Johannes Paulus Kleu (1876-1902)

[SRC-607] Born 8 December 1876, baptised at ZUURBERG on 6 March 1877, with Thomas Frederik and Catarina Elizabeth de Lange as witnesses. Third of the twelve children of Pieter Egbert KleuL (PER-001523) and Martha Magdalena SoekoeM (PER-001524). Death year 1902 from FamilySearch LKFF-938; no document for it is held here. *** HE IS HERE PRECISELY BECAUSE HE IS NOT THE MAN IN THE REMHOOGTE GRAVE. *** He was proposed for it on 2 September 2026 and withdrawn by Frans the same hour. A row with a baptism on it is what stops the same candidate being proposed a third time from the surname alone; the grave is PER-000518 and the two must not be merged without a document. LEAD-0332.

*** [2 Sep 2026, LATE] FRANS PUTS LKFF-938 BACK ON THE TABLE, AND THE CASE IS BETTER THAN WHEN IT WAS WITHDRAWN. *** 'johannes paulus kleu, was named after his mother's father. so LKFF-938 is a real candidate for war grave.' THE NAMING ARGUMENT CHECKS OUT AS FAR AS A PATTERN CAN. Pieter Egbert KleuL and Martha Magdalena SoekoeM's children run Peter Egbert 1873, Maria Elizabeth Magdalena 1874, JOHANNES PAULUS 1876, so Johannes Paulus is the SECOND SON, which is the position 5b assigns to the mother's father. The same rule was watched working an hour earlier on a register rather than on a table: SRC-613 has Johannes Diederich Kleu named for JOHANNES DEDERICK FERREIRA, his mother's people, standing at the font in 1870. This family names by the rule. NOTE WHAT THAT DOES AND DOES NOT PROVE. It predicts that Martha Magdalena SoekoeM's father was a Johannes Paulus; no record here says so. The pattern generates the hypothesis and cannot confirm it. What it DOES support is the step that matters: a Kleu remembered on a stone as plain JOHANNES, in a family that names by rule, is a Johannes-something, and of the right generation this record holds exactly one. *** AND THREE THINGS HAVE MOVED SINCE THE WITHDRAWAL. *** The stone reads CA 1880, not 1880, so it never stated a year and 1876 is inside its range. The two ages of twenty-two and twenty-three are both second-hand, from an album description and a local history, neither written by anyone who had his baptism. He was twenty-four and two months. And SRC-616 has now put KLEUS IN THE JANSENVILLE AND ABERDEEN COUNTRY, which is where the grave points; his own father married at GRAAFF-REINET in 1872, fifty-five kilometres from Aberdeen. When he was withdrawn, the only Kleu geography this project had was George and Oudtshoorn. *** WHAT STILL STANDS AGAINST HIM IS ONE UNSOURCED YEAR. *** FamilySearch gives him a death in 1902 and no document for it is held here. A man shot on 2 February 1901 did not die in 1902 - unless the 1902 is not a death at all: the Klaarstroom cameo has the Remhoogte man buried in the ravine at Wolwekloof and REINTERRED at the Church of the Good Shepherd, and a reinterment sits in the registers a year or more after the killing. That is a hypothesis and it is not evidence. STATUS: PER-000518 and PER-001945 STAY APART. Frans's judgement of an hour ago was that they are two men and nothing since has overturned it; what has changed is that the case for one man is now the stronger of the two, on three counts against one unsourced year. The merge is not made without a document. THE DOCUMENT THAT DECIDES IT, IN ONE LINE: whatever FamilySearch is resting the 1902 on. Open that before anything else. Then the Aberdeen and Prince Albert burial registers for February 1901, and the Church of the Good Shepherd's own register for the reinterment.

*** [2 Sep 2026] THE 1876 BIRTH IS FIXED, AND THAT CUTS BOTH WAYS. *** [FAMILY] This jp klue has birth cert, so birth is correct LKFF-938. SRC-607 is the ZUURBERG BAPTISM of 6 March 1877 recording 'geboren 8e Dec: 1876', with both parents named. It is not a birth certificate - civil birth registration did not exist at the Cape in 1876 - but a baptism entry taken from the parents seven weeks after the event is the strongest form the period offers, and it agrees to the day with FamilySearch LKFF-938. THE BIRTH IS NOT IN DOUBT. *** WHICH REMOVES THE WIGGLE ROOM RATHER THAN SUPPLYING IT. *** He was TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AND TWO MONTHS on 2 February 1901, exactly, and no longer approximately. The two accounts of the shooting give the dead man as twenty-two and as twenty-three, and the stone reads CA 1880. All three now sit two to four years off a date that cannot move. THAT DOES NOT SINK HIM. Both ages are second-hand, one from an album description and one from a local history, neither written by anyone who had this baptism, and a mason's 'ca' is an estimate by definition. But the gap is now a fixed quantity to be explained rather than a fuzziness to be waved through. AND IT SHARPENS WHAT A BETTER CANDIDATE WOULD LOOK LIKE: a Kleu born about 1878 or 1879, which is what the two accounts and the stone all point at between them. This model holds one such man with no recorded death at all, SEBASTIAAN JOHANNES KLEU b.1879 (PER-002000, G82G-87N) - who fits the age and fails the name, since a Sebastiaan Johannes is called Sebastiaan and the stone says Johannes. SO THE TWO CANDIDATES FAIL ON OPPOSITE TESTS, and neither is chosen. What is still owed is the same single document: whatever FamilySearch rests the 1902 death on.

*** [3 Sep 2026] AND THE 1902 IS NO LONGER WHAT KEEPS HIM OUT. *** The war records give the Remhoogte man a home at WATERKLOOF, ABERDEEN (SRC-619, SRC-620), and Rose Willis explains how anybody knew it: the address was in the pocket of the red waistcoat he was shot in, and the farmer sent the waistcoat to his parents at Aberdeen after the war (SRC-010). This man was baptised at ZUURBERG into a GRAAFF-REINET household and nothing ties him to Aberdeen. He is out on geography, which is better evidence than an unsourced death year ever was. STO-0032 now says so in those terms.