Estate inventory, deed MOOC8/24.27, 27 April 1802

Inventory of the joint estate · taken 27 April 1802

Copia inventaris van alle zodaanige goederen als 'er door wijlen Jacobus Oosthuysen d'oude en deszelfs nagelaatene weduwe Dina Carolina Brits in gemeenschap bezeeten en door d' eerstgem: met 'er dood ontruimd en nagelaaten, mitsg:s heeden opgenoomen en in waaren weesen bevonden geworden zyn, te weeten

Ter plaatse van Piet Corn:s Oosthuysen

Copy inventory of all such goods as were possessed in community by the late Jacobus Oosthuysen the elder and his surviving widow Dina Carolina Brits, and left by the first-named at his death — taken today and found to be truly as follows. At the place of Pieter Cornelis Oosthuysen.

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Losse goederen — Moveable goods

The estate was not inventoried on a farm of its own. It was taken at the place of the son, Pieter Cornelis Oosthuysen — the widow was living with him. What follows is therefore not a household but what an eighty-year-old couple still owned when they moved in with a child.

The one enslaved person named

een oude slaave jonge, gen:d Anthony van de Kaap

an old slave boy, named Anthony van de Kaap ("of the Cape")

He is listed between the plough and the sheep, as property. His name and origin are all the record gives, and for most enslaved people at the Cape this line in an estate inventory is the only place their name survives at all. It is transcribed here as written, because leaving it out would erase him twice. "van de Kaap" means Cape-born rather than imported — so Anthony was born into slavery in this colony, and in 1802 he is described as old.

Beestiaal — Livestock

Contanten — Cash

Aan contanten Rd:s 300

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Uitstaande penningen onder de kinderen — Money out on loan among the children

The most revealing table in the document. The old man's capital was not in land or stock — it was lent out to his own children, and the amounts differ sharply.

The clerk's own arithmetic, and why it matters here. On the manuscript the cash and the first loan are carried across the page break together — Aan contanten Rd:s 300, then by Joh:s Jac:s Oosthuysen 130, then Transporteere Rd:s 430 — so the Somma of 1382:5 is the whole movable estate, not the lending. The loans alone come to Rd:s 1082:5, and every figure closes to the schilling. Corrected 6 August 2026 against the original sheets; this file had been reading the Somma as the loan total, which overstated the lending by exactly the Rd:s 300 that was sitting in the house.

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Erfgenaamen — Heirs

9) The eight orphaned grandchildren, and where each was living

The clerk records ages for the two eldest and then gives up — "d' ouderdom niet bekend", age unknown, six times over. Nobody in the room could say how old these children were.

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Closing formula

Aldus gedaan en g'inventariseerd op den 27:e April 1802, ter plaatze van den burger Pieter Cornelis Oosthuysen Jac:z:n en volgens 't op- en aangeeven van denzelven die verklaarde hierinne ter goeder trouw te hebben gehandeld en niets zyn weetens versweegen of agter gehouden, met belofte zo iets nader, tot den boedel specteerende, mogt komen te ontdekken, deezen inventaris daarmeede te zullen amplieeren; zynde overigens bereid deeze opgaave ten allen tyden des gevorderd werdende met solemneele eede te bevestigen en zulks in 't byweezen van den adj:t boode Theodorus Muller en den burger Johannes Hendrik Crous, als getuygen.

(was geteekend) Pieter Cornelis Oosthuysen, Jac: S: (als getuigen) Theodorus Muller, J:H: Crous (lager) Mij present: A: Stockenstrom, Secret:s Accordeert: A: Stockenstrom, Secret:s

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What this record establishes

1. It closes the generation above the root ancestor. Ockert Oosthuysen (PER-000118, b. 1755, d. 1809 at de Modder Fonteyn) is heir no. 3 here, and his parents are named outright: Jacobus Oosthuysen d'oude × Dina Carolina Brits, married Tulbagh 10 April 1749.

2. It proves where "Ockert" comes from. The mother is a Brits. At the 1755 baptism [SRC-091] the witness is Ocker Brits. The name entered this family from the maternal side, and the man it came from stood at the font. Almero was not added until 1786 — see S008.

3. It confirms the vernoemingspatroon across three sons, exactly in order:

And the reuse rule: a Dina Johanna born 1762 died in 1771; a Dina Johanna Magdalena was born that same year, 1771, and is heir no. 6.

4. Two sons are missing from the heirs list. Jacobus Petrus (b. 1757, PER-000238) and Jacobus (b. 1769, PER-000243) do not appear. Both must have died before April 1802 without surviving issue — the second Jacobus being himself a name-reuse for the first. not yet verified

5. The pattern that repeats seven years later. In 1802 eight orphaned grandchildren are parcelled out among an uncle, two neighbours and a stepfather. In 1809 [SRC-092], when Ockert dies at de Modder Fonteyn, his eldest son takes in seven minor siblings on the same principle and undertakes to have them schooled. Two generations, the same answer to the same problem — and no Orphan Chamber orphanage anywhere near.

6. What they did not own. No farm appears in this inventory at all. The whole movable estate came to Rd:s 1382:5, and Rd:s 1082:5 of it was money owed by their own children — more than three quarters of what they had, out on loan inside the family. The land had already gone to the next generation; what was left was capital and a chair.

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Filed 29 July 2026. Transcription © TANAP / Globalise; publication permitted only with repository and reference number named, as done above.