The van Heerden Connection

My mother's maiden name was van Heerden, information regarding this branch of my family is not very well documented and the best I could do was to determine from their gravestone that my great grandfather was Gerhardes Hendrik Christoffel van Heerden and he was married to Maria Emelia Beetge.

A chance discovery of a book by Dr. Petronella van Heerden published in 1969 gave me the necessary connection to follow the van Heerden family all the way back to the arrival of the first van Heerden (Pieter Willemsz) in South Africa in 1701.