P.H. du Plessis

active 1891 · du Plessis line

Connection to the Koup

Held ground in this district: Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2) (1868-11-17).

land Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2) 1896-10-08
event Jan Koevies, a shepherd, finds the SECOND nugget on Klein Waterval - twenty years after the first1891-07

Names

Baptismal name: P.H.
Given: P.H.
Surname: du Plessis

The formal baptismal name and the name a person was actually called are both kept, and neither is derived from the other. Spelling drift between records is evidence, not noise.

A life in the record

17 November 1868 land Held it, Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2)
July 1891 event Jan Koevies, a shepherd, finds the SECOND nugget on Klein Waterval - twenty years after the first
Just over six pennyweights - 6 dwt 23 grains, about a third of an ounce, a lump the size of a pea. He took the rock, with a bit of yellow on it, to the farm owner John Muller, who thought a bullet had struck it; Muller showed it to Piet du Plessis of Zeekoegat, who knew it for gold. This time nobody
8 October 1896 land Held it, Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2)

Ground they are on record on

Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2) held it · 17 November 1868 to 8 October 1896
Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2) held it · 8 October 1896

Stories

subject The Prince Albert gold rush

What we don't know

No birth date is recorded.
No death date is recorded.
Neither parent is recorded, so this person is not attached to the tree above them.

A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.

Sources

"The Prince Albert goldfields, 1891" Arid Areas Research and DevelopmentRose's Roundup
Rose Willis & Doreen Atkinson, "Zeekoegat: Explorations in the Koup Karoo" (2022) Karoo Development Foundation38pp cameo

Research notes

[SRC-068] Piet Hermanus du Plessis, who farmed at Zeekoegat. Identified the 1891 nugget as gold when John MullerM brought it to him, and remained an active player to the end. Took the largest single find, 100 oz, and received £5,000 for samples sent away.

These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.

What the record is missing

27 years, and the ground changes hands to nobody we can follow second order · B1 succession
On Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2), Christian Hatting SeniorM is the last owner recorded from 1841-04-15, and the next entry is P.H. du PlessisH from 1868-11-17, 27 years later, with no person in common. DOC-0297 records the later arrival but not the 27 years before it.

What would settle it The Deeds Office transfer register for this farm between 1841 and 1868. A transfer names its predecessor in title, so one deed closes the whole gap.
23 years, and the ground changes hands to nobody we can follow second order · B1 succession
On Botterkraal (Jansenskraal No. 104 Ptn 2), P.H. du PlessisH is the last owner recorded from 1896-10-08, and the next entry is Christiaan Hendrik SwanepoelM (b6c5d7e3f7) and Pieter Johannes SwanepoelL (b6c5d7e16f1) from 1919-01-23, 23 years later, with no person in common. DOC-0056 records the later arrival but not the 23 years before it.

What would settle it The Deeds Office transfer register for this farm between 1896 and 1919. A transfer names its predecessor in title, so one deed closes the whole gap.

Found by breaks.py reading the model against itself, not written by hand, each one is a shape of missing record, not a fault in the data. The whole set is on the questions page.