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Hendrik Marsveld

Properties3
descriptionDutch Moravian missionary and tailor (about 1745 to 1822), one of the three who reopened the mission at Baviaanskloof in 1792. He was its voice to the Cape government, ran its water mill, and served there until his death.
tagstheme/heritage, theme/trancraa, lang/en
aliasesHenrik Marsveld, Hendrick Marsveld, Brother Marsveld

9 min read

Hendrik Marsveld was one of the three Moravian missionaries who reopened the mission at Baviaanskloof, now Genadendal, on 24 December 1792 [IC]. He was a tailor, and the only Dutchman of the three [MS]. Because he spoke Dutch, the language of the colony, he preached in it from the first months and made most of the long journeys to Cape Town to speak for the mission to the government [MS]. His reports of those journeys, copied into the missionaries’ diaries, are some of the fullest records of how the company’s officials treated the mission and its Khoekhoe residents. His story is also told, with that of Daniel Schwinn and Johann Christian Kühnel, on The Missionaries of 1792.

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.
  • [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian records, above all the missionaries’ own diaries, and the histories written from them. Much of this page rests on Marsveld’s own reports.
  • [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

The diary passages

Many facts on this page come from new English translations in the Genadendal Diaries repository. They are machine translations that no person has checked yet. Each passage is cited by its Utrecht file number and line numbers. See The Genadendal Diaries.

At a glance

Born9 November 1745, at Gouda in the Netherlands, according to [[history/genadendal-a-long-walk
Died8 September 1822, at Genadendal [MS]
Known forReopening the mission at Baviaanskloof in 1792, and speaking for it to the Cape government [MS]
Link to the valleyOne of the founders of the mission that became Genadendal

Before the Cape

Marsveld was a tailor [MS]. He was Dutch, while Schwinn and Kühnel were German [MS]. Balie’s history says he was born at Gouda, that his mother’s words on her deathbed, that her family should not weep because they would meet again, led him to commit his life to Christ, and that he worked for a time at the Moravian settlement of Zeist [MS]. In 1794 letters reached him at Baviaanskloof from his own brother in Gouda, in the Netherlands [MS]. On his first journey to Cape Town in March 1793 he recorded that when he joined the church, he had hoped only to be “the kind of brother who had nothing else to see to than just to earn his bread”, and was amazed to have been called to such a task [MS].

Diaries: A363595, lines 2441 to 2484; A363595, lines 8251 to 8292

At Baviaanskloof

The three missionaries arrived on 24 December 1792 [IC]. They found Magdalena, who had kept Georg Schmidt’s congregation together for 48 years, and Marsveld recorded that she came to support them and helped students who were struggling [MS]. Formal lessons began on 4 March 1793 [MS]. When the school for adults opened, the children’s school was put off until Marsveld came back from Cape Town [MS]. The two German missionaries could not yet preach in Dutch [MS].

Diaries: A363349, entry for February and March 1793, and its note 16

Speaking for the mission

Marsveld went to Cape Town again and again to secure the mission’s place:

  • March 1793. He travelled with Baas Teunis of the company post at Soetemelksvlei. In Cape Town he met the acting governor, Johan Isaac Rhenius, and asked whether the mission could buy its land. Rhenius answered: “That is not necessary; the place is yours”. When Marsveld asked what would happen if a later governor wanted it back, Rhenius said: “Even if 10 governors came, they could not do it, because the Council of Seventeen has so ordered it” [MS].
  • January 1794. Hearing that the mission’s place was to be taken, he rode to the Landdrost at Stellenbosch and on to the new Commissioner, Abraham Josias Sluysken, who told him the mission could stay, “and so it shall remain” [MS]. Marsveld again offered to buy the land, and asked for the promise in writing. Neither was granted [MS].
  • January 1795. He went to Sluysken to ask him to withdraw his order that the Khoekhoe living at the mission send their cattle away. Sluysken refused, saying farmers complained that Khoekhoe who were taught “would get behind their secrets”. Marsveld answered that the farmers had no secrets except ploughing, sowing, and reaping, “and those they have to learn from the Hottentots” [MS].
  • October 1795. After the British took the Cape, he went to the British commanders and asked permission for the mission to go on preaching, and for their protection. Both were granted [MS]. He also thanked Sluysken, who told him he had written to the British on the mission’s behalf [MS].

Diaries: A363595, lines 2604 to 2747; A363595, lines 7645 to 7728; A363595, lines 13680 to 13806; A363596, lines 2612 to 2652

Journeys in the country

In April 1794 Marsveld and Kühnel rode east with a Khoekhoe man from the mission, Jacob, to the Landdrost at Swellendam and on to the Snake River, probably the Slangrivier near present-day Heidelberg. There they visited Khoekhoe kraals, among them the family of a man who wanted to move to Baviaanskloof [MS]. In November 1794 Marsveld visited the Dutch Reformed minister Vos at Roodezand, now Tulbagh [MS].

At home he did the daily work of the mission: fetching firewood with Khoekhoe helpers, visiting the sick, and sitting with the dying [MS].

Diaries: A363595, lines 8337 to 8427; A363595, lines 12317 to 12366

The expulsion of 1795

On 29 July 1795 an order from Commandant Bisani, a leader among the rebel burghers of Swellendam, told the missionaries to leave within three days [MS]. Marsveld went with the others to Cape Town, and returned with them after Sluysken told them on 7 August that they could go home [MS].

Later years

In 1800 Schwinn came back from Europe with two brides for Marsveld and Kühnel, chosen by the Moravian practice of drawing lots, and the couples were married in Cape Town [MS]. Marsveld’s wife was Johanna Rachel Schäfer, born at Neuendorf near Herrnhut in 1757; she died at Genadendal in September 1825 [MS].

Marsveld was still at Baviaanskloof in February 1804, when he signed the mission’s diary with Christian Ludwig Rose, Johann Philipp Kohrhammer, Schwinn, and Kühnel [MS]. By then more than 1,000 people lived at the mission [MS]. The traveller Henry Lichtenstein wrote in 1803 that Marsveld was the miller, and had built a water mill that ground corn for the mission, its residents, and many neighbouring farmers [MS]. Balie’s history says he became known as the tailor-miller [MS].

He served at Genadendal until his death, on 8 September 1822, the last of the three missionaries of 1792 [MS]. Balie’s history, quoting the mission’s report, gives his age as 77, and says that when the news spread, many residents came to the missionaries’ house in tears [MS]. His grave is in the old mission cemetery [MS].

Diaries: A363597, lines 1506 to 1510

How to read his story

Almost everything known about Marsveld comes from the diaries he and his fellow missionaries wrote for their church in Europe. They record his journeys and conversations in his own words. They show the Khoekhoe of the mission through the missionaries’ eyes, and they do not say what the Khoekhoe thought of him.

  • The Missionaries of 1792. Marsveld, Daniel Schwinn, and Johann Christian Kühnel arrived and worked together. Their shared story is told on that page.
  • Johann Christian Kühnel. His companion on the journey to the Snake River in 1794, and to Cape Town for the smithy’s tools in 1797 [MS].
  • Magdalena. She helped the missionaries in their first years, and Marsveld recorded her support [MS].
  • Abraham Josias Sluysken. Marsveld was the missionary who dealt with him most, in January 1794, January 1795, and October 1795 [MS].
  • Bisani. The rebel commandant whose order drove the missionaries from Baviaanskloof in July 1795 [MS].

His legacy in the valley

The school that began on 4 March 1793 has run ever since, and is now L.R. Schmidt Primary School [MS]. The mission he helped to hold in place through the company’s last years grew into Genadendal. The question he raised in 1793 and 1794, of who owns the mission’s land, is still open today [IC]. See TRANCRAA and Farm 39.

What is still open

  • His year of birth. Balie’s history gives 1745, and the library record gives 1744. His age of 77 at death, as reported, fits neither date exactly.
  • Whether the Dutch copies of the diaries in file A363349 were written or translated by him.
  • How the Khoekhoe residents of the mission remembered him.

References

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