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Person PER-000505

Petrus Oosthuizen (Klaarstroom, fl.1858-1860)

active 1858–1860 · Oosthuizen line · uncertain

Connection to the Koup

Held ground in this district: De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom No. 178) (1858).

Names

Given
Petrus
Surname
Oosthuizen

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

  1. 1858 land Held it, De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom No. 178)
  2. 1858–4 August 1860 event A town is laid out on De Claar Stroom, and named Petersburg for Petrus Oosthuizen
    Soon after Meiringspoort opened in 1858 the ground was surveyed and 27 erven measured out; the first sold on 4 August 1860. The loan farm ran from Middelwater to Vrolikheid. The ground was Petrus Oosthuizen's, and the village was called Petersburg for him; he and his BROTHER OCKERT enforced its stip

Ground they are on record on

Stories

What we don't know

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

Sources

  1. Rose Willis and Doreen Atkinson, with Judy Maguire and Bruce Rubidge, "Klaarstroom: Ancient place of clear waters" (Karoo Cameos, 2021) Karoo Development Foundation, Karoo CameosKaroo Cameos, 2021

Research notes

[SRC-010, Rose Willis, Klaarstroom cameo] THE MAN KLAARSTROOM WAS NAMED FOR, and he was not in this model until 31 Jul 2026. The cameo: soon after Meiringspoort opened in 1858 a town was surveyed and 27 erven laid out on De Claar Stroom, 'the area was, at the time, owned by Petrus OosthuizenH'; the first erven sold 4 August 1860 and the place was called PETERSBURG - partly for the many Pieters who had a hand in it, but 'named mainly as a tribute to Petrus OosthuizenH'. He died 2 January 1876 aged 77, so born about 1798-99. Married first a Maria nee PITZER (d. 21 Nov 1842), eleven children; then Catherina Helena GELDENHUYS, ten more. NOT YET PLACED IN THE FAMILY. No Petrus OosthuizenH of this generation is in the tree rows here, and the cameo is a local history - tertiary, and no substitute for a death notice. His MOOC estate file would settle both the dates and the parentage. See LEAD-0029. [TO VERIFY]

*** CORRECTION, 31 Jul 2026, SAME DAY: THE FACTS BELOW WERE MINE AND THEY WERE WRONG. I read the cameo from a text extraction and joined two paragraphs that are five pages apart. The birth c.1798, the death on 2 January 1876 'at the ripe old age of 77', the first wife Alida Maria nee PITZER who died 21 Nov 1842 after eleven children, the second wife Catherina Helena GELDENHUYS with ten more, and the friends Gerome Marincowitz and Benecke ALL BELONG TO PETRUS JOHANNES MEIRING - the Klein Karoo farmer who found the route through the mountain and whom MEIRINGSPOORT IS NAMED FOR. Meiring married the widow of his employer Marthinus Bekker in 1821. None of it is Oosthuizen. WHAT THE CAMEO ACTUALLY SAYS ABOUT PETRUS OOSTHUIZEN, in full: he owned De Claar Stroom when the town was surveyed after 1858; the first erven sold 4 Aug 1860; the village was called Petersburg 'mainly as a tribute' to him because he 'had seen the need for a settlement and gone out of his way to take the first steps'; and 'the fledgling town kept Petrus OosthuizenH AND HIS BROTHER, OCKERT, very busy ensuring that all their stipulations were adhered to'. NO DATES AT ALL. The brother named Ockert is the one new fact, and it is a good one. ***

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.

Open questions

What the record is missing

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.