← The land

Story · 1802–1936 · v2.2

The Botmas of Spreeufontein

Four generations of one family on the ground the district called Gatsplaas. A Botma laid out a village there during the 1891 gold rush; his grandfather held the farm when the first gold was found; and a son of the house married four times and buried three wives before he was twenty-six. Two le Grange women married two brothers, and Botes and Niehaus run through the whole of it.

In 1891 a Botma laid out a village on his own farm. Two shops, a hotel, a post office. He called it Gatsplaas. The gold had just been found, five hundred people had come down on Spreeufontein, and by the end of the following year it was over.

The name outlasted the gold. Nearly fifty years later a district registrar was still writing Gatsplaas, distrik Prins Albert on an official form, as the burial place of a widow of seventy-nine. She was a Botma by marriage.

Out of the Roggeveld

The first of them on this ground is Lodewyk Botma, and his own papers say where he came from. He was born on 24 May 1802 in the Klein Roggeveld and carried to the font at Tulbagh that December, where four Botmas stood as his godparents and nobody else did. [SRC-603] He married at Worcester twice, in 1821 and again in January 1834, entered both times as a burgher of that place. [SRC-599]

His parents stayed west. When his mother Huibrecht Cloete died in March 1837 she was at Hartebeestfontein in the Middel Roggeveld, in the house of another of her sons, and her notice names eleven heirs and not one Prince Albert address. [SRC-601]

So the move into this district is Lodewyk's own. By 1871, when an aardvark turned up the first lump of gold here, Spreeufontein was his, and on 30 June 1874 he died on it: at his residence Spreeuwfontein, Division of Prince Albert, a farmer, a widower, twelve children and no will. The clerk set down his age to the day, seventy-two years, one month and six days. [SRC-602]

His son carries the name the family would use four times over. Frans Stephanus Botma was born in the Roggeveld about December 1834, and his own death notice of 1908 gives his parents as Lodewyk Botma and Elsje Maritz. [SRC-592] He married Johanna Geertruida Brink at Stellenbosch in December 1854. Nine children.

In March 1899 he took the amended title on the parent portion of Spreeufontein. Nine years later, on 15 April 1908, he was dead, and the notice says where: at his residence "Spreeuwfontein", Prince Albert Division. The man died on his own ground.

What the death notice opens up

That form names five branches rather than nine children, because a death notice lists heirs and not a family.

The eldest, Lodewyk, had been dead eight years by then. He had married a Martha Maria Catharina Botma, a Botma marrying a Botma, and left seven children of whom four were still minors in 1908. He is also the likeliest man to have laid out the village in 1891, because his grandfather of the same name had been seventeen years in the grave.

Cornelis Jacobus was born on the farm in 1867 and lies buried on it. He married Johanna Maria Magdalena le Grange at Prince Albert in April 1887, and she is the widow of the 1939 form, the one who preserved the word Gatsplaas for us.

The two daughters, Elsje Jacoba and Johanna Geertruida, both married a Niehaus.

Le Grange, and then le Grange again

Three years before Cornelis Jacobus's wedding his elder brother had stood in the same church, also with a le Grange. The register of 8 September 1884 enters Maria Johanna le Grange, twenty, of Groot Waterval, and beside her a bridegroom of twenty-four recorded as weduwenaar. [SRC-588] His dwelling stands in the register's own column: Spreeuwfontein.

Two brothers, two le Granges, three years apart. Whether the two women were sisters is not known. What does stand out is that G. M. le Grange signed as a witness at both weddings.

Four wives

That bridegroom is Frans Stephanus Botma, born February 1860, and his life runs through the registers as few others here do.

He married at twenty, to Hester Botes. She was dead before September 1884, because he then stood at the front as a widower with Maria Johanna. Eleven months later he stood there again, a widower again, and married Maria Margaretha Magdalena Niehaus, nineteen years old and a boerin in her own line of the register. [SRC-589] Three wives married and two buried, and he was twenty-five.

The last wedding is in July 1930, and it is not in a church. The register says the marriage was bevestig te Huis van F.S. Botma, district Prince Albert. [SRC-590] He was seventy, his dwelling Skoorsteen, and the bride Magdalena Maria van Tonder, a widow of sixty-one who had been born an Oosthuizen.

She outlived him. In April 1936 he died at Merweville of stomach cancer, after three months, and the family meant to take him back to Skoorsteen to bury him. [SRC-591]

Wilgerfontein

His eldest son, Frans Stephanus, was born in February 1881 and was three when his mother died. He married twice. At Prince Albert in October 1901 to Neeltje Catharina Hough, nine children by her, and when she died in 1916 he married Aletta Magdalena de Koker at Merweville that December. Four more.

By about 1918 he was farming Wilger Fontein No. 59, Crown land surveyed in 1872 and granted on quitrent in 1875 to two Marais men, carrying no Botma on either face of its diagram. [SRC-595] [SRC-596] How they came to be there is not known.

On 9 December 1921 he died there of fever, after fourteen days, with no doctor's name entered on the form. He was forty. His wife reported the death, and where the form asks for her signature there is a cross.

At the foot of the sheet, against the line asking the number of children, somebody pencilled a nine. [SRC-594]

What the nine says

Thirteen children were born. Nine were living. That is four deaths, and all four can be accounted for: a small boy of 1903 whose name was given to the next one, his brother of 1904 who died in the same year as his father, and two little girls, Hester Maria of 1914 and Neeltje Catharina of 1915.

There is a photograph of the family, taken about 1918 on Wilgerfontein. Renè Berry bought it unmarked in a second-hand shop in Oudtshoorn. Ten people stand against a sheet hung over a brick wall, and seven of the eight children fall neatly into place against the birth years.

What is missing is a four-year-old and a three-year-old. There is no toddler in the picture anywhere.

They are Hester Maria and Neeltje Catharina. A portrait of 1918 and a death notice of 1921, made by other hands and for other reasons, agree on the same two absences.

The burial ground

The family's own burial place lies on Vredendal, which is Portion 1 of Spreeufontein and which was called Gatsplaas at the time. Cornelis Jacobus lies there, and his wife of the 1939 form, and the oldest stone on the site is not a Botma's.

It is a slate slab lying flat, and it reads: Hier rust het lijk van Engela Susara Niehaus geb Botes, died 24 July 1886.

Botes and Niehaus, the two surnames running through this whole story. The one gave the eldest son his first wife, the other his third, and when the family sold Lot C in 1909 it was to Jacob A. Niehaus.

What this story is about

Sources

Everything this story rests on, with a link to the original wherever one exists. Where a citation is incomplete it says so, an incomplete citation is a research gap, not a formatting problem. If your work is here and the credit is wrong or thin, please tell us and it will be fixed.

  1. Surveyor-General diagram, 581/1873, 1872 Surveyor-General, Cape Town; sheet CK.8, filed D/G P.A.Q.2-11Dgm. No. 581/1873; title P.A.Q.2-11 (an earlier reference P.A.L.1.15 struck through)
  2. Diagram verso, 581/1873 (verso), 1872 Surveyor-General, Cape Town; back of sheet CK.8Dgm. No. 581/1873 (verso)
  3. Diagram 581/1873: the farm Wilger Fontein No. 59, Prince Albert, surveyed 1872, quitrent to two Marais brothers Surveyor-General, Cape Town; sheet CK.8, filed D/G P.A.Q.2-11Dgm. No. 581/1873; title P.A.Q.2-11 (an earlier reference P.A.L.1.15 struck through)
  4. Diagram 581/1873, back of sheet: the deduction table for Wilger Fontein No. 59 Surveyor-General, Cape Town; back of sheet CK.8Dgm. No. 581/1873 (verso)

Research notes

Built on six documents: the Prince Albert marriage registers of 8 September 1884, 17 August 1885 and 21 July 1930 (SRC-588, SRC-589, SRC-590); the death notices of 1908, 1921 and 1936 (SRC-592, SRC-594, SRC-591); and diagram 581/1873 with its deduction table (SRC-595, SRC-596). THE CHILDREN COUNT ON THE 1921 NOTICE IS WHAT CLOSES THE FAMILY. Nine living against thirteen born leaves four deaths, and all four are accountable, two of them the very children absent from the circa-1918 photograph. It also leaves no room for a fourteenth child, which is why the young woman standing in that photograph is probably not a daughter. STILL OPEN: how Lodewyk BotmaM came by Spreeufontein after 1848; how the family reached Wilgerfontein between the Marais grant of 1875 and 1918; whether the two le Grange brides were sisters; and the Prince Albert burial registers for 1916 to 1921.

[27 Aug 2026] CITATION PASS (LEAD-0315), v2.1: this story was written the same day the fault was found and had the fault itself. It named every register and death notice in the sentence and tagged none of them. Six tags added, both languages.

[27 Aug 2026] Its own Wilger Fontein diagram and deduction table now cited (SRC-595, SRC-596), and the grant restated as Crown land surveyed 1872 and titled 1875.

v+ 28 Aug 2026: Lodewyk BotmaM's own baptism (SRC-603), his 1874 death notice (SRC-602) and his mother's of 1837 (SRC-601) replace the bare 'born in 1802'. The move into this district is now dated to his own lifetime and the Roggeveld origin is on originals.

The research behind this page, kept separate from it: dated working notes, open questions, and what is not yet settled.