Elsje Johanna van der Merwe (1835-1882)
31 March 1835 – 19 March 1882 · van der Merwe line
Names
- Given
- Elsje Johanna
- Surname
- van der Merwe
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.
Immediate family
- Married
- Schalk Willem van der Merwe (1833-1904) 27 December 1854
A life in the record
- 31 March 1835 born Born
- 27 December 1854 married Married Schalk Willem van der Merwe (1833-1904)
- 1863 occasion Baptism of their child, Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe at Calvinia
- 19 March 1882 died Died
Stories
- mentioned The van der Merwes of the Hantam
Others of the same name
Afrikaans naming repeats hard, and the Cape Dutch naming pattern reuses a name on purpose, a child who died young has the name given again to a later sibling. These are different people. Never match on a name alone.
What we don't know
- No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.
- 2 other people in this model carry the same name. Never match on a name alone.
A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.
Research notes
[TREE, via a FamilySearch fan chart Name, dates and the FamilySearch id only. NO PLACE IMPORTED: the tree's place strings are systematically wrong and are not evidence (see PER-000760).
[10 Aug 2026, SRC-373] THE SECOND WIFE. Schalk Willem Burger van der MerweM married Anna Maria VisagieM first; she died in 1853. Janet Melville places PER-000762 with this marriage - "hy is van die 2de vrou" - against a Calvinia baptism entry that names the first wife as his mother.
[11 Aug 2026, SRC-378] THE REGISTER SETTLES IT IN HER FAVOUR. The 1863 baptism entry names the mother of PER-000762 as "Elsje Johanna v.d. Merwe", in full, and Anna Maria VisagieM appears nowhere in the entry. She is his mother. LEAD-0152 is closed. Her granddaughter, baptised in 1887, was named for her.
[11 Aug 2026, SRC-405, SRC-406] SHE HAS DATES AND PLACES NOW, from two original documents. BORN 31 MARCH 1835 ON WELBEDACHT in the Calvinia district, baptised at Clanwilliam on 4 October, daughter of Jacobus Alewyn van der MerweM and Elisabeth Maria TheronM. Her grandfather CAREL AARON and his second wife ANNA WILHELMINA BOTHA stood at that font, together with the Visagie couple. MARRIED ON WELBEDACHT, the farm she was born on, on 27 December 1854, aged 18 and of ACHTERZAND. DIED 19 MARCH 1882 ON OUDE MUUR, aged 47, and the notice calls her occupation Farmer and values the estate at about 5,000 pounds. TWELVE CHILDREN are named on her death notice. Her husband's own form, twenty-two years later, says nine.
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.
Elders
FamilySearch profile LWFH-PV3