← Threads

Two English settler threads, on either side

The family runs back to two different small English villages — Rudgwick in Sussex on the paternal side, Bodham in Norfolk on the maternal. Either would be unusual for an Afrikaans family. Both is striking.

The Laker thread is not the only English thread in the family.

On the maternal grandmother’s side runs the Frost line, anchored at Philip Frost — christened at Bodham in Norfolk on 25 February 1787; died at Port Elizabeth on 15 January 1867 and buried at Coega. Twenty-eight sources and nineteen memories on his FamilySearch profile — the single most heavily attested ancestor on the entire maternal side, more thoroughly documented than many of the church-register Cape Afrikaners closer to home.

So the family runs back to two different small English villages in two different counties: Rudgwick in Sussex, on the paternal side, and Bodham in Norfolk, on the maternal side. Either thread on its own would be unusual for an Afrikaans family. Both is striking.