The estate at de Modder Fonteyn is inventoried
23 April 1809 · family
MOOC8/28.63. Ockert Oosthuijzen died intestate on the Olifants River leaving eleven children, the youngest two years old. The inventory walks the house room by room and then out to the yard, where it finds an ox wagon, yellowwood planks, WAGONMAKER'S WOOD and a broken chaise - and in the winkel a bellows, two sledgehammers, tongs and a screw. THIS FAMILY WERE SMITHS AND WAGONMAKERS as well as stock farmers, and that is the skill they carried east. Two hundred sheep, forty-eight goats, eight oxen, five breeding cattle, one old riding horse, and one silver watch. The eldest son, 25, bought the farm for 1,000 rixdollars and took in the seven minors, having promised at his parents' death to keep them and have them schooled until they came of age. [19 Aug 2026] UNPINNED FROM CITRUSDAL. The prose was corrected on 18 Aug and the STRUCTURAL LINK WAS NOT, so the site went on saying Citrusdal on the roads page, the places page and the person page while the notes underneath said the identification was withdrawn. De Modder Fonteyn's location is NOT ESTABLISHED: the estate was taken before A.A. FAURE, LANDDROST OF SWELLENDAM (SRC-465), whose authority was territorial and did not reach Tulbagh or Clanwilliam where Citrusdal lay. 5 - an unresolved place gets no pin, because a wrong pin is worse than a missing one. LEAD-0220. [23 Aug 2026] THE DISTRICT IS NOW EVIDENCED BY THE SIGNATORIES' ITINERARY, not only by the river's name. The clerk Johannes Dorotheus Camijn, the first gerechtsbode Hendrik van As junior and A.A. Faure signed a word-for-word identical closing at d'Oude Muragie AT THE END OF THE CANGO on 19 April 1809, four days before this one (MOOC8/28.25, SRC-549). Cango to the southern Olifants at De Rust is about 32 km; Cango to Citrusdal is about 312 km straight line across two other magistracies. Faure is called 'den landdrost te Zwellendam' in the same series three weeks later, and the men attending him are the Swellendam drostdy's own staff. THE PLACE IS STILL UNPINNED: the district is settled as far as these papers go, the ground is not.
Who was there: 4 people
- 1755 Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1755)
- 1784 Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen (b.1784)
- 1785~ Petrus Jacobus Venter
- 1786 Ockert Almero Oosthuizen
Everyone the record names at this occasion. Who stood together is the clearest surviving evidence of which families were close to which, if you know of others who were here, this is the page they belong on.
Sources
- MOOC8/28.63 - Inventory of the estate of Ockert Oosthuijzen, taken at de Modder Fonteyn on the Olifants River, 23 April 1809 MOOC8/28.63, {18090423}
- A sweep of the published MOOC8 for the officials who signed the 1809 Modderfonteyn inventory - and the Cango estate they took four days earlier MOOC8/28.63 (23 Apr 1809), MOOC8/28.25 (19 Apr 1809), MOOC8/28.22 (17 May 1809), MOOC8/26.65 (1807), MOOC8/25.40 (10 Jul 1805), MOOC8/25.18 (1804). Volumes machine-searched: MOOC8_21-30 and MOOC8_31-40, the ranges covering Faure's tenure. Volumes below 21 are published under a grouping this sweep did not resolve and were NOT searched, so the signing range given below is a floor, not a census.