TOPIC:

In taking EFV’s advice to bring balance to the posts, I undertook a deeper exploration of the Neethling family tree while researching one of Smuts’ raiders who entered the Cape Colony.

In doing so, I was particularly struck by the story of Sophia and her son, Johannes Neethling, and felt compelled to share it with the forum.

I have therefore set this account out in two parts: the first reflecting on Sophia’s life and experiences, and the second on the fate of her son Johannes.

The material presented here has been drawn from sources such as FamilySearch, Facebook, and the books referenced below.



Early Life and Voortrekker Origins

Sophia Jacomina Aucamp was born on 29 July 1828 at Graaff-Reinet and baptised at Cradock, growing up on the volatile eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. She was born into a period of deep political uncertainty, and her extended Aucamp and Pretorius kin were among those preparing to leave British rule and trek inland in pursuit of autonomy, land, and security.

Members of both Sophia’s paternal Aucamp family and the Janse van Rensburg–Neethling connections that would later bind her by marriage were present among the Voortrekker groups who crossed the Drakensberg into Natal during the Great Trek.

The Murder of Piet Retief and Her Father

On 6 February 1838, Sophia’s father, Johan Diederik Aucamp, accompanied Piet Retief and his delegation to the Zulu royal kraal to finalise a land treaty with King Dingane. Although the deed was signed, Dingane abruptly ordered the delegation seized. They were taken to KwaMatiwane and executed. Johan Diederik Aucamp was among those killed.


The Bloukrans Massacres

Ten days later, unaware of the fate of Retief’s party, scattered Voortrekker family camps along the Bloukrans, Moordspruit, and Bushman’s rivers were attacked in coordinated assaults shortly after midnight.

Women and children were slaughtered in their wagons in one of the most traumatic events of the Great Trek. In total, 282 Voortrekkers were killed: 185 children, 56 women, and 41 men. A further 200 to 250 servants and camp followers also lost their lives, bringing the estimated death toll to between 532 and 534 individuals. This remains one of the highest recorded numbers of children killed in a single night in South African history.

Sophia survived the massacre at Bloukrans, having lost her father only days earlier.

The Battle of Blood River

In the aftermath of the Bloukrans massacres, women and children were withdrawn to more secure southern laagers while the Voortrekker commandos reorganised. On 16 December 1838, under the leadership of Andries Pretorius, the Voortrekker force formed a defensive laager on the Ncome (Blood) River and decisively defeated the Zulu army.

Present at the battle was Sophia’s future husband, the nineteen-year-old Hendrick Ludolph Neethling, who served as a sentry and took part in the fighting alongside his forty-four-year-old father, Willem Hendrick Neethling.

The victory at Blood River marked a critical turning point. It not only secured the immediate survival of the Voortrekker communities but also enabled their permanent settlement in the interior. Over time, this settlement led to the establishment and consolidation of the two major Boer republics. The territory beyond the Vaal River became known as the Transvaal, and in 1852 the Sand River Convention was signed, in which the British authorities formally recognized the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek. Two years later, in 1854, the Orange Free State was likewise recognized.

For families such as Sophia’s, Blood River thus represented not merely a battlefield victory, but the foundation upon which Boer political independence and statehood would be built.


First Marriage: Janse van Rensburg (1845–1857)

On 19 February 1845, Sophia married Barend Daniël Theodorus Janse van Rensburg. The couple settled in the Transvaal and began raising a family. In 1857, while hunting in the rugged Ohrigstad district, Barend disappeared without trace. He was never found, leaving Sophia a young widow with children to support.
 
Second Marriage: The Neethling Line (from 1857)

Later that same year, on 26 June 1857, Sophia remarried Hendrik Ludolph Neethling, a veteran of the Battle of Blood River. Their household became a central node in an extensive Transvaal kinship network.

Through this union, Sophia became the mother of Johannes Jacobus Neethling (1866–1901) and the grandmother of Jacob de Villiers Neethling (1878–1909)—a lineage that would later be drawn directly into the turmoil of the Anglo-Boer War.

 
The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902)

By the outbreak of the war in 1899, Sophia was seventy two years old and widowed. She was living with her married daughter, Anna Sophia du Toit, on the farm Klipkopjes near Pretoria. As British columns advanced through the district, mother and daughter were forced into flight, abandoning their home under cover of darkness.

Anna later recorded the moment of flight:

“And so we fled at about half past eleven at night and left behind almost everything we possessed. Oh, who can describe such a moment! Someone who has not experienced it cannot understand it; to leave home in such a cold, dark night, not even knowing where to go, and without the support of husband and sons. Constantly, as long as it was in sight, we looked back at our house, where the lamps still burned and the door stood open.”

The ordeal that followed was marked by prolonged hardship—months of travel by ox wagon, bitter winter cold beneath canvas, constant relocations, hunger, and uncertainty.

Throughout this period, Anna reflected on the spiritual endurance demanded of those in flight:

“Oh, in such days one learns to know one’s Saviour closely and to trust in Him alone.”
“To hear a child cry: ‘Ma, I am so hungry; please give me a piece of bread,’ and to have nothing to give him! Ah, then my heart could break from sorrow and grief.”

After 8 months, mother and daughter were interned in the Middelburg concentration camp. Unfortunately, two of Sophia’s grandchildren died in the camp.

At the same time, her son Johannes Jacobus Neethling and her grandson Jacob de Villiers Neethling had ridden into the Cape Colony as part of General Jan Smuts’ original raiding force of 300 men.

Johannes Jacobus was killed near Dordrecht on 2 October 1901. The circumstances of his death left Sophia with deep and enduring bitterness toward the Smuts family.
 
Later Years and Death

After the war, Sophia returned to a landscape of devastation—burned farms and shattered livelihoods—and began, once again, the slow process of rebuilding. She spent her final years with family on Knapdaar near Ermelo.

Sophia Jacomina Neethling died on 26 May 1914, having lived through the Great Trek, frontier warfare, two Boer republics, and the destruction and grief wrought by war.

Superb. Can't wait for part 2!

Early Life and Family Background

Johannes Jacobus Neethling was born on 4 May 1866 into a family already shaped by frontier wars and survival. He was the son of Hendrik Ludolph Neethling, a participant in the Battle of Blood River, and Sophia Jacomina Aucamp, a survivor of the Bloukrans massacres.
He grew up in the Transvaal within a large, closely knit household. Among his siblings from his father’s third marriage were Christiaan Daniel Neethling, born two years before him, and Maria Johanna Neethling, born two years after. His childhood unfolded within the interdependent family structures typical of the Boer republics.

The death of his father in 1891 left Johannes, then twenty five years old, and his younger siblings without paternal support. He came of age in a society that regarded endurance, self reliance, and military obligation as central virtues.

On 24 October 1894, Johannes married Emma Sophia Ellen Felling at Rondebosch in the Cape Province. At that time, movement across colonial and republican boundaries remained common, and family ties frequently spanned political borders that would soon become violently contested.

By the outbreak of war in 1899, Johannes was an educated, married man in his early thirties. His later identification as a school inspector suggests literacy, organisational competence, and standing within his community—qualities that would later see him attached to one of the most demanding and dangerous roles of the war.

The Second Anglo Boer War

When war commenced between the British Empire and the Boer republics in October 1899, Johannes Jacobus Neethling went on commando, as was expected of men of his background and standing. By 1901, as the conflict descended into its most destructive guerrilla phase, he had become attached to the forces operating under General Jan Christian Smuts.

In contemporary sources he appears under the familiar name “Jan Neethling.” He was not merely a burgher in the ranks. When Smuts planned his audacious invasion of the Cape Colony, Neethling was selected as one of the principal members of Smuts’ personal staff, alongside men such as Tottie Krige. This placed him at the very centre of the campaign, riding with the general and sharing his exposure to danger, pursuit, and exhaustion.

Into the Cape Colony

The Cape raid was a campaign of endurance rather than numbers. Smuts’ commando crossed the Orange River in early September 1901 and pressed southwards through hostile territory, threading its way between blockhouses, mounted columns, and colonial patrols. Food was scarce, horses failed, and the men were increasingly worn down by cold, hunger, and lack of sleep.

As the commando entered the Dordrecht district, local colonial defence units actively monitored their movements. Scouts watched from hilltops as Boer parties entered and left farmsteads, and word spread quickly that a senior officer was among them.

The Ambush at Moordenaarspoort

As General Smuts’ commando moved through the eastern Dordrecht district, their presence was detected by the Dordrecht District Volunteer Guard (DDVG), supported by members of the Winterberg Rifles. From elevated positions on the surrounding hills, colonial forces observed Boer movements and concluded that a senior officer was operating in the area. The rider on the white horse was identified as the commandant and marked as the primary target.

To intercept him, Lieutenant Keith Jackson was dispatched with a small patrol drawn from these colonial units. The patrol concealed itself at Moordenaarspoort, a narrow, bush covered defile well suited for ambush. Hidden behind a large slab of rock in a dry watercourse overlooking the track, they lay in wait.

Unaware of the patrol’s exact position, Smuts set out on a reconnaissance ride accompanied by Martiens Adendorff, his brother Willem Adendorff, and Johannes Jacobus Neethling.

Fully conscious of the danger posed by the terrain, the men agreed beforehand that, should they be fired upon, each would attempt to escape independently.

The colonial patrol held its fire until the riders were almost beneath them. When the shots rang out at close range, Martiens Adendorff was killed instantly, his white horse shot down beneath him.

The fatal shots were directed at the rider of the white horse—mistaken for Smuts—which had been lent to Martiens Adendorff shortly before the patrol set out, leading to his death in the opening volley.

In the confusion that followed, Willem Adendorff was thrown from his horse, wounded in both leg and arm. Johannes Jacobus Neethling was struck in the leg by a bullet that passed through his horse and saddle before hitting him. His mount collapsed, throwing him violently to the ground, grievously wounded and unable to move.

When the ambush was sprung, a bullet snapped General Smuts’ saddle girth, throwing him from his horse into a nearby gully. Believed by the attackers to have been killed or incapacitated, he escaped on foot along the course of the gully, using its depth and cover to evade further fire, and made his way toward the Schoeman homestead.

Shortly thereafter he regrouped with members of the commando who had ridden back on hearing the shots, reporting briefly that Martiens Adendorff had been killed and that he had seen Johannes Jacobus Neethling fall wounded from his horse. Although Smuts mounted another horse and rode some distance up the valley in search of survivors, he was warned by civilians that the ambushing patrol might still be lying in wait. On this advice, and with the ambush site out of sight and the risk of capture high, he did not return to the defile and instead rode on with the commando toward Middelplaas.

After the firing ceased, the scene was one of devastation. Johannes Jacobus Neethling lay severely wounded, unable to rise, beside dead horses and the body of Martiens Adendorff.

Willem Adendorff, though badly injured, struggled to his feet. Believing his brother dead and knowing that no help would come unless sought, he spoke briefly to Neethling and set out to find assistance. In the cold wind sweeping the defile, he dragged his injured leg and arm along the road, firing occasional shots in the hope of alerting the commando. No answer came.

Exhausted and in great pain, Willem Adendorff eventually reached the farmhouse of Mrs Roodt, where a servant raised the alarm and his wounds were dressed. He urgently implored those present to send help back to Neethling, who still lay in the kloof.
Meanwhile, limited aid reached Neethling from civilians who found him where he had fallen. He was given blankets, food, and water, and despite his injuries remained conscious. In a final act of responsibility, he entrusted General Smuts’ personal kitbag to Mrs Roodt for safekeeping before it could be hidden.

Johannes Jacobus Neethling lay gravely wounded in the kloof through the cold night, unattended except for the limited aid of civilians, until help finally arrived the following day.

When British troops reached the area, Neethling was brought down from the kloof, placed on a wagon, and transported to Dordrecht, where he was admitted to the gaol hospital.
 
Death of His Wounds

Neethling’s wound proved severe. Bullets that passed through leather and saddle were notoriously prone to infection, and despite medical attention, gangrene set in. Surgeons amputated his leg in an attempt to save his life, but the operation came too late.
On 2 October 1901, Johannes Jacobus Neethling died of his wounds in the Dordrecht gaol hospital.

He was buried in the Dordrecht cemetery. An escort from the Seaforth Highlanders carried his body to the grave and fired three volleys over it. His tombstone bears the inscription:
“Overleden aan zyne wonde 2 Oktober 1901.”


Aftermath and Family Consequences

Within the Neethling family they never forgave General Smuts for the circumstances under which Johannes had been left wounded in the field, and the relationship between the two families was permanently severed.
Deneys Reitz, who rode with Smuts’ commando, later wrote that had Smuts been killed in the Dordrecht district, the Cape expedition would almost certainly have collapsed, for there was no other leader capable at that stage of holding the scattered commandos together under such extreme pressure. While competent fighting men remained, Reitz observed that none possessed Smuts’ authority or personal command over the burghers.
 
Had Smuts been killed at Moordenaarspoort, the immediate military outcome—already suggested by Reitz—would likely have been the disintegration of the Cape raid itself. Beyond that, the longer implications for South African history can never be known with certainty. His death in September 1901 would almost certainly have altered that course.

For his mother, Sophia Jacomina Neethling, already burdened by loss during both the Great Trek era and the Second Anglo Boer War, the death of her son marked yet another profound and enduring grief.

Ref: “General Jan Smuts and His Long Ride” by Taffy and David Shearing & FamilySearch