Michiel Johan Bester

1801 – 1854

Names

Surname: Bester

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

1801 born Born
16 February 1840 witness Witnessed a baptism
1854 died Died

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.

they stood for Michiel Johan Bester baptism · 16 February 1840

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.

Sources

Beaufort West NG Gemeente, Baptisms 1819-1844 (doopregister) FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Records (Stellenbosch Archive), 1690-2011"; citing Genealogiese Instituut van Suid-Afrika (GISA), StellenboschSouth Africa > Cape > Beaufort West > Baptisms 1819-1844 > 302 images. Waypoint wc=M64H-PNL:13850901,13850902,14731201,14762701; cc=1392488. Last image (302 of 302) is ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-68TW-GKL. Held here: 91 distinct page images, filed under their ark suffix in sources/registers/beaufort-west-baptisms-1819-1844/

Research notes

[3 Aug 2026, SRC-200] THIN RECORD, created because this person STOOD AS A BAPTISM WITNESS at Beaufort West in 1840 (BWB-232-10, veldkornetskap V.C. C. de Clercq, page 232) AND is connected to the families this project is built on. KINSHIP PATH: 7 steps to the root couple in the private tree. THE PATH ITSELF IS NOT PRINTED, because its shortest route runs through people this site suppresses as living - the step count is the claim, the names are not ours to publish. 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.