Andries Dreyer, church archivist and collector of Africana, dies

Andries Dreyer was born on 10 January 1872 in Philadelphia, in the present day Western Cape Province. After studying at the Normal College in Cape Town, be became a teacher, and through private study he qualified as an N.G Kerk missionary in 1896. He went on to minister in Hermanus, and later Cape Town, and because of his interest in church history, he was appointed the first full-time archivist of the Cape N.G Kerk in 1929. In the same year he also published Die Kaapse Kerk en die Groot Trek (The Cape Church and the Great Trek). Dreyer published numerous other history articles and books, and was also an avid collector of Africana. His unique collection of Africana is now held in the University of the Free State's library in Bloemfontein. Another collection of his papers is held in the University of Cape Town library. In 1973 he was awarded an honourary doctorate from the University of South Africa. He died on 31 August 1938 in Cape Town.