Hi guys, small world!
I’ve been living in Melbourne, Australia for the past 5 years and I guess it’s a bit of longing for my native Cape Town from time to time, as well as being lucky enough to have received the researched work (done by a family member) of my own Slabbert lineage that had jolted my interest. This body of research shows that I’m a 10th generation (South African) Slabbert and descendent of Gideon Slabbert, one of the sons of Floris Slabbert who arrived in Cape Town on 27 Oktober 1699. What makes my case also interesting is that my grand parents (on Slabbert side) were both Slabbert but research shows they were not (at least closely ;-) !! ) related. I’m still looking into at which point these to branches separated (until they came together again in the latter part of the 1800’s)
As Jaco Slabbert points out, it does appear as if the surname Slabbert appeared for the first time in documentation only in South Africa (and not before and not anywhere else). As most research into surnames will show, spellings appears to change over centuries either (1) because of mistakenly miss-spellings in official documentations at the time by not always well literate officials or sometimes (2) a deliberate decision to change the spelling of a surname in order to adapt to a new adopted land and/or sometimes language. Whatever the reason for this change of spelling of the surname upon arrival in South Africa, the fact is that there is direct link to be found with the surname spelt as Slabbert and Slabbaert. This is the spelling you should look for when wanting to research further back in time.
I happen to have spent probably 100’s of hours over the last 5 years occasionally researching bits of Slabbert and Slabbaert history. This lead me to a wealth of information that goes back through the centuries that I can just not get into right now, but know there is a wealth of information to be found on the web! I guess it’s a case of the more key events and names you know, the more accurate the searches become. The further back you go, the more vague things get of course, the larger the gaps are and the more research needs to be done to see if there is indeed a (direct) link between these (sometimes famous) Slabbaerts still found in Europe today and have been for as far back as the Christian Crusades in 1200’s !! I’m serious ;-).
The name Slabbaert is mentioned in the Chronicles of the Crusades written by two high noblemen of Champagne, Jean de Joinville and Geoffroy de Villehardouin, and cover events from 1199 to 1298. This is at this point in time the earliest reference I have found of the surname Slabbaert. (but even in this source it states again that spellings are not consistent)
According to the above chronicles during that period, the name Slabbaert appears to be a Southern Minotian surname (I suspect this is probably from the Minot commune, in the Côte-d'Or department, in the region of Bourgogne/ Burgundy in eastern France) . By the time the first Slabbert/Slabbaert left from Europe for Africa in 1699, the Slabbaert name had arrived in the Netherlands via Belgium, probably as Jaco says because of religious persecution by the Catholic Church. My own research also shows that the Slabbaert name has a VERY (I mean VERY) strong tie to the Protestant Church in Brugges (in Belgium) in the mid 1500’s. This is an interesting bit of history there ;-), that I will not mention now.
It does appear to be a very interesting name with many famous artists, architects and religious and political figures scattered through the centuries. This helps in the research
Mark, my own family history also passes through Steytlerville and Jansenville and I have records of at least 4 generations of my family living and farming in these areas, as recently as my dad who was born in Steytlerville in 1928
I have to leave it there for now but I am planning to get in touch with the family member I mentioned earlier and see if he has access to email and internet and if he does then we could possible work togther on getting some of the information he has onto electronic format to be shared, expanded and discussed.
Useful tip: Whenever you get a hot and interesting tip (link), copy the link and the interesting paragraph and stick it in a “Slabbert” document somewhere to be accessed again in future. I have lost so much information over the past 5 years because I used to do completely random searches and not save anything. You sometimes never find that great bit of information again !