Editing Paul Kruger (section)

===Family and childhood===
Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger was born on 10 October 1825 at Bulhoek, a farm in the [[Steynsburg]] area of the [[Cape Colony]], the third child and second son of Casper Jan Hendrik Kruger (1801–1852), a farmer, and his wife Elsje (Elisa; ''née'' Steyn; 1806–1834).{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp = 1–4}} The family was of Dutch-speaking [[Afrikaner]] background, and of German, French [[Huguenots|Huguenot]] and Dutch stock.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp=1–4}}{{sfn|Kruger|1902|p=3}} Kruger also had some [[Khoi people|Khoi]] ancestry, which came down to him from his ancestress [[Krotoa]].<ref>Geslagsregister van die familie PELSER, PELSTER, PELSZER, PELTSER, PELTZER en PELZER in Suid-Afrika sedert 1708 deur R. DE V. PIENAAR [Genealogy of the Pelser, Peltster, ... and Pelzer families in South Africa since 1708 through R. de van Pienaar], Stellenbosch, 2004. Page 8.</ref> The Kruger family’s paternal ancestors had lived in South Africa since 1713, when Jacob Krüger, from [[Berlin]], arrived in [[Cape Town]] as a 17-year-old soldier in the [[Dutch East India Company]]'s service. Jacob's children dropped the [[Germanic umlaut|umlaut]] from the family name, a common practice among South Africans of German origin. Over the following generations, Kruger's paternal forebears moved into the interior.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp = 1–4}} His mother's family, the Steyns, had lived in South Africa since 1668 and were relatively affluent and cultured by Cape standards.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp=1–4}} Kruger's great-grand-uncle [[Hermanus Steyn]] had been president of the self-declared [[Republic of Swellendam]] that revolted against Company rule in 1795.{{sfn|Meintjes|1969|p=2}}

Bulhoek, Kruger's birthplace, was the Steyn family farm and had been Elsie's home since early childhood; her father Douw Gerbrand Steyn had settled there in 1809. The Kruger and Steyn families were acquainted and Casper occasionally visited Bulhoek as a young man. He and Elsie married in [[Cradock, Eastern Cape|Cradock]] in 1820, when he was 19 and she was 14.{{#tag:ref|As Elsie was below [[marriageable age]], the union required written approval from both sets of parents and the bride herself. Such early marriages were not uncommon among rural Boers at that time.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|p=3}}|group = "n"|name = "elsieage"}} A girl, Sophia, and a boy, Douw Gerbrand, were born before Paul was born in 1825.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp=1–4}} His first two names, Stephanus Johannes, were chosen after his paternal grandfather, but rarely used. The provenance of the third given name, Paulus, "was to remain rather a mystery", [[Johannes Meintjes]] wrote in his 1974 biography of Kruger, "and yet the boy was always called Paul."{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp=1–4}}

Paul Kruger was baptised at Cradock on 19 March 1826.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp = 1–4}} Soon thereafter his parents acquired a farm of their own to the north-west at Vaalbank, near [[Colesberg]], in the remote north-east of the Cape Colony.{{sfn|Kruger|1902|pp=3–5}} His mother died when he was eight; his father Casper soon remarried and had more children with his second wife, Heiletje (''née'' du Plessis).{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp=4–5}} Beyond reading and writing, which he learned from relatives, the only education Kruger received was three months of study under a travelling tutor, Tielman Roos, and [[Calvinism|Calvinist]] religious instruction from his father.{{sfn|Meintjes|1974|pp = 4–5}} In adulthood, Kruger would claim to have never read any book apart from the Bible.{{sfn|Meredith|2007|p = 76}}