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Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers" or "pathfinders" (literally "fore-trekkers") in Dutch and Afrikaans. The Great Trek led directly to the founding of several autonomous Boer republics , namely the South African Republic (also known simply as the Transvaal), the Orange Free State and ...
Date/Time Thumbnail Dimensions User Comment; current: 11:21, 1 August 2013: 1,870 × 2,116 (2.49 MB): JMK {{Information |Description ={{en|1=Dick Cruikshanks as Piet Retief in the 1916 film, The Voortrekkers, or Winning a Continent (in the USA), produced for African Film Productions Ltd., from a scenario drafted by Gustav Preller, by motion picture prod...
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Uys sold his own farm in December 1836 and left the Uitenhage area with his party of 100 Voortrekkers (as they became known) in April 1837. On 29 June of the same year, the Uys Trek arrived at the combined Voortrekker laager at the Sand River where, unbeknownst to them, Piet Retief had been elected Governor and a constitution drafted.
Retief was born to Jacobus and Debora Retief in the Wagenmakersvallei, Cape Colony, today the town of Wellington, South Africa.His family were Boers of French Huguenot ancestry: his great-grandfather was the 1689 Huguenot refugee François Retif, from Mer, Loir-et-Cher near Blois; the progenitor of the name in South Africa. [6]
The Weenen massacre (Afrikaans: Bloukransmoorde) was the massacre of Voortrekkers, Khoikhoi and Basuto by the Zulu Kingdom on 17 February 1838. The massacres occurred at Doringkop, Bloukrans River, Moordspruit, Rensburgspruit and other sites around the present day town of Weenen in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.
Many Trekboers crossed the Orange River decades before the Voortrekkers did. Voortrekkers often encountered Trekboers in Transorangia during their Great Trek of the 1830s and 1840s. In 1815, a Trekboer/trader named Coenraad (Du) Buys (a surname of French Huguenot origin) was accused of cattle theft and fled from the British.
Voortrekker Fort/Ohrigstad Fort was constructed before 1847 to act as a refuge for local Voortrekker families due to the constant attacks of local Bantu tribes. It is situated in the Ohrigstad area of northern Mpumalanga province which was first settled by Europeans under the leadership of Andries Hendrik Potgieter.