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Person PER-000589

Petrus Jacobus Venter

about 1785 – ? · Venter line

Connection to the Koup

Married into a household on this ground: Cornelia Petronella Oosthuizen.

Names

Baptismal name
Petrus Jacobus
Given
Petrus Jacobus
Surname
Venter

The formal baptismal name and the name a person was actually called are both kept, and neither is derived from the other. Spelling drift between records is evidence, not noise.

Three generations around this person

Petrus Venter 1726 Martha du Plessis 1730
Jan Louis Venter 1754
Jacobus Smith 1716 Catharina van Dyk 1724
Johanna Jacomina Smit 1760
Petrus Jacobus Venter 1785 Cornelia Petronella Oosthuizen 1791
Petrus Jacobus Stephanus Venter 1809 Susanna Catharina Petronella Venter 1811 Jan Louis Venter 1813 Ockert Jacobus Venter 1816 Johanna Jacoba Maria Venter 1817 Jacobus Daniël Venter 1819 Hermanus Carl Andries Venter 1820 Cornelia Petronella Magdalena Venter 1822 Catharina Petronella Venter 1825 Roelof Venter 1827 Hendricus Johannes Venter 1829 Johanna Jacomina Susanna Venter 1830

Work out how this person is related to somebody else →

Click any name and the same three generations are drawn around that person instead. There is no first couple here and no top to the tree: it is only ever the family standing closest to whoever you are reading about, and a blank is a gap in the record rather than a statement about anybody.

Immediate family

Father
Jan Louis Venter
Mother
Johanna Jacomina Smit
Brothers and sisters
Married
Cornelia Petronella Oosthuizen
Children

A life in the record

  1. about 1785 born Born
  2. 19 March 1786 event Petrus Jacobus Venter baptised at Paarl
    Baptised at the family's own church with his father's two sisters and their husbands standing - Tjaart van der Walt with Maria Elizabeth Venter, Jan Louis du Plessis with Hester Venter (the couples MOOC8/50.47a names, SRC-581). The register writes no birth date; he was born about 1785.
  3. 19 March 1786 occasion Baptism at Paarl (Drakenstein) [FS]
  4. 23 April 1809 event The estate at de Modder Fonteyn is inventoried
    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 be
  5. 19 August 1821 event Three Oosthuijzen siblings on one register page
    Not an event so much as a shape the page makes, and it is the kind of thing this project exists to find. On 19 August 1821 the Beaufort West register carries two baptisms back to back: ENTRY 381 - Petrus Jacobus Venter and CORNELIA PETRONELLA OOSTHUIJZEN's son. ENTRY 382 - CORNELIS ANDRIES OOSTHUIJZ
  6. 19 August 1821 witness Witnessed a baptism of a child · Cornelis Andries Oosthuizen

Who stood with them

Who signed at a baptism, a will or a survey is not incidental. It is the clearest surviving record of which families stood close to which.

Stories

What we don't know

A sourced gap beats an unsourced fill. These are the open questions on this person, stated rather than papered over.

Sources

  1. MOOC8/28.63 - Inventory of the estate of Ockert Oosthuijzen, taken at de Modder Fonteyn on the Olifants River, 23 April 1809 Cape Archives (KAB), Master of the Orphan Chamber; transcription published by TANAP / Globalise (Huygens KNAW)MOOC8/28.63, {18090423}
  2. Beaufort West baptisms, August 1821, entries 377–385 (image S3HY-6573-X8X) FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Records (Stellenbosch Archive), 1690-2011"; citing Genealogiese Instituut van Suid-Afrika, Stellenboschark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6573-X8X; South Africa > Cape > Beaufort West > Baptisms 1819-1844; register entries 377-385
  3. A sweep of the published MOOC8 for the officials who signed the 1809 Modderfonteyn inventory - and the Cango estate they took four days earlier TANAP / Globalise (Huygens KNAW), Cape transcriptions, Orphan Chamber MOOC8MOOC8/28.63 (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.
  4. Baptism of Petrus Jacobus Venter, 19 March 1786 - and the register writes no birth datePaarl NG, register G3/3/4 (baptisms 1786-1799) - PROVEN BY TARGET CARD, 24 Aug 2026: 'CONT FROM ANOTHER ROLL - ROLL NUMBER 79. CAPE DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH REGISTERS - PROJECT S.AF 00532. DETAIL OF ITEM NUMBERS' listing items 4-9 as Paarl baptism registers, item 9 being G3/3/4, 1786-1799. The item assignment is by year-fit: only G3/3/4 covers 1786-1790. Film of 125 images. Earlier note stands: FamilySearch L4Q7-841 independently gives the christening place as Paarl, Drakenstein.Register opening paginated 6-7, second entry on page 6

Research notes

[TREE] Added 2026-07-31 by kin_sweep.py under the one-degree rule: child of Cornelia Petronella OosthuizenH, spouse of Cornelia Petronella OosthuizenH. Thin record, name, dates and the family link only. NO PLACE IMPORTED: the tree's place strings are systematically wrong and are not evidence.

[14 Aug 2026] MERGED PER-000293 into this row. One man, two rows, joined by his wife's age. PER-000293 came off the 1809 estate inventory SRC-092 as 'husband of Cornelia Petronella OosthuizenH, then 17', with no dates at all. PER-000589 came off the private tree as Petrus Jacobus VenterH 1786-1846, whose recorded spouse is PER-000144 Cornelia Petronella OosthuizenH, born 1791 - which makes her 17 going on 18 in 1809, exactly as the inventory says. Same name, same wife, same age at the same date. WHAT THE MERGE IS WORTH: PER-000589's parents are Jan Louis VenterL and Johanna Jacomina SmitM, so this man is ADRIANA CECILIA VENTER'S OWN ELDER BROTHER - and the note on the retired row, that a Venter married an Oosthuizen thirteen years before Ockert Almero and Adriana Cecilia's son married Adriana Cecilia, becomes a much stronger statement than it was: it was her brother, not merely someone of her surname. The retired row's claim that he was 'child of Cornelia Petronella OosthuizenH' was a kin_sweep artefact and is wrong; his mother is Johanna Jacomina SmitM. Moved across: given=Petrus Jacobus; doopnaam=Petrus Jacobus; flourished_edtf=1809; living=0.

[24 Aug 2026] BIRTH CORRECTED from 1786-03-19, which was his BAPTISM date recorded as a birth: the register entry (SRC-575) carries no gebooren margin at all. Born about 1785 - the page's own baptism-lag pattern, the arithmetic against his brother's 26 Jan 1786 birth (SRC-576), and FamilySearch L4Q7-841 all agree; circa because no document states the day. This closes the 52-day impossible-spacing pair on LEAD-0108.

[24 Aug 2026] THE DEATH DATE IS NOW IN QUESTION: this row carries 1846-10-05, but FamilySearch L4Q7-841 records no death source and reasons that he 'still gave permission on his son's marriage of 11 Sep 1848'. A man cannot consent two years after dying, so either 1846-10-05 is wrong, or it belongs to a namesake - note his brother Jacobus Daniel also carries d. 1846. NOT changed: the marriage record has not been seen. [TO VERIFY]

[24 Aug 2026] DEATH DATE 1846-10-05 REMOVED, DISPROVEN BY REGISTER: he consents in person to his daughter Johanna Jacomina Susanna's marriage at Colesberg on 29 MAY 1848 (SRC-578, entry 959), nineteen months after that date. The 1846 date was [TREE] and may belong to his brother Jacobus Daniel (d. 1846) or another namesake. His actual death is unknown: alive 29 May 1848, and FS reasons he consented again on 11 Sep 1848 (record not yet seen). [TO VERIFY]

These are working notes, not finished prose: they carry the reasoning, the corrections and the things still marked to verify. They are kept here so the page itself can read as what is known.

Open questions

Elders

FamilySearch profile L4Q7-841