Zwartkraal

· on record 1936 · 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

Frederik Simon Oosthuizen lived on this ground. Not yet placed on the map.

Frederik Simon Oosthuizen is on record on this ground directly. No trace needed.

story A written history is set on this ground Roy Oosthuizen's fossil
story A written history is set on this ground The church at Zeekoegat
story A written history is set on this ground Eighty-one thousand morgen
story A written history names this ground Three farms in one deed: Anna Margaretha, 1937

Stories

set here Roy Oosthuizen's fossil
Roy Oosthuizen split a nodule on Zwartkraal in the 1980s and found a braincase. Oelofsen named it for him in 1986 and filed it as a shark. In 2013, fourteen years after he died, a CT scan read the inside of it and found a chimaera - and with it the origin of the last major vertebrate group nobody could place. Nature, 4 Jan 2017.
set here The church at Zeekoegat
Three generations of Oosthuizens in the Zwartberg church, and the rich farmer who built a chapel 65 km out on the dirt for a hundred people.
set here Eighty-one thousand morgen
Frederik Simon 'Oom Frikkie' Oosthuizen died in 1936 holding, by one account, 81,000 morgen around Zwartkraal - about a quarter of all the ground on this map. This project holds not one deed in his name. What the money was probably in, what it was certainly not in, and the one document that would settle it.
mentions this farm Three farms in one deed: Anna Margaretha, 1937
On 20 December 1937 one transfer deed put three farms and 11,897 morgen into the name of Anna Margaretha Marincowitz, born Oosthuizen - Tokkie's mother, and one of only seven women in this model recorded holding ground in her own right. Her father had died fourteen months earlier and her brother took the neighbouring portion the same day.

What the record holds, in order

1936 lived here Frederik Simon Oosthuizen (29 May 1856–10 October 1936)
farming · to 1936

Research notes

[SRC-067] The farm Frederik Simon OosthuizenH (1856-1936) lived on. Also spelled Zwartskraal - the farm where Roy Don OosthuizenM later collected the fossils that carry his name.

30 Jul 2026 [SRC-068]: by the early 1900s the centre of an 81,000-morgen (~69,400 ha) holding reaching from the N1 to the Traka, incl. Groot and Klein Sleutelfontein and Zeekoegat (LEAD-0012).

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

Open questions

Where did Frikkie's money come from priority 2 · LEAD-0012
What built Frederik Simon OosthuizenH's (PER-000006) 81,000-morgen fortune around Zwartkraal?

What would settle it 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

What the record is missing

Nobody is on record as ever having held this third order · B8 never-held
Zwartkraal is in the model, and carries no ownership record of any kind, not a grant, not a transfer, not an occupation.

What would settle it The Surveyor-General's diagram for the farm number names the grantee and the date; the deed reference on it opens the transfer chain.

Found by breaks.py reading the model against itself, not written by hand, each one is a shape of missing record, not a fault in the data. The whole set is on the questions page.