Testimonial for Miss Johanna Malherbe from the Principal of the Huguenot Seminary, Wellington, March 1896
correspondence · an original record · consulted 2026-08-16
- Type
- correspondence
- Repository
- Family papers, held by Frans Oosthuizen
- Reference
- One typed leaf, signed in ink "A. P. Ferguson", dated Wellington, March 1896.
- Consulted
- 2026-08-16
The citation as it was given
TRANSCRIBED IN FULL, 16 Aug 2026: "This is to certify that Miss Johanna Malherbe was for two years a pupil at the Huguenot Seminary, that her conduct was good, that she was faithful and diligent in her studies, and that I can recommend her heartily as a teacher, believing that she will be successful in her work. [signed] A. P. Ferguson. Principal of Huguenot Seminary. Wellington, March, 1896." || SHE WAS TRAINED AS A TEACHER, WHICH THIS PROJECT DID NOT KNOW. Johanna Fredricka Malherbe [PER-000140] turned twenty-one that May; two years at the Seminary puts her there from about 1894. She married Almero Jacobus Hitge Oosthuizen seven years later, in May 1903. || THE SIGNATURE IS A REAL PERSON AND A CHECKABLE ONE. Abbie Park Ferguson was the American principal of the Huguenot Seminary at Wellington, the girls' school founded in 1874 on the Mount Holyoke model. That a Karoo farmer's daughter was sent there for two years is a fact about the family's intentions as much as about her. || The name on the paper is JOHANNA MALHERBE and nothing more, so the identification rests on the family holding it. [FAMILY]
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.
What rests on this source
People
- Johanna Fredricka Malherbe 31 May 1875 – 14 September 1959