Boer families, together with large numbers of…
1828 CE to 1839 CE
All told, some six thousand Boer men, women, and children, along with an equal number of blacks, participate in this movement in the late 1830s.
Fewer Boer families migrate from the western Cape, where they are more prosperous on their grain and wine farms and therefore less concerned about land shortages and frontier pressures.
The exodus from the Cape is not organized in a single movement at the time, but it will later be termed the Great Trek by nationalist historians, and its participants are called Voortrekkers (pioneers).