How the Oosthuizens came to the Koup, 1685-1841

The Venters and the Strydoms were on this ground first, and the Oosthuizens married into families who were already here. The Beaufort roll of 1822 catches it in one document

A soldier came ashore in Table Bay in September 1685; five generations later his descendants were farming on the north side of the Swartberg, six hundred kilometres east. This is the road in four moves - Drakenstein, Swellendam, the Olifants River, and across the mountain - with the story that tells each stage. The Swellendam district then ran east over the mountains and took in the Little Karoo, which is why a family on the Olifants appears in Swellendam papers and then, without moving, in George papers.

A soldier came ashore in Table Bay in September 1685. Five generations later his descendants were farming on the north side of the Swartberg, six hundred kilometres east, and they got there in four moves.

This page is the road, not the stations. Each stage has a story of its own that tells it properly, and this one deliberately does not retell them. It holds them in order, so that four separate pieces read as the single journey they were, and then it does the one thing none of them does on its own: it asks how the ground came.

The four moves

1685 · Table Bay. Johannes Oosthuijsz, Jan in every record that speaks to him rather than about him, enters the Company's service as an adelborst on 13 May 1685, sails with the Land van Schouwen and is discharged at the Cape. Everyone in this project descends from him. He was a young man from Woerden, or Werden, or Werl, and the muster roll is not certain. → The muster roll

About 1702 · Drakenstein. Jan married Johanna Martens, and of their sons this road runs through Jacobus, born 1722. The brothers Gerhardus, Martinus and Jan Hendrik lead away from the Koup, and they still matter, because their sons and grandsons are all over the same records and all called Ockert and Marthinus and Gerhardus. The clerks solved it by writing down whose son a man was, and this record has to be read the same way. [SRC-074] [SRC-094]

1749–1809 · Swellendam. Jacobus Oosthuysen d'oude married Dina Carolina Brits at Tulbagh in 1749 and they had thirteen children, every one of them of the district of Swellendam, which then ran east over the mountains and took in the Little Karoo and kept doing so until George was cut out of it on 23 April 1811. That administrative fact is why a family on the Olifants River turns up in Swellendam papers and then, without moving an inch, in George papers. What that generation owned was not land but the opstal on a loan place.

From 1765 Jacobus held one of his own: Gamthous Bergh on the Canna, the water its own survey of 1818 calls the Kandelaarsrivier. [SRC-667] [SRC-668] His brother Jan Hendrik's son Marthinus took Welbedagt in the Attaquaskloof in 1780, from Ockert Olivier, whose own place Armoed lay between the two. [SRC-669] Nine kilometres the one way and ten the other: this stretch of the Olifants is where the family was, two generations before the Koup. → The Oosthuizens of Swellendam

April 1809 · de Modder Fonteyn, on the Olifants River. Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen died at de Modder Fonteyn intestate, his wife already dead. A clerk from the Orphan Chamber rode out on 23 April and wrote the house down room by room, including a complete forge in a room he calls de winkel. Eleven children are named with their ages. The farm went to the eldest son, aged twenty-five, for a thousand rixdollars, on his promise to raise and school the seven youngest. The other ten had to find ground elsewhere, and that sentence is the reason this road has a fourth move at all. → From Modder Fonteyn to the Koup

Two rules for reading a road like this

A baptism names a church, not a home

Seven of one couple's children were baptised between 1786 and 1808 at Paarl, Roodezand, Graaff-Reinet, Swartland and Swellendam, and Graaff-Reinet in 1799 and Swartland in 1802 are 558 kilometres and three years apart. [SRC-515] [SRC-517] [SRC-518] No household made that journey twice between confinements. What the column tracks is kin: Paarl is this family's own church, Roodezand is where the grandfather married in 1749, and at Graaff-Reinet the witness is a van Tonder, the mother's family, with the child named Roelof for him.

The exception is a register that says so outright. In 1812 the Stellenbosch clerk writes / George Drostdy / in the residence column against a child carried 331 kilometres to the font, and he wrote it because the distance was unusual. [SRC-545] A stated dwelling is evidence. An inferred one is not.

A tax roll names a farm

The Swellendam opgaafrol of 1808, volume J 322, does what no other document here does: it names each householder, his wife, and the farms he held, in columns. It also shows how a field cornet worked, because the entries run in the order he rode his ward, so the Oosthuizens appear in clusters with the same families beside them each time: Otto, du Plessis, Snijman, Saayman, van Rensburg. Reading it is unfinished and the patronymics are at the edge of legibility, so no household on it is claimed here yet. [SRC-486] not yet verified

1822 · three farms in the leenings-plaats column

Thirteen years after the estate was taken on the Olifants, a clerk at Beaufort wrote out the veldcornet Christiaan Hatting's ward householder by householder, and ruled a column on the facing leaf headed leenings plaats, the loan place each man held.

Line 16 is the eldest son, the one who bought de Modder Fonteyn out of his father's estate. He is on Koup ground with a farm of his own nineteen years before the grant of 15 April 1841 makes it his in law. Line 3 is the first holder named anywhere in this record for the 1777 loan farm De Claar Stroom.

Which way the ground came

Three of the farms this family is known by came to it three different ways, and the roll catches two of them in one document.

Middelwater came through a marriage. Adriana Cecilia Venter, the daughter of Jan Louis Venter on line 21, married Ockert Almero Oosthuizen at Swellendam in October 1807. He holds Middelwater on loan from 1833 and takes the perpetual quitrent in 1841. The farm was his wife's father's.

Rondabel came through two. Jan Adriaan Venter died on the place on 23 July 1829. The perpetual quitrent went in 1841 to David Jan Strydom, who was the brother of the Anna Magdalena Strydom standing on line 16. By January 1868 it was Jan Adriaan Oosthuizen's. Two families they had married into held it before an Oosthuizen did.

Vrolykheid came neither way. Jacobus Johannes is on it in 1822 with nobody recorded before him, and it is his in 1841.

So the arrival was not a landless family marrying up. Jacobus Johannes had bought his father's farm and still owed six hundred and fifty-six rixdollars of the price in December 1810. What the roll shows is smaller and more exact, and as far as the records gathered here go it is this: the Venters and the Strydoms were on this ground first, and the Oosthuizens married into families who were already here.

The people and the ground

By 1834 · two of three farms along the Swartberg

Within about twenty-five years of that inventory, Oosthuizen households held two of the three adjoining farms along the north foot of the Swartberg, Middelwater and Vrolykheid. The middle one was not theirs: Stretch's own sheet for De Claar Stroom, diagram 350 of 1833, reads "Surveyed for the Widow Du Pre", which agrees with the du Preez household on line 3 of the roll above. An Oosthuizen appears on that farm only in 1858.

They had come into ground the Company's own minutes describe as emptied, more than a hundred places standing abandoned in 1791, and they arrived before the grants of 15 April 1841 turned grazing into property.

Where to read on

Why the road matters as much as the destination

The families of this district did not appear here. They arrived, from somewhere, for reasons that are usually recoverable: a farm sold to an eldest brother, a district that ran over a mountain range, ground standing empty on the far side of it.

The Olifants is where this family stood immediately before the Koup, which is why the people they lived beside and married into there are part of this record and not a digression. Some of those neighbours crossed the Swartberg too, and on the evidence of the 1822 roll some of them crossed it first and were waiting.

What this story is about

• about Johannes "Jan" Oosthuijsz (stamvader)
• about Johanna Martens
• about Gerhardus Oosthuijzen (b.1703)
• about Martinus Oosthuisen (b.1712)
• about Jan Hendrik Oosthuijsen
• about Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1722)
• about Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen (b.1755)
• about Susanna Catharina van Tonder
• set on De Modder Fonteyn (aan d'Olifants rivier)

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. FamilySearch Family Tree - Oosthuizen direct line FamilySearchperson pages 972X-2LJ, LZ1Q-GDF, LDQC-R1B, LDQC-R17, LDQC-RTX and their family viewsview it online →
2. Baptism 22 November 1722: Jacobus, son of Jan Oosthuysen and Jannetje Martens FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994"; State Archives, Cape Provinceark 3:1:3Q9M-CSV8-W944-B; cc=1478678; register pages 59-60, ANNO 1722view it online →
3. MOOC8/28.63 - Inventory of the estate of Ockert Oosthuijzen, taken at de Modder Fonteyn on the Olifants River, 23 April 1809 Cape Archives (KAB), Master of the Orphan Chamber; transcription published by TANAP / Globalise (Huygens KNAW)MOOC8/28.63, {18090423}view it online →
4. Target card - Swellendam opgaafrol J 322, 1808 (the citation for film 008145384) FamilySearch, "Opgaafrollen, 1692-1844"; Cape Archives J-series census returns. SWELLENDAM, CAPE PROVINCE - volume J 322 - year 1808.Film # 008145384, image 318 of 519. The NEW BEGINS card; an END card faces it at image 317.
5. Graaff-Reinet baptism register, September 1799, pages 116-117: the baptism of Roelof, son of Ockert Oosthuijsen and Susanna Catharina van Tonder, and the same couple standing witness FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994"Film #008121018, ITEM 1 = GRAAFF-REINET, BAPTISM, 1792-1805. Image 82 of 176; the opening carries 'Bladzy 119/120' in the header and '116' and '117' as page numbers against the entries. Month band reads September 1799.
6. Swartland baptism register: the baptism of Susanna Johanna, daughter of Ockert Oosthuijzen and Susanna Catharina van Tonder, born 19 March 1801, baptised 6 December 1802 FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994". Filmed under project S-AF 00532, roll 92.Film #008147789, ITEM 2 = SWARTLAND G5/3/3, BAPTISM, 1783-1809. Image 141 of 202; the opening carries pages 192 and 193 and the year band 1802. The film's item table (image 2) lists item 1 SWARTLAND G5/3/2 (p42, from 1762) baptism 1745-1782, 142 pages, and item 2 as above.
7. Roodezand (Tulbagh) baptism register: the baptism of Pieter Marthinus, son of Okkert Oosthuijsen and Susanna Catrina van Tonder, born 9 June 1795, baptised 27 March 1796 FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994". Project S-AF 00532, roll 87.Film #008121003, ITEM 3 = TULBAGH G4/1/1, BAPTISM, 1743-1800. Image 416 of 779; page 333, entry No. 30, year band 1796. The volume's title page is image 185: 'Het boek der Gedoopte kinderen De Kerkgemeente van 't Land van Waveren, sedert 't jaar 1743'. The film's item table also lists item 1 PAARL G3/4/2 death 1824-1859 (99 pp) and item 2 PAARL G3/6/3 death 1876-1883 (97 pp).
8. Paarl (Drakenstein) baptism register: the baptism of Gert Adriaan, son of Ocert Oosthuijsen and Susanna Catharina van Tonder, born 2 January 1794 FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994". Project S-AF 00532, roll 80.Film #008121000, ITEM 1 = PAARL G3/3/4 (from page 188), BAPTISM, 1786-1799. Image 44 of 700; the opening carries pages 258 and 259.
9. Stellenbosch baptism register 1812, pages 400-401: the baptism of Daniel Johannes, entry No 54, with the household's residence given as GEORGE DROSTDY Stellenbosch Dutch Reformed congregation; supplied via FamilySearch, "South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1994"Opening headed 1812, left leaf page 400 'Namen der', right leaf page 401 'Gedoopten'. Entry No 54.

Research notes

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