I have tried to track the Retif origins before our 2008 holiday in Provence, as so many of us believe that the Protestants mainly arrived from Provence in SA. No success and finally, after my arrival in France I have managed to find that François Retif lived in Mer in the Loire Valley and departed to SA from the Netherlands with his sister. He arrived in the Cape in 1689 and adopted an 'e' into the name in the Dutch Cape so that the surname became Retief. A few years later he married a lady from the region just north of where we are living now.
To my surprise I have realised during one of our trips to Fouras that Mer is along the way. Due to Fouras being quite a drive from here, we never had the time to visit. When my mom arrived last year and said she would like to visit a few castles in the Loire, I have asked her it she would like to stop on the way at Mer to see where her great great great....great grandfather came from.
The whole of France was in a grip of the most serious drought in years. But on our arrival in Mer the rain came down. We walked through the rain up the main street and down narrow alleys along old walls and houses. This was one of the strangest feelings I had on visiting a place in France. Both my mom and I could hardly believe that we are walking in a country that is not ours, but where our ancestor was born and bred. Trying to imagine what it would have been like during his lifetime in Mer. Being only 11 km from Chambord, the royal castle where Louis XIV recalled the Edict of Nantes in 1685, 19 km from Blois where another royal castle is based, and 54 km from Amboise, another royal stronghold with its castle on the bank of the Loire River. A more hostile environment you could not have asked for!
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