Eksteenfamily.com

South African Eksteen family descendant from Heinrich Oswald Eckstein (changed to Eksteen) who settled in the Cape Colony in 1702

Gerd von Aulock and

daughter Natascha Hartlett

 

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Gerd and Petro von Aulock (nee Eksteen) worked on compiling a register of all South African Eksteens for 14 years until about 1982.

The raising of their children put the Eksteen Register on hold, and it then fell by the wayside.  Petro passed away in 1994.

In 2003 their daughter Natascha wanted to indulge her love for genealogy and found to her dismay that both copies of the Eksteen register that had existed, were lost.

After posting messages on the internet message boards and finding some truly helpful people, she was referred, one step at a time, to Professor Louis Eksteen.  It was thought that Petro may have approached him about the publishing of the Eksteen register because he was a literary man. 

Unfortunately, Natascha found he had passed away the previous October.  What a disaster!  And without the register, it was almost impossible to find his surviving family.

Oh, but wonderful traditions some families have...Natascha found a man with the same name...Louis Eksteen, and he was an editor of a famous magazine….could he be related to the book-loving Prof. Louis Eksteen?

She took a chance and phoned him at his place of work….only two blocks from her own office.  After introductions and explaining the situation, the young editor confirmed he was indeed the son of Prof. Louis Eksteen.  What luck!!!!

He promised to check with his mother whether any documents fitting the description of the register (over 1000 hand-written pages) were still in his father’s library.

A few days later, with tears of emotion, her parents’ hard work of 14 years were handed over to Natascha by the young editor, whose name and line of work connected him to a nearly lost treasure!

The pages were yellowed by age, but otherwise perfectly legible, written in Gerd’s hand.  They were overjoyed!

Since then, Natascha has digitized the register.  Gerd then instructed her to start the work of making it accessible to all Eksteens on the internet.  Natascha is not a techno-wiz, so had to bring in husband Graham to help with the website.

Thanks to all who have helped and to those who are still going to.

Please update your family with us.

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