Oop vrae

152 questions somebody wrote down, ranked by how much they would change if they were answered. These are not gaps the machine found in the data; they are things this project does not know and has decided are worth finding out.

Elke vraag vou oop om te wys wat verwag word, waar om te kyk, en wat dit sou besleg.

1. 1 The stamvader's parents LEAD-0001

   Who were the parents of Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (PER-000296), the progenitor?

   Wat ons verwag: A GERHARDUS / GERRIT / GERARDUS OOSTHUYSEN married to a BARBARA, with a son JOHANNES born about 1665-1672

   Waar om te kyk: Werden (now a district of Essen) or Werl (Kreis Soest), North Rhine-Westphalia; failing those, Woerden in Utrecht. LIKELIEST IN A CATHOLIC REGISTER, not a Dutch Reformed one - Werden was an abbey town and Werl a Catholic pilgrimage town. Dutch Reformed registers for Amsterdam and Leiden have already been checked and excluded.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism or marriage naming Gerhardus Oosthuysen and Barbara with a son Johannes in the right window, PLUS corroboration that the child is the man who enlisted on 13 May 1685 - the surname alone cannot carry it. CJ 2601 (the 1722 will) narrowing the birthplace to one parish would do most of that work.

   Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (stamvader)

   geopen 2026-07-29

2. 1 Where the stamvader was from LEAD-0002

   Woerden, Werden or Werl - which of the five candidate home towns is right?

   Wat ons verwag: Werden (Essen) or Werl (Westphalia), Germany - on the weight of the evidence, but not proved

   Waar om te kyk: Western Cape Archives, Court of Justice: CJ 2601. Also the VOC scheepssoldijboek folio behind NL-HaNA 1.04.02 inv. 5331 fo. 215, at the Nationaal Archief.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: READING CJ 2601, HIS 1722 WILL. It is the only one of the five sources in which he speaks about himself. Second best: the soldijboek folio, which is what the muster index was copied from.

   Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (stamvader)

   geopen 2026-07-29

3. 1 The 1821 Beaufort West opgaafrol LEAD-0003

   Which field cornetcy were the Oosthuizens in when they first appear in the Koup - and does the roll name their loan place?

   Wat ons verwag: A Koup or Gamka field cornetcy entry naming the loan farm they occupied before Middelwater was surveyed in 1833

   Waar om te kyk: Western Cape Archives, opgaafrolle for the Beaufort district, 1821 (and 1819, 1820 for the bracket)

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: The roll entry itself. Tax rolls are organised BY FIELD CORNETCY - the residential unit - not by town, which is exactly why they beat baptism registers for this question.

   Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Ockert Oosthuizen (b.1755) · Middelwater

   geopen 2026-07-29

4. 1 The local tree does not pull FamilySearch corrections down LEAD-0021

   MacFamilyTree records freeze at the date they were pulled. How much of the model rests on FamilySearch data that has since been corrected upstream, and can a genuine re-sync be made to happen before the next family-tree export?

   Wat ons verwag: Widespread. The family-tree's record CREATION dates cluster in three one-way pulls - 4 Dec 2022 (8,034), 29-30 Oct 2023 (30,874) and 22 Oct 2024 (765) - and of the 6,926 individuals carrying a record-level CHAN date, 96% have not been modified locally since the end of 2022. PER-000408 is the proven case: FamilySearch corrected her birth on 23 Oct 2024 and the 31 May 2026 export still carried the old value.

   Waar om te kyk: MacFamilyTree's FamilySearch sync settings - whether it can be made to re-pull changed records rather than only add new ones. Then re-export and diff the _FID and vital fields against this model.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: A fresh export whose CHAN dates move. If they do not move, the local tree is an archive rather than a mirror, and every fact taken from it needs its pull date treated as an as-at date.

   Maria Johanna Oosthuizen

   geopen 2026-07-31

5. 1 Was Middelwater Portion 3 known as Droge Kloof? LEAD-0023

   Portion 3 is 4,251 ha, two fifths of the original Middelwater, and no document we hold names it. A homestead called Droge Kloof stands on it. Is that the portion's name, and who took it off the farm, and when?

   Wat ons verwag: Likely yes. Karoo portions are habitually known by the werf on them, and a piece this size with a house is not a paper subdivision. The reason it is absent from the 1883 deduction table may simply be that it left later; the 1989 servitude list naming only Gedeelte 4, 5, 6 and the Restant would then mean it had already gone by 1989 and was no longer part of the farm being described.

   Waar om te kyk: Deeds office under DROGE KLOOF in the Prince Albert registration division; the SG farm-name layer and 1:50000 topo sheets, which carry werf names the cadastre does not; and the transfer chain of Middelwater 169 between 1883 and 1989.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: A diagram or deed naming the portion. The cadastre already gives it a key (3/169), so the SG holds a diagram for it - ordering that one sheet probably answers the whole question.

   Middelwater Nr. 169 Gdlt 3 · Middelwater

   geopen 2026-07-31

6. 1 Is Venters Kloof named for Adriana Cecilia Venter's family - and did the Oosthuizens follow them to the Koup? LEAD-0027

   Venters Kloof No. 168 lies immediately north of Middelwater No. 169, and the root ancestor Ockert Almero Oosthuizen married ADRIANA CECILIA VENTER. Did her family hold that kloof, and is that why the Oosthuizens ended up on the ground next to it?

   Wat ons verwag: Likely yes on the name, unproven on the sequence. Cape loan places were habitually called after whoever held them, and the farm is a HALF loan farm - already split before 1833, so its name is older than the sheet. Adriana Cecilia was born 1792 and her father JAN LOUIS VENTER (PER-000120) in 1754, so a Venter of farming age in the Koup in the 1790s-1810s is entirely available. The sequence matters and cuts against the neat story: they married at SWELLENDAM in October 1807 (UNI-000001), BEFORE the family is reckoned to have established at Middelwater around 1821. So this is not neighbours marrying. If anything it is the better finding - the Oosthuizens may have moved to ground beside his wife's people, which would make the marriage a cause of the migration rather than a consequence of it.

   Waar om te kyk: THE 1841 TITLE Bf.W.Q. 5-16 - it names the grantee and is the single cheapest test. Then the Beaufort/Prince Albert opgaafrolle and loan-farm registers for a Venter holding Venters Kloof; and Jan Louis Venter's own record, which LEAD-0015 is already chasing.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: A Venter named as holder or grantee of No. 168. Equally decisive the other way: a grantee of another surname, which would make the name a fossil of an earlier occupier and kill the family connection.

   Adriana Cecilia Venter · Jan Louis Venter · Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Venters Kloof Nr. 168 · Middelwater

   geopen 2026-07-31

7. 1 Who was Petrus Oosthuizen of Klaarstroom, and how is he related? LEAD-0029

   The village at the centre of this project's anchor was laid out on his land in 1858-60 and originally named Petersburg for him. He is not in the model's family. Where does he sit, and is he a descendant of the root couple?

   Wat ons verwag: Very likely close family. He was farming the ground between Middelwater and Vrolikheid in the 1850s, which is exactly the root couple's belt, and d. 2 Jan 1876 aged 77 puts his birth about 1798-99 - the root couple married in 1807, so he is a generation too early to be their son and is more likely a brother, cousin or nephew of Ockert Almero (b.1786). Twenty-one children across two marriages would also make him a large presence in any Prince Albert register.

   Waar om te kyk: His MOOC death notice and estate file at KAB - d. 2 Jan 1876 is a precise enough date to order on. Prince Albert DRC marriage registers for the Pitzer and Geldenhuys marriages. The Klaarstroom erf transfers of 1860, which would name him in full. And FamilySearch on the second wife, Catherina Helena Geldenhuys.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: The death notice - it names parents, spouses and surviving children.

   Petrus Oosthuizen (Klaarstroom, fl.1858-1860) · Alida Maria Pitzer (widow of Marthinus Bekker, then wife of P.J. Meiring) · Catherina Helena Geldenhuys (second wife of P.J. Meiring) · Ger(H)olm Marincowitz · Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Middelwater · Vrolikheid

   geopen 2026-07-31

8. 1 Two Oosthuizen-Venter marriages in eighteen months, on the Olifants River LEAD-0034

   Ockert Almero married Adriana Cecilia Venter in Oct 1807; by April 1809 his sister Cornelia Petronella was married to Petrus Jacobus Venter. Were the two Venters siblings, and is this a double alliance between two families about to move east together?

   Wat ons verwag: A double alliance. Two siblings of one family marrying two of another inside two years is the classic Cape pattern, and it is the strongest form of the 'relinking' this project measured on 30 July - which found only two relinked marriages in the whole model because so few people have recorded ancestry. If Petrus Jacobus Venter turns out to be a brother of Adriana Cecilia, this is a third, and the earliest. Adriana Cecilia's father is Jan Louis Venter (PER-000120), b.1754 in the Drakenstein.

   Waar om te kyk: Petrus Jacobus Venter's own baptism and marriage - he has no dates and no FamilySearch id in this model at all. The Tulbagh (Land van Waveren) register, since that is where Citrusdal and Swellendam families baptised before 1798 and where Jan de Bruin was baptised in 1769 (SRC-168/169). And Jan Louis Venter's children.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: Petrus Jacobus Venter's parents. If they are Jan Louis Venter and Johanna Jacomina Smit, it is a double alliance and the case is made.

   Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Adriana Cecilia Venter · Cornelia Petronella Oosthuizen · Petrus Jacobus Venter · Jan Louis Venter · Ockert Oosthuizen (b.1755) · De Modder Fonteyn (Olifants River)

   geopen 2026-07-31

9. 1 Two children with two different sets of parents LEAD-0037

   PER-000373 Sophia Johanna Oosthuizen (b.1850) and PER-000443 Adriana Cecilia Oosthuizen (b.1848) each carry two parentage rows naming different couples. Which is right?

   Wat ons verwag: For PER-000443 the Jacobus Daniel Johannes x Sophia Johanna Mocke reading is the likelier: PER-000128's other children are all recorded with PER-000129 and this would be an outlier. For PER-000373 the two candidate fathers are Jacobus Daniel Johannes Oosthuizen and Daniel Jacobus Johannes Oosthuijzen - the SAME FOUR NAMES in a different order, which is far more likely one man recorded twice than two men.

   Waar om te kyk: The baptism register for the birth year; it names both parents.

   Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism entry. Nothing short of it - both rows are [TREE] and neither has a register behind it.

   Sophia Johanna Oosthuizen · Adriana Cecilia Oosthuizen · Jacobus Daniel Johannes Oosthuizen · Daniel Jacobus Johannes Oosthuijzen · Cornelis Andries Oosthuizen (b.1828)

   geopen 2026-07-31

10. 1 Was the Jacobus van Zyl on the Blood River roll our Jacobus? LEAD-0047

    The roll of the Wenkommando names exactly one van Zyl - 'van Zyl, Jacobus' - among 388 men. Is he Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl, FamilySearch LCV6-XNT (1809-1906), who married Susanna Catharina Oosthuizen of Middelwater and laid out Brandfort in 1866? AND, since 1 Aug 2026, a harder version of the same question: the Beaufort West baptism register puts him IN THE CAPE COLONY on 19 August 1838, a named witness at his nephew's baptism. Blood River is 16 December 1838, about 1,200 km away. Could he have made it?

    Wat ons verwag: MOVED AGAIN, and this time TOWARDS the tradition. The FamilySearch data closes the gap the Beaufort West register opened: he remarried at POTCHEFSTROOM, TRANSVAAL, on 27 JULY 1840. So the sequence is now documented at both ends - Beaufort West 19 Aug 1838, Potchefstroom 27 Jul 1840 - and BLOOD RIVER (16 Dec 1838) FALLS INSIDE THAT TWENTY-THREE-MONTH GAP. He demonstrably went north in exactly the window required. That is not proof and it is not close to proof: it removes an objection rather than supplying evidence. What stands: an uncoded name on the roll, a family tradition, a documented departure northward at the right time, and 101 days from the Beaufort West font to the Wenkommando muster - hard by wagon, easy on horseback. WHAT REMAINS DEFINITELY WRONG is the family history's ORDER, and the FS data makes that worse rather than better: it has him turning back after Retief's murder in FEBRUARY 1838, but he is in the Cape that August and married in the TRANSVAAL - not back in the Cape - in 1840.

    Waar om te kyk: Du Toit & Steenkamp, Die Bloedrivierse Eeufeesgedenkboek - the genealogical source behind the coded entries. The Geni Blood River project (Frans's link), which may attach a profile to the roll entry. Voortrekker burgher lists for Natal 1838-43, and the Natalia land claims, where he would appear if he stayed until the annexation.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A de Villiers/Pama code against the roll entry. 74 of the 388 entries carry one and this one does not; if any published version of the roll carries a code that resolves to our man (FamilySearch LCV6-XNT), the question is closed. This project does not assign itself a De Villiers/Pama code - [FAMILY] FS is our anchor. Failing that: any Cape record placing him in the colony between September and December 1838 would make Blood River impossible rather than merely tight - an opgaafrol, a transfer, a witness signature. That is now the cheaper test, and it is a NEGATIVE one.

    Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl · Susanna Catharina Oosthuizen (b.1811)

    geopen 2026-08-01

11. 1 Is Modderdrift's "Casper van Zyle Senior" the Casper van Zyl of the Beaufort West baptisms? LEAD-0056

    Is the Casper van Zyle Senior for whom Modderdrift No. 106 was surveyed in 1833 the same man as Casper van Zyl (1781-1863), father of the two van Zyl brothers baptised at Beaufort West?

    Wat ons verwag: Probably the same man. He was 52 in 1833, of the right generation to be styled Senior, and the family is already documented in this district.

    Waar om te kyk: The title register for D/G Bf.W.Q.5-45, which gives the grantee's full names; his death notice (he died 1863, so MOOC at the Western Cape Archives), which lists the estate's immovable property; and the Prince Albert and Beaufort West transfer registers for farm 106 between 1841 and 1874.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice or estate inventory listing Modderdrift among his property, or a title deed giving his full names. Either settles it in one line.

    Casper van Zyl (1781-1863) · Susanna Abigaël Breytenbach (Bredenbach) · Cornelis Petrus Jacobus van Zyl (1817-1906) · Modderdrift Nr. 106

    geopen 2026-08-01

12. 1 Three van Zyl landholdings in this district, and whether they connect LEAD-0057

    Are Casper van Zyle Senior of Modderdrift No. 106 (1833), Lucas Daniel Fromon van Zyl of Klipgat No. 114 (d. by 1911), and the Brandfort van Zyls of S018 one family?

    Wat ons verwag: Probably connected, because the district is small and the surname is on two large adjoining-district farms in the same field cornetcy. But van Zyl is a very common Cape surname and that is not an argument.

    Waar om te kyk: The 1916 transfer deeds 1916-142-8820 to 8831, which should name ten heirs of Lucas Daniel Fromon van Zyl; his death notice in MOOC at the Western Cape Archives; the title register for D/G Bf.W.Q.5-45 (Modderdrift); and the Prince Albert and Beaufort West baptism registers for van Zyl entries across the 1800s.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice or estate account that puts two of these three men in one descent. Ten named heirs from the 1916 deeds would be the fastest route, because ten names are far easier to match against the tree than one.

    Louis Daniel Francois van Zyl · Casper van Zyl (1781-1863) · Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl · Modderdrift Nr. 106 · Klipgat Nr. 114

    geopen 2026-08-01

13. 1 Adult baptisms in the Beaufort West register, 1838-1844 - a story LEAD-0065

    Who are the adults baptised in the Beaufort West register after emancipation, how does the clerk record them, and can any of them be followed forward into their own children and marriages?

    Wat ons verwag: That there is a recognisable group, not a handful of oddities, and that the clerk marks them in three consistent ways: BEJAARD in the Geboren column where a birth date would go; a birth YEAR only, with no day; and, in the Ouders column, either a phrase instead of names ("Een vrij persoon van kuleur") or two single given names with no surname, the child then carrying a patronymic form of the father's name (Arend -> Arendse). Expect them concentrated in the months after 1 December 1838, when apprenticeship ended at the Cape, and expect at least some to reappear later in the SAME BOOK as parents.

    Waar om te kyk: The remaining 81 untranscribed pages of SRC-200 - every entry whose born_text is a bare year or "Bejaard", and every entry with an empty or phrase-only Ouders column. Then the Beaufort West MARRIAGE and DEATH registers in the same FamilySearch collection, and the Cape slave office records (SO series, KAB) for the 1834-1838 valuation and emancipation rolls, which name people and the farms they were held on.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: For the story: the full set from all 91 pages, with each person's ward. For the individual thread: a marriage entry for Sara Magdalena Abrahamse and Joseph Kirsner, which would confirm that BWB-216-09 and BWB-257-03 are one woman, and an emancipation record naming her.

    Sara Magdalena Abrahamse

    geopen 2026-08-02

14. 1 The veldkornetskap - what it was, how it worked, and which of our families held one LEAD-0066

    What was a veldkornetskap, what powers did a veldkornet actually have, what system did it replace and what replaced it - and which men in this project held the office, in which ward, in which years?

    Wat ons verwag: That the ward is the missing administrative layer between the farm and the district, and that it explains things this project currently treats as coincidence - who witnesses whose baptism, who is named as a neighbour on a diagram, who musters together. Expect the office to run from the VOC period (the veldwachtmeester / veldkornet under the landdrost-and-heemraden system), through the British reorganisations of the 1810s-20s when the veldkornet becomes the government's man on the ground - census, musters, passes, minor justice, and the commando call-out - and to be overtaken by the DIVISIONAL COUNCILS from 1855, which is when the road and tax functions move away. Expect the ward to be named for the man, not the place, and therefore to CHANGE NAME when the office changes hands - which is testable in this register.

    Waar om te kyk: THE CAPE ALMANAC (Cape of Good Hope Almanac and Annual Register) is the key source: it lists field cornets BY DIVISION AND WARD, YEAR BY YEAR, so it converts every ward name in SRC-200 into a named man with a date range. Then: the CO series and 1/BFW (Beaufort West magistracy) at KAB for appointments and correspondence; Government Gazette notices of appointment; the 1855 Divisional Councils Act for what replaced it.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Cape Almanac entries for Beaufort West across 1838-1844 set beside the ward column of SRC-200. If the almanac names the same men, the register's ward column becomes a dated, sourced map of local office as well as of residence.

    geopen 2026-08-02

15. 1 Order General Plan K25 (30 Jan 1901) - is it the layout of the village of Klaarstroom? LEAD-0068

    Does General Plan K25 lay out the village of Klaarstroom on the nine morgen of Portion 1, and if so who surveyed it, how many erven, and at whose instance?

    Wat ons verwag: Yes. The verso of the 1858 diagram of Portion 1 carries "FOR SUBDIVISION OF PORTION K25 VIDE GENERAL PLAN K25", dated 30 January 1901, written across a printed deduction table that is ruled and completely EMPTY - nothing was ever cut off this portion and sold as land. A general plan is the drawing made when ground is laid out into erven and streets rather than sold as veld. Portion 1 is the nine morgen of arable with the werf on it, the first piece ever cut out of Klaarstroom and sold, in 1858. The town of Klaarstroom stands on farm 178. Put together, this sheet is very probably the paper on which a farm werf became a place.

    Waar om te kyk: Surveyor-General, Cape Town: General Plan K25 of 1901, Prince Albert division, farm 178. While ordering, also ask for General Plan F.7, cited on the verso of the 1833 parent diagram (SRC-223) for "subdivision of portion of this diagram" and undated there - a second layout on the same farm, and possibly the earlier one.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The plan itself. It will either show erven and streets, which settles it, or show a farm subdivision, which kills it. Either way it names the surveyor and the date, and an erf plan would name the applicant.

    De Claar Stroom Nr. 178 Gdlt 1 (the arable) · De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom Nr. 178)

    geopen 2026-08-03

16. 1 Is Minnies Kraal No. 112 named for the MINNE family - who married into the Janse van Vuuren of Wilgemond? LEAD-0071

    Does the farm name Minnies Kraal come from the Mienie/Minnie surname, and if so which member of that family held or occupied the ground?

    Wat ons verwag: CORRECTED 3 Aug 2026, and much stronger than when it was opened. The surname is MINNE, not Mienie or Minnie - so "Minnies Kraal" reads simply as MINNE'S KRAAL. The family is German: Dirk Minne of PADERBORN, WESTPHALIA married Christina Scheepers at Paarl on 2 June 1743 and was dead before January 1752. His son Theodore Cornelis was born at AFRICANDERS KLOOF, GRAAFF-REINET in 1751 - inland within one generation - and THAT SON MARRIED SUSANNA JOHANNA JANSE VAN VUUREN. That is the link that matters: the Minnes marry into the very family that holds Wilgemond No. 179 in this district, in the mid-eighteenth century, before either name is on a diagram here. His grandson Theodorus Cornelis (1782-1862) then had FOURTEEN children at Graaff-Reinet, which is how one German immigrant's surname could end up on a Karoo farm. Two lesser strands still stand: a Minnie born at Prince Albert in 1884 who married a Swanepoel, and a Mienie who married a van Vuuren in 1836 - but those spellings may or may not be the same family and should not be merged without evidence.

    Waar om te kyk: The earliest attestation of the NAME, which is the whole question - the oldest document held for farm 112 is a 1955 diagram (SRC-206), far too late to say who it was named for. Look for an original grant or an early survey of 112, and for Mienie/Minnie in the Beaufort West baptism register once more pages are transcribed.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A grant, quitrent or early diagram of farm 112 naming a MINNE as occupier or grantee - the spelling on the document is itself part of the answer. Failing that, a Minne recorded on or beside that ground before the name appears on a map.

    Minnies Kraal Nr. 112 · Minnies Kraal Nr. 112 Gdlt 2 · Minnies Kraal Nr. 112 Gdlt 3 · Wilgemond Nr. 179

    geopen 2026-08-03

17. 1 A story: the de Beers of Kweekvallei, the family the town of Prince Albert was built on LEAD-0073

    Can the de Beer line be traced continuously from the 1762 loan farm Queeckvalleij to the families this project follows - and is that the earliest thread in the whole history?

    Wat ons verwag: Probably yes, and it would be the deepest-rooted piece the site could carry. ZACHARIAS AND DINA DE BEER TOOK QUEECKVALLEIJ IN 1762 - the farm the Zwartberg congregation was founded on in 1842 and the village of Prince Albert laid out on in 1845. That is eighty years before the 1841 grants that fix the rest of this district, so the de Beers are on the ground before anyone else in this history. And they did not stay separate. A de Beer held the FIELD CORNETCY of the Koup in 1833-34 and witnessed the Vlakfontein survey. The 1833 Wintervelt register has a Matthys Jacobus de Beer married to a VENTER, and three more de Beers standing as witnesses on the same page. A de Beer married an Oosthuizen daughter in 1851. Frederik Coenraad de Beer married a MIENIE at Richmond in 1849. And the 1859 death notice names OKKER ALMERO DE BEER - a de Beer carrying the Venetian name out of the Oosthuizen family. THE SHAPE OF THE STORY: not a lineage but a piece of ground. One farm, taken in 1762, that becomes a congregation, then a village, then the town the whole district is named for - and the family that held it marrying into every line that came after.

    Waar om te kyk: The loan-farm records for Queeckvalleij, 1762 onward, and the transfer that turned it into erven in the 1840s - Ockert Almero Oosthuizen bought five of those erven for the church, which is a documented transaction and a natural hinge for the piece. Then the de Beer genealogy between Zacharias (b. 1719, d. Tulbagh 1777) and the 1830s field cornet.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The 1762 loan-farm grant naming Zacharias and Dina, and a line of descent from him to Matthys Andries de Beer (b. 1799), the field-cornet candidate.

    Kweekvallei

    geopen 2026-08-03

18. 1 141 people are on this site linked to nothing LEAD-0074

    Which parcels and people exist on the site as dead ends - reachable by a list, but linked to no document, story, owner or neighbour?

    Wat ons verwag: CORRECTED AND LARGELY CLOSED, 4 Aug 2026. THE ORIGINAL COUNT OF 18 WAS WRONG, and the error was mine: the query that produced it checked documents, stories, ownership and neighbours but NOT parcel_links - which is the table that carries the parent-to-portion relation and therefore makes most portions reachable. Counting it, the real figure was TWO. Both are now joined. PAR-000049 Klein Waterval is one of the two main diggings in the 1891 gold-rush story and had no story_link; PAR-000008 Vischat is named in the Vrolykheid history, in the line that says where it is NOT. Three genuinely missing parent links were also added - Paardefontein to Cyferfontein, and Minnies Kraal portions 4 and 5 to their parent - all three created earlier the same week and never linked. PARCELS UNREACHABLE FROM ANYTHING: NOW ZERO. PEOPLE ARE THE REMAINING GAP, and smaller than first reported: 141 of 1,424, not 203 - that count had also omitted events and witnesses. Of the 141, 106 come from the private tree and carry a tree id, 14 carry a FamilySearch id, 18 are dated, and only THREE have neither a date nor an id: Johannes Mattheus Calitz, Jacobus Christiaan Kok and J.F. Schmidt. Those three are the only rows in the model that are genuinely floating.

    Waar om te kyk: The cheapest wins are the ones where the link already exists in a document we hold and was simply never written into neighbours.csv or ownership.csv. Driehoek is the worked example: it is named on the Rondabel deduction table AND used as a boundary in the 1921 beacon report, and it still has no neighbour row.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: For the 106 tree-derived rows, a parentage pass merged from the family-tree on tree id - which 6 already names as the direction of travel and which would connect them wholesale rather than one at a time. For the three floating names, find the document each came from and link it.

    Vischat · Rietfontein · Lot A (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 3) · Lot B (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 4) · Kromrivier (Kopjes Kraal Nr. 123 Gdlt 1) · Klein Waterval (consolidated)

    geopen 2026-08-03

19. 1 Order Bf.W.Q. volume 5 and P.A.Q. volume 1 as VOLUMES, not as twenty-three separate deeds LEAD-0075

    Can the archive supply the two quitrent volumes this project keeps citing into, rather than one deed at a time?

    Wat ons verwag: It should, and it would change the economics of this whole line of research. The model already cites SIXTEEN separate deed references inside Beaufort West quitrent volume 5 - 5-1, 5-2, 5-6, 5-7, 5-9, 5-10 twice, 5-11, 5-16, 5-17, 5-26, 5-30, 5-31, 5-32 and 5-45 - and SEVEN inside Prince Albert quitrent volume 1 - 1-15, 1-17, 1-18, 1-21 twice, 1-28 twice and 1-31. Ordered individually that is twenty-three requests, each with its own fee and wait. They are two books. Volume 5 is the 15 April 1841 grants, the day STO-0007 is built on. Four open leads close on deeds inside it: LEAD-0027 (Venters Kloof, 5-16), LEAD-0054 (the van Veurens, 5-30), and LEAD-0056 and LEAD-0057 together (the van Zyls, 5-45). Bf.W. 5-9 gives the Wilgemond grantee's full names instead of the initials J.M.J., which would settle two person identifications at once. P.A.Q. 1-21 is Rondabel's 1868 title and would confirm that its "Jan Adriaan Oosthuizen" is PER-000003, born 1816. | UPDATED 4 Aug 2026: two more references into volume 5 arrived through the inbox the same week - Bf.W.Q. 5-25 (Waterfall/Bokfontein No. 94) and Bf.W.Q. 5-27 (Riet Fontein No. 12), both titled 15 April 1841 off consecutive Stretch diagrams 522/1839 and 523/1839. That is EIGHTEEN references into one volume, and it also shows the volume is not only the 1833-34 survey campaign: Stretch had a THIRD season in 1839 whose farms were granted on the same day. P.A.Q. volume 1 likewise gains 1-24, Riet Fontein's 1868 quitrent, for eight.

    Waar om te kyk: Western Cape Archives (KAB) / Deeds Office Cape Town. Ask for the VOLUME and specify the 15 April 1841 entries for Bf.W.Q. 5.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The volumes themselves. Failing that, ask what the marginal cost of an additional deed within one volume is - that number decides whether to batch or to pick.

    geopen 2026-08-04

20. 1 The First Fifty Years project: ten enslaved and free-black ancestors this site has never mentioned LEAD-0076

    Which of the ten toponymically-named direct ancestors can be documented from transcribed Cape records, and what does the First Fifty Years project hold on them?

    Wat ons verwag: This is the answer to the "first fifty years" question, and it is larger than expected. The private tree holds 51 people named in the Cape manner for enslaved and free-black people - van Bengale, van Malabar, van Angola, van Madagascar, van Guinea, van de Kaap, van Ceylon, van Batavia, van Coromandel - and TEN OF THEM ARE DIRECT ANCESTORS of the anchor, at generations 9 to 13. Generation 13 is this project's own stated pedigree limit, so every one of them is IN SCOPE by the existing rule. Not one of them was in the model. The site currently opens its origin story with a soldier arriving in 1685 and a loan farm taken in 1762, and says nothing at all about the women in the same ancestry. 10 has said since July that "the enslaved and colonial Cape matriarchs in this ancestry (Catharina van Paliacatta, Catharina van Malabar, Angela van Bengale) are documented, real, and central" - a standing instruction that had never been acted on. THREE SEPARATE LINES, not one repeated: Catharina van Malabar (b. ~1637, d. 1707) descends to OCKERT ALMERO OOSTHUIZEN himself, via Cornelia Cornelisse Claasz and Catharina Bastijaans Pyl - and the model had already held those last two links since July, stopping one generation short of her. Angela van Bengale (b. ~1646, d. 18 July 1720) descends by the de Wet line. Elisabeth Rebecca van Bengalen (b. ~1700, d. 3 July 1759) descends by the MOCKE line, at only nine generations. The remaining six ancestors are Louis van Bengale, Souwa van Madagascar, Marij van Angola, Claesje van Angola, Maria van Bengale (twice, b. ~1660 and b. 1638) and Manuel van Angola.

    Waar om te kyk: The First Fifty Years project, e-family.co.za/ffy - Delia Robertson's transcription of Cape records from 1652, tracking over 10,000 people and documenting enslaved and free-black inhabitants rather than settlers only. NOTE: the site would not resolve from this machine on 4 Aug 2026, so it has NOT been consulted - everything above comes from the private tree and needs checking against the transcriptions.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: For each of the ten: a transcribed Cape record - baptism, manumission, marriage, estate - naming her and her children. Angela van Bengale is the most likely to be well documented; she married Arnoldus Willemsz Basson and her descendants are extensive.

    geopen 2026-08-04

21. 1 The opgaafrolle of Drakenstein and Tulbagh: were these families neighbours for a century before the Koup? LEAD-0077

    Do the annual tax and census rolls put the Oosthuizen, Venter, Theron, Joubert, Strydom, de Beer and van Zyl households in the same districts in the same years, before any of them reached the Karoo?

    Wat ons verwag: Yes, and the tree already shows the shape. Counting EVERY direct ancestor of the anchor who has a birth year and a Cape birthplace gives a clean three-stage migration: CAPE TOWN in the 1650s, DRAKENSTEIN AND PAARL from 1675 to 1750 - 48 of 80 ancestors born 1700-1724 were born there - then TULBAGH, the Land van Waveren, from 1750 to 1825, then GRAAFF-REINET and the Koup. THREE OVERLAPS FALL OUT OF IT. At Drakenstein c.1690-1760 the Oosthuizen stamvader took land in 1691 on the same settlement terms offered to the Huguenots arriving in those very years - and the Jouberts (Pierre b. La Motte-du-Caire) and Therons (Jacques b. Nimes) ARE those Huguenots. At Tulbagh c.1750-1825 the same cohort moves together; this project had already half-noticed it in the note on Matthys Andreas de Beer, which calls the de Beer presence at Tulbagh in the same decades as the Oosthuizens "the evidence for the friends-before-the-move question" - the aggregate says that was not two families but the whole group. At Graaff-Reinet c.1780-1820 Adriana Cecilia Venter (b. 1792) and Johannes Adriaan Oosthuizen (b. 1816) are both born, one generation before the Koup. So the root couple are not two strangers meeting on a loan farm. They are the fourth generation of two families who had been neighbours at Drakenstein, then Tulbagh, then Graaff-Reinet.

    Waar om te kyk: The OPGAAFROLLE - annual tax and census rolls for Drakenstein, Stellenbosch and Tulbagh, which list householders by district and year. Then the Drakenstein and Tulbagh baptism and marriage registers: a marriage witnessed across two of these families at Paarl in the 1720s would be worth more than the whole statistical table, and this project has already shown with the Beaufort West register that witness lists are where families are caught standing together.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The same households on the same roll in the same year. That converts an aggregate pattern into named neighbours.

    geopen 2026-08-04

22. 1 Graaff-Reinet c.1800 opgaafrol - STILL TO BE ORDERED. A page of Oosthuyzens arrived but its roll is unidentified. LEAD-0078

    Do the annual tax rolls put Ockert Almaro Oosthuizen and Jan Louis Venter in the same district in the same year - one generation before their children married?

    Wat ons verwag: THE RECOMMENDATION IS ONE YEAR AND ONE DISTRICT, and it comes out of the dates rather than a preference. Counting male ancestors who were alive and aged 25 to 70 - the age at which a man appears as a householder on an opgaafrol - the year 1800 catches BOTH FATHERS OF THE ROOT COUPLE simultaneously: OCKERT ALMARO OOSTHUIZEN, born 1755, father of Ockert Almero; and JAN LOUIS VENTER, born 1754 at Drakenstein, father of Adriana Cecilia. Both are in their middle forties in 1800. Their children married and their descendants took the Koup. If those two men appear on the same district roll in the same year, the families were neighbours a generation before the marriage, and the Klaarstroom story starts one generation earlier than this project has been telling it. If they appear on different rolls, that is equally worth knowing and kills a comfortable assumption. WHICH DISTRICT: Graaff-Reinet first. Adriana Cecilia Venter was born there in 1792, so the Venters were already east by then; Johannes Adriaan Oosthuizen was born there in 1816. The Oosthuizen position in 1800 is the unknown, which is precisely what makes the roll worth reading. SECOND CHOICE, a different question: DRAKENSTEIN c.1752, which is the peak of the earlier cluster - NINE key surnames are simultaneously adult and male there or nearby (Basson, Conradie, Joubert, Mocke, Strydom, Theron, Venter, du Plessis, van der Merwe). That tests overlap one rather than the root couple.

    Waar om te kyk: Western Cape Archives, the opgaafrolle. Ask the archivist for the reference by DISTRICT and YEAR - this project does not hold the series numbers and will not guess them.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The VENTER page of the same index, and then the numbered entries themselves - this is an INDEX, giving names and a reference but no households, stock, slaves or crops. The substance is in the pages it points to. Also worth resolving what the right-hand column counts: 43, 33, 39, 7, 34, 43, 42, 39, 43, 43 - with 43 appearing four times it is not a unique sequence number.

    geopen 2026-08-04

23. 1 Which DISTRICT was the Koup in before 1818? The opgaafrol recommendation depends on it and it is not established LEAD-0079

    Before the Beaufort district existed, was the Gouph administered from Graaff-Reinet or from Stellenbosch (later Tulbagh)?

    Wat ons verwag: THIS IS FRANS'S CHALLENGE AND IT IS A GOOD ONE - "why would prins albert people be in graaff reinet opgaafrol. that correct?" The honest answer is that it is NOT established, and my recommendation of a Graaff-Reinet 1800 roll rested on a reason I stated imprecisely. FIRST, THE ANACHRONISM. There were no "Prince Albert people" in 1800. The village was proclaimed in 1845 and named in 1846; the congregation dates from 1842. PLC-000015 already says so: a record placing anyone at Prince Albert before 1842 is a later normalisation, not an address. SECOND, WHAT OUR OWN DOCUMENTS SAY. Every dated district statement on Koup ground from 1829 onward reads BEAUFORT - the 1829 Venter estate at Rondabel (field cornetcy of Hermanus van der Westhuisen, Traka), and the whole 1833-34 Stretch campaign (Traka and De Beer cornetcies). Beaufort district was established in 1818, so those tell us nothing about 1800. THIRD, THE DOCUMENT THAT LOOKED LIKE EVIDENCE AND IS NOT. DOC-0036 is an 1830 inventory taken "at the place Spreeuwfontein, fieldcornetcy Winterveld, district of Graaff Reinet" - which would put Koup ground under Graaff-Reinet. But the row already carries a same-name caution: it is PROBABLY NOT our Spreeufontein No. 26. Using it would be exactly the namesake error this project keeps hitting. It is set aside. FOURTH, WHAT NARROWS IT. The 1808 boundary proclamation reproduced in Appendix II of the Tulbagh book (SRC-259) has the new Tulbagh district running east into the Great Karoo "tot aan de Leeuwen Rivier of de uiterste grenzen der Drostdij Graaf-Reinet". So from 1804 the Karoo was split between Tulbagh and Graaff-Reinet at roughly that line, and before 1804 Tulbagh's share was STELLENBOSCH. The 1800 candidates are therefore STELLENBOSCH or GRAAFF-REINET, and which one depends on where the Koup sits relative to the Leeuwen River. Not guessed at here.

    Waar om te kyk: The 1818 proclamation creating the Beaufort district - which district it was carved out of answers this directly. Also the Leeuwen River line in the 1808 proclamation, against the position of the Gouph.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Either the 1818 Beaufort proclamation, or simply finding the family: search BOTH the Stellenbosch and Graaff-Reinet 1800 rolls rather than assuming one.

    geopen 2026-08-04

24. 1 Why 15 April 1841? The project's headline question has never been a lead LEAD-0091

    Was the day a batch signature clearing a quitrent conversion backlog, a settlement scheme, or routine administration?

    Wat ons verwag: A BACKLOG CLEARED BY BATCH SIGNATURE, on four grounds already in this model: every parcel was already occupied and the diagrams say so in their own words ("The LOAN FARM Middle Water...", "The Loan Farm Vrolykheid with the annexed Government ground"); the surveys ripened for years first, 1833 to 1841 here and 1825 to 1845 for Bloemendaal; the field cornet Christian Hatting is himself a grantee, which a settlement scheme does not do; and the folios are not ordered by anything but the clerk's stack, with 1839 sheets sitting at 5-25 and 5-27 inside the 1833 run. NOTE ALSO that S007's premise needs correcting: it is not twelve or thirteen farms to as many surnames but at least TWENTY parcels, across volumes 3, 5 and 6 plus a P.A.Q. series, and the surnames repeat - two Oosthuizens, two van Veuren/van Vuurens.

    Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West quitrent registers, volumes 3, 5 and 6 - how many entries carry 15 April 1841, and whether the ENTRY dates differ from the DEED date. Then the Cape Government Gazette for April 1841.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The register. If many farms across the district share the date and the underlying entries are spread over years, it is a signing session and the question is answered.

    De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom Nr. 178) · Rietkuil Nr. 119 (Kouka) · Bokfontein Nr. 94 (formerly Waterfall) · Rietfontein Nr. 12

    geopen 2026-08-05

25. 1 The estate of Louis Daniel Francois van Zyl (d. 1900), who held Klipgat No. 114 LEAD-0096

    Does his death notice name Christiaan Hendrik and Jacobus Johannes Petrus among the heirs, and Klipgat among the estate property?

    Wat ons verwag: YES, and it would close the identification outright. The chain already stands on four independent legs: the 1911 amended title is issued to the ESTATE of the late holder, so he is dead by then, and FamilySearch gives Louis Daniel Francois van Zyl 1832-1900, inside that bound; the Klipgat portion diagrams already name him in full; two of the ten shares transferred out on 15 Nov 1916 go to 'Christian H.' and 'Jacobus J.P.' van Zyl, matching two of his named sons on consecutive deeds 8820 and 8821; and the elder son married at PRINS ALBERT in 1887, placing the family in the district independently of the land papers.

    Waar om te kyk: MOOC, Master of the High Court, Cape - the same series as SRC-077. On FamilySearch: 'Cape, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1822-1990'. Originals at KAB, the Western Cape Archives. Second best if the estate file is thin: DEEDS 8820 AND 8821 of 15 November 1916 at the Deeds Office, Cape Town, which give transferees in full rather than by initial.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A Cape death notice names the surviving spouse and every child by name, and the estate file lists the property. Both halves in one document.

    Klipgat Nr. 114 · Zoutwater (Klipgat Nr. 114 Gdlt 1) · Klipgat A (Klipgat Nr. 114 Gdlt 2)

    geopen 2026-08-05

26. 1 Nicolaus Hitge's will and estate account, 1848 - does it hold Wit Plaats? LEAD-0097

    Is the 'N. Hitge' granted Wit Plaats on 15 April 1841 the Uitenhage shopkeeper Nicolaus Hitge (1785-1848)?

    Wat ons verwag: GENUINELY UNCERTAIN, and the new evidence cuts both ways - which is why it is worth one document rather than an argument. AGAINST: his death notice gives his condition in life as SHOPKEEPER and has him dying at his residence in Baird Street, Town of Uitenhage, about 500 km from Prince Albert. That is not a farmer's profile and Wit Plaats is a farm portion. FOR: the same notice says he left MOVEABLE AND IMMOVEABLE property and died TESTATE, so he held land and there is a document that lists it; a Cape shopkeeper holding quitrent ground at a distance as an investment is entirely ordinary; and the Hitge name is otherwise tied into this district twice over by marriage - his daughter Hester married Gerolm Marincowitz, and Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge married Ockert Almero Oosthuizen. | REVISED 5 Aug 2026 AFTER A WEB SEARCH, AND THE PREDICTION FLIPS. A published WikiTree profile states that Nicolaus died in 1848 owning PROPERTY IN UITENHAGE AND THE FARM SANDFONTEIN IN THE DISTRICT - Sandfontein, not Wit Plaats, and 'the district' reads as Uitenhage. If that is drawn from the estate papers, the estate does not contain Wit Plaats and the 1841 grantee is a DIFFERENT Hitge. The profile is secondary and is not treated as settling anything, but it agrees with SRC-289 on every checkable detail - Baird Street, the 1785 birth, Mary Hunt in 1820, the six children - so it is likely working from the same papers.

    Waar om te kyk: MOOC, Master of the High Court, Cape - the will and the estate account for Nicholas Hitge, died Uitenhage 3 August 1848, notice no. 9090 of 1848, reference R 21/190. The death notice is SRC-289 and the estate file sits behind it in the same series.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The estate account lists the immoveable property. If Wit Plaats or Vrolykheid appears in it, PER-000044 is PER-000328 and the row can be merged. If the estate holds only Uitenhage property, the 1841 grantee is a different Hitge and the search moves to the 1841 deed itself. Now with a specific thing to look for: DOES THE ESTATE LIST SANDFONTEIN, WIT PLAATS, OR BOTH? If Sandfontein only, close this lead in the negative and the search moves to the 1841 deed and to the OTHER Hitge men - his sons Conrad Anthony and George Joseph Roy were adults by then.

    Wit Plaats (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 1) · Vrolikheid

    geopen 2026-08-05

27. 1 Is PER-001041 the commandant Sarel Oosthuizen, 'die Rooi Bul'? LEAD-0104

    This model's Sarel Francois Oosthuizen is born 15 March 1862 and died 14 August 1900. The historical commandant Sarel Oosthuizen, credited in the Churchill-capture account EVT-000014 records as family lore, was born in 1862 and died of his Dwarsvlei wounds on that exact day. Are they one man?

    Wat ons verwag: Likely, and the exact death date is the reason. A shared birth year is nothing; a shared birth year AND a death on the same day in the same war is a different order of coincidence. Against it: the given names differ across published accounts of the commandant, and this row arrived through kin_sweep rather than from a document, so its own dates need their source checked before they are leaned on.

    Waar om te kyk: The commandant's own record: Boer War casualty rolls, the Dwarsvlei (11 July 1900) accounts, and the standard biographical dictionaries. Then this row's provenance - where its 1862-03-15 and 1900-08-14 came from, and whether the private tree cites anything.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice or casualty record naming him in full with parents, which would place him in or out of this family outright.

    Sarel Francois Oosthuizen

    geopen 2026-08-06

28. 1 Was a van Zyl household living on Middelwater in 1839, and was Jacobus Johannes on Vrolikheid in 1809? LEAD-0110

    Fred van Zyl states that his great-grandfather Jan Adriaan van Zyl was born on Middelwater on 9 November 1839, and that Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen was born on Vrolikheid in 1809. Both would put named households on this project's core ground a generation earlier than its documents do.

    Wat ons verwag: Both are likely and neither is documented here. The Middelwater one is the easier: Johanna Jacomina was the root couple's eldest daughter and a married daughter living on her father's farm is entirely ordinary, and the 1839 baptism entry would name the farm. The Vrolikheid one is the more valuable, because Fred's same-day correction goes further and says this makes Jacobus Johannes the 'Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen' NAMED ON THE VROLIKHEID DIAGRAM - which is a claim this project can test against a sheet it holds.

    Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West baptism register for November 1839 and for 1809, which this project already holds as SRC-200 for other years and which states the farm. Then the Vrolikheid diagram itself and the 1841 grant, where the name and the household can be compared.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The two baptism entries. Each names the farm and the parents in the same line.

    Johanna Jacomina Oosthuizen · Wynand van Zyl · Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen (b.1784) · Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1809) · Middelwater · Vrolikheid

    geopen 2026-08-06

29. 1 FamilySearch ids for the enslaved and free-black ancestors, and for Anthony van de Kaap LEAD-0112

    Eleven people at the head of this family — the ten of S021 plus Catharina van Palliacatta — and the one enslaved man in the family's own estate papers carry no FamilySearch id between them. Which of them have profiles, and what are the ids?

    Wat ons verwag: Most of the ten will have profiles. Cape slave and free-black ancestry is unusually well worked over on FamilySearch — Angela van Bengale and Catharina van Malabar in particular are among the most documented people at the early Cape and are in published genealogies. ANTHONY VAN DE KAAP almost certainly will not, and that is the honest expectation rather than a failure: he appears once, in somebody else's inventory, as an item between a plough and a flock. He has no baptism, no marriage, no death and no descent recorded anywhere this project can reach.

    Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch, which is Frans's to search (known_issues.txt reserves FS adjudication for him). The private tree already gives family-tree ids for eleven of the twelve, which is the fastest route in. For Anthony the only realistic sources are the Cape slave records themselves: the MOOC estate papers around 1802, the slave transfer and valuation rolls, and the 1816-1834 slave registers if he lived that long.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: An id per person, or a recorded finding that no profile exists.

    Anthony van de Kaap · Catharina van Malabar · Angela van Bengale · Elisabeth Rebecca van Bengalen · Louis van Bengale · Souwa van Madagascar

    geopen 2026-08-06

30. 1 The manumission of Catharina van Malabar - the record that decides what Cornelia was born into LEAD-0117

    When exactly was Catharina van Malabar freed, and is there a manumission act? Her daughter Cornelia was baptised 18 November 1674 and she married a vrijburger on 15 March 1676. If the manumission falls between those dates, Cornelia was born owned.

    Wat ons verwag: Before the marriage, and after the baptism. A wine-history article (SRC-295) states it outright - freed before 15 March 1676 - and Cape practice supports it, since an enslaved woman could not marry. But that is the article plus reasoning, and neither is a record.

    Waar om te kyk: The Cape manumission records and the Council of Policy resolutions, 1673-1676. Her baptism as an adult on 29 October 1673 is often the step before manumission and may be in the same register series as SRC-296 and SRC-297.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The manumission act, or a resolution naming her. Failing that, any record of her status between November 1674 and March 1676.

    Catharina van Malabar · Cornelia Cornelisse Claasz · Catharina Bastijaans Pyl

    geopen 2026-08-06

31. 1 Who is buried in the Varsche Fontein cemetery? Five of seven now named LEAD-0122

    Four marked graves are now recorded and only one is identified. Who are Mariha Eliesabet Freysen (1901-1902), Jacobes Johanes Bukes, and B. STORM 1848? Frans has undertaken to give names.

    Wat ons verwag: B. STORM is the one worth chasing hardest. 1848 is SEVEN YEARS AFTER the farm was granted on 15 April 1841, so whoever it is was on this ground in the first generation of ownership, and no Storm appears anywhere in this model. The Beukes stone is the easiest - the cemetery is theirs and Gerhardus Fransoiys Beukes lies beside it. The infant is the hardest and the least likely to be in any register: eight months old, a phonetically cut stone, and a surname that may be Freysen, Fraysen or Preysen.

    Waar om te kyk: Frans first - he has said he will give details on the names. Then the Prince Albert death notices and the DR church burial registers for 1848, 1902 and the Beukes dates once they are read. The 1841 grant and the ownership rows either side of 1848 would say who was on the farm when the Storm burial was made.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Names from Frans, or a burial register entry. For the stones themselves: straight-on photographs in raking light, which would probably give the Beukes dates and the Freysen day and surname outright.

    Gerhardus Fransoiys Beukes · Varsche Fontein · Varsche Fontein Nr. 27 Restant

    geopen 2026-08-07

32. 1 Two Storms on Varsche Fontein, 1848 and 1849 - who were they, and what put them there? LEAD-0124

    Who is the B. STORM buried on Varsche Fontein in 1848 (GRV-0030), and does the grave connect to either of the two Storm lines this family already touches?

    Wat ons verwag: Worth chasing, and the two routes should not be confused. TESTED 7 Aug 2026 against the private tree: (1) BY DESCENT - MARIA MAGDALENA STORM (born before 6 March 1746, died 27 August 1804) is Frans's direct ancestor at GENERATION 7, through Neethling and then Joubert. Her father Hendrik Pieter Storm (about 1718-1777) and two Jacob Abraham Storms sit above her. So the surname is genuinely in his line. (2) BY MARRIAGE - NEELTJE JOHANNA STORM (about 1797), who married Bernardus Christiaan Godlieb Niehaus at Paarl on 7 August 1813, is reached only through a marriage: her son Bernhardus Gysbertus Johannes Gerrit Niehaus (1821-1876) married MAGDALENA FREDERICA ZULCH (1823), sister of Frans's direct ancestor Isabella Johanna Jacoba Zulch. Affinal, not consanguineous. NO STORM IN THE TREE HAS A GIVEN NAME BEGINNING B, and none died in 1848, so the stone is matched to nobody. The two Storm groups are also not joined to each other in the tree.

    Waar om te kyk: The Prince Albert death notices for 1848 and the DR church burial register. Then whether a Storm held or occupied Varsche Fontein: the farm was granted to Charl du Toit on 15 April 1841 and the next recorded owner is Luttig in 1903, so 1848 falls inside a 62-year hole in the ownership record. A Storm in that hole would explain the grave.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: THE LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT OF MAGDALENA STORM BORN BOTES, died Prince Albert 10 April 1884. Her death notice says she left IMMOVEABLE PROPERTY to be 'all sold immediately and the account filed'. That account names the land. It is now the single most direct route to whether the Storms held ground on or near Varsche Fontein. Failing that, the estate papers of her husband, died Prince Albert 19 August 1855.

    Jacob A. Niehaus · Isabella Johanna Jacoba Zulch · Johannes Bernhard Zulch · Willem Storm · Neeltjie Hoogendijk · Hendrik Storm (1757-1812) · Varsche Fontein · Varsche Fontein Nr. 27 Restant · Jan Willems Fontein Nr. 32

    geopen 2026-08-07

33. 1 Is the lone 1874 stone on Varsche Fontein a thirteenth Beukes child? LEAD-0126

    A hand-cut stone standing apart from the cemetery reads 1874 / G F BEUKES / Juny [15?]. Is it an infant son of Gerhardus Francois Beukes whose name was reused in 1877, and why is he buried away from the others?

    Wat ons verwag: An infant son, born and died 1874, in no compiled tree. FamilySearch's twelve children fall at two-year intervals with a THREE-YEAR BREAK AT 1872-1875 and 1874 sits inside it; the Gerhardus Francois on record is born 1877, after the break; and under the vernoemingspatroon the third son carries the father's own name, reused on a later child when the first dies. Every part of the pattern agrees. SEPARATELY WORTH ASKING: why apart? A burial where the family was living rather than in the plot, a burial before the cemetery was settled on, or a child's grave deliberately kept apart - each would say something about the farm in 1874.

    Waar om te kyk: The Prince Albert DR church baptism register for 1873-74 and the burial register for June 1874. A baptism naming Gerhardus Francois Beukes and Aletta Sophia Jacoba Niemann in 1874 settles it outright.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism or burial entry, or a death notice.

    Gerhardus Fransoiys Beukes · Aletta Sophia Jacoba Niemann · Varsche Fontein

    geopen 2026-08-07

34. 1 Read the graves ACROSS the farms, and against the online grave indexes LEAD-0127

    Storm, Botes, Niehaus, Botma, Beukes and Freysen appear on stones on Varsche Fontein and on Vredendal/Spreeufontein, and they intermarry. What does the picture look like when the burial grounds are read as one body of evidence rather than farm by farm, and what do the published grave indexes add?

    Wat ons verwag: ONE CONNECTED GROUP, NOT SIX SURNAMES. The joins already visible: Engela Susara BOTES marries a NIEHAUS whose mother was a STORM, and her own mother was a STORM [FAMILY]; a BOTES marries a FREYSEN in 1857 and another marries a STORM in 1819; the Freysen marry the BEUKES in 1889; the Botma lie beside the Niehaus on Vredendal; and two STORMS are buried on Varsche Fontein in 1848 and 1849. Read farm by farm these look like separate families on separate ground. Read together they look like one intermarried community occupying several farms across the same fifty years.

    Waar om te kyk: THE PUBLISHED GRAVE INDEXES FIRST, which Frans has flagged: eGGSA's gravestone photographic library and the Genealogical Society of South Africa's cemetery records cover this district and are free. They would add stones nobody in the family has photographed and, more usefully, stones on the NEIGHBOURING farms. Then the Prince Albert burial registers, read as a run rather than looked up name by name.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Nothing settles a question this shape. What it produces is a map: which families are buried where, who married whom, and which farms they moved between.

    Engela Susara Niehaus, born Botes · Hendrik Willem Storm Niehaus · Hendrik Willem Storm (1797-1855) · Gerhardus Fransoiys Beukes · Varsche Fontein · Varsche Fontein Nr. 27 Restant · Vredendal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 1)

    geopen 2026-08-07

35. 1 The Prins Albert ledematenregister is a census of this congregation. Work it as a run. LEAD-0128

    Four openings of the members' register have now been read and they name well over a hundred people between 1854 and 1861, with ages, dates and the kerkraad's signatures. What does the whole register give if it is read as a run rather than looked up name by name?

    Wat ons verwag: A YEAR-BY-YEAR CENSUS OF WHO WAS IN THIS DISTRICT, which is something this project has never had. Four openings already give: confirmations with AGES, which date births to within a year or two for people who have no baptism here; deaths by church year; transfers IN with the congregation they came from and OUT with where they went; and the KERKRAAD's own signatures, which name the men running the congregation. TWO THINGS ARE ALREADY VISIBLE. First, the BOTES ARE EVERYWHERE - nine of them confirmed between 1859 and 1861, more than any other surname on those pages. A family this project met only through marriages into the Storms, Freysens and Niehaus turns out to be one of the largest in the congregation. Second, THE STORMS VANISH: Hendrik Willem Storm Senr dies in the 1854-55 year and NO STORM APPEARS IN 1856, 1859-60 OR 1860-61, not even the junior the word 'Senr' implies. A family that buried two people on Varsche Fontein in 1848-49 is gone from the membership roll within a decade.

    Waar om te kyk: The rest of the same register, forwards and backwards. Backwards is the prize: a volume covering the 1840s would put the Storms in the congregation at the time of the two graves, and might name the farm.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Nothing settles a question this shape; it produces a roll of who was here and when, against which every other record can be checked.

    Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · J.R.G. Luttig · Hendrik Willem Storm (1797-1855)

    geopen 2026-08-07

36. 1 The petition: which mother, and to whom LEAD-0130

    The family holds that a Malherbe mother petitioned the governor at Cape Town for a captured son, and that he was then held in South Africa instead of being shipped to St Helena. Who petitioned, for whom, and does the petition survive?

    Wat ons verwag: The petitioner is Isabella Johanna Jacoba Zulch [PER-000756], not her daughter.

    Waar om te kyk: The Staff Officer for Prisoners of War, Cape Town, 1900-1903, whose records are catalogued at the Department of Arts and Culture archive portal; the Cape Colony Governor's / Prime Minister's correspondence at KAB; and the POW nominal rolls.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The petition itself, or the son's name on a POW roll held in South Africa rather than overseas.

    geopen 2026-08-07

37. 1 What was Gert Adriaan Oosthuizen doing on Uitnood in 1842 LEAD-0135

    His son was buried on Uitnood 147 in the Swartberge on 9 October 1842. Was the family living on that ground, holding it, or passing through - and does it connect to how the Oosthuizens came into the Klaarstroom basin at all?

    Wat ons verwag: Living there as a tenant or bywoner. A grave is a household, not a journey - two of them would be conclusive.

    Waar om te kyk: The opgaafrolle for the Prince Albert and Willowmore wards in the 1840s; the quitrent and loan-farm records for Uitnood 147; and the Prince Albert congregation registers for other children of this couple baptised in the 1840s.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A second Oosthuizen burial on Uitnood, or the farm's own occupation record for the 1840s.

    geopen 2026-08-07

38. 1 Who was the "and another" who took 86% of Middelwater in June 1884 LEAD-0136

    The 1884 quitrent title to Middelwater No. 169 issued to "J. D. J. Oosthuysen, and another", and the co-grantee is not named on the diagram. Three months later 9,264 morgen 180 roods - 86% of the farm - transferred away under transfer 304 of 26 June 1884. Who was the second grantee, and was that transfer a sale out of the family or a partition between the two of them?

    Wat ons verwag: A partition rather than a sale, and the co-grantee a brother or a son. The 477 morgen retained is precisely the quarter carrying the werf, the vineyard, Vaste Water and Avondrust, which is what someone keeps when dividing with a relative and not what is left over from a sale to a stranger.

    Waar om te kyk: Deeds Office Cape Town, transfer no. 304 of 26 June 1884 - it names both parties. The quitrent grant P.A.Q.3-3 of 24 March 1884 names the co-grantee outright. Survey record 1437/1883 and the diagram for 169/1. J.D.J. Oosthuizen's estate file, KAB MOOC 6/9/476.1897, for what he still held at his death in 1903.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The grant P.A.Q.3-3 or transfer 304, either of which names the second party.

    Jacobus Daniel Johannes Oosthuizen · Middelwater · Middelwater Nr. 169 Gdlt 1

    geopen 2026-08-08

39. 1 216 baptism witnesses are still loose names, and 150 of them share a surname with somebody here LEAD-0141

    The About page calls the witness lists the most interesting thing this record found: the social connections nobody deliberately wrote down. 75 of 291 witnesses are now tied to a person. Who are the other 216, and which of them belong in this model?

    Wat ons verwag: MOST OF THE 216 ARE NOT UNLINKED, THEY ARE ABSENT. A name-and-date sweep on 9 Aug found exactly 17 more that could be matched with confidence and 212 with no candidate at all, so this is not a matching job. 150 of the loose names share a surname with somebody already held, which is what a congregation looks like: the same twenty families standing for each other's children. Adding them is governed by scope rule R2, a church occasion in the district, and most would qualify.

    Waar om te kyk: The baptism registers already cited, SRC-076 and the Beaufort West and Prince Albert runs, which give each witness their own entries elsewhere. LEAD-0128, the Prins Albert ledematenregister worked as a run, would name most of these people with dates.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Person rows for the recurring witness surnames, with dates, so the name-and-date test can reach them.

    geopen 2026-08-09

40. 1 Which Vos family raised Petrus Gideon van Rensburg after both his parents died? LEAD-0142

    Petrus Gideon van Rensburg (PER-000173), Frans's maternal great-grandfather, lost his mother in September 1896 and his father in January 1898, at five and six. Frans's account is that he was adopted and raised by a VOS family and dropped the Janse from Janse van Rensburg. Which Vos family, and was it a formal adoption or a household taking in a relative's child?

    Wat ons verwag: A relative rather than strangers, and most likely on the mother's side. An orphan of six in that district in 1898 goes to kin before anybody else, and the Olivier and Vos families would want checking for a marriage first.

    Waar om te kyk: The estate files of BOTH parents, which is where a guardian is named: Albertus Gerhardus Janse van Rensburg d. 1 Jan 1898 and Martha Gertruida Olivier d. 8 Sep 1896, in the Cape Archives MOOC series. The Van Wyksvlei and Calvinia congregation registers for a Vos household with a boy of the right age in 1900 or 1904. His own 1919 marriage record, which may name whoever stood for him.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A guardianship entry in either parent's estate file, or a Vos household holding him in a register.

    geopen 2026-08-09

41. 1 Who were the Tygerhoek van der Merwes, and how do Francois Johannes and the widow Burger connect to the line? LEAD-0149

    Carel Aaron van der Merwe's household was on Tygerhoek by 1808. The 1823 survey names the holder as the widow of William Petrus Burger, and the 1885 quitrent for the adjoining Tyger Hoek Extension goes to Francois Johannes van der Merwe. How do those two connect to the direct line?

    Wat ons verwag: THE BURGER TIE IS THE ONE TO TEST FIRST. This model already holds seven Burgers in the van der Merwe and van Rensburg ancestry, and Schalk Willem BURGER van der Merwe (PER-001629) carries the name through his mother's mother Hester Johanna Burger (PER-001638, 1792-1852). A Burger widow holding the very ground the van der Merwes were born on is more likely to be kin than coincidence. Francois Johannes is probably a descendant of Carel Aaron, but the name alone cannot say so.

    Waar om te kyk: The Clanwilliam and Calvinia congregation registers, which cover this ground from before 1823. The quitrent file Clv. Q. 12-1 named on the 1880 sheet, and G/B Clv. Q. 1-41 named on the 1823 copy - both are the archive's own references for these farms and would carry the chain of holders.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage or baptism linking the widow Burger to the van der Merwes, and a parentage for Francois Johannes.

    Tygerhoek Nr. 689 · Tyger Hoek Extension Nr. 688

    geopen 2026-08-10

42. 1 Which Matjiesfontein was Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe born on in 1863? LEAD-0151

    FamilySearch records his birth on 24 March 1863 at 'Matjiesfontein, Calvinia'. The Northern Cape cadastre holds at least twelve farms of that name. Which one, and is it even in the Calvinia division?

    Wat ons verwag: FRASERBURG IS WORTH TESTING BEFORE CALVINIA. [FAMILY] There is another matjiesfontein in fraserburg district - closer to where kola, frans. dad, was burried and maybe where biesies is. Not sure yet.' Family knowledge about which ground the family used is a primary source and outranks a name match on a cadastral index. The Fraserburg cluster is 408 to 412, five farms of one name lying together at about 21.7 east, 32.05 south.

    Waar om te kyk: The Calvinia and Fraserburg congregation registers for the 1863 baptism, which may name the farm. The burial place of Jacobus Johannes Gideon van der Merwe (PER-000219), who died at Williston in 1961. And Biesies, which is not in the Northern Cape cadastre under that name at all - the nearest are Biesiewater, Biesiepan, Biesieputs and Biesiebult. [11 Aug 2026] Start with the CSG document index for Calvinia farms 601, 791 and 679, which are the three nearest the family's own ground, and read the diagrams for a van der Merwe on the title or on a boundary. THE EXACT SHEETS, asked of the CSG index on 11 Aug 2026 (regDivision C0150000, office SGKIM, Noffice 1): farm 601 has DIAGRAM F124/1823 in three pages, 10054381.TIF, 10054268.TIF and 10054384.TIF; farm 679 has DIAGRAM F118/1823 in two pages, 10054930.TIF and 10054931.TIF; farm 791 has DIAGRAM F421/1834 in two pages, 10055722.TIF and 10055725.TIF; farm 415 has DIAGRAM F257/1823, 10053113.TIF and 10053114.TIF. Farm 420's earliest is F2477/1920 and farm 712's is F1908/1885, both too late to name a loan-place holder. F118 AND F124 OF 1823 ARE THE ONES TO PULL FIRST. They sit in the same numbering run as the sheets this project already holds for Tygerhoek (15 May 1823) and within three years of Oude Muur and Lokenburg, which were drawn for the Commissie van Inspectie by J. M. Wentzel of Clanwilliam. Sheets of that series say who the ground was measured FOR, in words, on the face of the diagram. That is the field this question turns on.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A van der Merwe named on the face of one of these 1823 diagrams, or on the boundary list of a neighbour, tying one Matjesfontein to this family rather than to its name.

    Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe · Matjes Fontein Nr. 712

    geopen 2026-08-10

43. 1 Three dates where Janet Melville's reports and this model disagree, all in one household LEAD-0155

    Melville gives PER-000219 born 23 November 1888 and dead in 1950; this model has 23 October 1888 and 1961. She gives PER-000030 born at Williston; this model has Brandvlei. She gives PER-000013 as Maria Magdalena born 23 October 1928; this model has Maria Magritha born 28 October. Which is right?

    Wat ons verwag: SPLIT, AND THE PLACE IS THE ONE TO CONCEDE. On the birthplace Melville is probably right: she records all ten children of that marriage born at Williston, and a family does not usually cross to Brandvlei for one. On PER-000219's dates the FamilySearch page agrees with this model against her, but the family-tree here is itself a FamilySearch copy, so that is one source agreeing with itself and not two. On the name, Magritha and Magdalena are not variants of each other and one of them is a misreading.

    Waar om te kyk: The Calvinia baptism register for December 1888, which Melville cites by date and which would settle both the birth date and the Gilliam-not-Gideon reading in one line. The Williston death records for 1950 or 1961. The birth registration for 1924.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The 1888 baptism entry and a death notice for PER-000219.

    geopen 2026-08-10

44. 1 Which of the two Karoo Hoogland farms called Biesies is the family's? LEAD-0156

    Irish 1996 keys collecting locality 384 to 'Biesies' and gives coordinates for other sites in the same survey but not in this part. Where is his numbered locality list, and what coordinate does it give 384?

    Wat ons verwag: THE NORTHERN ONE, 21.10474 E / 30.86073 S. It is 18 km from Irish's Daskop, which he places in the Williston district, and his Biesies is two localities later in the same collecting run. It also lies north-east of Williston towards Boesmanland, which is how Melville describes the farm. The southern candidate, 21.1 E / 31.61667 S, is south-east of Williston and away from Bushmanland. This is a convergence of two independent sources and not a reading.

    Waar om te kyk: The other parts of Navorsinge van die Nasionale Museum volume 12, on Sabinet, where Irish's Karoo survey localities are enumerated. His earlier papers on Karoo Thysanura use the same numbering. [11 Aug 2026] Also: the six farms named on the boundary of Fraserburg 91, any one of which locates it.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Frans saying which side of Williston the farm lies, or Irish's numbered locality gazetteer, entry 384.

    Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe

    geopen 2026-08-10

45. 1 Two documents marry Izaak Heremias Visagie to two different van der Merwe women LEAD-0170

    SRC-388 and SRC-405 have Izaak Heremias Visagie married to JOHANNA SOPHIA VAN DER MERWE, daughter of Carel Aaron. SRC-410 has him married to MARIA, daughter of Schalk Willem and Anna Jacoba Louw. Which, or are there two men of the name?

    Wat ons verwag: TWO MEN, FATHER AND SON, IS THE LIKELIEST ANSWER, and this family reuses given names hard enough to make it ordinary - there are three Schalk Willems in one van Heerden sibling set and a Carel Aron Visagie in the next generation. On that reading the elder married Johanna Sophia, Carel Aaron's daughter, before 1834, and a son of the same name married Maria, Carel Aaron's great-niece, later. IT IS NOT A SIDE QUESTION. The whole Visagie finding of SRC-388 - that every Visagie beside this family descends from Carel Aaron, and that the women at the 1863 font were first cousins once removed - rests on WHICH Izaak Heremias married WHICH van der Merwe. If the identification is the wrong man the kinship is wrong with it. LEAD-0161 was closed on that finding and would have to be reopened.

    Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch for Izaak Heremias Visagie: how many of the name, and their marriages. The Calvinia and Clanwilliam marriage registers. Anna Maria Visagie's own baptism entry, which would name her mother.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Baptism or marriage entries distinguishing the men of this name and giving each his wife.

    geopen 2026-08-11

46. 1 Are the two Jan Oosthuijsens of the 1775 Sneeuwberg roll this family's collateral kin? LEAD-0182

    The Heemraad's roll of 1775 names JAN OOSTHUIJSEN D'OUDE and JAN OOSTHUIJSEN DE JONGE settled on the Sneeuwberg. Are they the same men as Jan Hendrik Oosthuizen (b.1714) and his son Johannes (b. about 1736), who are the brother and nephew of this project's own Jacobus Oosthuizen?

    Wat ons verwag: The names and the generations fit almost too well and the GEOGRAPHY IS AGAINST IT. Expect this to resolve against the identification unless a Graaff-Reinet or Sneeuwberg record puts one of them there.

    Waar om te kyk: The Graaff-Reinet and Stellenbosch opgaafrolle of the 1770s, which list householders by field-cornetcy - the only class of record that would place a named man on the Sneeuwberg in a given year. Then baptisms at Graaff-Reinet after 1792 and at Tulbagh before it.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A Sneeuwberg or Camdebo entry for either man in an opgaafrol, or a baptism or marriage of one of their children at Graaff-Reinet. Equally decisive the other way: a continuous Paarl/Tulbagh presence across 1770-1780 would rule them out. || SHARPENED 13 Aug 2026: the question is no longer whether this family was on the Sneeuwberg - it demonstrably was - but whether JAN HENDRIK HIMSELF was alive in July 1775. A burial entry, an estate account, or the source behind FamilySearch's 1772 would settle it either way.

    geopen 2026-08-12

47. 1 A 22-result CSC petition file walks this district's families through the Cape Supreme Court, 1900-1907 LEAD-0186

    Frans's NAAIRS query on the Cape Town Archives returned 22 CSC motions touching the district's families. Three supplied so far besides LEAD-0185: (1) KAB CSC LEER 2/6/1/194 ref 14 (1900): petition of Albert Lourens Matthews and GERT JAN OOSTHUIZEN MARINCOWITZ, tutors of NICHOLAS JAMES, EUGENE, JOHANNES JOUBERT and ANDREW PETER MARINCOWITZ, in re estate late NICHOLAS JAMES MARINCOWITZ and subsequently deceased spouse CATHARINA MARIA MARINCOWITZ. (2) KAB CSC LEER 2/6/1/269 ref 691 (1905): petition of FREDERICK SIMON OOSTHUIZEN OF ZWART KRAAL in re estate late PIETER MARINCOWITZ OOSTHUIZEN. What do the files hold, and what are the other 19 results?

    Wat ons verwag: The 1900 tutors petition fits the model like a key: PER-000021 Nicolaas James Marincowitz died 30 Jun 1896, his son Nicholas James (PER-000201) was born 1880 and a minor in 1900, and Gert Jan Oosthuizen Marincowitz (PER-000023) standing as tutor is the brother-in-law generation doing what this district's families did for each other's orphans. Eugene, Johannes Joubert and Andrew Peter may already be rows or may be gaps. The 1905 petitioner of Zwart Kraal joins the Zwartkraal thread - and note the index spells it ZWART KRAAL, which feeds the reserved spelling question without deciding it.

    Waar om te kyk: KAB, Cape Town: the two CSC files cited, and the full 22-result list of the same query - Frans has the query on NAAIRS.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The files themselves. A tutors petition names ages and guardians; an estate motion names the heirs and the ground.

    geopen 2026-08-13

48. 1 Which Vrischgewaagd did Pieter Marthinus Oosthuizen die on, and how does his household reach this record? LEAD-0188

    [FAMILY] Interesting, i did not know this farm was in family! vrischgewag. PER-000846, Pieter Marthinus Oosthuizen (FS GMGP-4RD, 1850-1925), is already in this model as a thin row. His 1925 death notice gives his usual residence AND his intended burial place as VRISCHGEWAAGD, district Prince Albert. This project draws two farms of that name - Vrisch Gewagt No. 163 (PAR-000130) and Vrisgewaagd No. 152 (PAR-000267) - and the 2023 valuation roll names a third piece, farm 163 portion 7, and a fourth on farm 221. WHICH ONE, and is he buried there?

    Wat ons verwag: Not predicted here, and deliberately so - three farms of one name inside this district is exactly the situation that just cost this project a wrong Bloemendal, and the cure there was a coordinate rather than an argument. What the documents DO establish, and what is worth recording whichever farm it is: he died 31 August 1925 at Market Street, Prince Albert, aged 75, a farmer, of mitral disease after three months, attended by Dr J.J. Kestell(?) [illegible]; the informant was P.M.J. Oosthuizen of Vrischgewaagd, present at the death, and the entry was registered at Prince Albert on 8 September 1925, no. 88. He married twice: Aletta Elizabeth Le Grange at Prins Albert on 18 January 1877 (register no. 630, he a landbouwer of KLEINVALEI, she with her father Pieter Jacobus la Grange consenting), and - a WIDOWER at 64 - Diedrika Johanna Hattingh, 43, at Cape Town on 30 September 1913 (register no. 722). Frans notes she was a divorced woman; the 1913 register records her state as 'echtscheiding', which is the divorce and not a widowhood, and that is worth keeping because it is unusual in these registers.

    Waar om te kyk: The burial place first: the death notice names Vrischgewaagd as the intended burial, so a farm cemetery there should hold him, and eGGSA may already have photographed it. Then a deeds or WinDeed search on farms 152 and 163 for the years around 1877-1925. KLEINVALEI on the 1877 marriage is a separate thread and may be the more useful one - it places him on named ground at 26, nearly fifty years before he died.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A grave, a deed, or a coordinate. Any one of the three names the farm; an argument from the name alone will not, as the Bloemendal case showed on 13-14 Aug 2026.

    Pieter Marthinus Oosthuizen · Vrisch Gewagt Nr. 163 · Vrisgewaagd Nr. 152

    geopen 2026-08-14

49. 1 Twelve NAAIRS index entries for the Prince Albert division, 1841-1890 - Colonial Office memorials, circuit court cases and Lands files LEAD-0189

    Two were already held (CSC 2/6/1/208 and 2/6/1/269). THESE TWELVE ARE NEW. Which of them are this family's, and which of the four unmatched surnames belong in this record?

    Wat ons verwag: TRANSCRIBED VERBATIM FROM THE INDEX PAGES; the files themselves are unconsulted and every attribution below is [TO VERIFY] per 5a-ii. All KAB, all TYPE LEER, PART 1 unless noted. COLONIAL OFFICE MEMORIALS, the four that name people this project follows: * CO 4158 sys 01 ref 157 (1869): MEMORIAL. G MANCOWITZ. REQUESTING CHART OF LAND PURCHASED NEAR PRINCE ALBERT. -- Gerolm Marincowitz (PER-000177, 1805-1890) is 64 in 1869 and is the obvious reading; the clerk's MANCOWITZ is one more spelling for the pile. * CO 4169 sys 01 ref M34 (1871): MEMORIAL. GEROLIN MARINCOWITZ. REQUESTING GRANT OF FARM 'SCHUUFTE KOPPIES' NEAR PRINCE ALBERT. -- the same man two years later, and A FARM NAME THIS PROJECT DOES NOT HOLD. Schuufte Koppies is not in the cadastre, the valuation roll or this model. * CO 4163 sys 01 ref H17 (1870): MEMORIAL. GJR HITJE. REQUESTING REFUND OF IMPROVEMENTS ON LAND NEAR PRINCE ALBERT. -- a Hitge. This model holds N. Hitge (PER-000044), the 1841 Vrolykheid title-holder, and no GJR. NOT matched here. * CO 4175 sys 01 ref M45 (1872): MEMORIAL. JA MELVILL. FORWARDING SPECIMEN OF STONE FOUND AT PRINCE ALBERT. -- SEE LEAD-0121: this is the year after the Atherstone and Bain gold tour. The model holds J.W. du T. Melvill, Government Surveyor (PER-001381); the initials DIFFER and they are not conflated. COLONIAL OFFICE, a farm this project does not hold: * CO 4167 sys 01 ref F33 (1871): MEMORIAL. CJ FREISEN. REQUESTING THAT THE FARM 'GROOTFONTEIN' NEAR PRINCE ALBERT BE PUT UP FOR SALE. * LND 1/267 sys 01 ref L1049 (1887): FARM 'GROOTFONTEIN', PRINCE ALBERT: MRS. FREYZEN'S APPLICATION FOR REDUCTION OF RENT ON. -- FREISEN in 1871 and FREYZEN in 1887 on the same farm, sixteen years apart. Probably one family; the spellings are recorded as the clerks wrote them. * LND 1/344 sys 01 ref L4196 (1890): LOT 2191, 'KRUIDFONTEIN', PRINCE ALBERT: AJ MYBURGH'S APPLICATION FOR. -- Kruidfontein/Kruitfontein is farm 33 in this district and IS on the map (PAR-000209). FIRST WESTERN CIRCUIT COURT AT PRINCE ALBERT, 1877, all CSC 1/2/1/92 sys 01: * ref 1: THE QUEEN VERSUS ADRIANA CECILIA AND SUSANNA MARGARETHA DE VILLIERS. MURDER. * ref 2: THE QUEEN VERSUS SUSANNA MARGARETHA DE VILLIERS. CONCEALING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD. * ref 4: THE QUEEN VERSUS JOHANNES CORNELIS JANSE VAN VEUREN. CULPABLE HOMICIDE. -- the Janse van Vuuren line is in this record through Wilgemond No. 179, Vrolikheid's western neighbour. The first two are one case and its companion charge, a mother and daughter or two sisters; the index does not say which and this does not guess. OTHER CIRCUIT COURT: * CSC 2/6/1/78 sys 01 ref 149 (1880): MOTION. PETITION OF HESTER JOHANNA BOTES, PRISONER IN THE PRISON OF PRINCE ALBERT FOR THE MURDER OF A CHILD IN RE APPLICATION FOR BAIL. -- BOTES, the surname Frans named on 13 Aug as one the record should carry. No Hester Johanna Botes in this model. * CSC 2/1/1/199 sys 01 ref 18 (1881): ILLIQUID CASE. JACOBUS J OOSTHUIZEN VERSUS PIETER ANTHONY FREDERICH DE RENCK. ACTION AGAINST THE DECISION OF THE RESIDENT MAGISTRATE OF PRINCE ALBERT. AND ONE THAT IS NOT THIS DISTRICT AT ALL: * GH 1/140 sys 00 ref 2238 (1841): PAPERS RECEIVED FROM SECRETARY OF STATE, LONDON: GENERAL DESPATCHES. STATING THE QUEEN'S PLEASURE AT THE WORDS 'THE PRINCE ALBERT' BEING INSERTED IN THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. -- the CONSORT, not the town. Recorded because a 1,558-result search on 'Prince Albert' returns him too, and the next person to run this query should know the trap is in the results.

    Waar om te kyk: KAB, Cape Town. The CO memorials and LND files are single documents and cheap to order; the circuit court records are bulkier. Order priority: CO 4169 (Schuufte Koppies, because a farm name nothing else holds is the best single lead here), then CO 4158, then CO 4175 for the gold thread.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The files themselves. Each entry is an INDEX LINE - it gives a name, a year and a subject, and nothing about what the paper says.

    N. Hitge · J.W. du T. Melvill (Government Surveyor) · Kruitfontein Nr. 33

    geopen 2026-08-14

50. 1 The roads map has been blank in production, and nothing noticed LEAD-0193

    static/roads.js draws nothing on the live site. Verified 14 Aug 2026 on mense-van-die-koup.vercel.app/en/roads.html: the canvas exists at MapLibre's default 400x388, zero markers, zero lines. The page renders its prose and its per-road lists correctly; only the map is empty. How long has it been like that, and what else on this site gates on an event that never fires?

    Wat ons verwag: THE CAUSE IS ALREADY DOCUMENTED IN THIS REPO, one file away. static/map.js carries a comment dated 1 Aug 2026: 'DO NOT GATE THE INTERFACE ON map.on(load)... map.loaded() and map.isStyleLoaded() both stay false, and neither load nor idle ever fires.' The main map was fixed then by never waiting for the event. roads.js was not, and it adds every source and layer inside map.on('load'), so it adds nothing at all. Confirmed by experiment on 14 Aug: a MapLibre 5.6.0 map on this site fires NO events whatever - not load, styledata, idle or error - and addSource throws 'Style is not done loading' indefinitely.

    Waar om te kyk: static/roads.js, the map.on('load') block. static/grants.js shows the pattern that works: declare the sources and layers in the initial style object so nothing has to be added afterwards, and retry anything that must be set later.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Rewriting roads.js the way grants.js is written, then looking at the page.

    geopen 2026-08-14

51. 1 The contact form can fail silently, and the fix collides with the no-address rule. Frans decides. LEAD-0196

    The About page form composes a mailto: and sets window.location.href to it. When the browser has NO mail handler registered - ordinary on desktop Chrome, and on some phone browsers - that line does nothing at all. The visitor types a message, presses send, and sees no error, no address and no second chance. The message is simply gone and they have no way to know. On a site whose stated invitation is "if you can close a gap, the contact form below is the place", is that acceptable?

    Wat ons verwag: That Frans will want SOME fallback, because a relative with a correction is exactly the visitor this site exists for and losing them is worse than a little spam. But it is not my call to make.

    Waar om te kyk: templates/about.html and templates/af/about.html, sendMsg(); data/checks.py, "A page that writes an email address into the DOM".

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: One instruction from Frans, choosing among the options below.

    geopen 2026-08-14

52. 2 The 1691 Drakenstein grant LEAD-0004

    Did the stamvader receive sixty morgen at Drakenstein on the Huguenot immigrant terms - and where was it?

    Wat ons verwag: Sixty morgen rent-free, on condition all produce was sold to the Company and he stayed five years

    Waar om te kyk: Western Cape Archives: land grants and Drakenstein opgaafrolle, 1691-1700

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A grant or roll entry naming him and the land.

    Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (stamvader)

    geopen 2026-07-29

53. 2 Hoge and Zoellner read directly LEAD-0006

    Do the standard works on Germans at the Cape actually say what they are reported to say about this family?

    Wat ons verwag: An entry for Jan Oosthuysen von Werden

    Waar om te kyk: J. Hoge, Personalia of the Germans at the Cape 1652-1806 (Archives Year Book, 1946); Linda Zoellner, Germans who came to the Cape 1652-1806. Indexed at ancestors.co.za/database/germanpers.php

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Reading the entry.

    Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (stamvader)

    geopen 2026-07-29

54. 2 Our portion numbers do not match the SG on Vrolykheid and Spreeufontein LEAD-0008

    Do our portion numbers for Vrolykheid and Spreeufontein correspond to the Surveyor-General portion numbers, or are they our own sequence?

    Waar om te kyk: The diagrams held as DOC-0029 (Wit Plaats) and DOC-0013 to DOC-0016 (Spreeufontein), plus the SG deed references on each.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The portion number printed on each diagram, against the SG portion number in the cadastre.

    Lot B (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 5) · Faans Kraal (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 4) · Marinco (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 3) · Vredendal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 1) · Lot A (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 3)

    geopen 2026-07-29

55. 2 N. Hitge's true footprint on Vrolykheid - and his relationship to Frans's own Hitge ancestors LEAD-0009

    Did N. Hitge's 1841 title (B.W.Q.5.18) actually cover more of Vrolykheid than the ~2,177-morgen Wit Plaats portion recorded for him - and how is N. Hitge (PER-000044) related to Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge (PER-000139, Frans's own direct 2x-great-grandmother) and to Hester Carolina Adriana Hitge (PER-000178, who married into the Marincowitz line)?

    Wat ons verwag: N. Hitge is very likely the father, or a close relative, of both Hitge women already in the model - if so this is not a lateral land-title curiosity but Frans's own direct ancestral line holding the antecedent title to most of Vrolykheid, not just Wit Plaats

    Waar om te kyk: Prince Albert / Uitenhage church and civil records for N. Hitge's own baptism, marriage and death (his full given name is not yet known - 'N.' is an initial only); deeds-office records for the original 1841 grant papers (B.W.Q.5.18); Wit Plaats's own SG Dgm 4275/1921 (DOC-0029) and its antecedent-title chain

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A record giving N. Hitge's full given name and naming his children, matched against Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge (b.1846) and Hester Carolina Adriana Hitge (b.1826) - if both are his daughters, or one his daughter and the other a niece or cousin, that settles the family relationship and gives a documented reason one 1841 title could legitimately be cited across multiple later Vrolykheid portions, subdivided within the Hitge family before ever reaching Marincowitz hands

    N. Hitge · Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge · Hester Carolina Adriana Hitge · Ger(H)olm Marincowitz · Vincent Charles Marincowitz · Charles Frederick Hitge · Vrolikheid · Wit Plaats (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 1) · Uitkyk Nek (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 2) · Faans Kraal (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 4) · Marinco (Vrolikheid Nr. 177 Gdlt 3) · Oorlogs Kloof Nr. 172 (Roode Els Bosch and Oorlogs Kloof)

    geopen 2026-07-29

56. 2 Is the Koup's Vrolykheid named for the Tulbagh farm of the same name? LEAD-0010

    Jacobus Oosthuizen (PER-000230) and Dina Carolina Britz raised their family at Tulbagh from 1749 into the 1770s-80s, including Ockert (PER-000118, b.1755), the root ancestor's own father. A different, independently surveyed farm called Vrolykheid (No. 61, in the Kom van Tulbagh, erfpacht loan-place of T.G. Hugo, surveyed 1816) sits in exactly that district. Is the Koup's Vrolykheid (PAR-000014, granted 1841 to an unidentified Jacobus Johannes Oosthuisen, 'Andries son') named after this Tulbagh farm, carried as a remembered place-name rather than any documented land connection?

    Wat ons verwag: The naming link now has a documented path: the 1833 applicant (PER-000043, probably PER-000208) was the son of Ockert Oosthuizen (b.1755, baptised AT TULBAGH) - the family of the man who held the Koup's Vrolykheid traces directly to the district of the Tulbagh Vrolykheid. Toponymic transfer by memory remains the hypothesis; no land connection to T.G. Hugo asserted.

    Waar om te kyk: Tulbagh (Roodezand) opgaafrolle and quitrent registers 1749-1786 for any Oosthuizen household near or on 'Vrolykheid'/'Vrolikheid'; the identity of PER-000043 (Jacobus Johannes Oosthuisen, 'Andries son', the 1841 Karoo grantee) - if his own father or grandfather can be traced to Tulbagh, the naming link becomes far more plausible; the 1841 Vrolykheid title deed itself, in case it or the 1833 survey diagram (DOC-0027) gives any reason for the chosen name

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A document placing the Oosthuizen family (or specifically PER-000043's own branch) at or near the Tulbagh Vrolykheid, or naming the Koup farm's origin explicitly; short of that this stays a plausible but unproven toponymic-transfer hypothesis, the same kind this project has already tested once for the surname Oosthuizen itself (SRC-103)

    Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1722) · Ockert Oosthuizen (b.1755) · Jacobus Johannes Oosthuisen (Almero's son) · Vrolikheid

    geopen 2026-07-29

57. 2 The two graves at the Rondabel huis LEAD-0011

    Who lies in the two graves close to the Rondabel farmhouse?

    Wat ons verwag: Most likely family or werf burials from the Marincowitz or Oosthuizen-Theron eras

    Waar om te kyk: The graves themselves (read the stones on a next visit); Joanne Barton's copy of the Stoltz death certificate (may state burial place); eGGSA Prince Albert farm-cemetery indexes; NG Prince Albert burial register 1886

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Reading the stones, or a burial entry naming the farm

    Gert Annis Oosthuizen Marincowitz · Rondabel

    geopen 2026-07-29

58. 2 Where did Frikkie's money come from LEAD-0012

    What built Frederik Simon Oosthuizen's (PER-000006) 81,000-morgen fortune around Zwartkraal?

    Wat ons verwag: Wool at scale on cheap Koup veld: an inherited base (grandfather Ockert Almero established at Kweekvallei 1842; father J.D.J. of Middelwater/Rhemhoogte), then aggressive buying through the distress years - rinderpest 1896-97 (EVT-000169), the war 1899-1902, droughts - with the farms sitting on the Beaufort West-Klaarstroom-Meiringspoort wool road (opened 1858). NOT gold: the 1871/1891 Prince Albert reef next door to Zeekoegat was never productive. NOT ostrich lucerne: the Koup is too dry; his was sheep country through the wool-staple decades (EVT-000138).

    Waar om te kyk: His 1936 deceased estate file (Cape Archives estate series, via NAAIRS - search 'Oosthuizen Frederik Simon' 1936/1937); J.D.J. Oosthuizen's estate (his wife Sophia Johanna Mocke d. 3 Dec 1885); Prince Albert divisional council valuation rolls; the transferor clause of deeds 13525/13528; wool brokers' and boer-bank records

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The 1936 estate inventory - it would list every farm with its purchase deed, date and value, i.e. the whole accumulation history in one document

    Frederik Simon Oosthuizen · Zwartkraal · Zeekoegate · Rhemhoogte Nr. 125

    geopen 2026-07-30

59. 2 Ezelsfontein, and what "district Albert" means LEAD-0013

    Where is the farm Ezelsfontein on which Sophia Johanna Mocke died - and does "district Albert" on Cape death notices of the 1880s mean Prince Albert?

    Wat ons verwag: Most plausibly a Prince Albert district farm written as "Albert" by the clerk - the family is Koup through and through - but no Ezelsfontein/Eselsfontein survives in the Prince Albert (or Beaufort West) cadastre pull, so the name may be lost, a lease, or genuinely elsewhere.

    Waar om te kyk: Sophia's will and estate file (the notice says 'Will, will shown' - NAAIRS under Oosthuizen born Mocke, 1883-1886); quitrent/valuation rolls for an Ezelsfontein; J.D.J.'s own estate papers; the Prince Albert NG death register for her burial place

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The estate file - it will name the farm, the district and what the household held at her death (which also feeds LEAD-0012).

    geopen 2026-07-30

60. 2 The Rondavel Venters - parentage, the two Jan Louis Venters, and Wolwekraal LEAD-0015

    (a) Who were Jan Adriaan Venter's (PER-000350) parents - vernoeming suggests a father named Willem; (b) who are 'Jan Louis Venter j:r' and 'the widow of Jan Louis Venter' in the 1829 debts, given the tree kills Johanna Jacomina Smit in 1824 and a Jan Louis witnesses a baptism in 1837; (c) is the Wolwekraal grantee Johannes Hendrik Venter (PER-000095) the widow's brother Johannes Henricus (); (d) 8 Nov vs 8 Dec 1823 for Jan Adriaan jr (PER-000096); (e) when did the Venters arrive on Rondavel and how did it pass to the Strydoms by the 1833 survey?

    Wat ons verwag: (a) a Willem Venter of the right generation; (b) most likely an elder Jan Louis (the 1754 man's father or uncle) whose widow survived, OR the Smit 1824 death date is wrong; (c) yes - the Wolve Kraal birth of 1821 puts the family on the farm twenty years before the grant; (e) the widow with five small children probably could not hold the place, opening it to Johannes Strydom by 1833.

    Waar om te kyk: Venter baptisms (Tulbagh/Graaff-Reinet registers) for PER-000350's parents; the opgaafrolle of the Traka field cornetcy 1825-1833; death notices for the elder Jan Louis Venters; the Wolwekraal grant file (Qts Vol 6 Fol 9) for the grantee's full name; the 1833 Rondabel survey file for how Johannes Strydom came to be the applicant.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Registers and the two grant/survey files.

    Rondabel · Wolwekraal Nr. 17

    geopen 2026-07-30

61. 2 When did Maria Johanna Botes born Oosthuizen actually die? LEAD-0020

    Her 1976 death is withdrawn as manufactured from a probate date range. She was born 14 Dec 1868 and married Michiel Josias Botes on 1 Jul 1895. When did she die, and under what surname was her estate filed?

    Wat ons verwag: The 1976-1979 probate is most likely her son ANDREW's estate - he died 22 Jul 1976, the range fits an estate rather than a death, and it is indexed under a maiden name she had not used since 1895. Her husband died 1947 and her last child was born 1911, so a death anywhere from the 1910s to the 1960s is unconstrained by anything we hold.

    Waar om te kyk: Western Cape deceased estate files under BOTES, Maria Johanna born Oosthuizen; Prince Albert and Wynberg DRC burial registers; and the estate files of her children - Andrew (d. 22 Jul 1976), Christina Johanna Koen (d. 24 Apr 1974), Magdalena Elizabeth (d. 1981) - each of which should state whether the mother was living.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice or estate file under Botes. Failing that, the wording of Andrew's 1976 file on whether his mother predeceased him.

    Maria Johanna Oosthuizen · Michiel Josias Botes · Cornelis Andries Oosthuizen (b.1828) · Magdalena Maria van Wyk

    geopen 2026-07-31

62. 2 Wilgemond's diagram number: 150/1833, or 350 mis-transcribed in 1952? LEAD-0025

    Every other farm in Stretch's August 1833 run carries a diagram number between 348 and 369, and their quitrent folios rise with them. Wilgemond is numbered 150/1833 yet holds folio 5-9, which falls exactly inside that run. Is the number wrong?

    Wat ons verwag: Probably 350. The sheet we hold is a RECOPY made 15.9.1952 (no. 1841/52), so the typed number and the handwritten one are not independent readings - both would carry a single 1952 slip. With 350 the series reads 348->5-6 (Klein Valie), 349->5-7 (Middelwater), 350->5-9 (Wilgemond), 351->5-10, 354->5-17, 355->5-18 (Vrolikheid), 356->5-30, 366->5-3? (Rondabel), 369->5-43 - monotonic throughout. With 150 the correlation collapses, and with it the argument that fixes Vrolykheid's disputed folio at 18.

    Waar om te kyk: Order the ORIGINAL 1833 sheet rather than the 1952 recopy. Also ask the SG whether a diagram 350/1833 exists for Prince Albert and what farm it belongs to - if 350 is already taken by another farm, the hypothesis dies.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The original diagram, or the SG's index of 1833 Prince Albert diagrams.

    Charles Lennox Stretch · Wilgemond Nr. 179 · Middelwater · Klein Valie Nr. 182

    geopen 2026-07-31

63. 2 Surveyor names are fragmented by spelling - build a register LEAD-0028

    The same surveyor appears under several spellings, so no page can honestly say 'who surveyed this farm' or group a season. How many distinct surveyors are actually in the model?

    Wat ons verwag: Roughly 27 name-variants collapse to perhaps 18 people. Certain pairs: 'C.L. Stretch' (6 sheets) and 'C. Lennox Stretch' (9) are one man with 15; 'J.W. du T. Melvill' / 'J.W. de T. Melvill' / 'J.A. de T. Melvill' / 'J.A.H. Melville' / 'P.A.H. Melville'; 'A.I. de Villiers' / 'A.J. de Villiers'; 'J.F.E. Hartwig' / 'J.H.E. Hartwig'; 'W.J. Seibelhoff' / the Windwaai signature read as Siebelhorn; 'J.A. Loubser' / 'J. Loubser'. Several are already flagged 'signature, reading uncertain'.

    Waar om te kyk: The sheets themselves, and the S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science, which already supplied SRC-034 for Thomas Bain and covers Cape surveyors generally.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A surveyor register keyed to PER- ids, with each spelling recorded as a variant rather than normalised away - the same discipline used for Oosthuizen/Oosthuysen/Oosthuijzen.

    Charles Lennox Stretch

    geopen 2026-07-31

64. 2 Nine people carry a different FamilySearch id here and in the tree LEAD-0036

    For nine people the model records one FamilySearch id and the family-tree's _FID records another. Which is the live profile, and are the two ids two profiles for one person that want merging on FamilySearch itself?

    Wat ons verwag: Most will be FamilySearch's own duplicates, where a merge upstream left one id redirecting to the other - a retired id still resolves, which is why both are worth keeping. PER-000246 is the interesting one: G6ZV-KXX against G6ZV-KXK differs in a single final character and is more likely a transcription slip on our side than two profiles.

    Waar om te kyk: Open both ids on FamilySearch. A redirect proves they are one profile; two live profiles with the same person is a merge to propose there, and belongs in FS-CORRECTIONS.md.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Loading each id and seeing whether it redirects.

    Gerolm Samuel Marincowitz · Hendrik Johannes Oosthuizen · Roelof Daniel Jacobus Oosthuysen · Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1809) · Jacoba Cornelia Oosthuizen · Ockert Almero Oosthuizen

    geopen 2026-07-31

65. 2 Andries Petrus and Andrew Peter Marincowitz, one man on two FamilySearch profiles? LEAD-0038

    PER-000206 'Andries Petrus Marincowitz' and PER-000602 'Andrew Peter Marincowitz' share a birth date of 21 March 1888 and the same parents, and the names are the Afrikaans and English forms of each other. But they carry DIFFERENT FamilySearch ids - GYXY-DKQ and GFQC-81T. Are they one man with two profiles on FamilySearch?

    Wat ons verwag: One man, two profiles, and the duplicate is UPSTREAM. A birth date agreeing to the day, the same father and mother, and a translated name is not a coincidence this family produces.

    Waar om te kyk: Open both ids on FamilySearch and compare their sources. If they are one man this is a MERGE TO PROPOSE THERE, and belongs in FS-CORRECTIONS.md rather than being merged here.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism entry, or either profile citing a source the other also cites.

    Andries Petrus Marincowitz · Andrew Peter Marincowitz · Nicolaas James Marincowitz · Catharina Maria Oosthuizen

    geopen 2026-07-31

66. 2 Anna Margaretha Oosthuizen assembles three farms in one deed, 1937 LEAD-0040

    On 20 December 1937 one transfer deed put Noorsdoringkop, Kleinbotterkraal and Kareemoerhoek into the name of Anna Margaretha Marincowitz, born Oosthuizen - over 10,240 morgen. Who assembled it, and with whose money?

    Wat ons verwag: A deliberate assembly rather than an inheritance. Both Noorsdoringkop and Kleinbotterkraal were SURVEYED IN FEBRUARY 1937 by J.H.E. Hartwig and transferred that December - ground cut and conveyed inside ten months, which is a purchase being arranged, not an estate winding up.

    Waar om te kyk: Deed 13528 of 1937 and the Hartwig diagrams. The Marincowitz estate papers would say whether it was her money or her husband's.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The deed itself: it names consideration and predecessor in title.

    Anna Margaretha Oosthuizen · Gert Jan Oosthuizen Marincowitz · Kareemoerhoek (Rhemhoogte Nr. 125 Gdlt 4) · Noorsdoringkop (Groot Sluitel Fontein Nr. 126 Gdlt 1) · Kleinbotterkraal (Klein Sleutlefontein Nr. 127 Gdlt 1)

    geopen 2026-07-31

67. 2 This district married itself, nine same-surname marriages LEAD-0041

    Nine recorded marriages are between people of the same surname: five Oosthuizen x Oosthuizen, two Venter x Venter, one Marincowitz and one Hitge. How close were these couples actually related?

    Wat ons verwag: First and second cousins, mostly. In a district this size with this few families it is the expected pattern rather than a scandal - but it is the MECHANISM behind two things this project keeps tripping over, and that is why it is worth quantifying: the pedigree collapse (Frans and his wife share about 1,294 ancestors) and the name-repetition traps (six men called Ockert Almero Oosthuizen). The same names recur because the same families recur.

    Waar om te kyk: Baptism registers for the couples' parents; the de Villiers-Pama codes.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Common ancestors for each pair. scope.build_ancestors() can already compute it once the parentage is in.

    Johannes Adriaan Oosthuizen · Frederik Simon Oosthuizen · Jan Adriaan Venter · Maria Catharina Venter

    geopen 2026-07-31

68. 2 Did Ds Adriaan Hofmeyr travel to Mashonaland in 1897, after he had left Prince Albert? LEAD-0044

    SRC-068 has Hofmeyr serving Prince Albert 1883-1895 and then joining Jan Luttig and Cecil John Rhodes on a Mashonaland expedition in 1897, two years after he left the town. The organ that ended up at Zeekoegat came out of that trip.

    Wat ons verwag: Both can be true, he need not have been minister here to travel, but the model dates the organ gift 'about 1897' on the strength of this passage, and if the trip is misdated the organ date moves with it.

    Waar om te kyk: Hofmeyr's own writings; the Afrikaans Wikipedia article the cameo cites; Rhodes's 1896-97 movements, which are very well documented.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A dated account of the N'gami expedition.

    ds Adriaan Hofmeyr · Jan Luttig · Cecil John Rhodes

    geopen 2026-08-01

69. 2 Brandfort: is the founder's farm Keerom documented, and when did Susanna Catharina die? LEAD-0045

    Published accounts have Brandfort laid out in 1866 on Jacobus van Zyl's farm Keerom, and one calls him 'a Voortrekker from Prins Albert'. What does the deed for Keerom say, and what became of his first wife Susanna Catharina Oosthuizen, born on this ground in 1811?

    Wat ons verwag: That the Prince Albert origin holds. The identification already rests on name + both dates + the marriage, which is the 9 standard, and the Prince Albert line comes from a source that had no reason to invent it.

    Waar om te kyk: The Free State deeds office for Keerom, Winburg/Edenburg district; the OFS opgaafrolle; NG Kerk Brandfort Moedergemeente records; the Voortrekker muster/trek lists for van Zyl; her death notice in the Master's records.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A transfer deed for Keerom naming Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl, or a death notice for Susanna Catharina giving a date and a place.

    Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl · Susanna Catharina Oosthuizen (b.1811) · Johanna Jacomina Oosthuizen · Wynand van Zyl

    geopen 2026-08-01

70. 2 Petrus van Veuren Senior and Lucas van Veuren "P. Zoon": father and son on adjoining ground? LEAD-0054

    Was Lucas van Veuren of Oorlogs Kloof No. 172 the son of Petrus van Veuren Senior of Uitnood No. 147?

    Wat ons verwag: Probably yes. Two loan farms surveyed in the same month, August 1833, by the same surveyor, in the same field cornetcy, one for a man styled Senior and the other for a man the form records as "P. Zoon", Dutch for P.'s son.

    Waar om te kyk: Cape estate papers (MOOC) at the Western Cape Archives for a Petrus van Veuren dying after 1841; the 1841 quitrent title registers for Bf.W.Q.5-30 and 5-32, which name the grantees in full; the Beaufort West and Prince Albert baptism registers for van Veuren entries in the 1790s and 1800s.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice or estate account naming Lucas as a son of Petrus, or a baptism entry giving Lucas a father Petrus. Either would turn an initial into a relationship.

    Petrus van Veuren Senior · Martinus van Veuren (Wilgamount, 1833) · Uitnood Nr. 147 (Loan Farm Uit-Nood) · Oorlogs Kloof Nr. 172 (Roode Els Bosch and Oorlogs Kloof)

    geopen 2026-08-01

71. 2 Eighty-one farms are named on our own diagrams and have no parcel row LEAD-0059

    Which of the 81 farm names that appear in neighbours.csv without a par_id should be tracked parcels?

    Wat ons verwag: Perhaps a third are real, trackable farms. The rest are Government ground, Crown Land, the Zwarte Berg and other non-parcels, or spelling variants of farms we already hold.

    Waar om te kyk: neighbours.csv, filtered to rows with an empty neighbour_par_id. Then the cadastre pull, which now covers nine registration divisions, to see which names have a polygon waiting.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: For each name: a polygon in the pull, or a diagram naming it as a farm with a number. Either makes it a row.

    geopen 2026-08-01

72. 2 1,302 cadastre keys carry more than one polygon, of different sizes LEAD-0060

    Is PRCL_KEY safe to use as a unique identifier in the Western Cape extract, and if not, what is?

    Wat ons verwag: No, it is not unique. It looks like the extract carries both a farm-level and a portion-level feature under one key in some cases, and genuine duplicates in others.

    Waar om te kyk: geo/*.geojson, grouping features by PRCL_KEY and comparing GEOM_AREA. 1,302 keys have two or more features of different size across the nine divisions.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Either a rule that picks the right feature deterministically (PRCL_TYPE F vs FP already does most of it), or confirmation from the Surveyor-General that the extract has duplicates.

    Modderdrift Nr. 106 · Rondabel Nr. 124 Restant

    geopen 2026-08-01

73. 2 Why did the State take Oorlogs Kloof in 1941? LEAD-0062

    What was the Government of the Union of South Africa consolidating Oorlogs Kloof No. 175 for in April 1941?

    Wat ons verwag: Most likely a Department of Lands settlement or irrigation scheme, or ground taken for the Swartberg catchment. The date is wartime, which may or may not be relevant, and guessing between those is not research.

    Waar om te kyk: The Certificate of Amended Title on Consolidation No. 3262 of 16 Apr 1941 and Crown Title 44 of 1941, both at the Deeds Office; SG File S2035 and survey record E.275/1940, which the diagram names; and the Department of Lands files in the national archives for 1939 to 1941.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The consolidation certificate itself names the purpose, or the Lands file does. Either turns a striking fact into a story.

    Lucas van Veuren ("P. Zoon") · Oorlogs Kloof Nr. 172 (Roode Els Bosch and Oorlogs Kloof) · Oorlogs Kloof Nr. 175 (1940 consolidation)

    geopen 2026-08-01

74. 2 What superseded Modderdrift Portion 4? LEAD-0063

    Modderdrift No. 106's Portion 4, 5,069.9 ha, carries WSTATUS='H' in the cadastre - superseded. Its geometry is right: RE + Ptn 1 + Ptn 4 reconstruct the 1874 resurvey (9,399 morgen 70 sq roods = 8,050.6 ha) to 0.15%. So the question is not where the ground went - it is what replaced Portion 4 as the current parcel over that ground, and when.

    Wat ons verwag: A re-subdivision or a renumbering after 1966, since the diagram was re-stamped 11.8.1966. Prince Albert also carries a SECOND farm called MODDERDRIFT, No. 239 (7,126.7 ha), which is a candidate and is not assumed.

    Waar om te kyk: The deduction table on the VERSO of the Modderdrift diagrams already held - DOC-0153 (Stretch, Aug 1833) and DOC-0154 (the 9,399 morgen resurvey). A verso is where a farm records what was cut off it. Then the CSG diagram index for farm 239, and the Deeds Office transfer history on 4/106.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The deduction list on the VERSO of DOC-0154 - the diagram says so itself: 'For list of deductions see back of diagram'. Frans holds the front; the back is the sheet that answers this.

    Modderdrift Nr. 106 · Trakasdrif (Modderdrift Nr. 106 Restant) · Modderdrift Nr. 106 Gdlt 1 · Modderdrift Nr. 106 Gdlt 4

    geopen 2026-08-02

75. 2 Thirty-three portions carry a number where they should carry a name LEAD-0067

    Which of the 33 parcels named only "<Farm> Portion N" or "<Farm> Remainder" have a real name recorded on a diagram we already hold?

    Wat ons verwag: Most of them. [FAMILY] The portion often indicate the names of those portions on the maps. In this district portions are named, not numbered, and the name is written in two places we routinely photograph: the MAP FACE, which labels every surrounding parcel, and the DEDUCTION TABLE on the verso, which gives portion number, name, extent, diagram and deed on one line. Expect the Middelwater, Spreeufontein and Varsche Fontein portions to be recoverable from sheets already in sources/diagrams/.

    Waar om te kyk: First the versos this project already holds - they are the cheap half and need no new archive request. The Rondabel deduction table (DOC-0186 verso) named six portions in one pass and gave DRIEHOEK to PAR-000117, which had carried no name and no extent. Then the parent diagrams of Middelwater 169, Spreeufontein 26 and Varsche Fontein 27.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A pass over every held verso and map face, transcribing the portion names into current_name with their source. It is bounded work: 33 rows, and the documents are already on disk.

    geopen 2026-08-03

76. 2 Who are the M.E.C. Venter born Swanepoel and the W.A. Venter who took Paardefontein in 1917? LEAD-0070

    Which Maria Elizabeth Catharina Swanepoel married which Willem Adriaan Venter, and are they the pair named on the 1917 transfer of Paardefontein?

    Wat ons verwag: The transfer stamp on SG Dgm 1640/1916 reads "In favour of M.E.C. Venter, born Swanepoel, married out of community to W.A. Venter", dated 22 May 1917. Both surnames are this project's. But the model holds TWO women named Maria Elizabeth Catharina Swanepoel who were alive in 1917 - PER-000581 (b. 24 Aug 1888, d. 1929) and PER-000711 (b. 29 Mar 1884) - and one Willem Adriaan Venter, PER-000107, whose only recorded activity is 1879 to 1897, twenty years before this deed. He bought parts of Venterskraal in 1879 and 1894 and Swanepoelsaanleg in 1897, so he is a man who accumulated ground in this district, which makes him plausible - and a 1917 deed could equally be his son of the same name.

    Waar om te kyk: A marriage record for the couple, which fixes both at once. Then the Deeds Office transfer of 22 May 1917 on Cyferfontein 115/2, which gives full names rather than initials. FamilySearch for both Swanepoel women.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Full given names on the transfer deed, or a marriage naming a Willem Adriaan Venter and a Maria Elizabeth Catharina Swanepoel.

    Paardefontein (Cyferfontein Nr. 115 Gdlt 2) · Cyferfontein Nr. 115

    geopen 2026-08-03

77. 2 Four pairs of live person rows look like one person each, and they are withholding links LEAD-0082

    Are PER-001263/PER-001264 (Wynand van Zyl), PER-000562/563, PER-000646/001087 and PER-000956/957 each one person or two?

    Wat ons verwag: ONE PERSON IN EACH PAIR, and the duplication imported faithfully from the private tree rather than created here. Each pair shares a name and an exact birth date while holding TWO family-tree ids and TWO FamilySearch ids, which is the signature of a tree that has the person twice. The clearest is WYNAND VAN ZYL, PER-001263 and PER-001264, both b. 3 June 1808 and both recorded as spouse of Johanna Jacomina Oosthuizen - the root couple's eldest daughter, so this is not a peripheral row.

    Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch, comparing the two ids in each pair - GJB6-H9Z against GW6V-FT8 for van Zyl. Then the private tree, where the duplication almost certainly originates.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Whether the two FamilySearch records are the same person. If they are, merge on FS first, then here with merge_person.py, tombstoning the loser as status=duplicate - never deleting, ids are permanent.

    geopen 2026-08-04

78. 2 Nineteen curated prose files are never built into the site LEAD-0083

    Should content/farms/, content/people/ and content/families/ be wired into the farm and person pages, or retired?

    Wat ons verwag: THEY WERE MEANT TO BE USED AND THE WIRING WAS NEVER DONE. 3 states the pattern explicitly - "Farm and person pages carry a short hook and a link, never the full text. See content/farms/F08-vredendal.md for the pattern" - so these files are the documented design, not leftovers. But nothing reads them: 10 farm files, 6 person files and 3 family files, and a search of the built site for their opening sentences returns nothing for any of the nineteen.

    Waar om te kyk: build_site.py and render.py. The story loader already does exactly this job and is the model to copy: it reads content/stories/<name>.md through render.lang_path(), which prefers content/stories/af/<name>.md on an Afrikaans build. lang_path is generic and would work unchanged for content/farms/af/ and content/people/af/.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Whether the hooks should render on the farm and person pages. If yes, wire them through lang_path and then translate; if no, move the nineteen files to a retired directory so they stop reading as live content.

    geopen 2026-08-04

79. 2 Cold-eye code review, 4 Aug 2026: the remaining five items LEAD-0086

    Which of the reviewer's structural recommendations are worth doing, and in what order?

    Wat ons verwag: ALL FIVE ARE WORTH DOING and none is urgent. The verdict on the big question was DO NOT REWRITE, on the ground that this repo's value is not its structure but its encoded knowledge - a privacy rule implemented three times on purpose and compared every build, one scan gate with a written history of the two times a new consumer bypassed it, and several hundred comments each recording a specific failure on this specific data. A rewrite trades that for tidiness the owner does not consume.

    Waar om te kyk: FIXED THE SAME DAY, not part of this lead: deploy.sh declutter (was deleting on name shape and would have removed archive scans named by this project's own inbox convention - now requires the sibling, and is written in Python because it deletes); 35 committed build artefacts under "site 2/" that no leak test scanned, with .gitignore widened to catch collision copies of every output dir; and export_public.estimate_birth_bounds reading parentage rows marked confidence=excluded. STILL OPEN, cheapest first: (1) delete the JavaScript scrubbing path entirely and keep leak_tests as the guarantee - the scrubber is convenience, the test is the control, and its comment lexer still matches "//" inside string literals such as URLs; (2) collapse seven of the nine templates/af files onto the shared templates via the `t` filter, keeping about.html and terms.html forked because those are different documents, not translations - about 700 lines and the drift trap LOOP.md names; (3) reduce five EDTF year parsers to one validating parser, keeping the deliberate SQL/Python pair - leak_tests._edtf_year does not validate, so "1950s~" yields 1950 there and None in the export, which quietly undercuts a rule the project doubles on purpose; (4) move UI_STRINGS out of render.py into data/, 516 lines and translation becomes data Frans can edit; (5) stop copying story titles into parcel records and re-syncing them after translation - make the panel look them up.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Two focused sessions. The reviewer estimates roughly 1 200 lines removed with the site improving throughout.

    geopen 2026-08-04

80. 2 Willem Venter and Anna Christina Oosthuizen stood as witnesses together four times over twenty years LEAD-0087

    Who were they, and were they a married couple? Four joint appearances between 1839 and 1859 make them the most active godparent pair in the register.

    Wat ons verwag: A MARRIED COUPLE, on the pattern the register itself shows. The only other repeated pair in 291 witness rows is Johanna Jacomina Oosthuizen with Wynand van Zyl - and those two are known to have married at Beaufort West on 1 February 1829. Couples stand together at the font; that is what the pairing means. So Willem Venter and Anna Christina Oosthuizen appearing together on 7 Oct 1839, 25 Dec 1848, 7 Jul 1850 and 2 Oct 1859 most likely means a Venter married an Oosthuizen, in a district where four such marriages are already recorded.

    Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West marriage register, 1830s. A Willem Venter b. 17 May 1819 is already in the model as PER-000522; whether he is this man is not established. Anna Christina Oosthuizen is in no model row at all.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage entry naming both. Failing that, a baptism where one of them is a parent rather than a witness.

    Willem Venter

    geopen 2026-08-04

81. 2 Seven parentage links the dates make impossible LEAD-0089

    For each of the seven, which of the three facts is wrong - the child's date, the parent's date, or the link itself?

    Wat ons verwag: PER-001335 (Aletta Johanna Catharina van Eck, b.1860 d.1897) is the most likely to resolve first and the most likely to be a single fault: she carries TWO impossible children - one born 1873 when she was 13, one born 1898 after she died. Two errors on one woman is the signature of a conflation (mother and daughter merged upstream) or of children attached to the wrong wife of the same husband, not of two independent typing slips. PER-000716 b.1874 off a mother born 1875 is likely a transposed date. PER-000080 b.1691 off Joachim Sachs d.1688~ turns on a circa date and may be no error at all - a tilde is not a year.

    Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch for each pair; the baptism registers for the 19th-century cases. For PER-001335, look for a second marriage of the husband and for a mother of the same name.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism entry naming the parents, or a FamilySearch record that shows the child attached to a different parent.

    geopen 2026-08-05

82. 2 Who actually received Klein Sleutlefontein No. 127 in 1841? LEAD-0090

    Read Bf.W.Q. 6-5. Is the grantee Johannes Stein, J. Steyn, or someone else?

    Wat ons verwag: Stein or Steyn - the 1833 diagram's title block and the 1937 copy-stamp on DOC-0093 both say so, and the two spellings are almost certainly one man. If confirmed, he is a non-kin, German-surnamed holder inside the 15 April 1841 bundle, which is interesting in itself: the day's other grantees are overwhelmingly the district's established Cape Dutch families.

    Waar om te kyk: Beaufort West quitrent register volume 6 folio 5; the 1841 deed itself.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The deed. It names the grantee.

    Klein Sleutlefontein Nr. 127

    geopen 2026-08-05

83. 2 Reopen: is the 1818/1823 Rondabel of the inventories ours or an eastern namesake? LEAD-0092

    Were the field cornets Stephanus van Wyk (1818) and Abraham Greyling (1815) Koup wards or eastern Graaff-Reinet wards?

    Wat ons verwag: EAST, on the evidence LEAD-0014 itself assembled before it was closed. MOOC8/44.48 shows that when a clerk meant our farm he wrote farm, ward, region AND district - "the place Rondavel ... field cornetcy of Hermanus van der Westhuisen in the Traka district of Beaufort". The 1818 and 1823 inventories name none of those, say Tarka, and the de Bruin estate sold its sheep to a GRAHAMSTOWN butcher.

    Waar om te kyk: The 1815 baptism and the 1818 inventory: place the two field cornets.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A ward list for Graaff-Reinet and for Beaufort in those years.

    Rondabel

    geopen 2026-08-05

84. 2 Six parcels whose surveyed extent is far from their polygon with no reason recorded LEAD-0093

    For each, is the extent mistyped, or did ground leave the farm without a note?

    Wat ons verwag: MOSTLY REAL DEDUCTIONS RATHER THAN TYPOS, on the strength of the aggregate: since the GEOM_AREA fix of 5 Aug 2026 the historic morgen figure and the modern polygon agree to a median of 1.0046 across 75 parcels, 47 within 5% and 40 within 2%. On the old inflated areas the same comparison gave 0.84 and only 8 within 5%. So the 1830s surveyors were right and the disagreement everyone would have blamed on nineteenth-century measurement was very largely our own units bug. That makes each survivor informative. PAR-000140 (4.73x, 2,108 mg against a 381 ha polygon) is the most likely to be a bad row; PAR-000089 Witberg is 'Reserved for Forest purposes' in 1915 and its ~2,400 ha shortfall probably went to the state.

    Waar om te kyk: Each parcel's own diagram and the deduction table on its verso - per 8 the answer is usually already on a sheet this project holds.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The deduction table. It lists portion, name, extent, diagram and deed on one line.

    Groot Sleutelfontein (Rhemhoogte Nr. 125 Gdlt 2) · Uitnood Nr. 147 (Loan Farm Uit-Nood) · Bloemendaal Nr. 165 · Witberg Nr. 180 · Lot A (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 3) · Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26)

    geopen 2026-08-05

85. 2 Two Jan Adriaan Oosthuizens, one wife: are PER-000163 and PER-000398 one man? LEAD-0098

    PER-000163 (tree, FS GQKX-JX7) and PER-000398 (tree, FS GHXS-ZVD) carry the same name and the same wife, Johanna Susanna De Villiers born 3 August 1867. Are they one man duplicated upstream, or two men the tree has confused? And whose dates does PER-000163's row actually hold?

    Wat ons verwag: One man. The private tree marries BOTH records to a Johanna Susanna De Villiers born on the same day, 3 Aug 1867 (families and), and one woman married to two same-named men is the shape of an upstream duplicate rather than a coincidence. PER-000163's own opening note calls him the eldest brother of Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen, whose parents are PER-000005 x PER-000139 - PER-000398's parents, not the ones kin_sweep gave PER-000163.

    Waar om te kyk: The two FamilySearch profiles side by side, GQKX-JX7 and GHXS-ZVD; a merge upstream shows as a redirect. Then the baptism register for 1856 and for 30 Aug 1864, and the death notice for whichever death is real - 30 Jan 1936 at Pretoria, or 11 Dec 1950.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A death notice. The two candidate deaths are fourteen years and a province apart, so one notice decides it outright.

    Jan Adriaan Oosthuizen (b.1864) · Jan Adriaan Oosthuizen · Johanna Susanna De Villiers · Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen · Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge

    geopen 2026-08-05

86. 2 Who does the 1841 Middelwater deed actually name? LEAD-0099

    Middelwater No. 169's 1841 quitrent title, Bf.W.Q. 5-7, names no grantee on the copy this project holds. Who does the register name?

    Wat ons verwag: Okert Oosthuizen, almost certainly Ockert Almero (PER-000001, 1786-1859). The 1833 diagram was surveyed for him and eight years is a short gap; but this project has twice been caught assuming the surveyed-for man is the granted-to man.

    Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West quitrent register, volume 5 folio 7, at KAB. The same order covers the 15 April 1841 folios 6, 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17 this project already holds for six other farms, so one visit closes several questions at once.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The register page: volume 5, folio 7.

    Okert Oosthuizen · Ockert Almero Oosthuizen · Middelwater

    geopen 2026-08-05

87. 2 Three farms are drawn as one of their own portions LEAD-0100

    PAR-000050 Angeliersbosch, PAR-000059 Vlakfontein (Koup) and PAR-000126 Jan Willems Fontein No. 32 are each pinned to a PORTION polygon while the cadastre also holds a whole-farm polygon for the same number. Is the pin wrong, or does each row genuinely mean that portion?

    Wat ons verwag: The pin is wrong on all three and each row means the whole farm. Every one of the three notes describes the whole place: an April 1841 allocation of Angeliersbosch to the Luttig brothers, Stretch's July 1833 survey of Vlakfontein with Swanepoel signing before the field cornet, and Jan Willems Fontein appearing six times as a NEIGHBOUR on our own diagrams' boundary lists, where a boundary list names a farm and not a portion of one.

    Waar om te kyk: geo/prince_albert_farms.geojson and geo/beaufort_west_farms.geojson hold the whole-farm features: W052C0610000000001570000 (3,383.5 ha), W053C0090000000003250000 (10,144.7 ha) and W052C0610000000000320000 (7,697.9 ha). Re-pinning is a match_cadastre.py explicit pin plus a fresh centroid and sg_area_ha.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Frans, or a document that ties one of these three rows to a specific portion. The evidence for the whole farm is already in the rows' own notes; what is missing is the decision, because re-pinning changes what the map draws.

    Angeliersbosch · Vlakfontein (Koup) · Jan Willems Fontein Nr. 32

    geopen 2026-08-05

88. 2 Why did Swanepoel's Aanleg leave the family in the rinderpest year? LEAD-0101

    Swanepoel's Aanleg was sold out of the family on 14 December 1897, to the Venter who had been buying Venterskraal fragments since 1879. Was this distress, or the last step of a deliberate re-assembly of the old Wolwekraal ground?

    Wat ons verwag: Both, and the buyer's side is the solid half. The purchaser had been picking up Venterskraal fragments since 1879 and this completes a quiet reunification of ground that had been one farm - that much is visible in the parcel geometry. The seller's motive is the speculative half: the date sits between the rinderpest of 1896-97 and the 1898 drought, which is when Karoo stock farmers sold, but no price and no stated reason is held.

    Waar om te kyk: Transfer deed 10724, which would give the price. A price far under the district trend would settle distress; a price at trend would make it an ordinary consolidation. The Prince Albert divisional council minutes and the 1897 rinderpest returns give the district context.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The price on deed 10724, read against other transfers of the same years.

    Pieter Johannes Swanepoel (b6c5d7) · Swanepoel's Aanleg (Swanepoelsaanleg) · Venterskraal (Wolwekraal portion) · Wolwekraal Nr. 17

    geopen 2026-08-06

89. 2 Two households widowed 24 hours apart, July 1846 - one event or two? LEAD-0102

    Charles Frederick Hitge died 29 July 1846 and Anna Magdalena Strijdom died the very next day. Both survivors remarried within the year, a married couple also died that year, and 1846 ties as the heaviest pre-1890 death year in this record. Was there a mortality event in the district that July?

    Wat ons verwag: One event. Two deaths in adjacent households on consecutive days, in a district this thinly settled, is more likely a shared cause than a coincidence - and the year's total supports it. But the model holds no cause of death for either, and a thin dataset makes any cluster look sharper than it is.

    Waar om te kyk: Anna Magdalena Strijdom's death notice at KAB. Then the Beaufort West baptism and burial register for July to October 1846: a district-wide spike would show there and nowhere else, and this project already holds that register as SRC-200 for other years.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A cause of death on either notice, or a visible excess of burials in the register for those months.

    Charles Frederick Hitge · Vrolikheid · Oorlogs Kloof Nr. 172 (Roode Els Bosch and Oorlogs Kloof)

    geopen 2026-08-06

90. 2 Black October 1918: did the Spanish flu reach these households? LEAD-0103

    Two family deaths, aged 42 and 59, fall inside the fortnight South Africa's influenza wave peaked in October 1918, and 1918 carries six deaths against two in 1919. No cause is recorded for either. Did this family lose people to the flu?

    Wat ons verwag: Yes, on the dates alone. 'Black October' killed something like 6 per cent of the country inside six weeks and the Karoo towns were hit hard; two deaths of working-age adults inside the peak fortnight is the shape of it. But two deaths is two deaths, and this model holds no causes.

    Waar om te kyk: The death notices for both, at KAB - a 1918 notice usually states a cause. The Prince Albert burial register for October 1918. The district's own newspaper if one survives.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A cause of death on either notice.

    geopen 2026-08-06

91. 2 The Star of David on a Swanepoel headstone, and the winkelier called 'Jood' LEAD-0105

    The 2003 thesis records an unexplained Star of David on the 1898 headstone of a Swanepoel wife, and prints, rows apart, that her husband was the farm winkelier nicknamed 'Jood' - a name he inherited from his father. Are the star and the nickname one fact, and which way does it resolve?

    Wat ons verwag: One fact. Two unexplained things about one household, both pointing the same way, are usually one thing. Which way it resolves is genuinely open: a shopkeeping nickname of the period could be a trade label with no descent behind it at all, or it could mark a real connection the family later stopped naming. Both readings are ordinary in the Cape record and the stone is the only physical evidence.

    Waar om te kyk: An eGGSA photograph of the stone, which would show whether the star is cut or applied and whether anything else on it is Hebrew. Then the NGK baptism and marriage entries for the couple, and any Prince Albert shop or trading licences of the 1880s-90s.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The stone itself, read properly, plus the marriage entry.

    Frederik Hendrik Swanepoel "Freek Jood"

    geopen 2026-08-06

92. 2 Who were the 'others' in the 1940 Klein Valie water transfer? LEAD-0106

    A 12-morgen river parcel on Klein Valie carrying a weir, surveyed 1938, was transferred in 1940 to 'Lategan AND OTHERS', with conduit servitudes running across the neighbouring portion. Who were the others, and was this an irrigation syndicate?

    Wat ons verwag: An irrigation syndicate, or a partnership of neighbouring farmers sharing a furrow. A weir, a named group of transferees and conduit servitudes across somebody else's ground is the standard shape of shared water in this district, and it is a form of co-operation the site records nowhere.

    Waar om te kyk: Deed 4072/1940, which names every transferee. Then the servitude diagrams for the conduits, which would show whose ground the water crossed and therefore who was in it.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The deed's list of names.

    Klein Valie Nr. 182

    geopen 2026-08-06

93. 2 When did Meiringspoort actually open? LEAD-0107

    This project dates the opening of Meiringspoort to 3 March 1858 from a tertiary source. The date is load-bearing: it sits three weeks after Jan Adriaan crossed the Swartberg to remarry at George, and six days before his mother's death. What is the primary record?

    Wat ons verwag: Close to right. Published accounts agree the pass opened in early 1858, so the year is not in doubt; the exact day is what rests on a tertiary retelling.

    Waar om te kyk: The Cape Colony Blue Books and the Government Gazette for 1858, which would carry an official opening. Thomas Bain and Andrew Geddes Bain's own records. The Oudtshoorn and George newspapers of March 1858.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A gazette notice or a contemporary newspaper report.

    geopen 2026-08-06

94. 2 Seven pairs of siblings born too close together for both to be real LEAD-0108

    Seven mothers in this model have two children whose exact birth dates fall less than ten months apart, twins excluded. For each: are the two rows one child, is one date wrong, or is one parentage link wrong?

    Wat ons verwag: Mixed, and the gap size sorts them. The two tightest cases were already resolved on 6 Aug 2026 as duplicated-upstream people and merged. Of the seven left, the pairs whose names are UNRELATED are unlikely to be duplicates and more likely a wrong date or a wrong link: 52 days between a Jacobus Daniel Venter and a Petrus Jacobus Venter, 146 between a Cornelia Francina and a Fredrica Johanna, 153 between an Isaak Daniel and a Cornelia Janette. The 285-day pair is close enough to ordinary that it will probably be dismissed once and for all rather than fixed.

    Waar om te kyk: The baptism register for each pair, which gives the true birth or baptism date and names the parents in the same entry - so it settles all three possibilities at once. SRC-073 (Pottas) is the common source for most of these and is a compilation, so it is exactly where a transposed date would come from. For the pairs with two FamilySearch ids, the two profiles side by side.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: One register entry per pair.

    Jacobus Daniel Venter · Petrus Jacobus Venter · Cornelia Francina Magdalena Elizabeth Oosthuizen (infant) · Fredrica Johanna Oosthuizen · Isaak Daniel De Vries van Zyl · Cornelia Janette van Zyl

    geopen 2026-08-06

95. 2 Fourteen children of Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1809) are missing from this model LEAD-0109

    Fred van Zyl states that PER-000211, born on Vrolikheid in 1809 and the man who named the Marico Klaarstroom, had fourteen children - one of them Susara Cornelia Oosthuizen, who married Fred's great-grandfather Jan Adriaan van Zyl. This model records none of them. Who were they?

    Wat ons verwag: The fourteen are real. The count is the load-bearing part of the namesake distinction Fred and this project reached independently - three children for the root couple's son PER-000124, fourteen for the cousin PER-000211 - and this model already confirms the three. A man with fourteen children leaves a long trail in a baptism register.

    Waar om te kyk: The Marico registers after 1848, and the Prince Albert or Beaufort West registers before it, since he was born on Vrolikheid in 1809 and moved north. Fred says he has received the full descendant tree of Almero's son from a J. Oosthuizen, which is worth asking him for directly.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A register or the descendant compilation Fred already holds. Susara Cornelia is the one to start with, because her marriage to Jan Adriaan van Zyl dates and places the family.

    Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1809) · Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen (b.1784) · Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen · Vrolikheid

    geopen 2026-08-06

96. 2 Four same-day sibling pairs that are one child under two spellings LEAD-0111

    Four pairs of siblings share a mother and an exact birth date and carry names one or two letters apart. Are they twins given near-identical names, or one child recorded twice?

    Wat ons verwag: One child each, without much doubt. Andries Petrus against ANDREW PETER Marincowitz is the same name in two languages; Gert Adriaan against Gerrit Adriaan van Zyl is a noemnaam beside its formal form; Aletta Francina against Aletta FRANZINA Theron is a c/z transcription; Cornelis Andries against Cornelis ANDREAS Oosthuizen is the same. Twins are not given near-identical names - the six genuine twin sets in this model all carry unrelated ones.

    Waar om te kyk: Each pair's tree id and familysearch_id first: two ids means the duplication is upstream in the tree and the merge note should say so. Then the baptism register, which would show one entry or two on the day.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: The register entry, or a single FamilySearch profile behind both ids.

    Andries Petrus Marincowitz · Andrew Peter Marincowitz · Gert Adriaan Van Zyl · Gerrit Adriaan Van Zyl · Aletta Francina Theron · Aletta Franzina Theron

    geopen 2026-08-06

97. 2 Is Jacobus Nicolaas Oosthuizen (PER-000659) a real thirteenth child? LEAD-0114

    FamilySearch lists twelve children for Jacobus Oosthuizen b.1722 (LHLG-SXG). This model holds thirteen. Is PER-000659, born 12 November 1755, a real child, another row for one of the twelve, or somebody else's son?

    Wat ons verwag: Not a thirteenth child. PER-000118 Ockert was also born in 1755, and two births in one calendar year need a January and a December to be possible at all. PER-000659 was added by the same 31 Jul kin_sweep pull that produced the other duplicates in this family, and it carries its own FamilySearch id (G77Y-85T), which means FamilySearch holds a profile it does not attach to these parents.

    Waar om te kyk: The Tulbagh and Drakenstein baptism registers for 1755 - the same series as SRC-094. A baptism entry names the parents and settles it in one line. G77Y-85T itself will show who FamilySearch attaches him to.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: A 1755 baptism entry, or Ockert's exact birth date. If Ockert turns out to be born within about ten months of 12 November 1755, one of the two rows is wrong.

    Jacobus Nicolaas Oosthuizen · Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1722) · Dina Carolina Britz · Ockert Oosthuizen (b.1755)

    geopen 2026-08-06

98. 2 Two more merges kept the survivor's FamilySearch id. Was it the right one? LEAD-0115

    Three merges in this model retired a FamilySearch id the survivor does not carry. One has now been adjudicated and the RETIRED id was correct. Are the other two the same way round? PER-000470 (kept K8RV-S4V, retired GL5W-F4T) and PER-000211 (kept GB6B-ZCM, retired L1GX-62B).

    Wat ons verwag: No prediction worth making from one case. What can be said is that the tool's rule - keep the survivor's id, retire the loser's to a note - is a default and not a finding, and it has been applied three times without ever being checked. The one time it was checked it was wrong.

    Waar om te kyk: The two FamilySearch profiles in each pair, side by side. The retired ids still resolve, which is why merge_person.py keeps them.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Reading each pair and saying which profile is the person. Where FamilySearch itself holds both, it needs merging there too.

    Cornelia Francina Magdalena Elizabeth Oosthuizen (infant) · Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1809) · Jacoba Cornelia Oosthuizen

    geopen 2026-08-06

99. 2 Is the ruin on Spreeufontein Portion 1 a gold-rush building, and are the workings above it diggings? LEAD-0121

    Two photographs of 29 March 2024 carry real device coordinates on Spreeufontein Portion 1: a collapsed dry-stone building at -32.969131, 22.290139 (855 m) and broken rock and spoil 232 m south and 74 m higher at -32.971036, 22.289128 (929 m). Do either belong to the 1891 rush, or to Gatsplaas, or to ordinary farming?

    Wat ons verwag: Plausible and unproven, and the honest expectation is mixed. A dry-stone building on a hillside 1.6 km from the Botma graves, on the farm where the first nugget was found in 1871 and where Lodewyk Bothma laid out Gatsplaas, is the right ground - but the Karoo is full of dry-stone kraals, shepherds' huts and jackal-proof walling of every period, and NOTHING IN A PHOTOGRAPH DATES ANY OF IT. The spoil above it is the more suggestive of the two: a face worked by hand with the waste thrown downslope is what prospecting looks like, and it is also what a quarry for building stone looks like.

    Waar om te kyk: The 1891 rush is documented in SRC-068 and written up as STO-0002; the question is whether any account gives a location for the diggings or for the village of Gatsplaas. Then the 1:50,000 topographic sheet and historical aerial photography, which would show whether the ruin sits in a cluster. Anglo American and the Geological Survey reported on the field.

    Wat dit sou uitmaak: Any contemporary map or report locating the diggings or the village; or a visit recording the ruin's plan, dimensions and any datable material - a fireplace, window openings, mortar, bottle glass, a dump. [14 Aug 2026] TWO CALL NUMBERS NOW ANSWER THE FIRST HALF OF THIS: CCP1/2/1/78 ref A12 for 1891 and CCP1/2/1/23 ref A30 for 1871. What they will not give is a coordinate for the ruin in IMG-0010; only a visit or a map does that.

    Lodewyk Bothma · Vredendal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 1) · Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26)

    geopen 2026-08-07

100. 2 Are the Varsche Fontein Beukes related to Christa's Beukes, or is it only the surname? LEAD-0123

     This project has recorded the Varsche Fontein Beukes as 'a cousin line on Frans's wife's side'. Is there an actual path, or was that inferred from the surname?

     Wat ons verwag: Probably related somewhere, and NOT AT ANY DISTANCE THIS PROJECT CAN CURRENTLY STATE. Tested 7 Aug 2026: Frans has NO Beukes ancestor among 2,736 in the tree; his wife has TWELVE, nearest her grandmother Johanna Christina Beukes born 1932, running back through Pieter Barend Andries (1899), Johannes Andries (1851), Charl Jacobus Cornelius (1830) and a Johannes Andries born about 1800. The Varsche Fontein line runs from Barend Hendrik Beukes (1781-1860), who married at Beaufort West in 1824. Those two lines are not joined in the tree and NONE of the Varsche Fontein people is in it at all. A common ancestor in the early 1700s is likely - the tree already holds Beukes back to a Jan Beukes born 1675 - but likely is not traced.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch upward from 27DM-B2V and from LC7S-K19; and from the tree's Johannes Andries Beukes (about 1800,) and Charl Jacobus Cornelius (1830,). The question is whether Barend Hendrik (1781) and that Johannes Andries are brothers or cousins, and the Beaufort West marriage of 1824 is the place to start.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A shared ancestor with both descents documented, or a demonstration that the two Beukes families are separate at the Cape.

     Gerhardus Fransoiys Beukes · Barend Hendrik Beukes · Catharina Elizabeth Lotriet · Aletta Sophia Jacoba Niemann · Aletta Sophia Jacoba Opperman (born Beukes) · Pieter Jozua Opperman · Varsche Fontein · Varsche Fontein Nr. 27 Restant

     geopen 2026-08-07

101. 2 Which Botterkraal was the mail coach taken on LEAD-0131

     The Boers seized the mail coach and horses at Botterkraal, on the road between Prince Albert Road station and the village. Which Botterkraal, and in what month of 1901?

     Wat ons verwag: Neither of the two this project holds; the road runs north-west and both of ours lie east.

     Waar om te kyk: The Prince Albert magistrate's records, the Cape postal service records for 1901, and the district newspapers.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A dated report naming the farm.

     Botterkraal (Jansenskraal Nr. 104 Gdlt 2) · Kleinbotterkraal (Klein Sleutlefontein Nr. 127 Gdlt 1)

     geopen 2026-08-07

102. 2 Who is D.J. Oosthuizen, dead in 1896 beside Peeter Marincowitz Oosthuysen LEAD-0133

     One photograph in the Prince Albert NG Kerk cemetery carries two Oosthuizens who both died in 1896 - P.M., now identified as Peeter Marincowitz Oosthuysen [PER-000403], and D.J., who is not. Who was D.J., and what killed two of one family in that year?

     Wat ons verwag: A brother, a wife or a child of his; the family had at least twelve children.

     Waar om te kyk: A better photograph of the stone, which would give full names; the Prince Albert death notices for 1896; and the congregation register.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The inscription read in full, or a death notice for a D.J. Oosthuizen of 1896.

     geopen 2026-08-07

103. 2 Lot A of Klaarstroom, 7 morgen 188 roods, is on the 1886 diagram and in no other record here LEAD-0137

     Thwaits's 1886 resurvey of Klaarstroom No. 178 (DOC-0191) tables two lots cut off the farm. Lot B, 9 morgen 167 square roods, is Barry's 1858 arable on the Groot River and is held as PAR-000151. LOT A, 7 morgen 188 square roods - given as a rectilinear 7 morgen 215 roods less 27 for the river boundary - is held nowhere. What is it, when was it cut off, and who took it?

     Wat ons verwag: A second riverside strip beside the arable, cut off in the same 1850s-1880s window and for the same reason: it is irrigable ground on the Groot River, which on this farm is the only ground worth cutting small. Likely Portion 2 of 178.

     Waar om te kyk: The verso of DOC-0191, which the face says carries the deduction list and which this project does not hold - request it. The CSG portion index for farm 178, which the cadastre says runs to 19 portions against the two held here. The Prince Albert transfer series either side of Transfer 45 of 3 June 1858, which carried Lot B.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The 1886 verso's deduction table, or the diagram for the lot itself.

     De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom Nr. 178) · De Claar Stroom Nr. 178 Gdlt 1 (the arable)

     geopen 2026-08-08

104. 2 Zeekoe Gat, cut off Klipgat before the estate division, is in no row here LEAD-0138

     Both of Klipgat No. 114's own sheets name "Portion Zeekoe Gat, transferred to P.J. Swanepoel" as a BOUNDARY of the farm - so it was cut off Klipgat decades before the 1911 estate division and became an outside neighbour. This project holds no parcel for it. What is it, and is it the same thing as the 15/114 the modern cadastre carries and no sheet here shows? The two sheets also disagree on the date by ten years: DOC-0158 reads 30/7/1857 and DOC-0193 reads 30.7.1867.

     Wat ons verwag: NOT the same piece, on the arithmetic done 9 Aug. The ten held portions are one full share short of the 1911 parent, 2,134.49 morgen against a standard share of 2,137.99, so 15/114 is most likely an ELEVENTH SHARE of the 1911-16 division. Zeekoe Gat was cut off in 1857 or 1867 and therefore lies outside the 21,379 morgen that parent measures. Two separate missing pieces, not one.

     Waar om te kyk: The CSG portion index for farm 114, which will say what 15/114 is and give its diagram. The Prince Albert transfer series for July 1857 and July 1867 under Swanepoel, which also breaks the date tie. The deduction table on the reverse of Dgm 1200/1911 (DOC-0159), which lists the ten 1916 shares and may list this one above them.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The diagram for 15/114, or the Swanepoel transfer.

     Klipgat Nr. 114 · Zoutwater (Klipgat Nr. 114 Gdlt 1)

     geopen 2026-08-09

105. 2 Minnies Kraal No. 112 has a Remainder of about 1,686 morgen and no row for it LEAD-0139

     The 1955 campaign cut Gedeeltes 1 to 8 out of farm 112, and those eight account for 8,183.8 ha of a 9,628.3 ha farm. The missing 1,444.5 ha, about 1,686 morgen, is the Remainder. Who held it, and does it still exist as RE/112?

     Wat ons verwag: It exists as RE/112 in the cadastre and was simply never pulled into this model. The eight portions were all transferred on consecutive 1956 deeds, which is an estate or a partition, and the Remainder is normally what the seller or the eldest keeps.

     Waar om te kyk: The CSG portion index for farm 112, which will show RE/112 and its area. The 1956 deed series 2300 to 2306, which names the eight transferees and by omission the party who kept the Remainder.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The RE/112 polygon and its area, or the 1956 deeds.

     Minnies Kraal Nr. 112

     geopen 2026-08-09

106. 2 Is diagram 1154/1863 the whole of Doorn Kraal rather than its Portion 1 LEAD-0140

     DOC-0248, diagram 1154/1863, is filed in this model against Doorn Kraal Portion 1 and gives 2,659 morgen, 2,277.5 ha. Portion 1's polygon is 994.2 ha, so the diagram is 2.3 times its parcel. Its verso then records Portion 2 being cut off in 1900. Is 1154/1863 the whole farm's sheet, misfiled against a portion?

     Wat ons verwag: Yes. A sheet whose verso records a portion being cut OFF it is the parent's sheet, not the child's, and the area fits a whole farm rather than a third of one.

     Waar om te kyk: The face of 1154/1863 itself, which will carry a title block naming what it represents. The CSG index for farm 116, which will say which diagram belongs to 1/116.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The title block on the face of 1154/1863.

     Doorn Kraal Nr. 116 · Doorn Kraal Nr. 116 Gdlt 1

     geopen 2026-08-09

107. 2 Elsje Johanna van Heerden would have been fifteen or sixteen at the birth of her eldest son LEAD-0143

     Death notice 2786 names Carel Aaron van der Merwe and Elsje Johanna van Heerden as the parents of Schalk Willem, born 1 February 1794. This model holds her born in 1778, which makes her fifteen or sixteen. Is her birth year wrong, or was Schalk Willem by an earlier wife the notice does not name?

     Wat ons verwag: HER BIRTH YEAR IS THE WEAK FIGURE. The 1794 birth is fixed to the day by an age computed on a death notice, and the birthplace on that notice matches independently. Her 1778 comes from the compiled tree alone and carries no source here. A year or three either way removes the problem entirely.

     Waar om te kyk: Her own baptism entry, and the marriage record of Carel Aaron van der Merwe. The Tulbagh registers cover both, since that is where this family baptised until at least 1814.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A baptism entry for Elsje Johanna van Heerden, or a marriage date for the couple.

     geopen 2026-08-09

108. 2 Two Cape death notices are held as screenshots with no ark, film or image number LEAD-0145

     SRC-346 and SRC-347 carry full transcriptions and no archival reference beyond a death notice number and, for one of them, an image position. What are their arks?

     Wat ons verwag: BOTH ARE FINDABLE. SRC-346 gives the most to go on: the viewer header 'Cape Province. Probate Records 1864-1866', death notice 2786, image 2138 of 2278. SRC-347 gives only the number 3465 1/2 and the filing date of 21 June 1839, so it will need a search on the name.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch, the Cape probate records of the Master of the High Court. The originals are at KAB.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The ark for each, and the image files dropped into _inbox so they can be filed as documents.

     geopen 2026-08-09

109. 2 Substituting Diagram 2014/1921 cancelled the 1834 grant of Jan Willems Fontein, and the farm grew by a quarter LEAD-0146

     S.G. Dgm 354/1834 gives Jan Willems Fontein No. 32 as 7,059 morgen, about 6,046 ha. The modern whole-farm polygon is 7,703.6 ha. The 1834 sheet is stamped CANCELLED, vide Subst. Dgm 2014/1921, D/T 1922-50-2887. What did the 1921 resurvey do, and where did the extra ground come from?

     Wat ons verwag: GROUND WAS ADDED, NOT LOST, AND THAT MAKES THIS THE OPPOSITE OF THE KLAARSTROOM 178 CASE. The pattern this project has been carrying is that a modern polygon is what a 19th-century resurvey LEFT, so the modern figure comes in under the grant. Here it comes in 27 percent OVER. Either the 1921 resurvey annexed adjoining ground, or the 1834 figure was a walked estimate rather than a survey: the sides are given in Rhynland roods on a sheet copied from a quitrent reference, and grants of that decade are often generous to the holder.

     Waar om te kyk: Subst. Dgm 2014/1921 and deed of transfer 2887 of 1922, both named on the cancellation stamp. The 1834 sheet also cites its own parent, D/G B.W. Q. 6-24, a Beaufort West quitrent.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Diagram 2014/1921, which will state the resurveyed extent and name what was taken in.

     Jan Willems Fontein Nr. 32 · Abrahams Kraal · Plaat Fontein (Varsche Fontein Nr. 27 Gdlt 3)

     geopen 2026-08-09

110. 2 The cadastre gives the name MINNIES KRAAL to two different farms, 12 and 112 LEAD-0147

     The Surveyor-General's own diagrams call farm 12 Rietfontein and farm 112 Minnies Kraal. The modern cadastre calls BOTH of them MINNIES KRAAL, on 12,957 ha and 9,659 ha respectively. Which is the error, and when did farm 12 stop being Rietfontein in the register?

     Wat ons verwag: A CADASTRAL PROPAGATION RATHER THAN A RENAMING. The two farms adjoin much the same ground and a name is more easily copied across than a farm is formally renamed away from the name on its own 1994 diagram. A renaming is still possible and the 1994 sheet does not disprove it, because a diagram records the farm as titled at survey.

     Waar om te kyk: The deeds registry entry for farm 12, and the Surveyor-General's farm-name index for the Prince Albert division. Diagram 995/1868, the parent both farm-12 sheets cite, would say what the farm was called when it was first laid out.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A deeds or SG record naming farm 12 after 1994.

     Rietfontein Nr. 12 · Minnies Kraal Nr. 112

     geopen 2026-08-10

111. 2 Andries Petrus and Andrew Peter Marincowitz share a birth date and are probably one man LEAD-0148

     PER-000206 and PER-000602 both carry 21 March 1888 and both are children of Nicolaas James Marincowitz and Catharina Maria Oosthuizen. Are they one person under a Dutch and an English form of the same name?

     Wat ons verwag: ONE MAN. checks.py's own duplicate text names this exact shape: 'An anglicised pair - Andries Petrus against Andrew Peter - is the same person under two conventions, not two brothers.' A family that christened a son Gert Jan Oosthuisen and another Percival was plainly writing both languages.

     Waar om te kyk: The private tree, which holds them under two family-tree ids, and, so the duplication is upstream. Then the Prince Albert baptism register for March 1888, which will have one entry or two.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: One baptism entry for 21 March 1888, or two.

     geopen 2026-08-10

112. 2 An Isaak van der Merwe and an Elsie Johanna van Heerden make a joint will in 1799, and they are probably NOT ours LEAD-0150

     MOOC8/75.24 is the joint will of Isaak van der Merwe and Elsie Johanna van Heerden, made 8 March 1799. This model holds Elsje Johanna van Heerden (PER-001640, 1778-1828) as the wife of Carel Aaron van der Merwe. Are they the same woman?

     Wat ons verwag: NO, AND THIS IS RECORDED SO NOBODY LATER THINKS YES. The will was made 'alhier op SNEUWBERG' and says both testators were 'van deser uijthoek geboortig' - born in that far district. The Sneeuwberg is the Graaff-Reinet side, hundreds of kilometres from Piketberg and the Hantam where our couple's children were born in 1794 and 1808. And ours was married to Carel Aaron in 1794, five years before this will.

     Waar om te kyk: The Tulbagh and Clanwilliam marriage registers for Carel Aaron van der Merwe.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage entry for Carel Aaron van der Merwe and Elsje Johanna van Heerden.

     geopen 2026-08-10

113. 2 Who was the Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe who stood at the 1863 font? LEAD-0157

     An adult of that exact name is the first witness at the 1863 baptism of the child christened Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus. The child is named for him. Who is he to this family?

     Wat ons verwag: A CLOSE KINSMAN ON THE FATHER'S SIDE, and the source of a name this line then carries for four generations down to Frans's own grandfather. Neither the father's nor the mother's pedigree in this model contains a Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus, so the name enters the line here and nowhere earlier that this project can see. He is paired in the witness list with Helena Jonetta Elizabeth Visagie, so he was probably her husband.

     Waar om te kyk: The Calvinia and Clanwilliam baptism and marriage registers for the 1820s to 1850s, for a marriage of Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe to a Visagie. Melville's descendant report, SRC-263, which covers this surname in this district.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A parentage or a marriage for him, and his relation to Schalk Willem Burger van der Merwe.

     geopen 2026-08-11

114. 2 Six children named on two death notices have no rows LEAD-0168

     Christina Elizabeth Nel's 1895 death notice names FIVE children, all minors, and Sibella Aletta Sophia Mostert's 1942 sterfkennis names FOUR. This model holds two of the first set and one of the second. Who were the other six?

     Wat ons verwag: THEY SHOULD BE STRAIGHTFORWARD, and the first set is nearly self-dating. The van der Merwe children - SCHALK WILLEM BURGER, ANNA JACOBA and ELIZABETH CRISTINA - were all born between the 1885 marriage and their mother's death in February 1895, and the two already held are 1887 and 1888, so the other three fall in 1889-1894 and the Calvinia baptism register should carry every one. The Bruyn children - ADRIAAN HUBERTUS, HENDRIK JACOBUS and HUBERTUS - were of age by 1942 and one of them signed the notice. AND THE NAMES ARE ALREADY EXPLAINED. All five van der Merwe children are named by the Cape order: father's mother, mother's father, father's father, mother's mother, mother herself. That is the first time this project has seen a whole sibling set account for itself.

     Waar om te kyk: The Calvinia doopregister for 1889-1894, which this project has now used twice and which indexes on FamilySearch. Estate files for the three Bruyn sons.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Baptism entries for the three van der Merwe children, and FamilySearch ids for all six.

     geopen 2026-08-11

115. 2 Where Biesies stands, and whether the Fraserburg one is the family farm LEAD-0175

     Which of the three candidate Biesies is the farm Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe (PER-000030) came off before 1950?

     Wat ons verwag: NOT the Fraserburg one, on distance. SG 877/1870 places Bissies en Anteelkolk immediately north-east of FRASERBURG TOWN, which is roughly 250 km from Brandvlei. Frans's two coordinate candidates are 74 km and 141 km from Brandvlei, and the family is a Brandvlei and Williston family.

     Waar om te kyk: SG 877/1870 (DOC-0295) draws Bissies en Anteelkolk with all six of its recorded neighbours around it - Kwaai Puts, Zand Puts, Water Kloof, Riet Poort, van Renens Plaats, Dassie Kloof - so the boundary list is CONFIRMED and the farm is located relative to the town. A coordinate still needs one of those six in a modern cadastre; the Fraserburg registration division is not among the eleven this repo has pulled into geo/.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A deed, a death notice or a photograph caption tying PER-000030 or his father to a named Biesies, OR a Fraserburg cadastral pull that fixes the six neighbours.

     Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe

     geopen 2026-08-11

116. 2 Who is the Jacobus A. van der Merwe who took Brassefontein West in 1915? LEAD-0176

     Is the Jacobus A. van der Merwe of transfer 8683, 30 December 1915, a member of this family?

     Wat ons verwag: JACOBUS ALEWYN, the elder brother of Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus (PER-000762). He was confirmed at Calvinia on 12 July 1879 at seventeen, on the line above his brother, so he was born about 1862 and would have been 53 in 1915. The name also runs in the family from Jacobus Alewyn "Kwaai Koos Welbedacht" (PER-001633).

     Waar om te kyk: The deeds office entry for transfer 8683 of 1915, which should give initials in full or an estate; and the Calvinia lidmateregister entry of 12 July 1879, which named the brother.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Full given names or a birth date on the deed. Initials alone will not do it.

     Brasse Fontein Nr. 371

     geopen 2026-08-11

117. 2 Two Jan Oosthuijsens beyond Bruijnshoogte in 1775, and whether the VOC resolutions reach the Koup loan farms LEAD-0179

     Are OOSTHUIJSEN, Jan (Oud) and OOSTHUIJSEN, Jan (Jonge), named in the Council of Policy resolution of 11 July 1775 on the settlers beyond Bruijnshoogte, this project's line? And do the resolutions of 1777-1795 record the granting of the loan places that became this district's farms?

     Wat ons verwag: The second question is the more likely to pay. The Council of Policy ran to 1795 and granted grazing on the frontier, and this ground was taken up as loan farms from about 1777, so the window overlaps by eighteen years. The first question may not be answerable at all: Jan is the commonest name in this family and the resolution gives no farm, no age and no patronymic beyond Oud and Jonge.

     Waar om te kyk: eGGSA's VOC Archive, https://www.eggsa.org/WebApps/VOCArchive/ - the location index reaches Camdebo, Sneeuberg, Swartenberg, Zwarte Berg and Gamka but has NO Koup and NO Traka, so search the rivers and the mountains rather than the district. The underlying data files are data-tanap/C###.js with data-indexes/locationindex.js and personindex.js, which is faster than the interface. Volumes C160 upward cover 1777-1795.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: For the Oosthuijsens: an age, a farm or a wife in a neighbouring resolution or in the opgaafrolle, tying one of them to a man this project already holds. For the loan farms: a resolution naming a place this model has a parcel for.

     geopen 2026-08-12

118. 2 Brakke Fontein 'agter de Swarte berg', taken in loan by a Swanepoel in March 1790 LEAD-0181

     Where was the veeplaats Brakke Fontein that Johannes Jacobus Swanepoel held in loan from the Company from March 1790 and gave up in 1792, and is he one of this project's Swanepoels?

     Wat ons verwag: The ground is more likely to be findable than the man. 'Agter de Swarte berg' with a Graaff-Reinet landdrost puts it north of the mountain and east of this district's core, but the 1792 Graaff-Reinet magistracy was enormous and the phrase is exactly how a Cape clerk would describe the Koup.

     Waar om te kyk: The Graaff-Reinet landdrost's report called for in this very resolution, if it survives - it would have described the place. Then the loan-farm and quitrent series at KAB, and the 1841 grants, for any Brakke Fontein north of the Swartberg. This project holds BRASSE FONTEIN No. 371 (PAR-000090) and the resemblance is worth testing, but Brakke and Brasse are not the same word and nothing here connects them. || BETTER ANCHOR, added 12 Aug 2026: SRC-428 puts the Graaff-Reinet western limit along the Swartberg's NORTH-EASTERN side 'tot aan de BRAKKE RIVIER'. Look for Brakke Fontein on or near that river rather than by matching modern farm names. Which watercourse the 1786 Council meant is itself the question - candidates include the Brak that joins the Gamka and the Brak in the Beaufort West country - and the cadastre can be queried for BRAK* rivers and farms along the mountain's north-east flank.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A farm number or a neighbour list for Brakke Fontein. For the man: a birth or marriage tying Johannes Jacobus/Joachim Swanepoel to Pieter Johannes Swanepoel of Vlakfontein, PER-000083.

     geopen 2026-08-12

119. 2 Three Orphan Chamber inventories put Rondabel 'in the Tarka' and this model pins them to farm 124 LEAD-0183

     INV-0001 (MOOC8/64.12a, 1818), INV-0002 (MOOC8/38.12, 1823) and INV-0027 (MOOC8/44.48, 1829) are all linked to PAR-000009, Rondabel No. 124 near Klaarstroom, yet each describes the place as lying in the Tarka or Traka. Is that this Rondabel?

     Wat ons verwag: Probably right, and worth proving rather than assuming. INV-0027 is the strongest: 'the place Rondavel, field cornetcy of Hermanus van der Westhuisen, TRAKA, DISTRICT OF BEAUFORT'. Beaufort West's district covered the Koup from 1818, and this project already holds Traka River, Trakas Kuilen and a Veldkornetskap Traka as LOCAL names. The 1818 and 1823 inventories say only 'Tarka', with no district.

     Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West opgaafrolle and the field-cornetcy lists for Hermanus van der Westhuisen, which would fix the Traka veldkornetskap on the ground. Then the 1841 grant for farm 124 and any earlier loan-farm paper for Rondabel.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A district named alongside 'Tarka' in the 1818 or 1823 inventory, or a chain of holders running from these estates into the 1841 grantee of farm 124.

     Rondabel

     geopen 2026-08-13

120. 2 A 1907 petition names James Caithness Marincowitz of Vrolykheid, suing his wife for restitution of conjugal rights LEAD-0185

     NAAIRS (supplied by Frans in chat indexes a Cape Supreme Court motion: PETITION OF JAMES CAITHNESS MARINCOWITZ OF VROLYKHEID, DIVISION OF PRINCE ALBERT, FOR LEAVE TO SUE HIS WIFE JOHANNA DOROTHEA CORNELIA ELIZABETH COETZEE BY EDICTAL CITATION FOR RESTITUTION OF CONJUGAL RIGHTS. Is the petitioner PER-000195 (b. 18 Jun 1866, d. 1934), and what does the file say about the household on Vrolikheid in 1907?

     Wat ons verwag: The petitioner is very probably PER-000195 - a 41-year-old James Caithness Marincowitz on Vrolykheid in 1907 fits the model's own Marincowitz-on-Vrolikheid era - and PER-001721 Johanna Dorothea Coetzee is a NAME-ONLY candidate for the wife, which is a lead and not a match. An edictal citation means she could not be served in person: she had left, possibly the Colony.

     Waar om te kyk: KAB, Cape Town Archives Repository: depot KAB, source CSC, type LEER, volume 2/6/1/318, system 01, reference 721, part 1, dated 1907. NAAIRS result: Document 8 of 10 on the query.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The CSC file itself. It will name the marriage date and place, the desertion account, and where she was thought to be - household detail for Vrolikheid in 1907 that no farm paper carries.

     James Caithness Marincowitz · Vrolikheid

     geopen 2026-08-13

121. 2 Spreeufontein drew mineral interest again in 1910-1912, and this record ends the story in 1891 LEAD-0190

     Two NAAIRS index lines put mineral activity on Spreeufontein a generation after the rush: an ALLEGED FIND OF CINNABAR in 1910-1911 (KAB SG 3/2/1/35 sys 01 ref MDC770) and THE SPREEUWFONTEIN (PRINCE ALBERT) GOLD MINING SYNDICATE LIMITED, registered under Act 25 of 1892 in 1912 (KAB LC 295 sys 02 ref 1210). What happened on that ground between about 1908 and the First World War, and who was behind the syndicate?

     Wat ons verwag: Not predicted. Two things are worth stating plainly. CINNABAR IS MERCURY ORE and has nothing to do with gold - somebody looking for it at Spreeufontein in 1910 held a different geological hope, not a continuation of 1891. And a company registered in 1912 and NAMED for the farm is a heavier thing than the 1891 syndicates S002 lists: those formed in Cape Town and Kimberley to acquire claims before proclamation; this one is incorporated under the Companies Act with the farm in its title.

     Waar om te kyk: The company file first - LC 295 ref 1210 should name directors and shareholders, which is the fastest route from a company to people. Then SG 3/2/1/35 ref MDC770 for the cinnabar. Both single files at KAB.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Either file. Both would give names, dates and what came of it.

     Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26) · Vredendal (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Gdlt 1) · Klein Waterval (Spreeufontein Nr. 26 Restant)

     geopen 2026-08-14

122. 2 Three more index lines: an insolvent Storm on Willems Kraal, a Botes widow selling Schoorsteen, and a du Pisani field cornet of Traka LEAD-0191

     Three NAAIRS entries Who are they, and does any of them belong in this record?

     Wat ons verwag: TRANSCRIBED VERBATIM, files unconsulted, [TO VERIFY]. All KAB. * LND 1/266 sys 01 ref L1022 part 1 (1887): RE QUITRENT FARM 'WILLEMS KRAAL', PRINCE ALBERT DIVISION, IN INSOLVENT ESTATE OF WJ STORM. -- STORM is a surname this project already chases: LEAD-0124 asks who the two Storms on Varsche Fontein in 1848 and 1849 were. This is a Storm forty years later, insolvent, on a quitrent farm in the same division. WILLEMS KRAAL IS NOT IN THIS MODEL; the nearest name is Jan Willems Fontein No. 32 (PAR-000126), which is a DIFFERENT farm and must not be assumed to be it. * CSC 2/6/1/83 sys 01 ref 4 part 1 (1882): MOTION. IN THE MATTER OF THE PETITION OF ELSJE JACOBA BOTES, BORN SNYDERS, WIDOW OF THE LATE ANTONIE JOHANNES J BOTES, PRAYING FOR LEAVE TO SELL THE FARM SCHOORSTEEN SITUATED IN THE FIELD CORNETCY OF GOUPH, DIVISION OF PRINCE ALBERT, WHICH FARM IS BY THE MUTUAL WILL OF HERSELF AND DECEASED SPOUSE BEQUEATHED TO THE JOINT CHILDREN OF THEIR MARRIAGE. -- THE RICHEST OF THE THREE. It names a woman, her maiden name, her dead husband, a farm, a field cornetcy this model holds (Veldkornetskap Koup/Gouph, PLC-000020) and the existence of a mutual will. Neither Botes is in this model and SCHOORSTEEN is in no parcel row here. * T 1132 sys 01 ref 3628 part 1 (1908): DU PISANI, JC, LATE FIELD CORNET TRAKA, DIVISION OF WILLOWMORE. -- the field cornetcy of Traka is PLC-000022 here. Note the DIVISION: Willowmore, not Prince Albert, which is a reminder that the Traka cornetcy sat across a boundary this project has to keep straight.

     Waar om te kyk: KAB. The Botes petition (CSC 2/6/1/83 ref 4) first: a motion of that kind normally has the will annexed, so one file could give a marriage, a death, a farm and a list of children.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The files. Each is an index line naming people this record cannot yet place.

     Jan Willems Fontein Nr. 32

     geopen 2026-08-14

123. 2 The Botes hold no ground here - are they a district family this project can write about at all? LEAD-0194

     The Botes turn up constantly in these records and hold NOTHING. Zero ownership rows, zero residences, no grant, no diagram, no farm. What the model does hold is 255 eGGSA captions naming Botes, 78 curated Botes gravestones, 50 stones in the Prince Albert NG Kerk cemetery alone, and a striking run of marriages into this district: Storm twice in two generations, two Botes brothers marrying two Niehaus sisters four months apart in 1880, plus Kruger, Combrink, Theron, Swanepoel and Oosthuizen. So: were the Botes ever ON this ground as occupiers, or are they a Beaufort West and Prince Albert town family that this district married?

     Wat ons verwag: That they are a TOWN and northern-district family rather than a Koup landholding one. The weight of the evidence is in cemeteries and marriage registers, not in deeds - and that is a real finding about how a district is made, not an absence of data.

     Waar om te kyk: Prince Albert and Beaufort West opgaafrolle and valuation rolls for a Botes householder; the deeds indexes for any Botes transfer in Prince Albert RD; the 1895 marriage entry giving Michiel Josias Botes woonplaats ZEVENFONTEIN, which is the ONLY thing in this model placing a Botes on a named farm - whose farm was it, and was he a tenant, a bywoner or an owner?

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: One Botes name on a deed, a valuation roll or an opgaafrol for ground in this district - or a documented absence across those three, which would settle it the other way.

     Jacobus Abraham Botes (1768-1852) · Elsje Dorothea Gouws (1775-1833) · Andries Stephanus Botes (1797-1872) · Petrus Johannes Botes · Michiel Josias Botes · Christina Johanna Botes, born De Wit

     geopen 2026-08-14

124. 2 A publish_ok verso passes as a JPEG and fails as a PDF. Which check is right? LEAD-0195

     leak_tests L15 (images) consults the publication gate and therefore honours publish_ok; L14 (PDFs) applies a bare 1936 cut-off and does not. So the same deduction table, released under 11 as a record of ground rather than of people, publishes if it arrived as a .jpg and is withheld if it arrived as a .pdf. Forty-odd post-1936 versos are published here on exactly that basis and every one of them is a JPEG. Is the difference deliberate, and if so should it be written down?

     Wat ons verwag: That it is half deliberate. A PDF can carry many pages and unbounded selectable text that no check in this repo reads, while an image is one sheet somebody has looked at - so the stricter rule for PDFs is defensible. What is NOT defensible is that the difference is undocumented and was discovered by a build failing during a deploy.

     Waar om te kyk: leak_tests.py L14 and L15; build_site.scan_is_publishable(); 11.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A decision from Frans, then either a sentence in 11 saying publish_ok does not reach PDFs and why, or a change to L14 that consults the gate the way L15 does.

     geopen 2026-08-14

125. 3 The 1713 smallpox burials LEAD-0005

     Did Barbara and Jannetje Oosthuizen die in the 1713 Cape smallpox epidemic?

     Wat ons verwag: Two burials in 1713 in the Drakenstein register

     Waar om te kyk: Drakenstein and Stellenbosch burial registers, 1713

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Burial entries with dates and, if the register gives it, cause.

     Barbara Oosthuizen (1708-1713) · Jannetje Oosthuyzen (1710-1713)

     geopen 2026-07-29

126. 3 Diagram 6954/90 is not held LEAD-0016

     Middelwater carries two 1990 Eskom servitude diagrams, 6955-90 and 6954/90, under one survey record E 131/90. We hold 6955-90 in full and only the endorsement sheet of 6954/90. What ground does 6954/90 cover?

     Wat ons verwag: Most likely the same two power lines where they cross a different portion - the endorsement letters them cd and ef, where 6955-90 letters its own ab and cDd.

     Waar om te kyk: Surveyor-General, Cape Town, under Leer Pr.Al. 169 / M.S.No. E 131/90; deed K.354/96s.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The diagram itself; it will carry its own Lo23 coordinate table.

     Middelwater

     geopen 2026-07-30

127. 3 Where is Charlotte Searle born Duminy buried, and where did the photograph come from? LEAD-0022

     The gravestone (SRC-146) settles her dates and gives her married surname, but the image carries no cemetery and no archive reference, so nobody can check it.

     Wat ons verwag: eGGSA. The plaque style and the lower-right watermark match SRC-090, which is an eGGSA item. If so the cemetery is named on its page and the citation is a two-minute fix.

     Waar om te kyk: Ask Frans first - he supplied it. Failing that, eGGSA search on SEARLE.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The eGGSA item number, or Frans naming the cemetery.

     Charlotte Florence Margaretha Duminy

     geopen 2026-07-31

128. 3 Vischat, Vischgat or Visgat, and where does the name come from? LEAD-0024

     The place is now located (PLC-000034, on Rondabel). What is its actual name, and does any document use it?

     Wat ons verwag: VISCHGAT, 'fish pool' - a water feature name, which is how Karoo werwe are usually named. Neither cadastre pull holds any farm name containing Vis or Fis, so it has never been a registered farm name; it is a werf name that lives in family speech and possibly on a topo sheet.

     Waar om te kyk: Ask CJJ, who grew up on it and is living - by far the cheapest source. Then 1:50000 topo sheets for the Rondabel area, and the deed by which G.A.O. 'Tokkie' Marincowitz bought it.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Any document or map using the name, or CJJ simply saying it.

     Hendrik Lodewyk Malherbe Oosthuizen · Christiaan Johannes Joubert Oosthuizen · Gert Annis Oosthuizen Marincowitz · Rondabel

     geopen 2026-07-31

129. 3 Who was 'The Ape', and who ended up with it? LEAD-0026

     Both the Wilgemond and Klein Valie surveys of 1833 annex a piece of Government ground called THE APE, and Wilgemond is bounded on the north by it. What is it, where is it, and is the name Die Aap?

     Wat ons verwag: A named piece of crown land on the Zwartberg foot between the two farms, probably 'Die Aap' - Karoo features called Aap are not uncommon. It was annexed to BOTH surveys, which suggests it was split between them rather than granted whole.

     Waar om te kyk: 1:50000 topo sheets; the SG farm-name layer; the 1841 title deeds of both farms.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Any map or deed naming it.

     Wilgemond Nr. 179 · Klein Valie Nr. 182

     geopen 2026-07-31

130. 3 De Claar Stroom: one parcel or two? LEAD-0039

     PAR-000004 is the 1777 loan farm De Claar Stroom and PAR-000097 is cadastral farm 178, the ground Klaarstroom village stands on. Should they be one parcel row or two?

     Wat ons verwag: TWO, on the model's own precedent. Middelwater PAR-000001 is a child of PAR-000004 by PLK-000001, so the loan farm is already treated as a distinct parent entity rather than as an early name for one of its children. Farm 178 at 7,259 ha is also far smaller than a loan farm the cameo describes as running from Middelwater to Vrolikheid, so they are not coextensive.

     Waar om te kyk: The 1841 quitrent conversion papers for farm 178, which should say what ground the title covered against the loan place it replaced.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The extent on the 178 title, compared with the loan farm's described run. If they are the same ground, one row; if 178 is a part, two.

     De Claar Stroom (the 1777 loan farm) · De Claar Stroom (Klaarstroom Nr. 178) · Middelwater · Vrolikheid

     geopen 2026-07-31

131. 3 When was Daniel Coghill killed on Lemoenrietfontein? LEAD-0043

     SRC-068 says 1901 in its prose and quotes a headstone reading 15 February 1900, in the same paragraph. Which is right, and was he a serving soldier at the time?

     Wat ons verwag: The headstone. A date cut in marble by the people who buried him beats a summary written 120 years later, but February 1900 and 1901 are very different moments in the war, and the difference decides whether he was here during the Cape rebellion.

     Waar om te kyk: The grave itself on Rietfontein Game Farm; Anglo-Boer War casualty rolls; his death notice in the Master's records (KAB, MOOC).

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A photograph of the headstone, or a death notice.

     Daniel William John Coghill

     geopen 2026-08-01

132. 3 Does Tokkie's son-in-law's van Zyl line come down from the Brandfort van Zyls? LEAD-0049

     Tokkie's daughter married a van Zyl, born 1954. Does his line come down from Casper van Zyl of Swellendam (1781-1863, PER-001376) - the same van Zyl family that married two Oosthuizen sisters off Middelwater in the 1830s?

     Wat ons verwag: UNKNOWN, AND THE QUICK LOOK FOUND NOTHING. The private tree holds him as a LEAF - no parents at all - so there is nothing to walk up. What is suggestive and must NOT be mistaken for evidence: his given names repeat a pair that runs in exactly this family - the 1781 patriarch is a Casper, and his son is a Casper Johannes Jacobus Gerhardus (1813-1883, LCV6-F9N). But that surname and that given name are common, and this is precisely the 9 trap: name alone, no dates, no place. A 120-year gap and a shared given name is not a descent.

     Waar om te kyk: His FamilySearch profile - the id is on his row in the model, not written out here. One click gives his parents, and two or three more would either reach Casper van Zyl (1781) or not. That is the whole job; it was not done here only because the tree had nothing and FS was not consulted.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A parent chain from his FamilySearch profile back to LC3S-V28 (Casper van Zyl, 1781-1863), or a clean break showing a different van Zyl line.

     Casper van Zyl (1781-1863) · Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl · Ockert Almero Van Zyl

     geopen 2026-08-01

133. 3 The drill bit on Rondabel, whose rig, and which of the four searches? LEAD-0051

     There is a drill bit on Tokkie's farm Rondabel (PAR-000009) from exploration drilling, which Frans remembers as French and dates to the 1950s, 60s or 70s. Whose was it?

     Wat ons verwag: FOREIGN FOR CERTAIN, FRENCH ONLY MAYBE. That is the honest version and it is the one recorded. The documented candidates, in order of fit: SOEKOR's oil drilling of the mid-to-late 1960s, which used contract rigs and foreign crews; and the uranium prospecting that ran 1969-1985, in which ESSO trial-mined. Both fit the remembered decades. A separate possibility for the FRENCH part specifically, offered as a hypothesis about a memory rather than a correction: the European Southern Observatory's station on ZEEKOEGAT, 40 km away, was the French team's from 1958 into the 1960s and the turn-off is still signposted FRENCH OBSERVATORY. Foreign technical people in the veld in those exact years, 40 km apart, doing two different things.

     Waar om te kyk: GOVERNMENT EXPLORATION RECORDS, as Either would name the operator. And THE BIT ITSELF: exploration bits carry a maker's mark, often a size and a serial. A photograph would probably date it and might name the country.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A photograph of the maker's mark, or a borehole on Rondabel in the national register.

     Gert Annis Oosthuizen Marincowitz · Rondabel

     geopen 2026-08-01

134. 3 Which A.F. Hitge took Spitskop in 1939? LEAD-0055

     Who is the A.F. Hitge named in Deed of Partition No. 3399 of 5 April 1939 over Karee Rivier No. 143 Portion 11?

     Wat ons verwag: A Hitge of the Willowmore or Prince Albert Traka, probably a descendant of the Hitge line that married into the Oosthuizens, but the initials do not identify him.

     Waar om te kyk: The Deeds Office transfer register for Karee Rivier No. 143, which will give the full name in the partition deed itself; Willowmore division death notices in MOOC; and the Hitge entries already in this model.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Reading Deed of Partition 3399, which names every party to it in full. The diagram recites only one of them.

     A.F. Hitge · Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge · N. Hitge · Spitskop (Karee Rivier Nr. 143 Gdlt 11) · Karee Rivier Nr. 143

     geopen 2026-08-01

135. 3 Two files on disk that belong to nothing: a van Zyl page 2, and a revised Klaarstroom cameo LEAD-0069

     What are images/IMG-0006-van-zyl-family-history-p2.jpg and sources/Klaarstroom-Cameo-revised2.pdf, and where is the rest of each?

     Wat ons verwag: The first is page 2 of a van Zyl family history. There is NO IMG-0006 row in media.csv and no page 1 on disk - so a two-page item was filed and both the row and the first page went missing, or the file was named in advance and never completed. It matters because Klipgat turned out to be a van Zyl estate (3 Aug 2026) and this is the only van Zyl secondary source here. The second is very likely a later revision of SRC-010, the Willis and Atkinson Klaarstroom cameo - "revised2" reads as the author's own version marker. If so the cited copy may be the older text.

     Waar om te kyk: Ask Frans where both came from. Compare Klaarstroom-Cameo-revised2.pdf against sources/local-history/SRC-010-klaarstroom-cameo-willis-2021.pdf page by page.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: For the cameo, a diff: if revised2 is newer, SRC-010 should point at it and say so. For the van Zyl page, page 1 and a provenance.

     geopen 2026-08-03

136. 3 Are A.J. de Villiers and A.I. de Villiers one surveyor or two? LEAD-0081

     Do the thirteen 1908-1924 diagrams signed "A.J. de Villiers" and "A.I. de Villiers" carry one man's signature, or two?

     Wat ons verwag: ONE MAN, on three grounds, none of them conclusive. The years interleave rather than separate - A.I. in 1908 and 1911, A.J. in 1910, 1916, 1923 and 1924 - so there is no clean handover of the kind a father-to-son succession usually leaves. Both work the same district. And I and J are barely distinguishable in the copperplate and early typescript of this period, which is a transcription risk on our side as much as a signature question on theirs.

     Waar om te kyk: The Surveyor-General's list of sworn land surveyors for the Cape, which is a published register of admissions and gives full names and dates of admission. The diagrams themselves at higher resolution would settle the letter directly.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A full given name on any one of the thirteen sheets, or the SG admission register showing whether one or two de Villiers held a licence in the Cape in 1908-1924.

     geopen 2026-08-04

137. 3 A third of the marriages in this model are within one surname - but the sample chose itself LEAD-0088

     Is the endogamy real, or an artefact of collecting exactly the families that intermarried?

     Wat ons verwag: BOTH, and the interesting part is the second. Of 39 marriages where BOTH surnames fall in this project's core set, 13 - a third - are within one surname: Oosthuizen x Oosthuizen 4, Venter x Venter 4, Swanepoel x Swanepoel 2. The cross-weaving is as heavy: Oosthuizen x Venter 4, Marincowitz x Oosthuizen 3, Oosthuizen x Strydom 3, Oosthuizen x van Zyl 3. THE NUMBER MUST NOT BE PUBLISHED AS A DISTRICT FACT. The denominator is marriages where both partners already carry a surname this project collects - so it measures how tightly the web we chose is woven, not how often Karoo families married their own. That is the same selection artefact that killed the "twin peaks of land transfer" idea on 4 Aug: a histogram of what we hold, presented as a histogram of what happened.

     Waar om te kyk: The Beaufort West marriage register in full, which is a denominator rather than a sample - every marriage in the district, not only ours.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The same-surname rate across ALL marriages in the register for a decade, against ours. If the district rate is much lower, the endogamy is a real family trait.

     geopen 2026-08-04

138. 3 inventory_items is a PARTIAL transcription - absence in it is not absence in the document LEAD-0094

     Which of the 27 inventories are fully transcribed, and which are stubs?

     Wat ons verwag: Only about 7 of 27 carry item rows at all. INV-0004 is the clearest case: roughly 150 lines in the document and ZERO rows in the table.

     Waar om te kyk: The TANAP transcriptions already held in sources/.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A per-inventory count of document lines against transcribed rows.

     geopen 2026-08-05

139. 3 Jan Nys of Duesseldorf has the wrong parents on FamilySearch, both of them. Who were they? LEAD-0119

     Jan Nys came from Duesseldorf as a VOC soldier, so neither Jacob Jansz de Nijs of Amsterdam (LJR9-74B) nor Marij Zacharias (LJR9-7H8) is his parent. Who were his parents, and what is the Marij Zacharias row actually?

     Wat ons verwag: A conflation of at least two women, and possibly three. FamilySearch attaches the 1692 Amsterdam baptism of Maria de Nijs - mother JANNA MARIJ BOUSIJN - to both Johanna Maria Boesijns and to Marij Zacharias, and it also shows Marij Zacharias with two daughters, Mary 1691 and Maria 1692, whose ids differ by one character (9VZF-514 against 9VZF-S14) and who are almost certainly one person recorded twice.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch, comparing LJR9-7H8, 9J1K-S7X, 9VZF-514 and 9VZF-S14. The Amsterdam marriage records for Jacob de Nijs would date the Bousijn union.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage entry for Jacob de Nijs naming Janna Marij Bousijn, which would place her in Amsterdam and leave any Cape Marij Zacharias as a separate woman.

     Marij Zacharias · Maria van Bengale (b.1638) · Jan Nys van Dusseldorf

     geopen 2026-08-06

140. 3 Is Arthur Kleu the painter one of the Kleus of Klueplaas? And is Kleu the same surname as Klue? LEAD-0125

     Frans holds a painting of MEIRINGSPOORT by ARTHUR LIONEL KLEU (1915-2008), a shopkeeper, inherited from his grandfather. Middelwater carries the werf name KLUEPLAAS. Are they one family, and are Kleu and Klue one surname?

     Wat ons verwag: TWO SEPARATE QUESTIONS AND THE SECOND IS THE EASIER ONE. (a) KLEU AND KLUE ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY ONE SURNAME HERE, and this model already held both without anyone noticing: SUSANNA MARIA KLUE takes transfer of Vaste Water, a portion of Middelwater, in 1923 [SRC-112]; JOHANNES KLEU is shot at Remhoogte, Middelwater's northern neighbour, in 1901 [SRC-010]; and Middelwater itself carries the werf name KLUEPLAAS. Two spellings, two documents, one small piece of ground. That is the ordinary spelling drift of this district and 5a note 6 keeps both. (b) WHETHER ARTHUR BELONGS TO THEM IS NOT ESTABLISHED AND SHOULD NOT BE ASSUMED. His line looks coastal and anglicised rather than Karoo: his parents married at MOSSEL BAY in 1908, his mother is a PANKHURST, he married at the STRAND in 1950. Neither he nor his parents is in the private tree, and no path to Klueplaas has been walked. WHAT MAKES IT WORTH ASKING RATHER THAN DISMISSING: Kleu is a rare surname in South Africa, and he painted MEIRINGSPOORT - the pass at whose northern mouth this entire project is anchored, about 20 km from Klaarstroom. A man of a rare local surname painting the local landmark is a coincidence worth testing. It is not evidence.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch upward from LKFX-BYX (Peter Egbert Kleu, 1873-1946) - two or three generations would reach the 1870s Karoo if the family is from here. The 1923 transfer deed 3007 for Vaste Water names Susanna Maria Klue and may give her husband or her district. And Rose Willis's Klaarstroom material [SRC-010] on Johannes Kleu, which is tertiary and marked TO VERIFY.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A common ancestor, or a Kleu/Klue baptism at Prince Albert or Klaarstroom in the nineteenth century that ties either line to the district.

     Arthur Lionel Kleu · Peter Egbert Kleu · Maud Sylvia Pankhurst · Susanna Maria Klue · Johannes Kleu (d. 1901, Remhoogte) · Pieter Egbert Kleu (1852-1914) · Middelwater · Vaste Water (Middelwater Nr. 169 Gdlt 5) · Rhemhoogte Nr. 125

     geopen 2026-08-07

141. 3 Fourteen gravestones that MAY be people in the family tree LEAD-0129

     For each of the fourteen stones listed below, is the person on the stone the person of that name in the family tree? Each shares a surname, at least one given name and ONE of its two years with a tree person, but not both years - which is not enough to assert identity.

     Wat ons verwag: Some will hold and some will not. On the last comparable batch, verification killed six of eight.

     Waar om te kyk: The eGGSA photograph of each stone, which often carries a fuller inscription than the caption; then the Prince Albert death notices and the NG congregation registers for the missing year.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The second year, from the stone itself or from a death notice.

     geopen 2026-08-07

142. 3 A van der Merwe grave at Louisvale near Upington, and a beacon called Johanna van der Merwe LEAD-0154

     A stone at Louisvale outside Upington reads Jacobus Frans van der Merwe, born 30 September 1877, died 2 December 1917. Is he kin, and who is the Johanna van der Merwe a survey beacon west of Louisvale is named for?

     Wat ons verwag: NOT ENOUGH TO SAY. Janet Melville, who works the whole surname, did not hold him: "Ek het hom nie as JF of FJ nie." Upington is 400 km north of the Hantam and outside any scope this project has.

     Waar om te kyk: The Louisvale photograph Frans took in August 2013, and a death notice for 1917.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A parentage for Jacobus Frans van der Merwe.

     Frans Jacobus Wilhelmus van der Merwe

     geopen 2026-08-10

143. 3 Who was Schalk Willem Burger van der Merwe married to when he died in 1904? LEAD-0158

     His 1904 death registration gives his marital state as MARRIED. Elsje Johanna van der Merwe died in 1882. A Maria Margaretha Visagie stands paired with him in the witness list at his granddaughter's baptism in 1887. Who was the later wife?

     Wat ons verwag: A SECOND WIFE IS THE OBVIOUS READING AND IS NOT THE ONLY ONE. Witnesses in these registers are listed as couples, his wife of forty-nine years had been dead five years, and he lived another seventeen. But Visagie women stand right through this family's baptisms - two more of them at his own son's font in 1863 - so a Visagie beside a van der Merwe is not by itself a marriage. This lead does NOT reopen the Anna Maria Visagie question, which SRC-378 has settled.

     Waar om te kyk: Calvinia marriage registers 1882-1887. His 1904 death registration gives only 'married' and no spouse's name; the estate file behind it, if there is one, would name her.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage entry, or a spouse named in his estate papers.

     geopen 2026-08-11

144. 3 Where is the Tigerkloof that Carel Aaron's youngest son died on in 1857, and who held it? LEAD-0162

     Nicolaas Francois van der Merwe died on 10 December 1857 "op Tigerkloof, op den Plaats van Hendrek Bota", and was born at Welbedag. Which Tigerkloof, and was Hendrik Botha the registered owner or a tenant?

     Wat ons verwag: PROBABLY THE PIKETBERG ONE, AND THAT WOULD MATTER. The CSG name index holds TIGERKLOOF No. 163 in PIKETBERG and TYGER KLOOF No. 227 in TULBAGH, and nothing of the name in Calvinia. Piketberg is the division this family left: Schalk Willem was born on Elsenbosch there in 1794 and the household was in the Hantam by 1808. If the second family was still in Piketberg in 1857, then Carel Aaron's two marriages went two different ways and only the first line came to the Koup and the Hantam. AGAINST THAT, a vernacular Tigerkloof in the Hantam would never appear in a title index at all, and Botha is not a Piketberg-only surname.

     Waar om te kyk: CSG documents for Piketberg 163 and Tulbagh 227, for a Botha on the title or a boundary in the 1850s. Cape deeds transfer records. The estate file behind death notice 4836, which would name the farm the estate was administered from.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A deed or diagram putting Hendrik Botha on a named Tigerkloof in the 1850s.

     geopen 2026-08-11

145. 3 The three van Rensburg siblings named in the 1987 memoir have no rows LEAD-0163

     Trudie names her father's three siblings - Hester, Koos and Martha - and this model holds none of them. Who were they?

     Wat ons verwag: THEY SHOULD BE FINDABLE. All three were alive into the twentieth century and two are placed: Koos farmed in the Bloemfontein district, Martha married a van der Berg and lived in South West Africa, Hester lived with her children in Johannesburg. Their parents died when Petrus Gideon was five, about 1895, which is itself a lead: two deaths close together in one household leave death notices.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch under Albertus Gerhardus Janse van Rensburg and Martha Gertruida Olivier, who are already in this model as the parents. Cape death notices about 1895 for both parents.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: FamilySearch ids and dates for the three siblings.

     Petrus Gideon van Rensburg

     geopen 2026-08-11

146. 3 Is either the Kruger or the Smuts kinship genealogical? LEAD-0166

     The family holds that Oupa Walters was a cousin of Paul Kruger; his wife was a Kruger of Carnarvon and her mother was born Smuts. Does either line actually join the presidents' families?

     Wat ons verwag: UNTESTED IN BOTH DIRECTIONS, and worth separating from the godfather story, which is documented family memory and needs no genealogy. The Carnarvon Krugers are a findable group. The Smuts great-grandmother is the thinner thread and the more interesting one, because a Smuts marriage would explain how a Karoo family came to have the Prime Minister stand godfather to a son.

     Waar om te kyk: FamilySearch for Magdalena Maria Kruger's parents, and for her mother's Smuts line. Kruger genealogies for Carnarvon.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A documented descent joining either family.

     geopen 2026-08-11

147. 3 The Hantam ground has no basemap under it LEAD-0167

     The Calvinia farms are on the map as polygons but sit over blank canvas, and the four Northern Cape cemeteries have no pins at all. What is missing, and is it worth fetching?

     Wat ons verwag: THREE SEPARATE THINGS, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM IS A BUG. (1) THE BASEMAP DOES NOT REACH. vendor/basemap/karoo.pmtiles covers lat -33.73 to -32.17 and lon 21.18 to 23.17 - the Koup and the Prince Albert district. Calvinia, Brandvlei, Williston and every farm in the Hantam fall OUTSIDE it, so those polygons draw over empty canvas with only the district outlines for context. The archive was cut before this project held any Northern Cape ground. fetch_basemap.py computes its box from parcels.geojson itself, so re-running it would now take in the Hantam without any change to the script. (2) THE FARMS ARE ALREADY THERE. Ten Calvinia parcels carry polygons and ship in site/data/parcels.geojson - Tygerhoek, Oude Muur, Lokenburg, Enkelde Wilgenboom, the Alewyns Bergs and now Matjesfontein 601. The map simply opens on Klaarstroom, which is deliberate. (3) THE CEMETERIES HAVE NO COORDINATES, and that is not a bug either. eGGSA's album pages for Calvinia, Brandvlei and Williston carry no GPS, and this project does not invent a pin.

     Waar om te kyk: fetch_basemap.py --dry-run, to size the extract before pulling it: the box would roughly triple in area and the cost is in tiles at zoom 13 and 14. For the cemeteries, eGGSA sometimes publishes a GPS line in the album's own description, and the GGSA cemetery DVD carries coordinates for many town cemeteries.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A re-cut basemap covering the Hantam, and a sourced coordinate for each town cemetery.

     Tygerhoek Nr. 689 · Oude Muur Nr. 619 · Lokenburg Nr. 815 · Enkelde Wilgenboom Nr. 768 · Matjesfontein Nr. 601

     geopen 2026-08-11

148. 3 Breek Been Kolk No. 293 has a diagram and no parcel row LEAD-0174

     Should Breek Been Kolk No. 293, Calvinia, become a parcel in this model, and what is its tie to this family?

     Wat ons verwag: A neighbour rather than family ground: it sits in the same Achter Hantam field-cornetcy as Brasse Fontein Portion 1, and its 1891 title is to W.P. van Niekerk, a surname this project does not hold.

     Waar om te kyk: The Calvinia cadastre already holds it at -30.80418, 20.15392 with portions 1-4, so a row and a polygon are one step. The tie, if any, is J.P. VISAGIE, the field-cornet the beacons were pointed out to.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Identifying J.P. Visagie against the Visagies this record already holds through Carel Aaron van der Merwe's daughters.

     geopen 2026-08-11

149. 3 Sixty-two headstones that disagree with the tree, about people this record does not hold LEAD-0178

     The eGGSA Karoo harvest found 64 gravestones whose dates disagree with the FamilySearch export by one to three years. Two are people this project holds and are now FIX-0009 and FIX-0010. What should be done with the other 62?

     Wat ons verwag: Most will already be right on live FamilySearch, because the export this project compares against is old. The remainder are a gift to strangers rather than work on this district.

     Waar om te kyk: data/_harvest/fs-corrections-STAGED.csv - 64 rows in the schema of fs_corrections.csv, each with the caption verbatim, the tree's dates, the eGGSA album url and the GPSID. data/_harvest/fs-date-conflicts.json holds the same material with the matching evidence. Neither is part of the model.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A decision about scope, not more evidence. fs_corrections.csv is a worklist for people THIS project holds; these 62 are Calvinia, Williston, Carnarvon and Beaufort West families with no tie to the Koup that this record can state.

     geopen 2026-08-12

150. 3 ANTHON VELD and KAU VELD - two regions on Sparrman's north road from the Camdeboo, named nowhere else yet found LEAD-0184

     Sparrman's Mappa Geographica letters ANTHON VELD between the Kau Veld and the Camdebo Veld, north of Cango and the Swartberg. What was it, who used the name, and what ground did it cover?

     Wat ons verwag: Most likely an informal grazing district named after a man, of the kind that attaches to a veldkornetskap and then falls out of use. The Council's own vocabulary for this country is Nieuweveld, Camdebo, Coup, Roggeveld and Bokkeveld, and Anthon Veld is in none of it, which suggests it was never administrative.

     Waar om te kyk: Other maps of the 1770s-1800s that derive from or compete with Sparrman - Gordon, Barrow, Lichtenstein, Burchell, Arrowsmith - to see whether the name is copied forward, which would show it circulating, or dies with this sheet, which would suggest a single informant. The Stellenbosch and Graaff-Reinet opgaafrolle for a veldkornetskap of that name. And the Swedish original of Sparrman's map, since the English editions were re-engraved.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: The name on a second, independent map or in any written record; or a veldkornet called Anthonie holding that country in the 1770s.

     geopen 2026-08-13

151. 3 Which village did Reitz climb the Swartberg from, and did his crossing touch this district? LEAD-0192

     Commando puts Reitz on the Swartberg twice - southward into the valley that runs to Oudtshoorn, and later northward back into the Karoo. On the first crossing he names no village, only a tiny one at the foot of the pass where dogs barked and soldiers ran to a large building as they rode out at sunrise. WHICH VILLAGE, and does his route cross ground this project holds?

     Wat ons verwag: NOT PREDICTED, AND THE TEMPTATION IS OBVIOUS ENOUGH TO NAME. The northern foot of the Swartberg Pass is Prince Albert, and a party riding out of the Karoo southward over a pass they climbed all day fits that geography. But Reitz does not name it, and this project has just spent two days learning what happens when a good-looking inference stands in for a location - the wrong Bloemendal, twice. What he DOES name on the southern side is Armoed. On the return he crosses where the range forked into numerous sierras rather than the single barrier he first met, so it is a second and different crossing.

     Waar om te kyk: The book is held (SRC-437); the passage is in the Smuts chapters, index entry 'Swartbergen, 255, 256, 257, 259, 268, 269, 270'. Reading those pages against a map of the passes - Swartberg Pass, Meiringspoort, Seweweekspoort, Gamkaskloof - is the whole of the work. A poort is ridden through and a pass is climbed, and Reitz climbed.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: Reitz's route read page by page against the passes, or another account of the same march.

     geopen 2026-08-14

152. 4 Which Walters sister was Lenie and which was Mieta? LEAD-0165

     The 1987 typescript lists seven surviving Walters children by their family names. Two of them, Lenie (of Wally) and Mieta, cannot be matched to the two daughters called Maria Jacoba Magdalena (1902) and Magdalena Maria (1906).

     Wat ons verwag: LENIE IS PROBABLY MAGDALENA MARIA, born 1906. Lenie is the short form of Magdalena and the same page uses it for their MOTHER, Magdalena Maria Kruger, so a daughter named for her mother would carry it too; Mieta is a short form of Maria. The one thing against it is that reading the list as birth order gives the reverse.

     Waar om te kyk: Anyone in the family who remembers the two aunts. The typescript's own later paragraphs name their husbands - a Roux and a Kootjie Erasmus - so a marriage record for either would settle it.

     Wat dit sou uitmaak: A marriage or a death notice naming one of them under the family name.

     geopen 2026-08-11

42 vrae wat beantwoord is — op hul eie bladsy gehou, met wat elkeen beslis het. ’n Beantwoorde vraag is die beste bewys wat hierdie werf het dat sy metode werk.

Die masjien vind sy eie gapings apart: gapings in die rekord.