Carel Aaron van der Merwe (1771-1850)

1771 – 1850 · van der Merwe line

Connection to the Koup

Took part in something recorded here: The van der Merwes cross from the Boland into the Hantam (1794/1808).

Names

Given: Carel Aaron
Surname: van der Merwe

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.

Immediate family

Father: Schalk Willem van der Merwe (1735-1778)
Married: Elsje Johanna van Heerden (1778-1828) 20 January 1793, Anna Wilhelmina Botha (1798-1845) 16 November 1828
Children: 1794Schalk Willem van der Merwe (1794-1866)

1796Johanna Sophia van der Merwe (1796-1872)

1798Carel Petrus van der Merwe (1798-1847)

1802Louisa Jacoba van der Merwe (1802-1845)

1804Jacobus Alewyn van der Merwe (1804-1870)

1808~Izaak Johannes van der Merwe (1808-1839)

1830Elizabeth Maria van der Merwe (1830-1920)

1833Nicolaas Francois van der Merwe (1833-1857)

A life in the record

1771 born Born
20 January 1793 married Married Elsje Johanna van Heerden (1778-1828)
1794–1808 event The van der Merwes cross from the Boland into the Hantam
Carel Aaron van der Merwe's eldest son was born at Elsenbosch in the Vier-en-Twintig Riviere, Piketberg district, on 1 February 1794. Another son was born at Tygerhoek in the Hantam about May 1808. Both facts come from the men's own death notices, which state a birthplace and an age to the day. Betw
2 June 1823 land Held it, Welbedagt No. 555
16 November 1828 married Married Anna Wilhelmina Botha (1798-1845)
1850 died Died

Ground they are on record on

Welbedagt No. 555 held it · 2 June 1823

Stories

subject The van der Merwes of the Hantam
ancestor The van der Merwes of the Hantam

Others of the same name

Afrikaans naming repeats hard, and the Cape Dutch naming pattern reuses a name on purpose, a child who died young has the name given again to a later sibling. These are different people. Never match on a name alone.

Carel Aaron van der Merwe (1817-1838)

What we don't know

1 other person in this model carry the same name. Never match on a name alone.

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

Sources

Death Notice 2786, filed 12 July 1866: Schalk Willem van der Merwe, Carel Aaron's son, of the farm Lokenburg, Calvinia districtFamilySearch, "Cape Province. Probate Records 1864-1866" (as titled on the image viewer). The Cape series is Master of the High Court, held at KAB, Western Cape Archives.Death notice no. 2786, filed 12 July 1866. Image 2138 of 2278 in the viewer. [TO VERIFY] the ark, film and DGS number: the sheet arrived as a screenshot in conversation on 9 Aug 2026 and the breadcrumb above the image is all that was captured.
Kennisgeving van Sterfgeval 3465 1/2, filed 21 June 1839: Izaak Johannes van der Merwe, Carel Aaron's son, of the place Enkelde Wilgeboom in the Hantam[TO VERIFY] The collection header was not captured. The form is the Dutch-language Cape death notice under Ordonnantie No. 104, so the series is Master of the High Court probate records, KAB.Kennisgeving van Sterfgeval no. 3465 1/2, filed 21 June 1839. [TO VERIFY] the ark, film, image and DGS number. Supplied as a screenshot in conversation on 9 Aug 2026.

Research notes

[TREE, via a FamilySearch fan chart Name, dates and the FamilySearch id only. NO PLACE IMPORTED: the tree's place strings are systematically wrong and are not evidence (see PER-000760).

[11 Aug 2026, SRC-388] HE IS THE JOINT THIS WHOLE CALVINIA RECORD TURNS ON, and more so than it looked. FamilySearch gives him six children, of whom this model held three sons. The other three include TWO DAUGHTERS WHO EACH MARRIED A VISAGIE: Johanna Sophia 1796-1872 (LWFG-THQ), who married Izaak Heremias Visagie, and Louisa Jacoba 1802-1845 (LZ2Z-2XD), who married Hendrik Johannes Visagie. Both ids were already written into this project on 11 Aug from the Visagie side (SRC-386) without anyone knowing whose daughters they were. SO EVERY VISAGIE IN THIS RECORD DESCENDS FROM HIM. His great-grandson Schalk Willem Burger married his granddaughter Anna Maria VisagieM in 1851; two more of his granddaughters stood as witnesses at the 1863 baptism of his great-great-grandson. He married at Cape Town on 20 January 1793 and the household was in the Hantam by 1808 at the latest.

[11 Aug 2026, SRC-390] HE MARRIED TWICE AND THIS MODEL HELD ONLY THE FIRST. Elsje Johanna van HeerdenH died in 1828; on 16 November 1828 he married ANNA WILHELMINA BOTHA (1798-1845), thirty years old to his fifty-seven, and had two more children. The younger, Nicolaas Francois 1833-1857, died at 24 on Tigerkloof, "op den Plaats van Hendrek Bota" - his own mother's people. So the six children on the first marriage are not the whole household.

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.

What the record is missing

The record stops in 1823 and never resumes second order · B2 trail-ends
Welbedagt No. 555 was worked as far as 1823-06-02, with Carel Aaron van der MerweL (1771-1850) the last owner on record. 203 years follow with nothing. Who held it after that, and is it still one farm?

What would settle it The current title deed traced backwards, each transfer names the one before it, or the Surveyor-General's subdivision diagrams, which are what usually explain a farm going quiet.

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.

Elders

FamilySearch profile L28K-3HM