Vredendal: three surnames on the stones, one family in the house

Vredendal is a werf name on Spreeufontein No. 26, the farm the district called Gatsplaas. Five graves carrying three surnames, an 1886 slate slab whose inscription dates a woman to the day and whose line runs unbroken back to Enkhuizen in 1744, and then a household: the van der Merwes, and a man who died on his own birthday.

Vredendal is Portion 1 of Spreeufontein No. 26. The portion was called Gatsplaas and was renamed Vredendal before the van der Merwes bought it. The farm it was cut from is Spreeufontein - and the ground thrown open for gold in 1891 was this very portion: the 19,050 morgen proclaimed that August is Portion 1's own extent. That year is told in the 1891 gold rush.

That matters for reading everything below. When a stone here says somebody died in 1886, the ground they died on was Gatsplaas. Vredendal is a later name for the same place.

The oldest stone, and a line that runs to Enkhuizen

A slate slab lies flat in the Botma burial ground. It is the earliest dated thing on this ground, so far as the records gathered here go:

Hier rust het lijk van ENGELA SUSARA NIEHAUS geb BOTES, overleden op den 24 July 1886, met den ouderdom van 49 jaar 2 maanden en 22 dagen.

Revelation 14:13 is cut below it. The age is the useful part: 49 years, 2 months and 22 days counts back to a birth about 2 May 1837, and FamilySearch independently gives her 1837–1886. Two sources, arrived at from opposite directions, agreeing.

Engela Susara married Hendrik Willem Storm Niehaus at Prince Albert on 8 October 1855 and they had fifteen children between 1856 and 1880. He outlived her by twenty-four years and married again at Aberdeen in 1888.

Her parents are known: Andries Stephanus Botes, 1797–1872, and Anna Magdalena Pieterse. Her father is one of the fifteen children of Jacobus Abraham Botes and Elsje Dorothea Gouws. So the line from this slab runs back to a man who came ashore at the Cape in 1744, with one step in it that is not yet firm:

Wietse Botes is not himself Jacobus Abraham's father. His son Antonie is, and that reading is held as probable rather than settled: Jacobus Abraham is almost certainly the Jacob Abraham born to Antonie Botes of Enkhuizen and Engela Erasmus.

Five generations carrying the one name, and the middle one lying under it on this farm. That is the vernoemingspatroon run out over a century and a half.

The Storm in this family comes in through her husband rather than through her. Her mother was Anna Magdalena Pieterse. Hendrik's mother was Neeltje Johanna Storm, who married Bernardus Christiaan Godlieb Niehaus at Paarl on 7 August 1813, and her son carries her maiden surname as a given name. Anyone meeting "Hendrik Willem Storm Niehaus" will look for a Storm marriage on the wrong side of this couple.

That 1813 marriage is the hinge. It takes a Storm into the Niehaus, and the Storms, the Botes, the Niehaus and the Botma are one connected group across this ground and Varsche Fontein, where eight more stones stand.

The Botmas, and the farm's other name

Two more stones, and they are a marriage.

Cornelis Jacobus Botma, GEB. 19 NOVEMBER 1867, OVERL. 30 JANUARI 1910, under a standing dark stone with a carved sunburst. Both dates read cleanly off the photograph. A verse follows and is partly under vegetation; it is left untranscribed rather than guessed at.

Beside him, a marble open book: Johanna Maria Magdalena Botma, TER GEDAGTENIS AAN ONS MOEDER, 31 March 1861 to 14 May 1939.

They married at Prince Albert on 11 April 1887 and had nine children. Her maiden name was Le Grange. He was born on this farm on 19 November 1867, when it was still Spreeufontein, and his burial is recorded as plaas Gatsplaas, which is a second document using that name for this ground.

His father Frans Stephanus Botma was born in the Roggeveld in 1834 and died here on 15 April 1908, nine years after taking the amended title to the parent portion. So the Botmas are three generations on this ground, and the reason they are buried on it is that they lived on it.

Her death notice is the record that ties the old name to this ground. She died in Nuwestraat, Prince Albert, aged 79, and the notice says she was buried at Gatsplaas. That is the name this portion carried before it became Vredendal. No cadastre records the name, but the notice does not stand alone: the Zeekoegat cameo tells the village of Gatsplaas and its people under that name, and the eGGSA captions for this ground carry it too.

A fifth name is on the eGGSA list: Gertruida Johanna Swanepoel, captioned 1915– with no closing year. Her stone has not been seen.

The van der Merwes at Vredendal

The stones stop in 1939. What follows is a household rather than a grave.

Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe was at Vredendal from the 1950s. He was born on 8 April 1924 and he died on 8 April 1968, which is to say he died on his forty-fourth birthday.

His daughter Catharina, born 18 May 1953, grew up on this farm. His son Deon, born 1957, holds it today through a family trust. Between the 1886 slab and the present owner there are four surnames on this one piece of ground, and only the last of them lives here.

The death carries across to another farm. In 1973, five years after he died, Maria Magritha van Rensburg, Ria, bought Varsche Fontein. She had remarried by then, to Gert Annis Oosthuizen Marincowitz, known as Tokkie, and the deed carries her married name, Marincowitz. She never lived on the farm. The family's account is that the purchase completed something she and Frans van der Merwe had been planning for a long time.

So the two farms that carry the most family here are joined by one marriage and one birthday.

What this story is about

• set on Vredendal (Spreeufontein No. 26 Ptn 1)
• set on Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein No. 26)
• about Engela Susara Niehaus, born Botes
• about Cornelis Jacobus Botma
• about Johanna Maria Magdalena Bothma
• about Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe

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. Family photograph collection (Frans Oosthuizen) privateDSC_7115.jpg

Photographs

Research notes

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