Hayes Family History

We are interested in family history and genealogy, and this page shows some of the families that we are researching, and a little about our own family. For a concise summary of the families we are researching, check our Tiny Tafel page.

Steve also maintains the African family history network. It will give you more information about genealogy and family history research resources on the net, especially those relating to Africa.

Our family tree

There are several places where you can see our family tree, and check if you are related:

Our Family History Web Journal (Blog) - research notes, sources, anecdotes on family history. Obviously our family history will not be identical to yours, but you can easily search it for entries relating to families you are interested in.
Our family wikispace -- this is a collection of family history information contributed by various family members. If you are related, please join, and contribute to the information there. You can add to the information, post queries, and discuss the information posted by others.
Our Gencircles page. It's a good place to search to see if anyone in our family tree matches anyone in yours. It also has the most up-to-date information.

Our TribalPages This has less information than the Gencircles one, but it also has more on current generations of living people. For that reason it is password protected, and we will only give the password to known relatives as a protection of privacy. If you think you might be related, and want to find out, check one of the other two. If you are related, e-mail us to ask for the password.

If you think your tree connects with ours, please let us know and we will be glad to exchange information. See our contact page for e-mail addresses etc.

If you were looking for your family and found us, we might also have been looking for you. Some family members have written to us in the past, and then their addresses have changed, and we have lost contact. So check below to see if we (or anyone else) have been looking for you!

[ Back to top of page | Index to all our pages ]

Some families we are researching

Hayes and Stooke

The earliest ancestor we know of was Simon Hayes, born about 1785 in North Curry, Somerset, England. He married Rachel Allen of Winscombe, and they had four sons, William, Sander, John and James who moved to Bristol and became builders and carpenters.

James Hayes married a widow, Catherine Chaffey (born Harris), and their son, William Allen Hayes, married Mary Barber Stooke. The Stooke family came from the Teign Valley in Devon.

Their son, Percy Wynn Hayes (Steve's grandfather), came to South Africa at the end of the 19th century, and was a stockbroker in Johannesburg, and later secretary of the Dumbe coal mine at Paulpietersburg, Natal.

There is a discussion forum for those related to the Stooke family of Devon

Green/Greene

The Green family came from Canada. The earliest ancestor we know of was James Green, a butcher of Quebec. His daughter Eliza had a son, William John Green, by a London merchant, William Goodall, and so the son was also known as William Goodall Green. Eliza Green later had an affair with Edward, Duke of Kent, which gave rise to a family legend that the Greens were of royal descent. She later married Thomas Esdaile, and settled in England. Though she had no children by him, he was apparently a very good stepfather, for his name cropped up several times in later generations.

William Goodall Green joined the commissariat department of the British Army, and served in Montreal, Halifax, and later in the Cape Colony, where several members of his family went. One son, Henry, was British Resident of the Orange Free State in the 1850s. Val's great great grandfather, Frederick Thomas Green (erroneously referred to in several books as Frederick Joseph Green), was an elephant hunter and trader in what is now Namibia and Botswana from the 1840s until his death in 1876. His first wife was from a well-known Herero family, and one of the descendants of that line, Mburumba Kerina, is credited with having invented the name Namibia (Kerina is the Herero form of Green).

Other members of the Green family settled in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Eventually a few made their way back to Canada.

Growdon

The Growdon (or Growden) family came from Cornwall. The earliest ancestor we know of is William Growden of Egloshayle who married Elizabeth Sandercock in Cardinham, Cornwall. They lived in Bodmin and had several children. Some moved to Australia and New Zealand, and from New Zealand one branch went to the USA. Steve's great grandfather, William Matthew Growdon, married Elizabeth Greenaway and came to the Cape Colony about 1876 as a platelayer on the Cape Government Railways. Eventually he was promoted to permanent way inspector, and settled in Queenstown. Several of his sons also worked on the railways.

There is more information on the Growdon/Growden family on this page

Pearson

The Pearson family came from Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. Val's grandparents, William Walker Pearson and Martha (Mattie) Ellwood, were born in Whitehaven and came to Natal in the early 20th century. They were married in St John the Baptist Church, Pinetown, in 1913.

Cottam

The Cottam family came from Lancashire, England. Richard Cottam married Margaret Bagot in Lancaster in 1835, and their son John Bagot Cottam married Adelaide Herbert in Manchester Cathedral in 1858. The family came to Natal on the Sebastian in 1863. J.B. Cottam came as accountant to the Natal Cotton plantation company, but later took up market gardening.

Click to join COTTAM_CONNECTIONS

Decker & Falkenberg families

Val's grandmother was Emma Decker who married Allan Dudley Green, and she was the daughter of Edwin Robert Morton Decker and Jessie Falkenberg. The Decker and Falkenberg families came from Germany to the Eastern Cape in the 1850s.

The Falkenberg family came from the Ueckermark district of Brandenburg, and among their ancestors were several Huguenot families who were refugees from France in the 17th century. Among these families were Payard, Bettac, Bevierre, Berthe, Fasquelle, Varenbourg, Veillard, Devantier, and several others. There were also spelling variations: Fasquelles, Varembourg and so on.

Other families

There are several other families for which we have information that are not listed here, though they are listed in our Tiny Tafels. Please contact us by e-mail or snail mail if you would like to exchange information, or enter a message in the Bravenet Forum by clicking below -- be sure to show the family surnames in the subject line!

[ Back to top of page | Index to all our pages ]

More family tree information

You can see more of our family tree on our family Wikispaces page. It's a good place to search to see if anyone in our family tree matches anyone in yours and if you are related, you can register to contribute more information. And don't forget to check our family history blog regularly for updates.

[ Back to top of page | Index to all our pages ]

Perhaps you came to this page looking for members of your family you have lost contact with or have never met. But it is also possible that some members of your family may be looking for you!

While you are here, why not look at some of our other pages

You may also search these web pages for other topics that interest you:

This page maintained by
Steve Hayes
E-mail:

Started: 1996-09-27
Updated: 2013-10-11