Hermanus Steyn
1743 – 1804
Names
- Given
- Hermanus
- Surname
- Steyn
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.
Immediate family
- Children
- Susanna Cornelia Steyn
A life in the record
- 1743 born Born
- 1804 died Died
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
*** HERMANUS STEYN, PRESIDENT OF THE SWELLENDAM REPUBLIC OF 1795 - a notable figure and a second great-grandfather of a woman buried on Rondabel. *** [TO VERIFY]: the identification rests on the FamilySearch chart rendering his given name as 'President Hermanus SteynH', which is a TITLE folded into a name field, not a reading of any register. The title is not carried into display_name for that reason. The Swellendam burghers declared their republic in June 1795 and it lasted about three months.
[FS] Added 23 Aug 2026 from a FamilySearch fan chart of Cecilia Maria du Plessis supplied by Frans. Thin record: name, dates and the line only. NO PLACE IMPORTED - the tree's place strings are systematically wrong and are not evidence. NO FamilySearch id captured, because the chart does not show them; that is a gap worth closing, since 10 makes the FS id the citation.
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.