Early Life and Background
Born in 1798, Pretorius received his education at home and grew up to become a farmer, like his parents, in Graaff-Reinet - then on the eastern fringes of the Cape Colony. He counted among his ancestors one of the earliest Dutch settlers in South Africa and a "two East Indian slave women, Catharina van Bengale on his mother's side, and Helena van Malabar on his father's side."
Read more about this topic: Andries Pretorius
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