Hendrik Jacobus Smit

1811 – 1902

Names

Surname: Smit

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.

A life in the record

1811 born Born
1902 died Died

What we don't know

Neither parent is recorded, so this person is not attached to the tree above them.
No dated record ties this person to a specific piece of ground.

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

Research notes

[3 Aug 2026, SRC-200] THIN RECORD, created because this person STOOD AS A BAPTISM WITNESS at Beaufort West in 1841 (BWB-260-11, veldkornetskap F Mocke, page 260) AND is connected to the families this project is built on. KINSHIP PATH, 5 steps to the root couple: child of Jacobus Hendrik Smit -> child of Alewyn Smit -> sibling of Jacobus SmithM -> parent of Johanna Jacomina SmitM -> parent of Adriana Cecilia VenterM. IDENTIFIED ON NAME + DATE, not on the name alone: the name is unique among 44,143 people in the private tree and the tree's dates put this person alive and adult at that font. 22 of 52 unique-name matches from this register were REJECTED because the chronology forbade them. [TO VERIFY] Nothing beyond the tree's own dates and this one appearance is claimed here.

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.