Ferdinand Appel, b2

1665 - 1713  (48 years)

• Name	Ferdinand Appel
  Suffix	b2
  Born	1665	Cape Town, Cape Colony, South Africa
  Christened	4 Oct 1665	Cape Town, Cape Colony, South Africa
  Gender	Male
  Died	1713	Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, South Africa
  DNA Y-Chromosoom Holplogroep= R1b	Aug 2013	Pretoria University, South Africa
  	Short communication Appel Botha Cornelitz: The abc of a three hundred year old divorce case Jaco M. Greeff *, J. Christoff Erasmus Department of Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa 1. Introduction DNA evidence has been used to confirm paternity of a few historically significant people by genotyping living descendants [1,2] or the actual remains of people concerned [3,4]. One of the earliest contested paternities at the Cape of Good Hope involved not just one, but the first seven children of Maria Kickers and resulted in a divorce from her husband, Jan Cornelitz, three hundred and thirteen years ago [5–7, Supplementary Table 1]. At the time it must have been a sensational affair as the divorce was preceded by 15 years of adulterous relationships [7, Supplementary Table 1] and it was one of only four divorces in the first 50 years of the Cape colony’s existence [6]. Here we use DNA from descendants as many as 10 generations later to unravel the paternity claims made during these proceedings. Jan Cornelitz came to the Cape in 1666 and married Catharina Harmansz on 22 May 1672 [8,9, Supplementary Table 1]. They had three children but she must have passed away before 1683, because on the 11th of July 1683 Jan got married to Maria Kickers (Fig. 1) [8,9, Supplementary Table 1]. Maria and Jan’s first child, Theunis, was christened on the 15th of April 1686, almost three years after their marriage date [8,9, Supplementary Table 1]. A second son followed shortly and was christened on the 2nd of November 1687 [8,9]. But in May 1689 Jan gathered together two female witnesses that testified that Maria told them that her first child was in fact fathered by Ferdinandus Appel and the second child by Frederik Botha (also known as Both and Boot) [7, Supplementary Table 1]. At the time of conception Ferdinandus was 20 years old and unmarried [8] whereas Frederik farmed part of Jan’s land for him from 1686 [5]. The reason for these testimonies was presumably to rein Maria in. Between these testimonies and their divorce eleven years later, Maria had a further five children [8,9]. Some popular accounts claim that Maria and Frederik openly christened the children together, but in fact, for all six children’s christenings that could be verified in the registers Jan was named as the father and Maria as mother (Supplementary Table 1). In 1700 Jan seems to have had enough of Maria’s relationship with Frederik and filed for a divorce. Here Maria admitted to having had all her children with Frederik Botha and blamed her husband for being impotent and suggested that he even encouraged her [5–7]. Maria was not given permission to remarry. In 1702 the Muster roll gives Frederik living with 8 children, presumably those of Maria, and Maria living on her own in Stellenbosch. This record may have been a subterfuge to prevent authorities from learning that Maria and Frederik were illegally co-habiting. In 1706 they were indeed found guilty of co-habiting (Supplementary Table 1). After Jan’s death in 1713, Maria and Frederik finally got married in 1714 [8,9]. In the end, all Maria’s children used the surname Botha rather than the name they were christened under [7]. While we may not know the paternity of Maria’s children we know that her descendants did extremely well at the Cape. The Bothas grew Forensic Science International: Genetics 7 (2013) 550–554 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 6 May 2013 Received in revised form 10 June 2013 Accepted 14 June 2013 Keywords: Y-STR Afrikaner Non-paternity Adultery Pedigrees Genealogy A B S T R A C T In 1683 Maria Kickers and Jan Cornelitz got married in Cape Town. Today, 330 years later, the living patrilineal descendants of Maria’s four sons, number in excess of 76,000 people. Curiously, none of them carry the surname Cornelitz – in fact, they are all called Botha and include former President P.W. Botha, general Louis Botha and Minister Pik Botha. The reason for this anomaly is also the reason why Jan got divorced from Maria in 1700. According to Maria’s testimonies she did indeed have a long term relationship with Frederik Botha, but in her defence she claimed that her husband was impotent and that he actually encouraged her. Other witnesses, presumably prompted by Jan, gave testimonies that implied that Maria was in fact licentious. We combined haplotyping with the AmpF‘STR1 YfilerTM kit with deep-rooting genealogies to show that Maria’s first son was actually fathered by Ferdinandus Appel and that roughly half the living Bothas (38,000 people) actually descend from Ferdinandus Appel while the remaining three sons all stem from the same father, presumably Frederik Botha, and this implies that Maria’s husband did not father any of her sons.  2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +27 83 257 8761. E-mail addresses: jaco.greeff@up.ac.za (J.M. Greeff), christoff.erasmus@gmail.com (J.C. Erasmus). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Forensic Science International: Genetics jou r nal h o mep ag e: w ww .elsevier .co m /loc ate/fs ig 1872-4973/$
  Person ID	I85	My Botha Genealogy
  Last Modified	31 Aug 2022

  
  

  DNA Tests	1 DNA test is associated with Ferdinand Appel, b2
  	Test Type	Taken by	Haplogroup	Test Information
  	atDNA	Gideon Hendrik Botha, b1c7d1e9f1g1h6i5j1k2	Y = Rib	Most distant ancestor: Ferdinand Appel, b2,   b. 1665, Cape Town, Cape Colony, South Africa ,   d. 1713, Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, South Africa Most recent common ancestor: Adam Johannes Botha, b1c7d1e4f1g1h6,   b. 4 Apr 1868, Utrecht Republiek Natalia, (South Africa) ,   d. 3 Jul 1901, The Other Vlakfontein Battle, Elandskloof Farm Dullstroom, Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek

  
  

  Father	Jurriaan Jansz Appel,   b. Mar 1640, Amsterdam Government, North Holland, Netherlands ,   d. 7 Jul 1672, Cape Town, Cape Colony, South Africa  (Age ~ 32 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Mother	Jannetje Gerritsz Ferdinandus,   b. 1638, Kortrijk, West Flanders, Flanders, Belgium ,   d. 25 Jul 1700, Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, South Africa  (Age 62 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Family ID	F99	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Maria Van der Stel/Kickers SM/PROG,   b. Feb 1674, Amsterdam, North Holland, The Netherlands ,   d. 2 Dec 1725, Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, South Africa  (Age ~ 51 years)
  Notes	They wear both very young when Teunis/Theunis Botha, b1 was conceived in 1668 and never got married
  Children	+ 1. Teunis/Theunis Botha, b1,   b. Mar 1686, Libertas Farm, Stellenbosch, Cape Colony, South Africa ,   d. Jun 1746, Swellendam, Cape Colony, South Africa  (Age ~ 60 years)  [Birth]
  Last Modified	11 May 2021
  Family ID	F35	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

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