Genadendal: A Long Walk

For Isaac Balie to review

This page is waiting for Isaac Balie to check it. It is published now so that he can see how it fits with the rest of the site. Until he has approved the text, it may change. Questions for him:

1. Does this page describe your book fairly? What would you like to change?
2. Is “former director and curator of the Genadendal Mission Museum” the title you would like the page to use?
3. Rows marked [TBV] are where the book’s dates differ from other sources. For each one, which date would you stand by, and on what source?
4. Are you content with how the wiki quotes and cites the book?

Because this page touches the mission settlement or its land, the Genadendal Transformasie Komitee will also be asked to check it.

Genadendal, The Valley of Grace: A Long Walk Through the History of the First Mission Station in South Africa is a history of Genadendal by Dr Isaac Balie, a former director and curator of the Genadendal Mission Museum [MS]. He first published it himself in September 2020, and AuthorHouse published the current edition in July 2023 [MS]. The book tells the story of the mission village from 1737 to the present, through its church, schools, buildings, crafts, people, and museum collections [MS]. This page describes the book, sets out the major events it records in one table with page numbers, lists where it differs from other sources, and explains how this wiki uses it.

What the letters in square brackets mean

Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.

• [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record. On this page, a row is tagged [IC] only when the book agrees with a fact that History of the Valley already supports from independent sources.
• [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from the book alone. The book draws on the mission’s archives and the museum’s collections, and on the author’s own interviews and memories, so it is one side’s record. It has not been checked against sources that do not depend on it.
• [TBV] To Be Verified. The book’s date differs from other sources used on this wiki, or the book gives more than one date and no other source settles it. See Where the book differs below.

Whose voice this is

The author says the book follows no strict chronology, and that it is told in the first person and reflects his own memoirs (p. 8). He grew up in Genadendal and led its museum, and he writes as a Christian: most pages close with a Bible verse or a reflection. The book records the valley’s first people as “Khoi”. Where it quotes older writers, they sometimes use colonial names now considered offensive, and this page does not repeat them.

At a glance

Author	Dr Isaac Balie, former director and curator of the Genadendal Mission Museum [MS]
Full title	Genadendal, The Valley of Grace: A Long Walk Through the History of the First Mission Station in South Africa
Editions	First published by the author, September 2020; second edition, December 2021; AuthorHouse edition, 18 July 2023 [MS]
Publisher of current edition	AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana [MS]
ISBN	979-8-8230-8373-7 (paperback); 979-8-8230-8374-4 (e-book) [MS]
Preface	Marthinus van Bart, retired cultural editor of Die Burger [MS]
Pictures	Most from the Genadendal Museum Archives; cover lithograph by Rev Daniel Suhl, after a painting of Genadendal in 1802 [MS]
Where to get it	Amazon

Page numbers on this page are those of the AuthorHouse edition of 2023.

What the book covers

Chapter	Starts on page	What it covers
Preface	7	The museum collection’s declaration as a National Cultural Treasure in 1991, and its later change to provincial status
Historical Outline	9	Schmidt, the reopening of 1792, the renaming, the “Golden Age”, the twentieth century, and Mandela’s visit of 1995
Our Spiritual Life	27	The Moravian Church, festivals, the pear tree, and the churches of 1798, 1800, and 1893
Education	43	The schools of 1814 and 1831, the teachers’ college of 1838 and its first teachers, and the library
Our Built Environment	57	Khoi huts, clay cottages, Church Square, the bridge, and restoration
Our Natural Environment	73	The kloof, fynbos, medicinal plants, trees, gardens, and wheat farming
Cottage Industries	87	Knives, furniture, tanning, milling, smithing, women’s work, and efforts to save the crafts
Printing	107	The mission press, its publications, and the Printing History Museum
Inhabitants	113	Khoi ancestry, law and order, land tenure, language, transport, soldiers, music, and medicine
From the Cradle to the Grave	131	First residents, baptisms, marriages and burials, the missionaries of 1737 to 2019, and their graves
Post War Genadendal	153	Village management after the missionaries, the loft movement against apartheid, the land question, and village life
The Mission Museum	163	The museum’s work, benefactors, education, and research services
Photographs & Poems	177	Photographs by Anne Fischer, with poems by the author
About the Author	193	The author’s life and work, written by Marthinus van Bart
Social Media, Bibliography, Teachers, Index	199	The author’s 19 YouTube documentaries, a bibliography, and a register of teachers trained from 1838 to 1934

The major events the book records

Each row gives the event as the book records it, with the page or pages where it appears. Rows tagged [TBV] are explained under Where the book differs.

Date	What the book records	Pages
1457	Followers of Jan Hus found the Unitas Fratrum in Moravia, the church later called the Moravian Church [IC]	27
13 August 1727	The church is renewed at Herrnhut, in Saxony, where Moravian refugees began building in 1722 [IC]	27-29
9 July 1737	Georg Schmidt lands at the Cape [IC]	9
25 April 1738	Schmidt settles at Baviaanskloof in the Riviersonderend valley [TBV]. Thirteen colonists’ farms already lie near the Khoi kraals that remain [MS].	9
1738 to 1744	Schmidt teaches reading and writing to a first class of 28 pupils, and his students learn to sow and harvest wheat [MS]	43, 86
12 April 1742	Schmidt baptises Kibido as Jonas [MS]. Kibido is the man this wiki calls Kupido. The book gives other years for the first baptisms [TBV].	131, 132, 175
1744	Cape Dutch Reformed clergy object that Schmidt, who is not ordained, may not baptise, and he leaves after seven years [IC]. He gives Magdalena a New Testament printed in Amsterdam in 1694 and asks her to keep the 28 converts together [MS].	9-11
1744 to 1792	Magdalena gathers believers under Schmidt’s pear tree to pray and to hear the New Testament read [MS]	34-35
1 August 1785	Schmidt dies at Niesky, in Germany [MS]	10
24 December 1792	Hendrik Marsveld, Daniel Schwinn, and Christian Kühnel arrive to reopen the mission [IC]. They find Magdalena, the ruins of Schmidt’s house, and his pear tree [MS].	10, 34, 141
1793	Lessons resume under the pear tree [MS]. The first 135 soldiers from the station, called pandours, are recruited and stationed at Rietpoel near Cape Town [MS].	14, 43
1793 to 1795	The Stellenbosch Dutch Reformed congregation, under Rev Meent Borcherds, questions the mission’s right to work in its parish, and the Cape government forbids the mission to ring its bell [MS]. Around 1795 the station suffers violent attacks, and a commando of Strandveld farmers threatens to end the mission by force [MS].	11-12, 37
End of 1794	The school has 170 learners [MS]	43
1795 to 1797	After Britain takes the Cape, the Colonial Secretary, Andrew Barnard, finds the bell stored in the guest house, and the mission is allowed to ring it again [MS]. The book dates the permission to 1797 [MS].	37, 39
1797	On Lady Anne Barnard’s recommendation, the government gives 500 rixdollars to drain the garden land, and each household gets 2 to 4 morgen to garden [MS]. Kühnel opens a cutlery workshop in March [MS]. The watermill is built [IC]; the book calls it the oldest surviving watermill in South Africa [MS].	82, 91, 95
1797 to 1836	The population grows from 705 to 1,457 [MS]	131
1798	Under British rule, the mission may build a church. The Middle House, a chapel designed to look like a Cape Dutch dwelling, is consecrated [TBV]. The book calls it the first mission church building in South Africa [MS]. The colonist Jean Baptiste Nigrini and his Khoi wife open a guest house, the first in the interior [TBV].	24, 36
1799	Christlieb Booda, a Khoekhoe captain in the government’s service who came to the station in 1792, joins the church [MS]	13
3 January 1800	Magdalena dies [IC], and is buried in the new cemetery [MS]	132
8 January 1800	The first service is held in a larger church with stepped gables, built by the residents’ voluntary labour [MS]	38
1800	The missionary Christian Ludwig Rose lays out the cemetery on the pattern of Herrnhut’s [MS]	137
1801	A fire pump arrives as a gift from Zeist, in the Netherlands. The book calls it the oldest fire engine in South Africa [MS].	152
1806	Governor Janssens renames Baviaanskloof Genadendal, “Valley of Grace” [IC], after being impressed by the courage of its soldiers [MS]. With 228 homes and 1,234 people, Genadendal is the largest settlement in the colony after Cape Town [TBV].	14-15, 22
1810	The missionary Johann Michael Peterleitner starts a joinery and teaches furniture-making [MS]	89
1813	The surveyor H. Schutz maps the boundary between the station and the neighbouring farms, but residents receive no proof of ownership [MS]	11
15 July 1814	A school building, the first juvenile school in the interior, is consecrated with 243 children [MS]	15, 44
1816	C.I. Latrobe, visiting for the church, draws up rules for residents as a “Brotherly Agreement” [MS]. He writes of a local “Genadendal Dutch” [MS].	115, 117
17 December 1817	Hans Peter Hallbeck arrives as superintendent. Under him, new stations open at Enon and Hemel-en-Aarde (1818), Elim (1824), and Clarkson (1839) [MS].	144
1819 to 1820	Residents build a bridge over the Sonderend River under the missionary Johann Daniel Beinbrecht [IC]. The book calls it the first solid bridge in South Africa [MS].	66, 139
1820 to 1860	The village economy flourishes. Half the residents earn their living in trades such as tailoring, cobbling, carpentry, masonry, cutlery, smithing, and tanning [MS].	87
1825	A lending library opens [TBV]. The first cluster pines are planted, and the watermill is enlarged [MS].	56, 81, 91
1826	Three irrigation dams are built [MS]	82
1828	Tanning begins on 15 September, taught by an Irish tanner named Mackenny, and a tannery building follows in 1829 [MS]	90
1830 to 1832	A gift of 100 rixdollars buys a used pipe organ from England, which the book calls the oldest in South Africa. It is in use by 1832 [MS].	126, 143
4 July 1831	Fire destroys the smithy, and the missionary blacksmith Johann Gottlieb Schulz dies of the shock [MS]	94-95, 146
12 September 1831	South Africa’s first kindergarten opens for 144 children aged three to six [MS]	46
1832 to 1837	Dr Edward Lees practises as Genadendal’s first qualified doctor, until his death in 1837 [MS]	128, 143
1837	The printing works is set up with a wooden press from the Netherlands [IC]. Its first book is a lesson book for infant schools [MS].	107
1 January 1838	More than 600 people, many of them freed slaves, have applied to live at Genadendal [MS]	48
12 September 1838	South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opens [IC], with 11 students, Hallbeck as principal, and C.F. Francke as lecturer [MS]. Prince Victor von Schönburg-Waldenburg gives 20,000 thalers towards the building [MS].	48, 53
5 May 1839	The first marriage at Genadendal is recorded. In 1840, 154 couples marry [MS].	131-132
1842	Carl Jonas, the son of a slave, becomes the college’s first qualified teacher, and later the first South African ordained as a Moravian minister [MS]	50
1849	Johannes Ruiter becomes Genadendal’s first policeman. Farmers petition against him, and four months later a European constable replaces him [TBV].	115, 145
1849 to 1869	The missionary doctor Rudolph Roser works at Genadendal [MS]. In the measles epidemic of 1858, 3,000 people are vaccinated and 10 die; in the typhoid epidemic of 1865, 30 of 250 patients die [MS].	128
1851	Genadendal knives win an honourable mention at the Great Exhibition in London [MS]	88
3 January 1855	Governor Sir George Grey visits. Two older residents, Leefregt Ari and Sebastian Hendrik, are the last who can still speak the Hessequa language [MS].	116
November 1857 to 15 February 1858	The surveyor J. Kuys measures the station at 5,644 morgen and 289 square roods, and the Legislative Council grants it in trust to the church’s superintendent [MS]. Many residents reject the grant because no resident is made a co-trustee [MS].	15, 115
1858	Genadendal’s first post office opens [MS]	121
1859	The press begins printing the monthly De Bode, edited by Benno Marx [IC]	108
1861 to 1862	The press prints a children’s magazine, Maandbladje voor Kinderen, renamed De Kinder-Vriend in May 1862 [MS]	108
1862	When two liquor stores open in Greyton, the press prints a warning against drink, De Drank [MS]	109
1877 to 1894	The missionary A.G. Hettasch tries to replace the failing crafts with new work: castor oil, silkworms, and buchu and everlastings for export [MS]	104
1880	The last of Genadendal’s cutlers dies. The book blames cheap Sheffield knives sold at the Cape with the Genadendal mark [MS].	88-89
1886	Genadendal’s castor oil wins prizes in Cape Town, and 33 medicinal herbs win an honourable mention at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London [MS]	76, 104
Late 1800s	Factory goods undercut the crafts, and many people leave for the diamond fields, the railways, and the farms [MS]	16, 104
20 August 1891 to 15 March 1893	The church of 1800 is pulled down, and the present church is built on its site with bricks made and carried by residents. It is consecrated on 15 March 1893 [MS].	40-41
1899	A deputation of the Afrikaner Bond argues that the college is not needed for people who are not white [MS]. The Mission Store, the youngest building on Church Square, is built [MS].	49, 63
1899 to 1902	During the Anglo-Boer War the missionaries sympathise with the Boers and residents side with Britain, and resentment against the mission grows [MS]	153
1901	Louis Rudolph Schmidt begins about forty years at Genadendal as missionary. He maps the houses and garden plots of the mission villages [MS].	149-150
1909	The Mission Stations and Communal Reserves Act (Act 29 of 1909) becomes law [IC]. It gives the mission title to its church, school, and houses, reserves the rest of the land for registered occupiers, and provides for a board of six elected and three nominated members [MS]. Many residents leave the Moravian Church [MS].	16, 156
1915 to 1918	Five hundred Genadendal men enlist, and 19 die in service [MS]	157-158
October 1918	About 1,500 residents catch influenza, and 70 funerals are held within two months [MS]	153
1924	A Board of Management under the 1909 Act replaces the missionaries’ Council of Overseers [IC]. A group of residents known as the Magermans take the church to the Supreme Court over property rights [MS]. The Volkskerk is founded in the village [MS].	42, 154, 159
1926	The Department of Public Education closes the teachers’ college, arguing that “coloured” people had no need of tertiary education [IC]. In 90 years it had trained 236 teachers [MS].	16-17, 48-49
1926 to 1997	A series of government departments runs Genadendal, which stays an undeveloped village of about 5,000 people [MS]	17, 154
1928	The Young Men’s Society puts up an obelisk to the soldiers who died in the war of 1914 to 1918 [MS]	158
1938	A high school opens in the old college building, with H.A. Dudley as its first principal. It is later named after Emil Weder, and is now Emil Weder Secondary [MS].	54
1950	The Group Areas Act becomes law [IC]. Fear of removal spreads to Genadendal as families in Greyton and Caledon are removed, and many residents stop maintaining their houses [MS].	61-62
1950s and 1960s	Members of the Teachers’ League of South Africa meet in the parsonage loft to oppose apartheid, and become known as the Solder-beweging (Loft Movement) [MS]	154-155
1950s	Co-operative laws force farmers to send their wheat to licensed co-operatives, and the watermill closes [MS]	92
1962	Rev Daniel Wessels, one of the loft movement, is placed under house arrest for five years [MS]	155
1960s	Eskom electricity and piped water reach Genadendal [MS]	159
1963	A museum opens at Genadendal [MS]	194
1980	The buildings on Church Square are declared national monuments [MS]. The Department of Forestry fells the cluster pines on the mountain [MS].	7, 68, 81, 151
1986	The Moravian Church launches the Mission Trust Fund to restore the buildings on Church Square [MS]	68
1987	The museum opens in the college building of 1838 [MS]	53, 164
8 March 1991	The museum’s collection is declared a National Cultural Treasure [MS]	7, 164
1992	The watermill is restored and working again, with money from the Tiger Oats Milling Company [MS]	92
10 October 1995	President Mandela visits Genadendal [IC]. Earlier that year he had renamed his Cape Town residence, Westbrooke, Genadendal [IC], after a motivation from the museum’s curator [MS]. He tours the museum, speaks in the church, and addresses about 2,000 people on the rugby field [MS].	16-21
2000	The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) changes the status of the museum collection and the Church Square monuments from national to provincial [MS]. The first liquor store and shebeen open in Genadendal [MS].	7, 159
About 2001	The Dutch government gives R11 million to restore the historic buildings, and residents are trained as masons and thatchers [MS]	69
2002 to 2003	The modern presses are moved to Cape Town and the printing works closes. The building becomes the Printing History Museum [MS].	110
2005	The Albion press, used at Genadendal for many decades, comes back from the South African Museum on Heritage Day [MS]. The museum begins a genealogy project, “The Children of Jonas”, tracing the old families to Kupido’s daughter Anna Maria Mauritz [MS].	111, 175
2007 to 2008	The Genadendal Transformation Committee applies to the Western Cape High Court to review actions of Theewaterskloof Municipality, and then for an order that the municipality is in breach of a settlement made by the court in 2008 [MS]. The book says no settlement had been reached when it was written [MS].	155
2015	The Department of Cultural Affairs names the Genadendal Mission Museum the best museum in the Cape Province [MS]	195

Where the book differs

The book sometimes gives different dates for the same event on different pages, and some of its dates differ from other sources used on this wiki. Each is set out here without choosing between them.

• The day Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof. The book gives 25 April 1738 (p. 9) [MS]. History of the Valley gives 23 April 1738 [IC], and the valley’s tercentenary is set for 23 April 2038.
• The first baptisms. The book gives 1739 for Magdalena’s baptism (p. 132), 1740 for Schmidt’s first baptisms in the river (p. 32), 12 April 1742 for Kibido’s (p. 175), and 1743 for the first five candidates (p. 131) [MS]. This wiki gives 1742 [IC].
• The first church. The book says permission came in 1798 and dates the Middle House chapel to 1798 (pp. 36, 63), but its map of the square dates the first church to 1795 to 1796 (p. 64) [MS]. This wiki gives 1796 [IC].
• The guest house. The book says Jean Baptiste Nigrini and his wife opened it in 1798 (p. 24), and elsewhere that Jean Pierre Nigrini built it in 1800 (p. 179) [MS].
• The population of 1,234. The book gives this figure for 1806, with 228 homes (p. 22), and for 1799 (p. 38) [MS]. The missionaries’ diaries count 1,093 people in 217 houses at the end of 1804. See The Valley Through TIME.
• The watermill. The book gives 1797 (p. 91), 1799 (p. 63), and about 1796 (p. 199) [MS]. This wiki gives 1797 [IC].
• The library. The book dates the lending library to 1825 (p. 56) [MS]. This wiki gives 1823 [IC].
• The first policeman. The book gives 1854 (p. 115) and 1849 (pp. 115, 145) for Johannes Ruiter’s appointment [MS].
• The land grant. The book dates the grant to 15 February 1858 (p. 15) and to 1858 (p. 115), and once says Governor Grey granted the land in 1856 (p. 159) [MS]. This wiki gives 1858 [MS].
• The size of the mission land. The book gives 5,644 morgen and 289 square roods (p. 15) [MS]. At about 0.857 hectares to the morgen, that is roughly 4,830 hectares, a little above the range of 4,515 to 4,800 hectares given on TRANCRAA and Farm 39. The conversion is this page’s own.
• The end of mission rule. The book says a Board of Management replaced the Council of Overseers in 1924 (p. 159), shows the last Council of Overseers in 1925 (p. 154), and dates government management from 1926 (p. 17) [MS]. This wiki gives 1924 [IC].
• The college’s closure. The book gives 1926 (pp. 16, 17, 53) and 1927 (pp. 48, 49) [MS]. This wiki gives 1926 [IC].
• The monuments on Church Square. The book counts 20 declared monuments in one place (p. 7) and 25 in others (pp. 63, 200) [MS].
• The printing works. The book says the presses moved to Cape Town in 2002 and in 2003 (p. 110) [MS]. This wiki gives 2003 for the closure [MS].
• The bridge builder’s name. The book spells it Beinbrecht (pp. 66, 139). This wiki earlier spelled it Beinbach, and now follows the book.

How this wiki uses the book

• Facts taken from the book are tagged [MS]. A fact moves to [IC] only when a source that does not depend on the book or on the mission’s records confirms it.
• Citations give the page number in the AuthorHouse edition of 2023.
• Where the book and another source disagree, this wiki gives both and says which source gives which.
• The book has a bibliography, but no footnotes, so a single fact usually cannot be traced to the source it came from.
• The author’s reflections on faith, and his views on present-day matters, are his own. This wiki reports them only as his, and only where they bear on the valley’s history.

What is still open

• Which source gives 25 April 1738 for Schmidt’s settlement, and whether Schmidt’s own diary, which the book lists in its bibliography, settles the day.
• Whether the Supreme Court case over land at the end of the 1800s (p. 115) and the Magerman case of 1924 (p. 159) are one dispute or two.
• Records of the 500 Genadendal soldiers of 1915 to 1918, and of the 19 who died, in military archives.
• An independent record of the loft movement and of Rev Daniel Wessels’s house arrest, and what families remember of them.
• The Khoi and slave ancestry the book traces through the mission registers, told by the families themselves.

Have your say

If you know this book, can correct a row, or hold records that settle one of the questions above, contact the moderators via How to Submit.

Related

• Valley History
• History of the Valley
• The Valley Through TIME
• The Genadendal Diaries
• What Began Here
• From the Farm to the Classroom
• Music of the Valley
• Moravian Church
• The Mission Economy
• Georg Schmidt
• Magdalena
• The Missionaries of 1792
• Hans Peter Hallbeck
• Genadendal Mission Museum
• Moravian Church Genadendal
• TRANCRAA and Farm 39: The Land Transfer Process
• Genadendal

References

• Balie, I. (2023). Genadendal, The Valley of Grace: A Long Walk Through the History of the First Mission Station in South Africa. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse. ISBN 979-8-8230-8373-7. First published by the author in September 2020; second edition December 2021. The source of every row in the table on this page.