Van der Veen story telling: Family during the siege of Pretoria 1880-1881

Fred read me this quote from a Bloomberg article about the UAE. I marvel at how this bug on understanding my ancestral past has hooked me, whether the Wedderburn 1820 story, or my Nan's story from the Isle of Wight and now the van der Veen story, Dutch settlers who landed in Port Natal and then made their way to Pretoria only to get embroiled in war. The late eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundred's were not easy years in the Transvaal, the years of the First and Second Boer Wars.

My traveling to and from the National Archives has given me time in the Pretoria CBD, so it was with some astonishment that I found this photo online, Pretoria in 1880, and taken from the home of Mr van der Veen. Amazing, this would have been the home of one of the sons of the Dutch settler, Arend Johannes. I have analysed all the addresses where the van der Veen's lived over the last century and looking at the angle of the photo relative to the map below it could have been taken from Struben Street where a lot of the family lived.

A photo I found on the internet, caption says
"Convent Redoubt and Jail Laager from Mr van der Veen's house"

The view from the van der Veen home would have been looking south towards the Convent (17)
with the Fort Commeline  (5) which is just opposite the Voortrekker Monument.

Wonderful old register logging the photos taken for the Pretoria News including photo 34237.

I followed a lead on another photograph, sourced the huge old register from the National Archives and found the reference detail. The reference  confirms that Mr AJ van der Veen, the grandson of the original Dutch Settler, was one of the Pretoria citizens who were laagered into the Convent Redoubt by the British during the First Anglo Boer War in 1880.

He also served in the Second Anglo Boer War. The reference on the photo mentions that he was the Foreman of the Bricklayers when the Church on Church Square was built. The family profession of builders and bricklayers reaches it's peak during this time.

I have not been able to map my great grandfather, Arend Johannes van der Veen, to this particular AJ, my premise is that we are descendant from another of the brothers who came out with their father, the original AJ van der Veen...

The research continues.

Mr Arent Johannes van der Veen, grandson of the original Dutch settler,
son of Bernadus Johannes van der Veen.