Drooge Kloof

· on record 1833–1922 · show on the map

District

Prince Albert

This parcel has no matched survey polygon, so it cannot be drawn on the map. That is a gap in the cadastre match, not an absence from the record.

Why this farm is here

Ockert Almero Oosthuizen held it. Not yet placed on the map.

Ockert Almero Oosthuizen is on record on this ground directly. No trace needed.

• story A written history is set on this ground Almero, fourteen, and the Swartberg Pass in the dark, 1892
• story A written history names this ground Middelwater's story since 1777
• story A written history names this ground The Oosthuizens of the Koup
• story A written history is set on this ground Bruid van 1946 het droogte op Klaarstroom leer ken
• …and 2 more, listed in full further down this page.

Stories

• set here Almero, fourteen, and the Swartberg Pass in the dark, 1892
  A fourteen-year-old drives three schoolteachers over Bain's new Swartberg Pass in a mule cart and comes home by moonlight.
• mentions this farm Middelwater's story since 1777
  From a loan farm on the Zwartberg to eight cadastral parcels: the full documented history of Middelwater No. 169 - Stretch's 1833 survey for Okert Oosthuizen, the twelve-farm grant day of 1841, the 1883 resurvey and the 1884 quitrent to J.D.J. Oosthuysen 'and another', the portions cut off for a spring called Vaste Water and a place called Avondrust, and the 1990 power-line survey whose coordinates finally put the farm on a map.
• mentions this farm The Oosthuizens of the Koup
  Eight generations east, from a VOC soldier off the Land van Schouwen in 1685 to a farmer baptised at Prince Albert in 1909. An 1809 estate inventory shows a forge on the Olifants River and explains in one line why the family left: the farm was sold to the eldest son for 1 000 rixdollars, and the rest had to find ground elsewhere. After 1836 they stop moving, and title and a congregation arrive in the same two years.
• set here Bruid van 1946 het droogte op Klaarstroom leer ken
  Anna Oosthuizen, gebore Joubert, kom in 1946 uit die Boland as bruid van 'n Klaarstroomse skaapboer. Jare later, in 'n droogte van haar eie, skryf sy in Die Oudtshoorn Courant oor haar skoonvader van Droogekloof, die werker Anna Hendriks wat vet vleis geeis het toe daar nie was nie, en die dagboek wat sy 'n ou man gevra het om te skryf.
• set here Brokkies uit oupa Almero Oosthuizen se dagboek
  Almero Oosthuizen van Droogekloof, gebore 1878, skryf sy herinneringe neer op sy skoondogter se versoek: die 1885-vloed deur Meiringspoort, sy oupa wat in 1865 die Middelwaterse lemoenboord met vate natgery het, die perdevrekte van 1892, Klaarstroom se Pietersburg-jare, en die droogtes van 1914, 1926 en 1939. Woordeliks gepubliseer.

Who stood on this ground, and how they were related

Everyone the record places here - by deed, by residence, or by burial - and the kinship between each pair of them. Two numbers are given and they are deliberately kept apart. Steps is how far apart two people are in the family graph, counting a marriage as one step. The common ancestor is the nearest one they share by blood, with the year they were born. A pair four steps apart through a couple born in the 1750s is a relationship; a pair ten steps apart through a progenitor born in the 1630s is background, because almost everybody descends from him. Read both.

1. 1878 Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen lived on 1878 · lived on 1922-01-02
2. 1897 Ockert Almero Oosthuizen held ../1897

Drawn from the parentage and marriages this project holds, never from a shared surname. A pair with no common ancestor here may still be related through a link nobody has recorded yet.

What the record holds, in order

1. 1833 boundary change consolidation: from Middelwater
2. 1878 lived here Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen (18 January 1878–29 October 1961)
   farming
3. 1897 event Ockert Almero Oosthuizen (27 November 1836–2 January 1922), Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen (18 January 1878–29 October 1961), Jan Müller (bought Klein Vallei, 1897)
   Ockert Almero Oosthuizen sells Kouwveldt - properly Klein Vallei, PAR-000088 - to Jan Muller and moves his household to his other farm, Droogekloof (PAR-000007). The same year the brandsiekwet came from Rhodes; 'die enigste goeie ding wat hy in Suid-Afrika gedoen het', the diary says, with the district protesting.
4. before 1897 to 1922-01-02 ownership Ockert Almero Oosthuizen (27 November 1836–2 January 1922)
   owner · confidence medium
5. 2 January 1922 lived here Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen (18 January 1878–29 October 1961)
   farming (residence per death-record informant field)

Research notes

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

Open questions

• Where is Drooge Kloof, the house Frans's father grew up in? priority 1 · LEAD-0064

  Drooge Kloof is a werf name in family use - Frans's father grew up in the house - and it is NOT a farm name in the Prince Albert cadastre. It appears twice in the paper, on two DIFFERENT pieces of ground: as the Government ground annexed into Middelwater No. 169 by the 1833 diagram, and as a struck-through 'Droege Kloof' against Portion 3 of Bloemendal Annex No. 164 on its 1913 verso. Which one is the family's?

  What would settle it Frans saying which farm the house is on, or a coordinate.