard on the search criteria and go down to page 10+ of the results. Also try searching on the Books tab. This cuts out all the commercial clutter and can turn up some fantastic information. Archive.org and Google books have lots of lovely stuff.

Being retired helps too!!!

You can see some of the output of this family archive plus document/photo collection process here https://downrabbitholes.com.au/marshall/orphans/ , here https://downrabbitholes.com.au/marshall/the-clerical-connection/ and here https://downrabbitholes.com.au/marshall/bank-of-england/ The content is probably boring to most as it is about my wife's Marshall ancestors (although you will see a Cape Town connection under the Orphans and there is a very nice panorama of Cape Town from 1788 that I got from an excellent Dutch site).

:-)

Wow, this is overwhelming..... I am only starting my family tree.

Alun, interesting what you turned up about the region surrounding the castle of Harzburg being referred to generically as "Harzburg" -- that is, I think, strong confirming evidence.

Ondertrouwboek Groningen 1623 - 1636.

15-01-1625.
Hans Snijman, soldier onder de zeer reputable hopman Erenst van Isselmuden
[Baron van Isselmuiden] en Barber, de weduwe van Matijs Mulder present.
Wordt de proclamatie geconsenteerd. Gecopuleerd 06-01-1625 door domijnum Wesselum.

Huwelijksinschrijvingen van militairen de de Groningen 1623-1636.
Door: Joop van Campen.
Inleiding: The period 1623 t / m 1636 is gekozen omdat het een logisch vervolg is the reeds
reopened ondertrouwboeken van de Stad Groningen in the reeks Groninger Bronnen en
Toegangen, with numbers 20 t / m 22 in the period februari 1595 - july 1623 , waarin ook
veel militaries have been reported.

Vragen en / of opmerkingen email aan: joopvancampen@yahoo.com

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=ht...

https://www.openarch.nl/gra:1da1c4a1-d426-73dc-e5af-f74218d82d28