History of the Valley

Ward 2 lies in the valley of the Sonderend River, below the Riviersonderend mountains. People have lived here for a very long time. This page tells the valley’s story in the order it happened, from the first stone tools to the first meeting of the Ward 2 Development Forum in 2026. It covers Genadendal, Greyton, and the smaller settlements around them. A full list of dates is at the end of the page.

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 such as a law, a court order, or a heritage register.
• [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian mission records and the histories written from them, or from one party’s own documents or statements. Mission sources often agree with each other because they share an origin. They have not been checked against sources that do not depend on them.
• [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

The valley at a glance

Year	What happened
1738	Georg Schmidt starts a mission school at Baviaanskloof, the place now called Genadendal [IC]
1744	Schmidt is forced to leave. Magdalena keeps the small congregation going [IC]
1792	Three Moravian missionaries reopen the mission [IC]
1806	Baviaanskloof is renamed Genadendal, “valley of grace” [IC]
1838	Slavery ends at the Cape. South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opens at Genadendal [IC]
1854	The first plots are sold in the new village of Greyton [IC]
1858	The mission land, now called Farm 39, is granted to the Moravian Church in trust for its residents [MS]
1926	The government closes the teachers’ college [IC]
Late 1960s to early 1970s	Coloured families are forced out of Greyton to Heuwelkroon [IC]
1995	President Mandela names his Cape Town residence Genadendal and visits the village [IC]
1998	TRANCRAA becomes law. The transfer of Farm 39 is still not complete [IC]
2026	The Ward 2 Development Forum meets for the first time [MS]
2038	Genadendal turns 300

The first people

Stone tools found near Riviersonderend show that people lived in this area more than 200,000 years ago [IC]. Archaeologists have found tools from the Early, Middle, and Late Stone Age on the northern, eastern, and southern sides of the Riviersonderend mountain [IC]. No full archaeological survey of the mountains has been done, so much is still to be found [IC].

The first people known by name are the Soaqua, the San hunter-gatherers of this part of the Cape, who lived by hunting and gathering [IC]. Their rock paintings survive in the mountains, mostly on the drier northern side [IC]. Traces of the Soaqua have been found in the mountains north of Genadendal [IC]. Fourteen cave sites in the mountains are on a heritage list, but they have not been formally surveyed or dated [TBV].

About 2,000 years ago, Khoekhoe herders arrived with sheep and cattle [IC]. The Soaqua moved higher into the mountains, where they lived on plants and small animals such as tortoises and dassies [IC].

By the 1600s the Overberg was home to two main Khoekhoe groups, the Chainoqua and the Hessequa [IC]. Chainoqua land stretched from the Hottentots Holland mountains towards Cape Agulhas and inland to the Riviersonderend mountains [IC]. Some of their kraals stood near where Genadendal is today [IC]. Each kraal had a headman, and a camp could hold from 20 to more than 100 matjieshuise (reed-mat houses) [IC]. Cattle were the measure of wealth [IC]. Land was held by the group as a whole, and nobody could divide it up for themselves [IC].

Contact with the Dutch (1652 to 1737)

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) set up a station at the Cape in 1652 [IC]. Its people first met the Chainoqua on 14 November 1657 [IC]. In 1661 the Chainoqua leader Soeswa visited Jan van Riebeeck and agreed to trade cattle [IC]. For about fifty years after that, the Chainoqua and Hessequa were the main suppliers of cattle to the Cape [IC]. From 1679 to 1693 the Chainoqua clan leader Dorha, whom the Dutch called Klaas, acted as the VOC’s go-between with the Overberg Khoekhoe [IC].

In 1669 Dutch travellers found rich grazing at the Huis River, where Greyton stands today [IC]. The Khoekhoe moved their herds with the seasons, so the land looked empty when they were away [IC]. Settlers took this as a sign that the land was free to take [IC]. Greyton sources say that in the late 1600s the Hessequa leader Stoffel Koekson moved his people to Boschmanskloof, and that the foundations of their houses lie under the old houses there [TBV].

In 1713 smallpox, brought by passing ships, killed many Khoekhoe [IC]. More settlers moved onto the land they left behind [IC]. By 1727 the VOC was farming timber and cattle between present-day Greyton and Riviersonderend [IC]. Independent Khoekhoe kraals were still recorded near Genadendal as late as 1803 [IC].

Where the missionaries came from

The mission at Genadendal grew out of a church with a long history in central Europe.

• In 1415 the Czech reformer Jan Hus was burned for heresy [IC]. People who followed his teaching founded the Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren) in 1457 [IC]. In English this church is known as the Moravian Church.
• In 1620 the Protestant side lost the Battle of White Mountain, and the church was banned in Bohemia and Moravia [IC].
• Jan Amos Comenius (1592 to 1670) was a bishop of the church and its best-known thinker [IC]. He is often called the father of modern education [IC]. He argued that every child, girl or boy, rich or poor, should go to school, and that children learn best by seeing and doing, in their own language [IC]. His Orbis Pictus (1658) was the first picture book made for teaching children [IC].
• After Comenius died, small groups of families kept the faith in secret for about fifty years. The church calls them the “Hidden Seed” [IC].
• In 1722 Moravian refugees built the village of Herrnhut in Saxony, on the estate of Count Zinzendorf [IC]. The church was renewed there on 13 August 1727 [IC].
• From 1732 Herrnhut sent missionaries overseas [IC]. They were craftsmen who earned their own living and lived among the people they served [IC].

Georg Schmidt came from this community. He was born in Moravia in 1709 and had spent years in prison and forced labour in Bohemia for preaching [IC].

Schmidt’s school at Baviaanskloof matches many of Comenius’s ideas. It was open to all who came, it taught reading in the local language, and it taught through work in the gardens and fields [MS]. Some researchers think Schmidt carried the Comenius tradition with him from Herrnhut, but this has not been shown [TBV]. A 1961 study by Jerome Clauser, on Comenius and Moravian schools, may settle the question. It has not yet been read for this page.

Georg Schmidt at Baviaanskloof (1737 to 1744)

Schmidt landed at the Cape on 9 July 1737 [IC]. Later that year he began teaching Khoekhoe people in Dutch, first at a kraal where Africo was the clan leader [MS]. On 23 April 1738 he settled at Baviaanskloof (“baboon ravine”), where Genadendal stands [IC]. By the end of 1738, 28 people were living and learning at the station [IC].

Schmidt taught reading and writing under a pear tree [IC]. He dug a water furrow and planted vegetable gardens, and people worked in exchange for supplies [IC]. In 1739 he built a hartebeeshuis (a house of reeds and clay), a sheep kraal, and a threshing floor [IC]. His students grew wheat, but they had no mill, so a neighbouring farmer ground it for them [IC].

In 1742 Schmidt received permission to baptise. He baptised five people: Willem and Kupido, Africo, Christina, and Vehettge Tikkuie, who took the name Magdalena [MS]. Vehettge’s husband, Janneke Tikkuie, who hunted and fetched supplies for the mission, was not baptised with her [MS]. Local Dutch Reformed ministers objected that he had no right to baptise [IC]. Farmers were also unhappy to lose cheap Khoekhoe labour [IC]. Schmidt left the Cape in 1744 and was never allowed to return [IC]. He died at Niesky, in Germany, in 1785 [IC].

Magdalena and the pear tree (1744 to 1792)

For 48 years there was no missionary at Baviaanskloof [IC]. Magdalena kept the small congregation together [IC]. She gathered people under the pear tree in Schmidt’s garden to pray, and read to them from the Dutch New Testament Schmidt had given her [IC]. She kept it wrapped in sheepskin [MS].

When new missionaries arrived in 1792, they found Magdalena, old and nearly blind, still holding on to that New Testament [MS]. She died on 3 January 1800 [IC]. The historians Henry Bredekamp and Christina Landman have written her story [IC].

The mission grows (1792 to 1838)

Three Moravian missionaries arrived at Baviaanskloof on 24 December 1792 [IC]. Hendrik Marsveld was a tailor, Daniel Schwinn a shoemaker, and Johann Christian Kühnel a knife-maker [MS]. Eight kraals of Khoekhoe moved to the kloof, and formal lessons began on 4 March 1793 with 25 adults [MS]. The school has run ever since. It is now L.R. Schmidt Primary School [MS].

The VOC would not let the missionaries build a church. They could build only after the British took the Cape in 1795 [IC]. A chapel was consecrated in 1796 [IC]. In March 1797 the community built a forge, and a water mill at about the same time [IC]. The forge made Genadendal knives, which were sold across the Cape [MS]. A larger church was finished by 1800 [IC]. Balie’s history records its first service on 8 January 1800 [MS]. In 1797, on the advice of Lady Anne Barnard, the government gave 500 rixdollars to drain the wetland at the centre of the valley, and each household was given 2 to 4 morgen to garden [MS]. In 1813 a surveyor mapped the boundary between the mission and the neighbouring farms, but residents were given no proof that they owned their land [MS].

In 1806 Governor Janssens visited and renamed the mission Genadendal, “valley of grace” [IC]. More than 1,000 Khoekhoe were living there by then [MS]. Balie’s history says Genadendal was then the largest settlement in the colony after Cape Town [MS].

The mission became a place of learning and trades. A school building for children was consecrated on 15 July 1814, with 243 pupils [MS]. In 1819 and 1820 the missionary Johann Daniel Beinbrecht and members of the congregation built a bridge over the Sonderend River. It is now a Provincial Heritage Site [IC]. In 1823 Genadendal opened a lending library, with books in English, Dutch, and German and a reading room [IC]. Balie’s history dates the library to 1825 [MS]. A tannery was started in 1828, and on 12 September 1831 South Africa’s first kindergarten opened, for 144 children aged three to six [MS]. Balie’s history says that from 1820 to 1860 half of Genadendal’s residents earned their living in trades, among them tailoring, carpentry, masonry, knife-making, smithing, and tanning [MS]. A printing press arrived in 1837, and it is now in the Genadendal Mission Museum [IC]. The mission buildings around Church Square (die Werf) are a Provincial Heritage Site [IC].

Laws outside the mission shaped who came to it. The Caledon Code of 1809 forced Khoekhoe people to have a fixed home and to carry a pass [IC]. Mission stations became one of the few places where they could live without working for a farmer [TBV]. Ordinance 50 of 1828 gave free people of colour legal equality and ended the pass laws [IC].

Emancipation and the busy years (1834 to 1860s)

Slavery at the Cape ended in law on 1 December 1834. People who had been enslaved then had to work four more years as “apprentices” [IC]. They became fully free on 1 December 1838 [IC]. In the countryside, mission stations were among the few places where freed people could find land and a home, and many came to Genadendal [IC]. Mission records show its population growing from 1,446 in 1837 to 2,187 in 1840 [MS]. Newcomers were given a plot to build on and were taught a trade, as Khoekhoe families had been [MS]. By 1 January 1838 more than 600 people had applied to live there [MS].

In 1838 South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opened at Genadendal [IC]. It was founded by Hans Peter Hallbeck, who led the Moravian missions in South Africa from Genadendal from 1817 to 1840 [MS]. Mission sources give the date as 12 September 1838, when 11 students enrolled [MS]. It trained teachers for almost ninety years [IC], 236 in all [MS]. Its first qualified teacher, in 1842, was Carl Jonas, the son of a slave [MS]. Music was part of its teaching, and brass playing began there. By Easter 1856 Genadendal had a brass band, which still plays today [MS]. See Music of the Valley.

From 1859 the mission press printed De Bode van Genadendal, a monthly journal founded by the missionary Benno Marx [IC]. It was written in the Dutch spoken at Genadendal, one of the roots of written Afrikaans, and it came out 17 years before Die Afrikaanse Patriot (1876) [IC]. From 1914 it appeared as Die Huisvriend [TBV]. Genadendal knives won an honourable mention at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 [MS]. When Governor Sir George Grey visited on 3 January 1855, only two older residents could still speak the Hessequa language [MS].

In November 1857 the surveyor J. Kuys measured the mission land at 5,644 morgen and 289 square roods [MS]. In 1858 it was granted to the Moravian Church “for the use of and in trust for such persons as may from time to time be lawfully resident at the institution of Genadendal” [MS]. This is the land now called Farm 39 [MS]. Balie’s history gives the date of the grant as 15 February 1858, and says many residents rejected it because no resident was made a trustee alongside the church’s superintendent [MS]. The trust for residents lies at the heart of the land questions the valley still faces. See TRANCRAA and Farm 39: The Land Transfer Process.

The mission’s work reached nearby settlements. Moravian missionaries started a school at Bereaville in 1865, which is now Berea Primary School [MS]. Bereaville and Voorstekraal each have a Moravian congregation [MS]. The early history of both villages has still to be written.

Greyton is founded (1793 to 1910)

In 1793 the land around the Gobos River, once Hessequa grazing land, was granted to a young Dutchman, Marthinus Theunissen, who farmed it as Weltevreden [IC]. Hendrik Cloete of Groot Constantia took it over in 1795 [IC]. It passed in 1839 to John Malcolm Stewart, its first British owner [IC]. In 1846 an Englishman, Herbert Vigne, bought Weltevreden [IC]. Some sources give 1845.

Vigne laid out a village on the farm. Sources date its founding to 1852, with the first plots sold in 1854 [IC]. He named it Greyton after Sir George Grey, the Governor of the Cape [IC]. The surveyor J.G. Rietz drew the town plan [IC]. It was planned as a farming village for smallholders: each long, narrow plot had room for a house, crops, and a few animals [IC]. Water reached the plots by gravity through open furrows from the Gobos River, the leiwater system that still works today [MS]. The plots came with title deeds, water rights, and grazing rights, and were sold to buyers of any race [TBV]. Greyton sources say Vigne left the land around the village to the plot owners as a commonage, but his will or deed of gift has not been found [TBV]. The Post House, built in 1860, is one of Greyton’s oldest buildings and a Provincial Heritage Site [IC]. Greyton histories say the De Villiers family built a trading store in the same year [TBV]. In the 1860s Vigne married Elizabeth Belshaw [IC]. By 1891 Greyton had 276 residents [IC]. Greyton became a municipality in 1910 [IC]. Greyton’s fuller story is on History of Greyton.

Hard years: land, work, and law (1860s to 1950)

In the second half of the 1800s, cheap factory-made goods reached the Cape by steamship. They undercut the knives, furniture, and other goods made by hand at Genadendal, and many people left to find work in towns and on farms [TBV]. Balie’s history says cheap Sheffield knives were sold at the Cape with the Genadendal mark, and that the last of Genadendal’s knife-makers died in 1880 [MS]. From 1877 the missionary A.G. Hettasch tried new work to replace the crafts, such as castor oil, silkworms, and buchu for export [MS].

Between 1891 and 1893 the congregation built the large church that stands on Church Square today, and it was consecrated on 15 March 1893 [MS]. In 1899 a deputation of the Afrikaner Bond argued that the teachers’ college was not needed for people who were not white [MS]. During the Anglo-Boer War (1899 to 1902) the missionaries sympathised with the Boers and many residents sided with Britain, and resentment against the mission grew [MS]. In 1899 the Moravian Church bought the mountain farm Langgezocht, about 1,881 hectares, to protect the water sources of Farm 39 [MS].

In 1909 the Mission Stations and Communal Reserves Act placed mission land under management boards. Residents kept the right to live on the land, but they could not own it [IC]. Forum research describes this as the start of a deep rift between the missionaries and residents [MS]. Balie’s history says many residents left the Moravian Church over the Act [MS]. Five hundred Genadendal men enlisted in the war of 1914 to 1918, and 19 died in service [MS]. In October 1918 about 1,500 residents caught influenza, and 70 funerals were held within two months [MS]. In 1924 a secular board of management took over from the missionaries [IC]. In the same year a group of residents known as the Magermans took the church to the Supreme Court over property rights [MS].

In 1926 the government closed the teachers’ college [IC]. It argued that coloured people did not need higher education because they were suited to work as labourers on farms [IC]. In 1927 about 70 hectares at the heart of Genadendal and Bereaville, known as the Glebe Lands, were granted to the Moravian Church [IC]. Balie’s history says that under a series of government departments, from 1926 to 1997, Genadendal stayed an undeveloped village of about 5,000 people [MS]. In 1928 the Young Men’s Society put up an obelisk to the soldiers who had died in the war [MS]. In 1938 a high school opened in the old college building, and it later became Emil Weder Secondary [MS].

Apartheid (1950 to 1994)

The Group Areas Act of 1950 divided land by race [IC]. In Greyton, coloured families were forced to sell their homes and farmland and move to Heuwelkroon, on the edge of the village [IC]. Sources differ on the dates. Some Greyton histories say the 1950s. An essay in the journal Herri dates the removals from 1968 to 1974, and a 2022 heritage study says Heuwelkroon was built in 1970 [TBV]. See History of Greyton. Balie’s history says fear of removal spread to Genadendal, and many residents stopped maintaining their houses [MS].

In the 1950s and 1960s members of the Teachers’ League of South Africa met in the Genadendal parsonage loft to oppose apartheid, and became known as the Solder-beweging (Loft Movement) [MS]. One of them, Rev Daniel Wessels, was placed under house arrest for five years in 1962 [MS]. In the 1950s co-operative laws forced farmers to send their wheat to licensed co-operatives, and the water mill closed [MS]. Electricity and piped water reached Genadendal in the 1960s [MS].

On 13 May 1977 the Greyton Nature Reserve, established by Brian Rycroft, was proclaimed on the mountain commonage [IC]. It covers about 2,200 hectares [IC].

In 1987 the Rural Areas Act 9 of 1987 took over the former mission areas, and Genadendal was added to it in 1989 [IC]. In 1980 the buildings on Church Square were declared national monuments [MS]. In 1986 the Moravian Church started the Mission Trust Fund to restore them, and in 1987 the Mission Museum opened in the college building of 1838 [MS]. On 8 March 1991 the Mission Museum’s collection was declared a National Cultural Treasure [MS]. In 1992 the water mill was restored and began milling again [MS].

Democracy and the land question (1994 to 2011)

South Africa held its first democratic election on 27 April 1994 [IC]. In 1995 President Nelson Mandela renamed his official Cape Town residence, then called Westbrooke, Genadendal [IC]. Mission sources say the name came from a letter by the museum curator, Dr Isaac Balie [MS]. Mandela visited Genadendal on 10 October 1995 [IC]. He later described it as “a place of sanctuary for more than a thousand slaves when slavery was abolished in 1838” [MS].

In the mid-1990s a transitional council replaced Greyton’s white municipal council and the Heuwelkroon management committee [IC]. In December 2000 the valley became part of the new Theewaterskloof Municipality [IC]. In 2000 the South African Heritage Resources Agency changed the status of the museum collection and the Church Square monuments from national to provincial [MS]. Around 2001 the Dutch government gave R11 million to restore the historic buildings, and residents were trained as masons and thatchers [MS].

TRANCRAA, the law meant to hand Farm 39 to an entity its residents help choose, came into force on 2 November 1998 [IC]. The municipality began the process in 2002 [IC]. Residents elected the Transformasie Komitee in November 2004 [IC]. A settlement between the Komitee, the municipality, and the national Minister became a High Court order on 22 October 2008, and its terms were never carried out [IC]. Balie’s history says the Komitee applied to the Western Cape High Court in 2007 to review actions of the municipality, and later asked the court to declare the municipality in breach of the settlement [MS]. The transitional period for Farm 39 ended in January 2011 without a transfer, and the land stayed with the Minister [IC]. The full story, with each party’s position in its own words, is on TRANCRAA and Farm 39: The Land Transfer Process.

The Genadendal printing works closed in 2003, after more than 170 years [MS].

Recent years (2011 to 2026)

• In 2011 a group of Greyton residents started Greyton Transition Town, in response to rising fuel and food costs [MS].
• In 2019 residents of Madiba Park, on Farm 39 land, protested over housing and services [IC]. See Madiba Park: Land Status and Basic Services.
• The national COVID-19 lockdown began on 27 March 2020 [IC]. Small-scale and commercial farmers in the valley set up a community feeding scheme [MS].
• In 2024 Ranyaka held community sessions across the valley. Between 50 and 89 people came to each [MS].
• In 2025 Theewaterskloof Municipality was placed under a Financial Recovery Plan [IC].
• In July 2026 the Valley of Grace Nature Realm, covering about 10,000 hectares of the valley, went live on the Guardians of Earth platform [MS].
• On 16 September 2026 the Ward 2 Development Forum (W2DF) met for the first time, at Hester Dorothea in Genadendal [MS]. See the minutes of the inaugural meeting.

Looking ahead

April 2028 marks 290 years since Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof. On 23 April 2038 Genadendal turns 300. The Forum has set its long-term goal against that date. See Our Long-Term Goal.

Where the sources disagree

• When Genadendal was founded. Schmidt reached the Cape in 1737 and began teaching nearby that year. He settled at Baviaanskloof on 23 April 1738 [IC]. The provincial heritage register gives 1737 [IC]. The museum, the mission, and the 2038 tercentenary use 1738 [MS]. Balie’s history gives the day as 25 April 1738, without a source [MS]. This wiki keeps 23 April.
• The first baptisms. This wiki gives 1742 [IC]. Balie’s history gives 1739, 1740, 12 April 1742, and 1743 on different pages [MS].
• When Schmidt left. Most sources say 1744. Some say 1743 [IC].
• The first church. A chapel was consecrated in 1796 [IC], and a larger church was finished by 1800 [IC]. Balie’s history dates the first chapel, the Middle House, to 1798, and its map of Church Square to 1795 to 1796 [MS]. Magdalena died on 3 January 1800, five days before the larger church’s first service on 8 January [MS].
• The lending library. Most sources give 1823 [IC]. Balie’s history gives 1825 [MS].
• The land grant. Most sources give 1858 [MS]. Balie’s history gives 15 February 1858 on one page and 1856 on another [MS].
• The teachers’ college. Most sources say it closed in 1926 [IC]. Balie’s history gives both 1926 and 1927 [MS].
• Greyton’s founding. Vigne bought Weltevreden in 1845 or 1846. The village is dated to 1852 or 1854, depending on whether the source counts the plan or the first sale of plots [IC].
• The removals to Heuwelkroon. Some Greyton histories give the 1950s. The Herri essay gives 1968 to 1974, and the 2022 heritage study says Heuwelkroon was built in 1970. The later two agree [TBV].
• Greyton Transition Town. Its own website says it started in mid-2011. Forum research notes give 2012 [MS].
• The size of Farm 39. Records give between about 4,515 and 4,800 hectares. Balie’s history gives the survey of 1857 as 5,644 morgen and 289 square roods, which at about 0.857 hectares to the morgen is roughly 4,830 hectares (this page’s own conversion) [MS]. See TRANCRAA and Farm 39.

Help fill the gaps

Much of the valley’s history is written from mission records and Greyton sources. Some parts are missing:

• The history of the Khoekhoe and San in the valley, as their descendants tell it, and the old names of places.
• How Bereaville, Voorstekraal, Boschmanskloof, and Madiba Park began.
• The removals from Greyton to Heuwelkroon: when they happened, who was moved, and what families remember.
• Photographs, letters, and documents held by families, congregations, and schools.

If you can help, contact the moderators via How to Submit.

Reading the history through TIME

Some of the Forum’s research reads the valley’s past with a framework called TIME. It builds on the work of the American researcher David Ronfeldt, who called his version TIMN. TIME asks one question of each period: how did people organise themselves to share work, land, and what they produced? It names four forms. Each new form is added to the ones before it, and the older forms carry on alongside it.

Form	How people organise	In this valley
T: Tribes	Kinship and belonging. What you give and get depends on your family and clan.	The Soaqua and Khoekhoe, before 1738
I: Institutions	Written rules, leaders with authority, and fixed settlements.	The mission, from 1738
M: Markets	Buying and selling at a price.	From 1806, Genadendal’s crafts were sold across the Cape, and makers lived from their work. From about the 1860s, the market worked more for outside owners than for the valley’s makers.
E: Emergent	Sharing, commons, and care for the land, linked to similar places around the world.	Starting in 2020, with the community response to COVID-19

This is one way of reading the history. Residents may read the same events differently. The Forum’s research uses it to ask what each period can teach the next one. See Our Long-Term Goal.

Full timeline

Date	What happened
More than 200,000 years ago	Stone tools are made near Riviersonderend, the oldest dated sign of people near the valley [IC]
Thousands of years ago	Soaqua hunter-gatherers live in the area and leave rock art in the mountains [IC]
About 2,000 years ago	Khoekhoe herders arrive with sheep and cattle [IC]
1488	Portuguese sailors describe large Khoekhoe cattle herds at the Cape [IC]
Before 1652	The Chainoqua and Hessequa live in the Overberg. Soeswa leads the Chainoqua [IC]
1652	The VOC sets up a station at the Cape [IC]
14 Nov 1657	First Dutch contact with the Chainoqua [IC]
1661	Soeswa agrees a cattle trade with Jan van Riebeeck [IC]
1669	Dutch travellers find rich grazing at the Huis River, where Greyton now stands [IC]
Late 1600s	Stoffel Koekson moves his people to Boschmanskloof [TBV]
1713	Smallpox kills many Khoekhoe [IC]
1727	The VOC farms timber and cattle between present-day Greyton and Riviersonderend [IC]
9 Jul 1737	Georg Schmidt lands at the Cape [IC]
23 Apr 1738	Schmidt settles at Baviaanskloof [IC]
1739	Schmidt’s house, a sheep kraal, a garden, and a threshing floor are built [IC]
1742	First baptisms, including Vehettge Tikkuie (Magdalena) [IC]
1744	Schmidt leaves the Cape [IC]
1744 to 1792	Magdalena keeps the congregation together [IC]
24 Dec 1792	Marsveld, Schwinn, and Kühnel arrive at Baviaanskloof [IC]
4 Mar 1793	Formal lessons begin at the reopened mission [MS]
1793	Weltevreden, where Greyton now stands, is granted to Marthinus Theunissen [IC]
1795	Hendrik Cloete takes over Weltevreden [IC]
1796	The first chapel is consecrated [IC]
1797	A forge and a water mill are built at the mission [IC]
1797	The government pays to drain the garden land, and households get 2 to 4 morgen each [MS]
3 Jan 1800	Magdalena dies [IC]
8 Jan 1800	First service in the larger church [MS]
By 1800	A larger church is finished [IC]
1803	Independent Khoekhoe kraals are still recorded near Genadendal [IC]
1806	Baviaanskloof is renamed Genadendal [IC]
1809	The Caledon Code requires Khoekhoe people to have a fixed home and carry a pass [IC]
1813	The boundary between the mission and the farms is mapped [MS]
15 Jul 1814	A school building is consecrated with 243 children [MS]
1819 to 1820	A bridge is built over the Sonderend River [IC]
1823	A lending library opens at Genadendal [IC]
1828	Ordinance 50 gives free people of colour legal equality [IC]
1828	A tannery is started [MS]
12 Sep 1831	South Africa’s first kindergarten opens [MS]
1832	A pipe organ, bought with a gift made in 1830, is in use at Genadendal [MS]
1 Dec 1834	Slavery ends in law, and a four-year “apprenticeship” begins [IC]
1837	A printing press arrives at Genadendal [IC]
1838	South Africa’s first teachers’ training college opens at Genadendal [IC]
1 Dec 1838	Full emancipation of enslaved people at the Cape [IC]
1839	John Malcolm Stewart becomes the first British owner of Weltevreden [IC]
1842	Carl Jonas becomes the college’s first qualified teacher [MS]
1846	Herbert Vigne buys Weltevreden [IC]
1851	Genadendal knives win an honourable mention at the Great Exhibition in London [MS]
1852 to 1854	Greyton is laid out as a village of smallholders, and the first plots are sold in 1854 [IC]
1854	Greyton’s leiwater furrows begin carrying water from the Gobos River to every plot with a water right [MS]
3 Jan 1855	Governor Grey visits; only two residents can still speak the Hessequa language [MS]
Easter 1856	The Genadendal brass band gives its first recorded performance [MS]
Nov 1857	The mission land is surveyed at 5,644 morgen [MS]
1858	The mission land (Farm 39) is granted to the Moravian Church in trust for residents [MS]
1859	De Bode van Genadendal is first printed [IC]
1860	The Post House is built in Greyton [IC]
1865 to 1880	First attempt to build a road over the Boesmanskloof to McGregor [TBV]
1865	Moravian missionaries start a school at Bereaville [MS]
1880	The last of Genadendal’s knife-makers dies [MS]
1891	Greyton has 276 residents [IC]
1891 to 1893	The present church on Church Square is built, and consecrated on 15 March 1893 [MS]
1899	The Moravian Church buys Langgezocht to protect Farm 39’s water [MS]
1909	The Mission Stations and Communal Reserves Act denies residents ownership of mission land [IC]
1910	Greyton becomes a municipality [IC]
1915 to 1918	Five hundred Genadendal men enlist, and 19 die in service [MS]
1918	The Dutch Reformed congregation of Greyton is founded [MS]
Oct 1918	About 1,500 Genadendal residents catch influenza, and 70 funerals are held within two months [MS]
1924	A secular board replaces the missionaries in running Genadendal [IC]
1924	The Magermans take the Moravian Church to the Supreme Court over property rights [MS]
1926	The teachers’ college is closed [IC]
1927	The Glebe Lands are granted to the Moravian Church [IC]
1928	A memorial to Genadendal’s soldiers of 1914 to 1918 is put up [MS]
1936 to 1941	Work on the Boesmanskloof road resumes as a relief scheme, and stops for the Second World War [TBV]
1938	A high school opens in the old college building [MS]
1950	The Group Areas Act becomes law [IC]
1951	The Moravian Brass Band Union of South Africa is founded [IC]
1950s	The water mill closes [MS]
1950s and 1960s	The Loft Movement of teachers opposes apartheid from the Genadendal parsonage [MS]
1960s	Electricity and piped water reach Genadendal [MS]
1962	Rev Daniel Wessels is placed under house arrest for five years [MS]
1968 to 1974	Coloured families are forced from Greyton to Heuwelkroon. Some sources say the 1950s [TBV]
13 May 1977	The Greyton Nature Reserve is proclaimed [IC]
1980	The buildings on Church Square are declared national monuments [MS]
1986	The Mission Trust Fund is set up to restore Church Square [MS]
1987	The Rural Areas Act 9 of 1987 takes over the former mission areas. Genadendal is added in 1989 [IC]
1987	The Mission Museum opens in the college building of 1838 [MS]
8 Mar 1991	The Mission Museum’s collection is declared a National Cultural Treasure [MS]
1992	The water mill is restored and working again [MS]
27 Apr 1994	South Africa’s first democratic election [IC]
1995	The presidential residence in Cape Town is renamed Genadendal [IC]
10 Oct 1995	President Mandela visits Genadendal [IC]
Mid-1990s	A transitional council replaces Greyton’s old municipal structures [IC]
2 Nov 1998	TRANCRAA comes into force [IC]
2000	The museum collection and Church Square monuments are changed from national to provincial status [MS]
Dec 2000	Theewaterskloof Municipality is created [IC]
About 2001	The Dutch government gives R11 million to restore the historic buildings [MS]
2002	The Farm 39 transformation process begins [IC]
2003	The Genadendal printing works close [MS]
9 Nov 2004	The Transformasie Komitee is elected [IC]
2007	The Transformasie Komitee applies to the High Court to review the municipality’s actions [MS]
22 Oct 2008	The Houw Hoek settlement becomes a High Court order [IC]
Jan 2011	The Farm 39 transitional period ends without a transfer [IC]
2011	Greyton Transition Town starts [MS]
10 Oct 2014	The Land Claims Court strikes the Komitee’s application from the roll [IC]
2019	Madiba Park residents protest over housing and services [IC]
Dec 2019	A fire burns about 5,950 hectares on the mountains above Greyton [IC]
27 Mar 2020	The COVID-19 lockdown begins, and a community feeding scheme starts in the valley [MS]
2024	Ranyaka holds community sessions across the valley [MS]
2025	Theewaterskloof Municipality is placed under a Financial Recovery Plan [IC]
Jul 2026	The Valley of Grace Nature Realm goes live [MS]
16 Sep 2026	The Ward 2 Development Forum holds its first meeting [MS]
Apr 2028	290 years since Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof
23 Apr 2038	300 years since Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof

Related

• Valley History
• Genadendal: A Long Walk
• Khoekhoe
• San
• Dutch East India Company
• Moravian Church
• The Municipality
• Money and Land
• History of Greyton
• Greyton and the Planned Towns of the Cape
• The Laws That Shaped the Valley
• What Began Here
• Music of the Valley
• Jan Amos Comenius
• Georg Schmidt
• Future of the Valley
• Villages
• Genadendal
• Greyton
• Heuwelkroon
• Madiba Park
• Bereaville
• Voorstekraal
• Boschmanskloof
• Genadendal Mission Museum
• Moravian Church Genadendal
• L.R. Schmidt Primary School
• Greyton Conservation Society
• TRANCRAA and Farm 39: The Land Transfer Process
• Madiba Park: Land Status and Basic Services
• Our Long-Term Goal

References

Books and academic sources:

• Krüger, B. (1966). The Pear Tree Blossoms: A History of the Moravian Mission Stations in South Africa, 1737 to 1869. Genadendal Printing Works. The main mission history of Schmidt, Magdalena, and the 1792 reopening.
• Balie, I. (1988). Die Geskiedenis van Genadendal, 1738 to 1988. Mission history, including the numbers of freed people after 1838.
• Balie, I. (2023). Genadendal, The Valley of Grace: A Long Walk Through the History of the First Mission Station in South Africa. AuthorHouse. First published 2020. The facts attributed to Balie’s history on this page; page numbers are on Genadendal: A Long Walk.
• Marsveld, H., Schwinn, D. and Kühnel, J.C. The Genadendal Diaries, Volume I (1792 to 1794). Edited by H.C. Bredekamp and H.E.F. Plüddemann. University of the Western Cape Institute for Historical Research. The first lessons in 1793.
• Bredekamp, H.C. (1987). “Vehettge Tikkuie, alias Moeder Lena van Genadendal (1737 to 1800).” Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library 41(4). Magdalena’s life.
• du Preez, H. and others (eds) (2009). The Challenge of Genadendal. IOS Press. Mandela’s foreword gives the 1995 renaming and the visit of 10 October 1995.
• Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae. “I Will Gather All Nations and Tongues”: Christian Missions and Racial Integration in the Cape Colony in the Aftermath of Abolition. Genadendal’s population from 1837 to 1840.
• Clauser, J.K. (1961). Comenian Pedagogy and the Moravian School Curriculum (1740 to 1850). D.Ed. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University. Not yet read for this page.
• CapeNature. Riviersonderend Complex Protected Area Management Plan 2021 to 2031, section 2.5 (Heritage Context). The Stone Age, Soaqua, and Khoekhoe history, citing Kaplan (1990, 2004), Humphreys (1989), Le Roux (1984), and Clift (2001).

Reference works and heritage records:

• Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Schmidt, Georg. Schmidt’s life, imprisonment, arrival, and departure.
• Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Tikhuie, Vehettge Magdalena. Her baptism in 1742 and death on 3 January 1800.
• South African History Online. Genadendal Historic Village and Museum. The college founding and 1926 closure, and the 1995 renaming.
• South African History Online. Greyton, Western Province. Weltevreden, Vigne, and the founding of Greyton.
• South African History Online. Afrikaans: the Language of Black and Coloured Dissent. De Bode van Genadendal (1859) and Die Huisvriend.
• Wikipedia. Genadendal. The 1792 arrival, 1796 chapel, 1797 forge, 1806 renaming, and 1823 library.
• Wikipedia. Greyton. Stoffel Koekson, Weltevreden, Vigne, and the Group Areas removals.
• Wikipedia. Genadendal Residence. The 1995 renaming.
• Wikipedia. List of heritage sites in Caledon. The Genadendal Mission Complex, the 1819 to 1820 bridge, and the Greyton Post House.
• Artefacts. Moravian Mission Church, Genadendal. The building of the present church, 1891 to 1893.
• Genadendal.info. The Genadendal Mission Station. The college date of 12 September 1838, the 1837 press, the 2003 closure of the printing works, and Mandela’s October 1995 visit.
• Genadendal Project. History of Genadendal and Surrounds. Schmidt’s first months, and the 1739 buildings.
• ACO Associates for Ohana Environmental Consulting (2022). Heritage Impact Assessment, Erf 595, Greyton. The founding of Greyton, and Heuwelkroon around 1970.
• Williams, R. Essay in Herri, issue 2. The removals from Greyton from 1968 to 1974.
• Greyton Transition Town. What is Greyton Transition Town. Its start in mid-2011.

Forum research:

• BioConomy Wiki. The Comenius-to-Schmidt Chain. The church’s history from 1415 to 1738, and the case for a link between Comenius and Schmidt’s teaching.
• Valley of Grace: Significant Dates (2026). Forum research notes, held by the Forum. The timeline this page is built on.
• Framer OS. It’s About TIME (August 2026). The TIME framework.