A few generations of Bricklayers

Pa and Nan on their wedding day, 2 June 1928

I remember signing Fred and I up for a Bricklaying course in the south of Johannesburg soon after we were married. The plan was to build our own home, as we had bought a piece of ground.

What was I thinking! Me laying bricks? We did the course, after work for quite some weeks. It may even have been winter as it was freezing cold in the huge warehouse. I made notes, laid bricks and then never touched them again.

When I found this duplicate of Pa and Nan van der Veen's Marriage Register in Nan's Estate Late file at the National Archives in Pretoria, I was just a little bemused. Pa, like his father Arend, was a Bricklayer by trade. The bricklaying gene was not passed down effectively.

I never knew what Pa's work was as a young child spending time with him, looking back though I recall all the brick work of their Faraday Boulevard home in Vanderbijlpark, especially the backyard with its brick paving, brick flowerbeds and brick retaining walls.

How I love these old documents and the stories they tell. Nan was older than Pa, another little insight to file in this journey of mine into our ancestors.