Christoffel Coetzee de Villiers (10 March 1850 – 4 September 1887), born in

Swellendam Swellendam is the fifth oldest town in South Africa (after Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Simon's Town, and Paarl), a town with 17,537 inhabitants situated in the Western Cape province. The town has over 50 provincial heritage sites, most of them b ...

as the fourth son of a wagon-maker, and married in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

where he then settled, spent his last years as a printer's clerk in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

. His passion for researching his own family's history eventually grew into his compilation of ''Geslachts-Registers der Oude Kaapsche Familiën'',C.C. de Villiers, ''Geslachts-register der Oude Kaapsche Familien'' (red. G. McC. Theal), three volumes, Van de Sandt de Villiers, Cape Town, 1893–1904. a complete (in so far as it was possible) genealogy of colonists' descendants born at the

Colony of the Cape of Good Hope The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with th ...

during the Dutch period (1652–1806). He died of pneumonia with his life's work uncompleted and leaving his family in penury, having expended all his resources on his research. On his death-bed, he extracted a promise from his friend and mentor, the historian

George McCall Theal George McCall Theal (11 April 1837, Saint John, New Brunswick – 17 April 1919, Wynberg, Cape Town), was the most prolific and influential South African historian, archivist and genealogist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. L ...

, to finish the work and have it published.

''Oude Kaapsche Familiën''

The publication, financed by the Cape Government at Theal's insistence, had to wait until a few years after Theal's appointment (in 1891) as Colonial Historian. Only the first volume was sponsored, though: publication of the two others was conditional on sales of the first recovering its production cost. The public's reception was overwhelming and the three volumes are now collector's items. They set a standard of scholarship, aspired to but rarely equalled by later genealogists, and remain a standard reference work well over a century later.''Oude Kaapsche Familiën'' is available as e-books
Vol.1Vol.2Vol.3
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:De Villliers, Christoffel Coetzee 1850 births 1887 deaths People from Beaufort West South African genealogists 19th-century South African writers