Van Reenen Family Website

Resources for this site: "VanReenen, Van Renen, Vanrenen 1722 - 1994" by Prof Gideon de Kock and James Duckitt (JD) van Renen and "The Genealogical Impact on South African History Of the Prussian Settler Count Jacob Van Rhenen who arrived in the Cape in 1721" by John George, which is available in electronic and hard copy format at www.lulu.comApparently, next to the Cloete family, there is no Cape family that has confused researchers as much as the van Reenens, due to the repetition of Christian names. There is also confusion about the spelling: the original settler, Jacob, wrote his surname Renen and sometimes used von instead of van- he came from Memel in the Baltic. (I could so far only find the spelling "von Rönen" in Memel archives!) In the Company's records the surname was always entered as van Reenen, while the old travellers also wrote Rheenen and Renan. In the third generation the men for the most part signed as van Reenen, except for Jacob and Sebastian Valentyn whose descendants spell their name van Renen and later Daniel van Reenen registered his children as van Renen, but one of his grandsons, also Daniel van Renen, changed his descendants surname back to van Reenen. Since Jacob van Reenen II had 10  sons, there are 10 so called "branches" of van Reenens/van Renens in South Africa, of which some have emigrated to Australia and some to the Netherlands as well.If your surname is van Reenen, van Renen or Vanrenen and your ancestry is displayed here at some stage, please register and load your family, photos and other family information to continue your family branch for generations to come! And please feel free to invite any van Reenen/van Renen family you know about! (At least it can't get lost, except if the whole internet crashed, since the site is being backed up every month.) If you want to know more about Old Memel/Klaipeda in Lithauen, Lithuania where the SA van Reenen family originated from, you can click on the photo album "Family Roots" to see the maps and videos or you can read here:  http://www.tydecks.info/online/pers_memel_hist_engl.html and here: http://wiki-en.genealogy.net/MemelOur family tree is posted online on this site! There are 2492 names in our family site.The site was last updated on Apr 3 2025, and it currently has 20 registered member(s). If you wish to become a member too, please click here.   Enjoy!