Vrolykheid's story

From an Oosthuizen loan place to the Marincowitz root in the Karoo

The farm where the paper and the people disagree: Stretch's 1833 survey already carrying the names of portions not cut for another century, two titles granted on one day in 1841 - one to an Oosthuisen and one to an 'N. Hitge' whose deed four later portions cite instead - a Trieste immigrant who married a Hitge in 1844 and died holding the farm in 1890, and the death notice that finally put the Hitges on the ground.

There is a second Vrolykheid, No. 61 at Tulbagh, and it is not related to this one. Because this family lived at Tulbagh for two generations before they came to the Koup, whether the Karoo farm was named after that one is an open question and not an established fact.

The place

Vrolykheid lies against the north face of the Zwartberg, in what the 1833 surveyor called the Field Cornetcy of Traka and what the 1934 surveyors, correcting their own printed forms by hand, called Kredouw. It is bounded south by the Zwarte Berg itself, east by Oorlogs Kloof, west by Wilga Mount, and north by what was then still Government ground. The name means cheerfulness, and it is spelled Vrolykheid on the diagrams and Vrolikheid in the cadastre.

This is the farm where the paper and the people disagree, and where the disagreement is the story.

Marked because it is not proved: the Klaarstroom cameo ([SRC-010], a local history and therefore tertiary) describes the 1777 loan farm De Claar Stroom as running "from the modern farm called Middelwater, at the present-day tarred turn-off to Prince Albert, to Vrolikheid, 10 km down the gravel road to Willowmore". If that is right, Vrolykheid and Middelwater are the two ends of one loan place, and both are ground divided out of it, which would make this farm's story begin sixty years earlier than the 1833 survey below. It is not yet verified: loan-farm extents were walked rather than surveyed, and a grazing right over a radius is not a boundary. See De Claar Stroom: the farm the town stands on.

The Oosthuizens hold it before any surveyor reaches it (1809-1822)

This farm's own paper begins eleven years before Stretch rode out.

The Beaufort opgaafrol of 1822 carries Vrolykheid in its leenings-plaats column against line 16, and line 16 is Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen [SRC-558], the Modderfonteyn heir whose household the Traka register had already carried in 1818. That household came off the Olifants river after their father died there in 1809, and its road is told in From Modder Fonteyn to the Koup.

A tax roll is a strong document and a narrow one. It settles that a man of that name held this loan in 1822. It does not settle which Jacobus Johannes, and the 1841 grant reopens that question below.

A second catalogue entry dates the household from the other end. The NAAIRS index carries a will of Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen drawn in 1817 and filed in 1847. [SRC-537] The document itself is unread and the description says nothing beyond the name, but the two dates carry a finding on their own: a joint will is lodged when the first spouse dies and the estate is wound up. He married Anna Magdalena Strydom at Uitenhage in March 1808 and married again, to Anna Helena Roscher, in February 1847. So the filing dates her death to within weeks of it, and the drawing puts the couple settled enough in 1817 to make a will. not yet verified

And the family says 1809. A descendant states, in two letters, that Ockert Jacobus Oosthuizen was born on Vrolikheid in 1809: the son of that same Jacobus Johannes, and later the man who trekked to the Marico and named a farm there Klaarstroom, after the place bordering the ground he was born on. [SRC-119, SRC-294][FAMILY][TO VERIFY] It is testimony and it is treated as testimony. What would settle it is one line in the Beaufort West baptism register for 1809, which names the farm and the parents together. See LEAD-0110.

So the 1833 diagram records not an arrival but a household already long in place, which is what a loan farm normally was, and what there is almost no paper for.

The survey, and the names already on the ground (1833)

In August 1833 Charles Lennox Stretch, the same surveyor, in the same season, who measured Middelwater and Rondabel, measured this place too (SG diagram B355/1833):

"The Loan Farm Vrolykheid with the annexed Government ground containing 6890 Morgens, Surveyed for Jacobus Johannes Oosthuisen As. son, Field Cornetcy of Traka."

"As. son" is a patronymic: this Jacobus Johannes is being told apart from another by his father's name.

The tax rolls say whose son he was. The Beaufort roll of 1822 enrols Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen and his wife Anna Magdalena Strydom with Vrolykheid as their loan place, beside his brothers Cornelis Andries and Roelof, and the roll of 1824 writes him Ockert Zoon with Vrolykheid on his line [SRC-558] [SRC-634]. He is Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen, eldest son of the Ockert who died on de Modder Fonteyn in 1809.

The abbreviation itself still does not fit him. As. is not Ockert, and the obvious reading, Almero's son, fails as well: the father is written Ocker on his son's baptism entry and Ockert throughout his own 1809 estate, and the Almero enters the family one generation later. The sheet held here is a copy typed in 1963, and what the 1833 hand wrote has not been seen: see LEAD-0354. not yet verified

One farm in that row of three was not theirs, and it is the middle one. Stretch measured De Claar Stroom between Middelwater and Vrolykheid in the same month, and his sheet reads "Surveyed for the Widow Du Pre". The Beaufort roll of 1822 agrees from the other end: Klaare Stroom stands against Hermanus Carel du Preez [SRC-559], born at Tulbagh in 1760 [TREE], whose family held that ground while the Oosthuizens held the two farms on either side of it. An Oosthuizen appears on it only in 1858, when the village was laid out. So the brothers are on two farms in 1833, not three, and Vrolykheid's own reading has to stand on its own evidence.

The remarkable thing about the diagram is what is already written inside its boundary: Wit Plaats, Uitkyk Hek, Frans Kraal, Marinco, Lot B, the names of five of the six portions that would be surveyed off this farm a full century later, in 1934. The werf and veld names came first; the portions were cut to fit names that were already there.

With one problem. Marinco is a Marincowitz name, and Gerolm Marincowitz did not reach the Cape until 1838, five years after this survey. The copy we hold carries a 1963 copy-stamp, so the likeliest explanation is that some internal names were added to the sheet later. It is flagged rather than explained away not yet verified.

Two titles on one day (15 April 1841)

On 15 April 1841, the same afternoon that settled Middelwater, Rondabel and the rest. Vrolykheid was granted on perpetual quitrent to Jacobus Johannes Oosthuisen, deed Bf.W.Q.5-1B.

And a portion of it, Wit Plaats, was granted the same day to N. Hitge, deed B.W.Q.5.18. That initial is all the record gives: no first name, no dates.

Here is the difficulty, and it has not been solved. Four of the portions later cut off this farm. Wit Plaats, Uitkyk Nek, Marinco and Faans Kraal, cite the 1841 Hitge title as their antecedent, not the Oosthuisen grant the farm is otherwise taken to descend from. And the Oosthuisen deed number as typed on our 1963 copy, Bf.W.Q.5-1B, is one glyph away from Bf.W.Q.5-18, the Hitge deed. Either the copy-stamp is a misreading, or Hitge's title covered far more of Vrolykheid than the Wit Plaats portion suggests. Both readings are live not yet verified.

The Hitges were actually on the ground (1844–1846)

For a long time "N. Hitge" was a name on a deed with no flesh on it, which is what made the title puzzle feel like a paper problem. Two records put the family physically on this farm.

On 5 June 1844, at Uitenhage, Gerolm Marincowitz, born in Trieste on 11 February 1805, an Adriatic immigrant whose surname reaches the Karoo as Marincovich, not out of the Netherlands, married Hester Carolina Adriana Hitge (1826–1892), daughter of Nicolaus Hitge (1785–1848) and Mary Wright Hunt. They had ten children.

Two years later, on 29 July 1846, Hester's brother Charles Frederick Hitge died on this farm. His death notice, number 8586, filed within five weeks and signed by another brother, gives it plainly (DOC-0110):

Name: Charles Frederik Hitge. Birth-place: In England. Parents: Nicolaus Hitge and Mary Hunt. Age: 27 years 11 months & 29 days. Condition in life: Farmer. Married to Sophia Johanna Mocke. Where the person died: "Vrolykheid Zwarteberg." Children: "An infant, not yet baptized." Property: Moveable.

A farmer of twenty-seven, born in England, dead on a Zwartberg farm five years after the Hitge title was granted, leaving nothing but moveables and a seven-week-old daughter.

That daughter is Aletta Catharina Maria Helena Hitge, born on 11 June 1846 and baptised after her father was already dead, with both sets of grandparents standing as witnesses. In 1863 she married Ockert Almero Oosthuizen, born on Middelwater in 1836. Her widowed mother, Sophia Johanna Mocke, married the man who took the Middelwater quitrent in 1884. This farm and Middelwater are joined through that household, a widow and a fatherless child moving from one to the other.

None of this proves that the "N. Hitge" of the 1841 deed is Nicolaus Hitge. It removes the reason to doubt it. A family that farms a place, dies on it and is buried out of it is not a family that only appears in its deed register.

The farm becomes Marincowitz

By 13 May 1890 Gerolm Marincowitz held Vrolykheid: he died on the farm. How he got it is recorded on no document here: no deed carries the farm from the 1841 Oosthuisen grantee to him. It is the largest single gap in this farm's history.

But the shape of it is visible. Marincowitz married a Hitge in 1844; the Hitges held a title over this ground from 1841 and were farming on it by 1846; Marincowitz died holding it in 1890. The farm most plausibly came to him through his wife's family rather than by purchase from the Oosthuizens not yet verified. It is worth noticing that this is the first of two Hitge marriages that move land in this district: Hester Hitge marries into the Marincowitz line in 1844, and her niece Aletta into the Oosthuizen line in 1863.

The Marincowitz hold was then made formal in three registrations, all to one man, Vincent Charles Marincowitz:

Wit Plaats came first, in 1921–22, surveyed by K.M. von Oppell, whose accompanying Report on Red Lines is a small masterpiece of the genre: the beacons were pointed out by the owners of Vrolykheid and Roode Els Bosch, all of them cairns of stone; the differences from the original diagram were drawn in red; and the originals, first framed on 28 March 1912, had been lost and had to be reframed.

The rest went in one campaign, surveyed July 1934, approved by the Surveyor-General on 12 January 1935, registered across 1935 and 1936. On all three of those 1934 diagrams the printed field cornetcy Traka is struck through and corrected by hand to Kredouw: three separate sheets, the same correction, so the district's own naming had moved and the forms had not caught up.

Two Kraals, and they are not the same place.

They must not be merged, and the spelling is what keeps them apart. It is one letter, and the two farms are eighty-three kilometres apart, so the spelling has to be read carefully every time.

Transcriptions keep what the document says. The 1833 diagram and its deduction table write Frans Kraal and still do here, because that is what is on the paper. The 1934 diagram writes Faans Kraal and the parcel is named for it. Where the two disagree, both are shown rather than one being chosen.

(Vischat sits on Rondabel No. 124, not on either Kraal, see LEAD-0018.)

Deneys Reitz went over the mountain from here, 1901

For a farm with this much paper, the war is missing from it. The account below is the only one this record holds, and it comes from a local history rather than a despatch: Helena Marincowitz's Prince Albert and the Anglo-Boer War, published by the Fransie Pienaar Museum in 1999. [SRC-172]

In October 1901 eight young men of Smuts's commando, separated from him near Aberdeen and trying to catch up, worked their way along the Swartberg. One of them was Deneys Reitz, who wrote Commando about it afterwards. Marincowitz puts their crossing here:

The eight young men, including Reitz, crossed the rugged Swartberg mountains either from the farm Vrolikheid, or Oorlogskloof, and spent the night on the top of the mountains.

Which of the two farms is not settled, and the book prints a photograph of the Vrolykheid homestead captioned "from where Reitz and his men presumably crossed". Presumably is the book's own word and it is kept.

What narrows it is a man who farmed this ground and walked the route. Vincent Marincowitz, previously of Vrolikheid and living at Oudtshoorn when he was interviewed, gave the path:

As it was dangerous to use a horse, Deneys Reitz had to walk the path from Vrolikheid past Faanskraal over the Swartberg. He then would have arrived at Stompdrif near De Rust. I have walked the path myself.

Faanskraal is this farm. It is Portion 4, 2,113.5677 morgen, surveyed in July 1934 and transferred in August 1936, and the route a Marincowitz describes runs across it. The portion did not exist under that name in 1901; the ground and the footpath did.

He also says what the soldiers on the other side were doing: the British fired howitzers from the Kredouw, and "the Khakis climbed high along the ridge of the mountain from where they had a clear view of the whole poort". Those guns carried three thousand yards, which is why walking was safer than riding.

Two more things come out of that same interview, and both reach into this farm's own graveyard. His grandfather on his mother's side, Herman Rill, was taken prisoner and sent to Ceylon. His uncle Thomas Marincowitz fought at Paardeberg under Field Cornet Slabbert.

The Rill name is on this ground. Elizabeth Caroline "Lizzie" Rill, 1887 to 1968, is buried in the Vrolykheid farm cemetery under her married name of Marincowitz. Whether she is the informant's mother, and so Herman Rill's daughter, is not established here: no marriage and no children are recorded against her in this model. It is the obvious question and it is not yet an answer. not yet verified

The chain of ownership

The grant day has a sequence, and the sequence predicts this farm's folio

Seven of the farms C. Lennox Stretch measured in August 1833 were titled on the same day, 15 April 1841. Set the diagram numbers against the quitrent folios:

On every legible pair, the two rise together without exception: 349→7, 351→10, 354→17, 356→30, 369→43.

Vrolykheid's diagram sits between 354 and 356. The pattern therefore places its folio between 18 and 29, and Spreeufontein already holds 5-26, so between 18 and

1. The lowest value in that window is 18, and 18 is exactly what a typewritten 1B is one

glyph away from.

This is not proof, and it should not be read as any. It is a pattern across five points, and the run is demonstrably not ordered by diagram number alone. Spreeufontein's 5-26 sits on an 1834 diagram, so the 1834 surveys interleave with the 1833 ones somewhere. What the sequence does is remove the last comfortable reading of 1B as a folio in its own right: in a run that goes 7, 10, 17, 30, 43, there is no room for a folio that is not a number. Reading B.W.Q.5.18 at the deeds office still settles it. not yet verified

A Marincowitz was buying next door eleven years before Gerolm died here

The farm immediately east of this one is Roode Els Bosch and Oorlogs Kloof. On 21 June 1879 a part of a portion of it was transferred to a G. Marincowitz, deed 416, diagram 818/1879, and on 12 August 1896 the southern part of Schurfte Kopjes went to N.J. Marincowitz, deed 5013. Both pieces were later swept into Klipfontein A and both are listed, verbatim, on that farm's 1939 amended-title diagram (284/1939).

That matters here because Gerolm Marincowitz held Vrolykheid at his death on 13 May 1890 and no document here says how he came by it. The 1879 transfer does not answer that. But it does say that a Marincowitz was already acquiring ground on Vrolykheid's eastern boundary eleven years before, which makes the family's arrival on this side of the Zwartberg a good deal less abrupt than it otherwise looks.

Who the 1879 G. Marincowitz was is deliberately left open: four candidates were alive and adult in 1879, and a name alone does not identify a man. Deed 416 of 1879 would name him in full.

What the Marincowitz descendant report adds

The SAG descendant report does two things for this farm.

Three generations of Marincowitz men are in the ground here. Gerolm died on Vrolikheid in 1890. His second son Thomas Frederik died on the farm in October 1916, aged

1. His grandson Vincent Charles "Winnie" Marincowitz, who took six

portions between 1922 and 1936, died here on 6 February 1950, aged 72. Grandfather, son, grandson, on the same ground, across sixty years, and Winnie's own dates come from this report and from nowhere else in the record gathered here.

The farm has a cemetery. Winnie's wife, Elizabeth Caroline "Lizzie" Rill, died at Mount Pleasant outside Port Elizabeth on 13 November 1968 and was "begrawe te Vrolikheid, Distr. Prince Albert", brought back and buried on the farm, eighteen years after her husband. That is the only burial on Vrolykheid the record names, and the first evidence that there is a burial ground here at all. Nobody has visited it. There is no photograph, no inscription, no coordinate. not yet verified

One thing the report does not settle. It gives Thomas Frederik's death as 22 October 1916 where the family tree gives the 20th. Two days, same month, same year; neither is preferred here and the death notice would decide it. not yet verified

Everything above is a published genealogy, a secondary source, and treated as one. What makes it worth having is that its own citations are not secondary: the day-precision baptisms it carries come from the Prince Albert, Willowmore and Oudtshoorn congregation registers by name, and nine of Gerolm's ten children have gained a birth date to the day from it.

What this story is about

• set on Vrolikheid
• set on Wit Plaats (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 1)
• set on Uitkyk Nek (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 2)
• set on Lot B (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 5)
• set on Faans Kraal (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 4)
• set on Marinco (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 3)
• set on Lot A (Vrolikheid No. 177 Ptn 6)
• about Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen (b.1784)
• about N. Hitge
• about Charles Frederick Hitge
• about Hester Carolina Adriana Hitge
• about Ger(H)olm Marincowitz
• about Vincent Charles Marincowitz

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, B355/1833, August 1833 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm B355/1833
2. Diagram verso, B355/1833 (verso), August 1833 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm B355/1833 (verso)
3. Surveyor-General diagram, 4275/1921, December 1921 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4275/1921
4. Surveyor's report, 4275/1921, 9 December 1921 Surveyor-General9 Dec 1921
5. Surveyor-General diagram, 4935/1934, July 1934 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4935/1934
6. Surveyor-General diagram, 4932/1934, July 1934 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4932/1934
7. Surveyor-General diagram, 4933/1934, July 1934 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4933/1934
8. Death notice, deed no. 8586, 3 September 1846 Master of the High Court death notice, Cape - same series as SRC-077 (FamilySearch, "Cape, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1822-1990")Death notice no. 8586, filed 3-4 Sep 1846 Citation incomplete: Supplied as a screenshot. The ark and film/image numbers were never captured, so the original cannot be ordered from this entry alone.
9. Surveyor-General diagram, 351/1833, August 1833 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 351/1833 (vice 8472/50)
10. Surveyor-General diagram, 284/1939, August 1938 Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 284/1939; S.G. File S.14126; Survey Records E.1450/1938
11. Genealogy, 2018 GISA / LegacySAG Vol 1-17
12. Rose Willis and Doreen Atkinson, with Judy Maguire and Bruce Rubidge, "Klaarstroom: Ancient place of clear waters" (Karoo Cameos, 2021) Karoo Development Foundation, Karoo CameosKaroo Cameos, 2021view it online →
13. Vrolykheid No.177 original loan-farm diagram (1833) Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm B355/1833
14. Vrolykheid No.177 - reverse: deduction table Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm B355/1833 (verso)
15. Vrolykheid Portion 1 "Wit Plaats" diagram (coloured) Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4275/1921
16. "Report on Red Lines" - Wit Plaats, K.M. von Oppell Surveyor-General9 Dec 1921
17. Vrolykheid Portion 5 "Marinco" diagram Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4935/1934
18. Vrolykheid Portion 2 "Uitkyk Nek" diagram Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4932/1934
19. Vrolykheid Portion 4 "Faans Kraal" diagram Surveyor-GeneralSG Dgm 4933/1934
20. Death notice of Charles Frederik Hitge, d. 29 July 1846 at Vrolykheid, Zwartberg Master of the High Court death notice, Cape - same series as SRC-077 (FamilySearch, "Cape, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1822-1990")Death notice no. 8586, filed 3-4 Sep 1846 Citation incomplete: Supplied as a screenshot. The ark and film/image numbers were never captured, so the original cannot be ordered from this entry alone.
21. Fred van Zyl on the b7c3d2/b7c3d3 distinction, Jan Adriaan van Zyl's Middelwater birth, and the Casper van Zyl of De Cango Private family correspondenceLetter of 6 Aug 2026, in Afrikaans, with one same-day correction
22. Will of Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen, drawn 1817, filed 1847 - NAAIRS catalogue entry KAB (Western Cape Archives and Records Service), via National Archives of South Africa (NARSSA), NAAIRS - National Automated Archival Information Retrieval SystemDEPOT KAB, SOURCE MOOC, TYPE LEER, VOLUME_NO 7/1/188, SYSTEM 01, REFERENCE 55, PART 1. STARTING 18170000, ENDING 18170000. REMARKS: FILED 1847.view it online →

Research notes

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