The progenitor of the South African family, Johan(n) Adam Raubenheimer, was born on 3 March 1742 in Germany, and baptised in the Lutheran Church in Sobernheim.  In 1769 he journeyed to the Cape on the Vryburg.  He was twenty seven years old, unmarried, and a soldier in the service of the Dutch East India Company.  Later he worked as a building foreman and farm labourer.  He became a burger in 1779 and served as a cornet from 5 December 1779.  He married Dina Margaretha van Dyk in the Tulbagh congregation (although he resided in the Prins Albert area).  In the marriage register it is noted that the hailed from Sobernheim.  Dina was baptised in the Stellenbosch congregation on 8 October 1741, and was the daughter of Sybrand van Dyk and Alida Aletta Brits, the widow of Zachareas de Beer, whom she married on 30 November 1760.  With de Beer she had three daughters and four sons, and he had six daughters and two sons from a former marriage.

At the age of thirty seven, the progenitor began his new life with is wife and her approximately ten children on a loan farm of de Beer’s.  The farm “Kweekvallei” was in the Swartberg in the region of Prins Albert, in the ward of Graaff-Reinet.

Johan Raubenheimer and Dina van Dyk had one child, namely Johan Adam.  All the South African Raubenheimers are descended from him.  The history of the Raubenheimers in South Africa could have run a completely different course had this child perished.