Estate inventory, deed MOOC8/28.63, 23 April 1809

Inventory of the estate · taken 23 April 1809 · on the farm

Inventaris van alle zodanige goederen, beestiaal, etc:a als er door wijlen den manh:e Ockert Oosthuijzen ab intestato met er dood ontruijmd en nagelaaten, mitsgaders heeden opgenoomen en in waren weezen bevonden zyn geworden, te weeten

Op de plaats de Modder Fonteyn en aldaar

Inventory of all such goods, livestock etc. as were left at his death intestate by the late Ockert Oosthuijzen, taken today and found to be truly as follows. On the farm de Modder Fonteyn, and there.

This is the document that turns family memory into record. Frans has stood in a building on the Citrusdal property; until this text was read, that was all we had. The inventory names it.

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The house, room by room

The clerk walked through the house in order. That order is the floor plan.

In 't voorhuis — In the front room

Twenty-two spoons and twelve forks in a house of thirteen people. And one silver watch — the only object in the whole inventory that is not either a tool, a container or a piece of furniture.

In de kamer ter regterhand — In the right-hand room

In de kamer ter linkerhand — In the left-hand room

The left-hand room is the dairy. Butter is being made here at scale — two vats, two tubs, a churn.

In de combuis — In the kitchen

In de winkel — In the workshop

A bellows, an anvil iron, two sledgehammers, tongs and a vice. This is a forge. Winkel here is not a shop — it is the workshop, and the man who died on this farm was a smith.

Op de werf — In the yard

Wagemakershout — wagonmaker's wood — is not firewood and not building timber. It is stock in trade. Together with the forge inside, it says the trade plainly: smith and wagonmaker. And in the credits below, a neighbour owes money over gekogte wagemakershout — he was selling it.

That is the skill this family carried east into the Karoo, where a wagon was the only thing between a farm and everywhere else.

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Beestiaal — Livestock

Two hundred sheep in 1809, on the Olifants River, a generation before the merino boom reached the Karoo.

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Baten des boedels — Credits due to the estate

The last line is the sale of the farm. The eldest son bought his father's place out of the estate for 1,000 rixdollars, and by 11 December 1810 had paid off 344 of it. That is OWN-000051 in the model.

The second line from the bottom but one is the root ancestor of this whole project, aged 23, owing 56 rixdollars on a wagon he bought from his own father — marked vold:, paid in full.

Lasten des boedels — Debts of the estate

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Erfgenaamen — The eleven heirs

Heirs 5 to 11 are bracketed in the original with a single note: "alle woonachtig bij denzelver broeder Jacobus Joh:s Oosthuijsen" — all living with their brother Jacobus Johannes.

De laatstgem: zeven onmondige zijn op speciaal verzoek van Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen die bij 't afsterven van zijne ouders heeft belooft dezelve te zullen nazigneemen en doen onderwijzen tot dat zij hunne mondige jaren zullen hebben bereykt, besteed.

The last-named seven minors were placed at the special request of Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen, who at the death of his parents promised to take them in and have them taught until they should reach their majority.

He was twenty-five years old. He bought the farm for a thousand rixdollars and took on seven children, the youngest two, and undertook to have them schooled.

Note the phrase "bij 't afsterven van zijne ouders" — at the death of his parents, plural. The mother was already dead. These children were orphans outright.

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Closing formula

Aldus gedaan en g'inventariseerd ter plaatse genaamd de Modder Fonteijn gel: aan d' Oliphants rivier op den 23 April 1809, ende zulx op 't op en aangeeven van de burgers Jacobus Johannes en Ockert Almoro Oosthuizen, dewelke verklaarde zig hierinne ter goeder trouwe gedragen en huns weetens niets versweegen of te rug gehouden te hebben van al 't geen tot den boedel en nalatenschap behoord … ende zulx in 't bij weezen van den clercq Johannes Dorotheus Camijn en den eerste gerechtsboden Hendrik van As junior als getuijgen.

Als getuygen: J:D: Camijn, H: van As junior Voor de opgaave: Jacobus Johanes Oosthuysen, Ocker Almero Oosthuysen Ten mynen overstaan: A:A: Faure

"Ocker Almero Oosthuysen" — the root ancestor's own signature, 23 years old, in 1809. He signs himself Ocker, the noemnaam, not Ockert.

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What this record establishes

1. The Citrusdal property is documented. De Modder Fonteyn, gelegen aan d'Olifants rivier — PAR-000065, the westernmost parcel in the model and the family seat before the trek east.
2. The trade. Smiths and wagonmakers, with a forge in the house and wagonmaker's wood for sale in the yard. Not only stock farmers.
3. Two hundred sheep, in 1809, before the Karoo.
4. The earliest documented address for the root ancestor, PER-000001 — and it is on the Olifants River, four hundred kilometres west of Middelwater.
5. The family were literate. Two brothers sign their own names; a promise to have seven siblings onderwezen is made and recorded.
6. No slaves are listed. Unlike his father's 1802 estate and the three Tarka inventories in this folder, this household held none — or none survived to be inventoried. not yet verified

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Filed 29 July 2026. Transcription © TANAP / Globalise; publication permitted only with repository and reference number named, as done above.