Louis van Bengale
active before 1714 · van Bengale line
No birth date is recorded for this person. The family puts an outer limit on it: born no later than 1643, because their child born 1659, so at least 16 years earlier. That is a hard limit, it cannot be otherwise. It is an upper bound and not a birth year, and nothing in the model records it as one.
Names
- Given
- Louis
- Surname
- van Bengale
The formal baptismal name and the name a person was actually called are both kept, and neither is derived from the other. Spelling drift between records is evidence, not noise.
Three generations around this person
Work out how this person is related to somebody else →
Click any name and the same three generations are drawn around that person instead. There is no first couple here and no top to the tree: it is only ever the family standing closest to whoever you are reading about, and a blank is a gap in the record rather than a statement about anybody.
Immediate family
- Children
- Lysbeth Sanders
Stories
- mentioned A woman's forty-six possessions
What we don't know
- No birth date is recorded.
- No death date is recorded.
- Neither parent is recorded, so this person is not attached to the tree above them.
- No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.
- Nothing dated is recorded about them at all, they are here because another record names them.
A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.
Research notes
[SRC-259] ONE OF THE TEN, AND THE FIRST OF THEM CONFIRMED FROM A PUBLISHED SOURCE. Boeseken and Cairns, writing from the Cape archives, describe Jan Harmensz Potgieter - the first man recorded on the land in the Land van Waveren - settling beside the Klein Berg River and marrying "Clara HerbstM, granddaughter of a freed slave, LOUIS OF BENGAL", legitimising their three daughters. Clara died in 1714. That is exactly the descent the private tree gives for this man - Louis van BengaleH to Lysbeth SandersH to Clara HerbstM to Sibille PotgieterM and onward to the anchor - and it is now supported by a scholarly work using the archival record rather than by a compiled tree alone. TWO WORDS IN IT MATTER. "FREED" - he was manumitted, which most were not. And "GRANDDAUGHTER" - the book independently places him two generations above Clara, which is where the tree puts him. His own dates remain unknown. See the story Ten at the Cape (STO-0021), which listed him with no dates at all and can now say this much. [TO VERIFY: the manumission itself]
FLORUIT, DEDUCED AND LABELLED AS SUCH: before 1714. No document gives him a date. The deduction is short and sound - his GRANDDAUGHTER Clara HerbstM died in 1714, having already borne three daughters, so a man two generations above her was necessarily alive and adult well before that year. The value is recorded as the EDTF "before" form rather than as a year, because a year would be invented precision. This is what let him publish: with no date of any kind the privacy rule fails closed and suppresses, which is correct behaviour and caught him on the first build.
[15 Aug 2026, FS] FamilySearch id filled from the FamilySearch id field of the family tree exports, matched on this row's own tree id and accepted only because the tree's NAME AND YEARS agree with this row. It is a door to the sources, not a source: nothing here is taken from the profile.
[15 Aug 2026] THE PRIVATE TREE HOLDS LOUIS VAN BENGALE TWICE AND THE TWO ROWS DISAGREE ABOUT WHAT HE WAS TO LYSBETH SANDERS. One row, with no dates, stands as her FATHER; a second, born about 1652 and died 1716, stands as her HUSBAND, and their two daughters carry the patronymic LOUISZ. Lysbeth was baptised before 2 March 1659, so the dated row cannot be her father - he would be seven years older than his daughter, which the chronological test rejects outright.
THE WHOLE DESCENT TURNS ON THIS. If Lysbeth is his daughter, Clara HerbstM is his granddaughter and the Tulbagh book is describing blood. If she is his wife, Clara - her daughter by Johann Herbst - is his STEPgranddaughter and the line does not carry his ancestry at all. The published book says granddaughter; the tree, read one way, says otherwise. NOTHING IS BEING DECIDED HERE. [TO VERIFY] LEAD-0206.
[22 Sep 2026, SRC-664] FIRST FIFTY YEARS g6/p6129.htm (Wayback snapshot 20241015170219): from Batavia, arrived 2 April 1662; sold to Hendrik Lacus 1666; bought his own freedom in 1671; baptised 5 May 1675, 'a Bengali by nation', about 23; land in Cape Town from 1676 and the farm he called Bengale in Jonkershoek 1683-1693; freed Lijsbeth Sanders van de Caep 27 July 1683, with whom he had daughters Elizabeth (1680), Anna (1685) and Maria (1686) Louisz; married Rebecca van Macassar 21 March 1694; will 30 August 1697; died 1716. The page does not name Clara HerbstM, so which daughter carries the descent is still to be shown. [FFY; originals it cites to pull]
These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.
Open questions
-
FamilySearch ids for the enslaved and free-black ancestors, and for Anthony van de Kaap
priority 1 · LEAD-0112
Eleven people at the head of this family — the ten of S021 plus Catharina van PalliacattaM — and the one enslaved man in the family's own estate papers carry no FamilySearch id between them. Which of them have profiles, and what are the ids?
What would settle it An id per person, or a recorded finding that no profile exists.
-
Import the nine Cape descent chains - they are Frans's own ancestry, generation 9 to 13
priority 1 · LEAD-0116
Eight of S021's ten have no recorded child in this model, so the site names a descent it cannot walk. The private tree holds every chain. Importing them means about fifty new person rows across the de Wet, Mocke, Duminy, Snyman, van Dyk, Janse van Vuuren, Smuts and du Preez lines. Is that in scope?
What would settle it Frans deciding. A middle course exists: import only the chains that reach families the site actually writes about, and leave the rest as a stated gap on the page.
-
Was Louis van Bengale the father of Lysbeth Sanders, or her husband? The descent depends on it
priority 1 · LEAD-0206
The private tree holds Louis van BengaleH twice: an undated row standing as Lysbeth SandersH's FATHER, and a row born about 1652 and died 1716 standing as her HUSBAND, whose two daughters by her carry the patronymic Louisz. Which is right? If he is her father, Clara HerbstM is his granddaughter and the descent this project publishes is blood. If he is her husband, Clara is his stepgranddaughter and the line carries none of his ancestry.
What would settle it A baptism naming Lysbeth SandersH's parents, or a marriage record for Louis van BengaleH and Lysbeth SandersH. Either one answers it in a line.
Elders
FamilySearch profile GJ8D-KZK