Christoffel Coetzee de Villiers (10 March 1850 – 4 September 1887), born in Swellendam, Cape Colony[1] as the fourth son of a wagon-maker, and married in Wellington where he then settled, spent his last years as a printer's clerk in Cape Town.

His passion for researching his own family's history eventually grew into his compilation of Geslachts-Registers der Oude Kaapsche Familiën,[2] a complete (in so far as it was possible) genealogy of colonists' descendants born at the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope during the Dutch period (1652–1806).

[3] He died of pneumonia with his life's work uncompleted and leaving his family in penury, having expended all his resources on his research.

On his death-bed, he extracted a promise from his friend and mentor, the historian George McCall Theal, to finish the work and have it published.

Only the first volume was sponsored, though: publication of the two others was conditional on sales of the first recovering its production cost.