Jan Louies Venter

active 1838

Names

Surname: Venter

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

11 July 1838 witness Witnessed a baptism · Adriana Cecilia Van Zyl

Who stood with them

Who signed at a baptism, a will or a survey is not incidental. It is the clearest surviving record of which families stood close to which.

they stood for Adriana Cecilia Van Zyl baptism · 11 July 1838
dates known, no other trace here

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.
No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.

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

Sources

Beaufort West baptisms 1838. Adriana Cecilia van Zyl (11 Jul) and Jacobus Petrus van Zyl (19 Aug), the two van Zyl x Oosthuizen households FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Records (Stellenbosch Archive), 1690-2011"; citing Genealogiese Instituut van Suid-Afrika, Stellenboschark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-68TW-GLX, cc=1392488; South Africa > Cape > Beaufort West > Baptisms 1819-1844 > image 212 of 302; register pages 210-211

Research notes

[9 Aug 2026] ADDED BY witness_scope_sweep.py UNDER SCOPE RULE R2, THE COMMUNITY. This person stood as a witness in this district and is here because the surname is one this project already holds. The register writes the name "Jan Louies VenterH". OCCASIONS: 1838-07-11 baptism at Beaufort West for PER-000834. SOURCE: SRC-181. flourished_edtf is the earliest of those occasion years and is the only date claimed for this person: the register attests them alive and adult on that day and says nothing else. No birth or death date is guessed. Sex is inferred from the given name where the name is unambiguous, and is left blank otherwise; it is an inference and not a record. THIS ROW IS A NAME IN A REGISTER, NOT A RESEARCHED PERSON. It carries no parentage, no ground and no tree id, and it exists so the witness seam can be walked in both directions.

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.