A family three hundred years deep, begun by a marooned migrant and a freed slave, and carried now by van der Walts of every background, on six continents. In our 300th year we are doing one simple thing: finding each other.
1727
Gaele comes ashore
On 16 March 1727 Gaele Andries steps off the ship at the Cape, the stamvader of every van der Walt in South Africa.
1800s
Across a continent
The line spreads as trekboers, commandants and farmers, through hardship the registers nearly lost.
1978
The arms, made honest
After three years of research the family registers its own shield with the Bureau of Heraldry: the Frisian eagle, the fleur-de-lis, and by law no helm or borrowed knight.
2027
Three hundred years
Thousands of us, on six continents, most never having met. The year we gather and carry it on.
