Maria van Bengale (b.1638)
1638 – 21 May 1665
Names
- Given
- Maria
- 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
- Marij Zacharias
A life in the record
- 1638 born Born
- 21 May 1665 died Died
Stories
- mentioned A woman's forty-six possessions
- mentioned The Jouberts and Duminys of the winelands
What we don't know
- 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.
A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.
Research notes
[TREE] Added 6 Aug 2026. Named on [S021] as one of the enslaved or free-black people at the head of this family, and held no row in this model until now — the site asserted the descent on a published page while the model could not answer a single question about the person. Dates as the private tree gives them; NO PLACE IMPORTED, per 5. No FamilySearch id yet: see PEOPLE-WITHOUT-FS-ID.md and LEAD-0112. S021 is itself marked provisional — this descent rests on a family tree and not yet on the Cape records — and creating the row does not change that. [TO VERIFY] S021's generation 13. The exact death date matches the tree row exactly.
[SRC-301, 6 Aug 2026] THE DESCENT FROM HER TO THIS FAMILY IS DISPROVEN. It ran through Marij ZachariasH to Jan Nys, and Jan Nys was a German from Duesseldorf who came out as a VOC soldier and married at Mauritius in 1694. He is not her grandson. She remains in the model and on [S021] with the correction stated, because a page that quietly drops a person it named for days is worse than one that says it was wrong. What is NOT in doubt: she existed, her dates are the sharpest of the ten, and she was an enslaved woman at the Cape. What is now known is that this family does not descend from her.
[9 Aug 2026] surname set to VAN BENGALE. The field was empty, so anything deriving a surname from the display name took the bracket, '(b.1638)'. Van Bengale is the toponymic byname the Cape records give her and it is the only surname she has.
[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.
[22 Sep 2026, SRC-664] FIRST FIFTY YEARS g13/p13779.htm (Wayback snapshot 20240520221714): arrived 21 April 1655; sold to Boom and then to Pieter van der Stael; her freedom bought by Jan Zacharias 6 July 1658 and married to him 21 July 1658, 'born in Bengal, about 20'; daughters Marij (1660) and Hester (1663) Zacharias; died 21 May 1665. [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.
-
Who was Jan Nijs's mother? Twenty-one years say Jacob had two wives
priority 1 · LEAD-0118
Where does the Maria van BengaleH (b.1638) descent actually run? The tree gives Marij ZachariasH born 1660, married December 1672, with a son born about 1671. Which date is wrong, or is a generation missing between them?
What would settle it A baptism naming Jan de Nys's mother, or the 1672 marriage entry itself. Failing those, any record naming Jacob Jansz de Nijs's wife before 1692 - if she is not Marij ZachariasH, this descent is not this family's.
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Jan Nys of Duesseldorf has the wrong parents on FamilySearch, both of them. Who were they?
priority 3 · LEAD-0119
Jan Nys came from Duesseldorf as a VOC soldier, so neither Jacob Jansz de Nijs of Amsterdam (LJR9-74B) nor Marij ZachariasH (LJR9-7H8) is his parent. Who were his parents, and what is the Marij ZachariasH row actually?
What would settle it A marriage entry for Jacob de Nijs naming Janna Marij Bousijn, which would place her in Amsterdam and leave any Cape Marij ZachariasH as a separate woman.
Elders
FamilySearch profile LJR9-7HJ