The direct lines

Four grandparents, and behind each of them one line of fathers running back as far as the record carries it. A page for each, a section for each generation, and the ground under it where the ground is known.

A direct line is one thread out of a whole cloth. Each of these follows fathers only, so every generation leaves out a mother and her people, who are no less ancestors and are often better recorded. Read it as one way through the record and not as the shape of a family.

• The Oosthuizen father-line 8 generations · 1665–1909

  Eight generations east, from a soldier who came ashore in 1685 to a farmer on Vischat who died in 1979.

  5 of 8 generations have ground on the map.

• The van der Merwe mother-line 12 generations · 1620–1924

  Twelve generations, from a young man off the Dordrecht in 1660 to the farmer on Vredendal who died on his own birthday in 1968.

  6 of 12 generations have ground on the map.

• The Joubert line 7 generations · 1725–1915

  Seven generations of the winelands. This line never came to the Karoo, and it has no farm on this map.

  0 of 7 generations have ground on the map.

• The van Rensburg line 9 generations · 1717–1928

  Nine generations of the dry north, ending with the woman who bought Varsche Fontein in 1973.

  1 of 9 generations have ground on the map.