Three farms in one deed: Anna Margaretha, 1937

On 20 December 1937 one transfer deed put three farms and 11,897 morgen into the name of Anna Margaretha Marincowitz, born Oosthuizen - Tokkie's mother, and one of only seven women in this model recorded holding ground in her own right. Her father had died fourteen months earlier and her brother took the neighbouring portion the same day.

The deed

On 20 December 1937, transfer deed 13528 moved three farms into one name.

Eleven thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven morgen, about 10,190 hectares, in a single instrument, on one day, to a woman.

The deed records her as Anna Margaretha Marincowitz, born Oosthuizen, married out of community of property to Gert Oosthuizen Marincowitz.

Who she was

Anna Margaretha Oosthuizen was born on 5 October 1879. Her father was Frederik Simon "Frikkie" Oosthuizen of Zwartkraal, the wealthy farmer who built the Zeekoegat church at his own expense in 1906, added the hall in 1929 and the mission church after that, and made the whole lot over to the congregation in the year he died. Her grandfather was Jacobus Daniel Johannes Oosthuizen, the J.D.J. of the 1884 Middelwater quitrent, who sat on the Prince Albert church building committee in 1860.

She married late. She was thirty-eight when she married Gert Jan Oosthuizen Marincowitz in Cape Town on 23 April 1918, and he was forty-two. Three sons followed in six years: Gert Annis, called Tokkie, born ten months after the wedding; Freddie in 1921, who became a dominee and carried his grandfather's name; and Pat in 1924.

Her marriage is one more turn of the braid this history keeps running into. An Oosthuizen marrying a Marincowitz, which is why Oosthuizen sits inside Marincowitz given names for two generations, and why her son is Gert Annis Oosthuizen Marincowitz.

The timing

Frikkie Oosthuizen died on 10 October 1936.

In February 1937, the surveyor J.H.E. Hartwig measured out two new portions: Noorsdoringkop off Groot Sluitel Fontein, and Kleinbotterkraal off Klein Sleutlefontein. Noorsdoringkop's diagram was approved in July; Kleinbotterkraal's is diagram 4239 of 1937.

In December 1937, both were transferred to her, together with Kareemoerhoek.

Fourteen months from her father's death to the deed, with a fresh survey in the middle of it. And she was not the only one transferring that day: her brother Ernest Albert took Annex Modderdrift, Portion 3 of the same Rhemhoogte, on 20 December 1937 as well.

Two siblings, two adjacent portions of their family's ground, one date, a year after their father was buried. That reads as an estate being divided, not as land being bought, and it should be said plainly that the first guess here was the other way round. The ten-month gap between survey and transfer looked like a purchase being arranged. The brother taking the neighbouring portion on the same day is the detail that turns it over.

Kareemoerhoek supports the same reading from a different direction. Its previous holder was John Peter Oosthuizen, J.D.J.'s son, her uncle. The ground moved from the grandfather's household to the granddaughter without leaving the family.

What Noorsdoringkop and Kleinbotterkraal were doing in the same instrument is a separate question, because they come off two different farms and neither is Rhemhoogte. not yet verified

"Married out of community of property"

This phrase is doing real work in the deed and it is worth being exact about what it did and did not mean in 1937.

The default for a Cape marriage was in community of property: one joint estate, and the husband administering it. A marriage out of community, under an antenuptial contract, gave each spouse a separate estate. So the three farms went into hers. They were not her husband's, they did not fall into a joint pot, and on his death in 1952 they were not his to leave.

What it did not necessarily give her was free hands. The husband's marital power, the rule that a wife needed her husband's assistance to bind herself or to deal with immovable property, was a common companion to out-of-community marriage and it was not abolished in South Africa until the Matrimonial Property Act of 1984, forty-seven years after this deed and eleven years after she died. Whether her antenuptial contract excluded it is not recorded here. not yet verified

So the honest statement is the narrow one: the land was hers and not his. Whether she could sell it without him signing is a question the deed abstract does not answer.

That is still a great deal. She is one of only seven women in this entire model recorded as holding ground in her own name between 1829 and 1973, and by area she holds more than any of them.

Afterwards

Her husband died on 8 October 1952. She outlived him by twenty-one years and died on 3 December 1973, aged ninety-four.

Her son Tokkie married a widow, Maria Magritha van Rensburg, who had been left on her own in April 1968, and it is through that second marriage that Tokkie becomes Frans's step-grandfather, and that this page is on this site at all. Anna Margaretha lived to see it.

Still open

• Deed 13528 itself has not been read. Everything above comes off the diagrams and the

transfer endorsements. The deed states its consideration, and the consideration is the whole question: an estate division and a purchase look identical from a diagram.

• Frikkie's estate file. He died in October 1936 with land, a church he had given away

and at least two children taking transfer fourteen months later. The Master's file would settle the shape of it in one reading.

• Was the antenuptial contract's marital power excluded? Registered antenuptial

contracts are held with the deeds; this one would be traceable from the 1918 marriage.

• Ernest Albert is barely recorded here. He took Portion 3 the same day and is otherwise

a name in a note.

• Noorsdoringkop and Kleinbotterkraal come off Groot Sluitel Fontein and Klein

Sleutlefontein, not off Rhemhoogte. How the family came to be cutting portions out of those two farms in 1937 is not established.

What this story is about

• about Anna Margaretha Oosthuizen
• about Gert Jan Oosthuizen Marincowitz
• set on Kareemoerhoek (Rhemhoogte No. 125 Ptn 4)
• set on Noorsdoringkop (Groot Sluitel Fontein No. 126 Ptn 1)
• set on Kleinbotterkraal (Klein Sleutlefontein No. 127 Ptn 1)

Sources

Everything this story rests on, with a link to the original wherever one exists. Where a citation is incomplete it says so, an incomplete citation is a research gap, not a formatting problem. If your work is here and the credit is wrong or thin, please tell us and it will be fixed.

1. FamilySearch Family Tree - Oosthuizen direct line FamilySearchperson pages 972X-2LJ, LZ1Q-GDF, LDQC-R1B, LDQC-R17, LDQC-RTX and their family viewsview it online →
2. Rhemhoogte Ptn 4 "Kareemoerhoek" diagram, 1937 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm -/1937
3. Noorsdoringkop, Portion 1 of Groot Sluitel Fontein No.126, diagram (1937) Surveyor-GeneralS.G. File S.13291; Survey Records E 771/1937; diagram number illegible

Research notes

The research behind this page, kept separate from it: dated working notes, open questions, and what is not yet settled.