Youth
Kruger was born at Bulhoek, on his grandfather's farm, which was approximately 15 km west of the town of Steynsburg and 100 km to the north of Cradock in the British Cape Colony, and he grew up on the farm Vaalbank. Among his ancestors were the Khoi woman named Krotoa, and a Danish settler, Pieter van Meerhoff (Peder Jacobsen). He received only three months of formal education, his master being Tielman Roos, but he became knowledgeable from life on the veld. Paul Kruger became proficient in hunting and horse riding. He contributed to the development of guerrilla warfare during the First Boer War. Kruger's father, Casper Kruger, joined the trek party of Hendrik Potgieter when the Great Trek started in 1835.
The trekkers crossed the Vaal River in 1838, and at first stayed in the area that is known today as Potchefstroom. Kruger's father later decided to settle in the district now known as Rustenburg. At the age of 16, Kruger was entitled to choose a farm for himself at the foot of the Magaliesberg, where he settled in 1841.
The following year he married Anna Maria Etresia du Plessis (1826-1846), and they went together with Paul Kruger's father to live in the Eastern Transvaal. After the family had returned to Rustenburg, Kruger's wife and infant died in January, 1846. He then married his second wife Gezina Susanna Fredrika Wilhelmina du Plessis (1831-1901) in 1847, with whom he remained until her death in 1901. The couple had seven daughters and nine sons, some dying in infancy.
Kruger was a deeply religious man; he claimed to have only read one book, the Bible. He also claimed to know most of it by heart. He was a founding member of the Reformed Church in South Africa .
Read more about this topic: Paul Krueger
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.”
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)