Lodewyk Botma (1856-1900)
1856 – 1900 · Bothma line
Connection to the Koup
Took part in something recorded here: An aardvark turns up the FIRST gold nugget on Spreeuwfontein - twenty years before the rush (1871-08).
Names
- Given
- Lodewyk
- Surname
- Botma
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
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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
- Mother
- Johanna Geertruida Brink
- Brothers and sisters
- Frans Stephanus Botma (1860-1936), Cornelis Jacobus Botma
A life in the record
- 1856 born Born
-
August 1871
event
An aardvark turns up the FIRST gold nugget on Spreeuwfontein - twenty years before the rush
2½ oz, round, water-worn and encrusted with crystals, in the spoil of a burrow on Lodewyk Bothma's farm 50 km from Prince Albert. Young Bothma took it for a sheep dropping, kicked it aside, then pocketed it as a pretty stone for his mother; she thought it "queer" and it ended up on a cupboard. Sir R
-
1891
event
Lodewyk Bothma lays out Gatsplaas, named for the hole the first nugget came from
He beat N.J. Gillet, who wanted to found a town called Gilletville. F Brazier developed the township; Jan Haak put up the first iron-and-wood building; Thomas Vinson a shop, a German firm a butchery, Cole of Cape Town a bakery, Dr Bastable a practice. Two shops, a hotel, a bottle store, barbers and
- 1900 died Died
Stories
- subject The Botmas of Spreeufontein
What we don't know
- 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
- "The Prince Albert goldfields, 1891" Arid Areas Research and DevelopmentRose's Roundup
- "The Karoo's mini gold bonanza" Engineering News / Mining Weekly21 Feb 2014
- Rose Willis & Doreen Atkinson, "Zeekoegat: Explorations in the Koup Karoo" (2022) Karoo Development Foundation38pp cameo
Research notes
[FS GXH4-21C] Eldest son of Frans Stephanus BotmaL and Johanna Geertruida BrinkM, and the most likely candidate for the BOY WHO FOUND THE FIRST NUGGET on Spreeufontein in 1871 (SRC-068, STO-0020). He was FIFTEEN that year. His grandfather and namesake Lodewyk BothmaM (PER-000037) was sixty-nine in 1871 and died in 1874, so the source's "young boy" cannot be that man, and this project had the two of them as one row. [TO VERIFY] against the account itself, which names a Lodewyk without dates. The village of Gatsplaas laid out after the find may belong to either.
[SRC-592] His father's 1908 death notice records him as ALREADY DEAD and married to MARTHA MARIA CATHARINA BOTMA - a Botma wife, so cousins marrying - leaving SEVEN CHILDREN, four of them minors in 1908: Aletta Francina (a major), Johanna Geertruida, Frans Stephanus, Lodewyk, Abraham Christoffel, Martha Maria Catharina and Elsje Johanna. None is in the model yet (LEAD-0309).
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.
Elders
FamilySearch profile GXH4-21C