There’s gold in our veins
I was born and raised in a town called Carletonville. The area is home to the world’s deepest gold mine. Around fifty percent of all the gold ever mined by humans has come out of the ground in this region.
Most of my family settled in a town called Germiston when they arrived in South Africa. Germiston is about 90km east of Carletonville and is home to the Rand Refinery, which has produced more bars of refined gold than anywhere else on the planet.
Back in the early 1900’s, gold mining wasn’t a prospector’s game like the California gold rush. Most immigrants who arrived here to seek their fortune on the gold fields didn’t strike it rich by finding prize nuggets. Mines were run by companies that grew into large corporations. However, the gold mining industry and the burgeoning city of Johannesburg that grew up around it at least provided these immigrants a chance at upward mobility from the factory-class lives they’d lived in Europe.
That opportunity is the reason most of my family came to South Africa and so in a way I credit gold-mining for my own existence.
The rocky background texture behind the text in the title image of this site is actually gold-bearing ore that was mined from the Carletonville region. Here’s a better look at it:
Just like that rock, this family has gold in its veins.
Hi, my grandfather Jacobus Marthinus du Toit married Anna Jacoba Hunter, daughter of Joseph Hume Hunter,
probably in Potchefstroom, around 1900. Any information?
Hi Tyrone, I am a descendant of David Gavine Hunter and Ellen Sutherland Hunter from Dundee Scotland who moved to South Africa which is where I was born but now live in England. There son David Hunter married my great granny May and had my grand mother Winnie Hunter and married William Hayward. I’m currently researching my family tree and hoping to find loads of info