KFA - In 1907, Jansen van Rensburg came to the Protectorate to reconnoitre. In Nairobi he met Sir James Hayes-Sadler who promised that, if he would bring up 30 families or more, the Uasin Gishu should belong to the South Africans. Every settler was to be given a farm proportionate to the extent of his assets. With that promise, Mr van Rensburg returned to SA, held 3 meetings in the Bethel district of the Transvaal and secured promises from 50 families. The trek started in June, 1908, from 3 stations on the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay line. There were 47 families in all, and 3 single men making a total of between two and three hundred souls. All the families but two brought their own wagons, and more than half of them brought a horse, or several horses: but no oxen, as these could be procured in EA. Mr van Rensburg, the Kommandant, had chartered a German boat, the 'Windhoek' for £1750. She sailed from Delagoa Bay and reached Mombasa in 7 days.

The railway provided 5 special trains. The passenger accommodation consisted of trucks with wooden benches on which mothers bestowed their children as best they could. There was little sleep for any of them as the wood-fired train puffed its way upwards from the heat of the coast into the cool uplands; and at dawn the newcomers, gazing at the wide veld, the stunted thorn-scrub and the herds and herds of game all round them, felt that they had come home. A few families got off at Athi River to settle there. The rest continued to Nakuru, and arrived on July 18th, with 72 horses, 42 wagons and 2 predikants.

They established their camp about 5 miles outside the town, near the site of the present airfield. One or two families trekked down to Solai where an Afrikaner called Gous had a farm, and one or two more to Lower Molo to join van Dyke and Engelbrecht. A meeting of the men decided to send ahead immediately a party of horsemen, with a light cart and oxen, to reconnoitre the ground and choose a path for the heavier wagons to follow. Those who stayed in camp were to train the raw oxen, none of which had ever seen a yoke before, bought at a sale of cattle arranged by the District Commissioner. ........ (more of trek to the Uasin Gishu pp. 59-63)

Curtis - p. 96 - Uasin Gishu - 'Then, in 1908, came the first Boer Trek. With the blessing of the Protectorate's Govt., Jansen Van Rensburg led 47 Afrikaner families, plus 3 single men, from the Transvaal, bringing their wagons and household goods, first to Nakuru where they camped, and then up through the forested escarpment to the open plateau beyond

Red 22 - Jan Van Rensburg, Eldoret AND J.J. Van Rensburg, Naivasha

Web - Leader of Boer Trek to Kenya 1908 - …. Three of the daughters who went to Kenya were married to: Piet Steenkamp, Koos Smith, and Faan Smith. The eldest daughter was married to the Magistrate of Bethal and she did not Trek. Land 1909 - J.J. Van Rensburg - Grazing and agricultural, 4480 acres - Uasin Gishu - 5/9/08 - Leasehold under Occupation Licence from 5 to 99 years from 1/2/09 - Registered 12/7/09

Gazette - 7/4/15 - Liable for Jury service, Uasin Gishu Plateau - J.J. Van Rensburg, Farm No. 138

Red Book 1919 - District Committees - Uasin Gishu - J.J. Van Rensburg

KAD has J.J. Van Rensburg, Eldoret.

Red 25 - J.J. Van Rensburg, Box 26, Eldoret