Adriana Cecilia van Zyl baptised at Beaufort West
11 July 1838 · family · Prince Albert
Born 18 June 1838, baptised three weeks later. Daughter of Jacobus van Zeyl and Susanna Chatarina Oosthuisen. NAMED FOR HER MOTHER'S MOTHER, Adriana Cecilia Venter (PER-000002) of Middelwater - the first daughter, exactly as the vernoemingspatroon predicts. Witnesses: Hester Elisabet Strydom, Jan Louies Venter, Siena van W[ij]k, Dabid Jacobus Strydom and Susara Oosthuisen. | HIS NAME IS NOT IN THIS WITNESS LIST, and that is NOT evidence that he was away. The register's convention is that PARENTS ARE NEVER ALSO WITNESSES AT THEIR OWN CHILD'S BAPTISM - they occupy the 'Ouders' column and the 'Getuigen' column carries everybody else. It holds on every entry on this page: the Oosthuizen x Smit child, the Lombard child, the Roex child, all of them. So this entry says NOTHING either way about whether Jacobus stood there on 11 July, and neither does it about Susanna Catharina. The witnesses are largely HER side and her neighbours - Hester Elisabet Strydom, Dabid Jacobus Strydom, Jan Louies Venter, Susara Oosthuisen - which is ordinary for a first daughter baptised near her mother's people, and is not a sign of an absent father.
Who was there: 3 people
- 1809 Jacobus Stephanus van Zyl
- 1811 Susanna Catharina Oosthuizen (b.1811)
- 1838 Adriana Cecilia Van Zyl
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
- Beaufort West baptisms 1838. Adriana Cecilia van Zyl (11 Jul) and Jacobus Petrus van Zyl (19 Aug), the two van Zyl x Oosthuizen households ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-68TW-GLX, cc=1392488; South Africa > Cape > Beaufort West > Baptisms 1819-1844 > image 212 of 302; register pages 210-211