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Rose Willis and Doreen Atkinson, with Judy Maguire and Bruce Rubidge, "Klaarstroom: Ancient place of clear waters" (Karoo Cameos, 2021)

local history · 'n geskrewe werk · geraadpleeg 2026-07-31

Soort
local history
Bewaarplek
Karoo Development Foundation, Karoo Cameos
Verwysing
Karoo Cameos, 2021
Geraadpleeg
2026-07-31

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Klaarstroom local history; founding on Oosthuizen land | [31 Jul 2026] READ IN FULL for the first time; it had been in the model unreferenced. Author is ROSE WILLIS (the Zeekoegat cameo is Willis & Atkinson; this one is Willis alone). What it holds for this project: the loan farm De Claar Stroom ran FROM MIDDELWATER TO VROLIKHEID; the town was surveyed after Meiringspoort opened in 1858, 27 erven, first sold 4 Aug 1860; the ground was owned by PETRUS OOSTHUIZEN and the village was called PETERSBURG 'mainly as a tribute' to him; he was helped by GEROME MARINCOWITZ - our Gerolm, PER-000020 - and a Worcester man named Benecke; Petrus d. 2 Jan 1876 aged 77, two marriages, twenty-one children. It also records the first flood closing the pass in 1885 with 50 wagons stranded, and Tollie Marincowitz and his son Graham still distilling witblits on Vrolykheid. TERTIARY - a popular local history with no citations. Everything taken from it is [TO VERIFY] against registers and the deeds office. | [31 Jul 2026] THE PDF IS NOW HELD IN THE REPO and the whole 42 pages read. Authorship corrected again: Rose Willis AND Doreen Atkinson, with Judy Maguire and Bruce Rubidge; series editor Atkinson. CORRECTED: the Pitzer/Geldenhuys marriages, the 21 children and the death on 2 Jan 1876 belong to PETRUS JOHANNES MEIRING, not to Petrus Oosthuizen - five pages apart in the document, run together in a text extraction. See PER-000505. WHAT THE CAMEO CLAIMS THAT THIS MODEL CAN CHECK, and none of it has been written into the model - see LEAD-0032: (a) 'The story of Klaarstroom began when the first farm in this area was granted in 1777' - earlier than anything we hold; our earliest is the 1825 Bloemendaal survey. (b) 'Among the first land buyers were Frans Adriaan Swemmer, Piet Classen, P H du Plessis and GEROME MARINCOWITZ, WHO IN 1821 BUILT the majestic Cape Dutch homestead on the farm VROLIKHEID.' This CONTRADICTS the model outright: our Gerolm Marincowitz (PER-000020) was born in Trieste on 11 Feb 1805 and arrived in 1838 - sixteen years old and not in the country in 1821. Either the date is wrong, or the builder is a different Marincowitz. (c) 'In 1935, the farm owner, PIET OOSTHUIZEN renamed a portion of the farm [BLOEMENDAL] as SCHEEPERSRUS' - Bloemendaal is PAR-000093, filed today, and we hold no owner for it. (d) The 1901 skirmish at REMHOOGTE: Boer rebel JOHANNES KLEU shot and died there; the owner 'R du Plessis' brought him in; 'Miemie du Plessis, a little girl of ten' remembered it. Kleu and Klueplaas are already in this model. (e) 'The original farmhouse at MIDDELWATER ... also belongs to the KLUE family' - we hold no modern Middelwater owner. (f) GIDEONSHOOP, of the Langenhoven love story, 'today is the DE AAP GUEST FARM' - which names 'The Ape' of the 1833 Klein Valie and Wilgemond diagrams (LEAD-0026), and Gideons Hoop is Klein Valie portion 182/4 on the 1919 verso (SRC-150). (g) Meiringspoort: campaigned for by Meiring; ridden in 1854 by John Charles Molteno with Charles Pritchard, Andrew Geddes Bain and son Thomas, who preferred Toorwaterpoort; work began 1856; initial work by THOMAS J MELLVILLE, Sub-Inspector of Roads for George, with 93 labourers, later replaced by Adam de Smidt; opened 3 MARCH 1858 with 300 mounted men and 50 coaches; 22 km, 25 river crossings, 223 days. Melville is a surveyor name already in this model (LEAD-0028). (h) By June 1870 more than a million kilograms of wool had gone through the poort to Mossel Bay. First flood 1885 stranded 50 wagons; Thomas Bain repaired it, reopened 1886. (i) Scheepers's commando rode into Klaarstroom 1 Feb 1901 under Lt FANIE SWANEPOEL; escaped north on 5 Feb via Boesmanskloof, SLEUTELFONTEIN and BOTTERSKRAAL to ZEEKOEGAT on 7 Feb - four farms in this model. (j) ROY OOSTHUIZEN of SWARTSKRAAL, the palaeontologist of STO-0004: Dwykaselachus oosthuizeni, a shark-like fish of c.280 Ma, CT-scanned by Dr Robert Gess in 1993, published in Nature 4 Jan 2017 (Coates et al., doi:10.1038/nature20806). ITS OWN SOURCES worth chasing: HELENA MARINCOWITZ, 'Klaarstroom' and 'Prince Albert en die Anglo-Boere Oorlog 1899-1902' - a Marincowitz writing the district's history; and JUDY MAGUIRE, 'Prince Albert and the Anglo Boer War: The Affair at Wolwekraal, Remhoogte', Prince Albert Museum 2021 - Wolwekraal is PAR-000054. | [31 Jul 2026] TIER 1 AND 2 NOW WRITTEN IN, each tagged TERTIARY / TO VERIFY at the point of use: Meiringspoort's chronology (EVT-000209 to 211), the 1901 raid and the affair at Remhoogte (EVT-000212/213), Petrus Johannes Meiring (PER-000517) and Johannes Kleu (PER-000518), and notes on PAR-000001, PAR-000068, PAR-000088, PAR-000093 and PLC-000003. STILL NOT WRITTEN IN, deliberately: the claim that Gerome Marincowitz BUILT THE VROLYKHEID HOMESTEAD IN 1821, which contradicts our sourced Trieste birth of 1805 and arrival of 1838. See LEAD-0032. *** [3 Sep 2026] THE PASSAGE READ IN FULL AT LAST, and it carries six facts this project did not have and corrects one it had backwards. Transcribed as read, page 23-24: 'Just then Johannes Kleu, a 23 year old Boer rebel passed en route to his home at Aberdeen. He was unarmed. He stumbled across the semi-conscious Boyd who got such a fright that he reached for his gun and fired. The shot hit Kleu in the chest. On hearing the shot, the owner of Remhoogte, R du Plessis, rode out to investigate. He saw Kleu lying on the ground bleeding badly and rushed him to his farmhouse for attention. Nothing could be done to save him and he died soon after. The farmer took his body back to the peaceful ravine for burial. For young Johannes Kleu from Aberdeen, who had joined Scheepers' commando on 15 January, the war had lasted only 18 days.' 'Miemie du Plessis, a little girl of ten years at the time, clearly remembered the incident. Kleu was wearing a red waistcoat and in the pocket was his home address. "Father took the body, wrapped it in a blanket, and buried it quietly during the night. After the war he sent the waistcoat with its bullet hole to Kleu's parents at Aberdeen".' 'Only while preparing a grave did the farmer see Boyd's body. He too had died of his wounds, so the soldiers were buried side by side. After the war Boyd's widow requested that he be reinterred in the graveyard at the nearest Anglican church. That was the Church of the Good Shepherd at Klaarstroom. Boyd's death was a blow as he had been the first to enrol in the Scottish Sharpshooters. Also killed was Trooper SK Gishford of the 2nd Brabants Regiment.' 'Years later, in 1948, Johannes Kleu's family in Aberdeen were asked if they wanted his remains to be moved to a more suitable graveyard. They refused, saying that he should be allowed to rest in peace.' Two photographed Guild Crosses are captioned 'Trooper Hirschfords (actually Gishford), and Lance Corporal Boyd, resting in the Klaarstroom cemetery'. *** [3 Sep 2026] THE ITINERARY PAGE, TRANSCRIBED IN FULL. THIS PROJECT HAD SUMMARISED IT ON 31 JULY AND NEVER READ THE PASSAGE ITSELF UNTIL NOW. *** Transcribed as read: 'On the night of 2 February 1901, Scheepers and his men stayed over at the farm Bloemendal west of Klaarstroom. (In 1935, the farm owner, Piet Oosthuizen, renamed a portion of the farm as Scheepersrus.) The Boers pursued the British soldiers from the Klaarstroom direction. They captured some of them, under the command of Sergeant Jackson, and took their rifles. They wrecked the rifles and hid them in the hollow trunk of a peach tree; then they threw everything into the Groot River. Years later, in 1970, some rifle parts washed up at Scheepersrus during a flood.' 'British reinforcements arrived from Prince Albert. The British encirclement rapidly tightened around Scheepersrus. The wily Scheepers led his men northwards along a foot path, across the Witteberg, via Boesmanskloof, Sleutelfontein and Botterskraal, from where they headed towards Zeekoegat, which they reached on 7 February 1901, and looted two shops at Zeekoegat for supplies. From there, they captured a number of Beaufort West District Mounted Troops who had been ordered to drive Scheepers' commando south.' 'Scheepers and his commando moved rapidly northwards on 5 February, with the 2nd Brabants in pursuit. He was living off the land. The Brabants didn't find the Boers, and when they reached Letjiesbos, they were sent back by train to Prince Albert Road and deployed along the Swartberg to prevent Scheepers breaking back into the Southern Cape.' *** SIX THINGS THIS ADDS, NONE OF THEM PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN INTO THE MODEL. *** ONE, the Beaufort West patrol's men are captured, not the raiders' own; the rifles are Boyd's and Gishford's patrol's, seized after the Die Gang chase already told on the Remhoogte grave's own page, and their fate (wrecked, hidden in a peach tree, thrown in the Groot River, resurfacing in a 1970 flood) is a small piece of district folk memory with its own physical trace. TWO, the NAMING of Scheepersrus: PIET OOSTHUIZEN renamed a PORTION of Bloemendaal in 1935. Bloemendaal itself, PAR-000093, is held by this family still - Tokkie [FAMILY, no deed seen] - so the farm the commando hid on is the same ground this family holds today. Who Piet Oosthuizen was is not identified; no Oosthuizen with that noemnaam is held on this farm. LEAD-0339. THREE, the retreat route is now four named farms and a mountain: Bloemendaal, across the WITTEBERG, via Boesmanskloof, Sleutelfontein (Groot or Klein is not specified) and Botterskraal, to Zeekoegat, 7 February. Botterskraal here is almost certainly Kleinbotterkraal / Klein Sleutlefontein (PAR-000074), the same neighbourhood as Sleutelfontein and 12-20 km short hops apart, and IS NOT the same farm as the Botterkraal on the Prince Albert Road where the mail coach was taken, which lies elsewhere in this division; two 'Botter-' names in one story is exactly the trap 9 warns of and the two are kept apart here. FOUR, the departure date, 5 February, and the arrival date at Zeekoegat, 7 February, sit either side of the itinerary description in the text but agree with each other: two days to cover the ground the geography shows, about 30 km direct and more on a mountain foot path. FIVE, TWO SHOPS AT ZEEKOEGAT WERE LOOTED and a body of BEAUFORT WEST DISTRICT MOUNTED TROOPS - sent to drive the commando south - was captured there instead. SIX, THE 2ND BRABANT'S REGIMENT chased as far as LETJIESBOS, lost the trail, and was entrained back to Prince Albert Road to hold the Swartberg passes instead. [TO VERIFY], as the whole cameo is; Groot Rivier, Witteberg and Letjiesbos are not otherwise held in this model as places.

Woordeliks gehou. Hierdie projek weerspreek gepubliseerde genealogieë en stel 'n familie se eie mondelinge oorlewering reg, so elke bewering moet nagegaan kan word deur iemand wat nie in die vertrek was nie.

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