Estate inventory, deed MOOC8/38.12, 13 June 1823

Inventory of the joint estate · taken on the farm Rondabel, 13 June 1823

Inventaris van alle zodanige goederen en effecten, als behoord hebbende tot den gemeenschaplyke boedel van nuwylen Jan de Bruin en desselfs nagelatene weduwe Alletta Johanna Oosthuizen en door eerstgem: op den 23 December 1822 met er dood ontruimd en nagelaten

The first item listed is the farm itself.

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Losse goederen — Moveable goods

1 leeningsplaats Rondabel gelegen in Tarka — one loan farm Rondabel, situated in the Tarka

Table and kitchen

3 tinne schotels · 7 tinne borden · 1 tinne bak · 1 party lepels en furken · 1 tinne zoep lepel · 4 aarde borden · 12 kommetjes · 1 blikke beker · 2 glasen · 4 bottels · 2 kanne · 1 tinne boter potje · 1 lantaren · 2 trommels · 1 bril en spiegeltje (spectacles and a small mirror) · 1 kelder met vlessen · 2 kopere ketels · 1 kastrol · 1 aardekan · 1 pan · 6 potten · 1 aardepot · 1 zeep form · 8 zaken zout (eight sacks of salt) · 7 zakken

Tools and trade

2 wyngaard messen (two vine knives) · 1 schaar · 10 zeekels (ten sickles) · 1 groote bottel · 2 schaven (two planes) · 1 winkelhaak en kruishoud (a try-square and cross-staff) · 2 slooten · 1 party out yzer · 1 zaag · 3 bytels · 3 boren · 1 schaal en ballans · 1 zweepstok · 1 snymes · 1 byl · 1 party ploeg gereedschappen · 1 schroeft (a vice) · 4 pikken · 1 ploegschaar · 4 graven · 3 sleipsteene (three grindstones) · 1 plank · 2 assen (two axles) · 14 p:s hout · 1 party houtwerk · 2 wagens (two wagons)

Household

4 vaten · 3 emmers · 1 kandelaar · 4 rakken · 2 kisten · 4 stoelen · 2 tavels · 2 veldstoeltjes · 2 boterbakken · 1 boter karren · 1 halfaam · 1 brandewynsketel (a brandy still) · 3 aams vaten · 1 horlogie (a watch) · 2 geweren (two guns)

Ten sickles, two vine knives, planes, a try-square, axles, timber and two wagons — and a brandy still. The same combination as at de Modder Fonteyn fourteen years earlier: farming, wagon work and a workshop.

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Beestiaal — Livestock

Fifteen hundred and forty sheep in 1823, against 538 on the same farm five years earlier. Nearly a threefold increase in five years — this is the merino boom arriving in the eastern districts, in the numbers.

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Slaven — The three enslaved people

1) Clarinda van Mosambicque 2) Adonis van de Kaap 3) Zerona van de Kaap

Named, and nothing else — no ages, no valuations, no relationships recorded. Two were born at the Cape; Clarinda was taken from Mozambique. They are listed between the livestock and the cash.

Transcribed here as written. For most enslaved people at the Cape an estate inventory is the only document in which their name appears at all, and omitting the line would remove the only trace.

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Contante — Cash

nihil

Baaten des boedels — Credits due

Six hundred rixdollars owed by a butcher in Grahamstown for sheep. That single line is the market: the Tarka flocks were being sold east, to the garrison town, and the debt was larger than every other credit combined.

Note also the first name in the list — Zacharias de Beer. The de Beers took Kweekvallei, the farm on which Prince Albert village stands, in 1762; a de Beer was field cornet at the 1833 survey; and the de Beers and Oosthuizens married in 1851. Here is a de Beer borrowing money from an Oosthuizen household in the Tarka in the early 1820s.

Schulden des boedels — Debts

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Erfgenamen des boedels — Heirs

Five married daughters and sons, two minors. The widow signs for herself.

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Closing formula

Aldus gedaan en geinventariseerd ter plaatze Rondabel in Tarka op den 13 Juny 1823 volgens op en aangeven van de wed: voorm: … ter presentie van Arie Johannes van Dyk en George Aldrich als getuigen.

Als getuigen: A:J: van Dyk, G: Aldrich Aletta J: Oosthuisen, weduwe J: de Bruijn In kennisse van my: W:W: Harding

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What this record establishes

1. An Oosthuizen widow was holding Rondabel in the Tarka in 1823 — eighteen years before the Prince Albert Rondabel was granted, and in a different district. The two Rondabels must be kept apart. not yet verified whether PAR-000009 is correctly attached to this inventory, or whether this is a same-name trap of exactly the kind the family-tree place rule warns about.
2. The sheep boom is visible in a single farm's numbers: 538 in 1818 → 1,540 in 1823.
3. The market was Grahamstown, and it was on credit.
4. A de Beer and an Oosthuizen household were already in financial dealings in the early 1820s.

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Filed 29 July 2026. Transcription © Cape Town Archives Repository; publication permitted only with repository and reference number named, as done above.