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I had always been mildly curious about the origins of the name Bellingan, particularly as there are many similar names such as Bellingham, Bellinghan etc. the spellings of which caused endless confusion almost every time I had to fill in a form. There were stories of English or Irish origins connected with these latter names and I had simply assumed that this was where the roots of the paternal line lay, with a miss-spelling at some juncture, leaving us with a slightly different number of letters in our name. In fact, I have found nothing to back up that assumption and the early origins could just as easily lie in either Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany or France.
The copy of a birth certificate dated 1799, handed down to me by my father, was what motivated me to see how far back I could trace the name, and the internet seemed the quickest means to do this. The birth recorded on the certificate was in Driel, Gelderland, Netherlands, and by enormous good luck by typing into Yahoo/Google the words Driel and Bellingan I was led to the family site of the Lucas and Riemens families in the Netherlands. From information they had on their site, within minutes I could trace the Bellingan name back to the birth in 1568 in Amiens, France of Florent Bellingan.
Of ancestors before Florent Bellingan we have no information, but the page on French Roots, adds background about France during Florent's time and some interesting coincidences. The next recorded birth after Amiens, is in 1618 in the Netherlands. The family were probably Huguenots, or Protestants of other descent, living in France and the death of the french king, Henri IV in 1610 (which was just one of many sad events during the gruesom religious wars in France during this time) could have prompted them to flee to the nearby Protestant country. There were apparently several brothers of Florent, and we know one stayed in France and others are believed to have migrated elsewhere at the same time. (It would be great to find some of those links if anyone has any information....?)
So, my line of the family moved or rather fled from France to the Netherlands and after another two hundred or so years, the man on the birth certificate, Floris Noach Bellingan, landed in South Africa.
Floris Noach Bellingan (1799) had another brother who died only a few months old, both his parents died in 1830 in the Netherlands and a sister, Jenneke, died in 1816 at Tholen in the Netherlands. It seems likely then that he made the journey south as a young man, on his own. The only documentary evidence I have found on the Bellingan name leads back to him, so I believe he is the origin of the clan in South Africa. Exactly when he arrived is not known, but on 11 February 1826 he married Maria Cornelia Marais at George, in the Cape Province, and his first child was born the next year.
In true colonising spirit, Floris Noach Bellingan had 16 children, although several died very young. The ten male children then went on to have another 45 children between them, and although we know that two of the daughters died aged under one year, there would have been children from the female offspring, with partners named Schlemmer, Marais etc. Within about 50 years of landing in South Africa those with the name Bellingan had gone from numbering one, to over 50.
This site has started to record the history of the Bellingan name going back in time from its spread in South Africa. As a side issue I have started compiling documents of my family history,as a way of building up a picture of the triangle between Port Elisabeth, George and Middelburg that features as the area where so many of the first generations were born. A document that gave me some clues was from a yearbook, of Cape Farmers, which outlines what my grandfather did. He was born in Uitenhage and ended up with a farm in Middelburg, Cape.
If you have any ideas for additions to the site, then please contact me - I am very open to suggestions. Or, if you have data or background information on the family and its history, then please get it into digital format now and if you want to make it available to others via this site, let me know.
Anthony Bellingan
(www.webmidi.net)
Anowledgements:
Lucas - Riemens family site, Stryjdom family site, Family Search Website
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