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Person PER-001925

Frans Stephanus Botma (1860-1936)

February 1860 – 4 April 1936

Connection to the Koup

Lived on Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein No. 26) in this district (1884).

Names

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.

Immediate family

Father
Frans Stephanus Botma (1834-1908)
Mother
Johanna Geertruida Brink
Brothers and sisters
Lodewyk Botma (1856-1900), Cornelis Jacobus Botma
Married
Children

A life in the record

  1. February 1860 born Born
  2. 14 June 1880 married Married Hester Botes
  3. 1884 land Lived on it, Spreeuw Fontein & Toornits Kraal (Spreeufontein No. 26)
  4. 8 September 1884 married Married Maria Johanna le Grange
  5. 8 September 1884 occasion Marriage at Prince Albert, Ned. Ger. kerk
  6. 17 August 1885 married Married Maria Margaretha Magdalena Niehaus
  7. 17 August 1885 occasion Marriage at Prince Albert, Ned. Geref. Kerk
  8. 21 July 1930 married Married Magdalena Maria van Tonder, born Oosthuizen
  9. 21 July 1930 occasion Marriage at Huis van F.S. Botma, Prince Albert district
  10. 4 April 1936 event Frans Stephanus Botma dies at Merweville, meant for burial at Skoorsteen
    Stomach cancer, after three months. Seventy-six, a veeboer, and the last of the Spreeufontein title-holder's sons to be recorded on this ground. The family meant to carry him back over the district line to Skoorsteen.
  11. 4 April 1936 died Died

Ground they are on record on

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

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.

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. Prince Albert marriage register 1884, no. 935: Frans Stephanus Botma, widower at 24, of Spreeuwfontein, marries Maria Johanna le Grange of Groot WatervalDuplicaat Origineel Register, huwelike bevestig te Prins Albert; FamilySearch film, image 113 of 180 - film/item number not on the screenshot, [TO VERIFY]No. 935 of 1884; pencil mark 3466
  2. Prince Albert marriage register 1885, no. 851: Botma a widower again at 25, marrying Maria Margaretha Magdalena NiehausDuplicaat Origineel Register, huwelike bevestig te Prins Albert; FamilySearch film, image 485 of 674 - film/item number not on the screenshot, [TO VERIFY]No. 851 of 1885; pencil mark 3234
  3. Prince Albert marriage register 1930, no. 38: Botma at seventy, a widower again, marrying a widow at his own houseDuplicate Original Marriage Register / Duplikaat Origineel Huweliksregister, Prins Albert; FamilySearch film, image 135 of 163 - film/item number not on the screenshot, [TO VERIFY]No. 38 of 1930
  4. Form of Information of a Death, entry 78 of 1936: Frans Stefanus Botma, veeboer, of Merweville, to be buried at SkoorsteenUnion of South Africa, B.M.D. 2, Vorm vir Informasie van 'n Sterfgeval (Act 17 of 1923); registered Merweville, district Beaufort WestNo. of entry 78; registered 7 April 1936; received 4 April 1936

Research notes

[FS L56F-CDL, supplied by ] Son of Frans Stephanus BotmaL (PER-000323) and Johanna Geertruida BrinkM (PER-001604) - the vernoemingspatroon carrying his father's name. THREE MARRIAGES, the first two ending in one terrible year: (1) HESTER BOTES (PER-001926), m. 14 June 1880 at PRINCE ALBERT, d. 1884, three children 1881-1883; (2) MARIA JOHANNA LE GRANGE (PER-001927), m. 8 September 1884 at Prince Albert, d. 1884 per FS - months at most; (3) MARIA MARGARETHA MAGDALENA NIEHAUS (PER-001929), m. 17 August 1885 at Prince Albert (SRC-589) - a widower again at twenty-five, eleven months after the Le Grange wedding; and (4) ALETTA MAGDALENA DE KOKER (PER-001928), the photograph-caption's 'second wife' - at least his FOURTH, the caption counting only the marriages that left living children, perhaps. [TO VERIFY: her marriage record and the Niehaus wife's fate]. OF WILGERFONTEIN, PRINCE ALBERT per the photograph's caption (RES-000041) - the first person tied to Wilger Fontein No. 59. A family photograph of about 1918 circulates (via the SA Genealogy group): him seated centre, his wife with a baby, and nine children of the marriages; the print itself is not held here.

[SRC-591, 26 Aug 2026] HIS DEATH ON PAPER: 4 April 1936 at MERWEVILLE, district Beaufort-Wes, of stomach cancer after three months, aged 76 years 1 month 11 days - which puts his birth on 22 or 23 February 1860 and is why the bare 1860 here is now 1860-02. A veeboer to the end. The family meant to bury him at SKOORSTEEN in the Prince Albert district (PLC-000096), the farm he was living on when he married in 1930; whether they did is not recorded here. The informant was H. W. Bot[h]ma, an adult relative present at the death.

[SRC-590] AND HE MARRIED A FIFTH TIME, at seventy, on 21 July 1930, IN HIS OWN HOUSE: Magdalena Maria van Tonder born Oosthuizen (PER-001930), a widow of sixty-one, who outlived him. So the sequence is Botes 1880, le Grange 1884, Niehaus 1885, De Koker before 1930, van Tonder 1930 - five wives, four of them buried, and the 'second wife' of the family photograph's caption was at least his fourth. *** CORRECTED 26 AUGUST 2026, AND THE CORRECTION IS A WHOLE GENERATION. *** This row was created earlier the same day as the man in the circa-1918 Wilgerfontein family photograph. HE IS NOT. The photograph is his SON of the identical name (PER-001931, 1881-1921), who was thirty-seven in 1918 where this man was fifty-eight, and whose two wives - Hough then De Koker - are exactly the 'children from both marriages' the caption describes. ALETTA MAGDALENA DE KOKER (PER-001928, born 1891) and the Wilgerfontein residence have both been moved to the son. Frans's own reading of the picture, 'looking around 40', was the thing that was right. [FS L2BH-4F4]

WHAT REMAINS TRUE OF THIS MAN: four wives on the record, not five - Hester BotesL 1880, Maria Johanna le GrangeH 1884, Maria Margaretha Magdalena NiehausH 1885, and Magdalena Maria van Tonder in 1930 - the first three all dead within five years and he a widower twice before he was twenty-six. Spreeufontein in 1884, Skoorsteen by 1930, Merweville by 1936, where his son's family had gone before him.

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 L56F-CDL