Twenty-three problems — ten of them now solved
Disputed
The MyHeritage tree behind this archive is unusually well sourced and, in places, impossible. Rather than quietly choosing the readings that suit, this page lists every contradiction found — including the ones that damage the family's own story.
Why this page exists first, not last
A family tree that shows no contradictions has usually had them removed. This one has not. It carries MyHeritage's own consistency warnings, several conflicting birth facts, two Canadian and English census records attached to people who were in the Karoo, and at least one profile that is demonstrably two different men fused together.
Every one of them is listed here. Three classes are used:
Fatal the record cannot be true as it stands and a link must be broken. Serious a real conflict that changes a conclusion. Reject an obvious wrong match or typing error, safely discarded. Resolved settled by a document read in September 2026.
Ten have now been settled, every one of them by reading scans the family tree had been carrying, untranscribed, for years. One confirmed a guess this archive had already written down; two showed that a researcher had gone out and photographed the wrong building; and one — the two Gertrudes — turned out not to be an error at all. This archive has also had to correct two mistakes of its own. The documents →
The list
| Person | The contradiction | Class | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anna Maria van der Merwe — whose daughter? | The family tree makes her a daughter of DAVID SCHALK VAN DER MERWE and ANNA ELIZABETH LOUW, born 1785. De Villiers's printed Cape genealogy of 1893, volume 2, makes her a daughter of WILLEM VAN DER MERWE and HESTER MARIA VAN DER MERWE, baptised 5 OCTOBER 1788 — fourteen days after the man she married. Both cannot be right. | Serious | NEITHER IS BEING ADOPTED, and the interesting part is that it does not matter to the conclusion the archive drew from her. On the tree's version DAVID SCHALK IS HER FATHER; on the book's he is HER BROTHER, baptised 10 October 1790. The name stands one step from her either way, and her son — baptised 4 January 1807 — is the only David Schalk in the whole first volume of the Cape genealogies, the volume holding every Booijsen de Villiers recorded. A CONCLUSION THAT SURVIVES BOTH READINGS OF THE EVIDENCE IS THE ONLY KIND WORTH KEEPING. What the disagreement does cost is her: she has two sets of parents and no way to choose, and the baptism register of 5 October 1788 at Cape Town would end it. → |
| Gerthardus Lodewikus Booysen — did he exist? | The 1876 Rustenburg Sterfkennis of Petrus Jacobus Booijsen, Notice 678, names his parents on line 3 as GERTHARDUS LÖDEWIKUS BOOIJSEN and MAGDALENA DE BEER. De Villiers (1893) and de Villiers & Pama (1981) both place that Petrus Jacobus under JAN Booijsen, b3c4. The mother agrees; the father does not. | Serious | FOUR THINGS NOW POINT ONE WAY AND THE CHART HAS NOT BEEN MOVED. Riël Smit confirms from the 1981 revision — which this archive does not own — that Petrus Jacobus is still placed under Jan. Pieter van Zyl searched for a marriage between a Gerhardus Lodewicus and a Magdalena de Beer AND FOUND NONE. Jan was dead more than forty years before Petrus Jacobus died. And the disputed name sits NINE LINES LOWER ON THE SAME SHEET: line 12 lists eight children and the fifth is JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN — so the name in the parents' box is the back half of a son's name, and the half that was dropped is Jan. The man who signed was Hendrik Stefanus, the seventh child, born about 1828, writing the name of a grandfather dead before he was ten. THE SPINE STAYS WHERE IT IS ON PURPOSE: everything against him is a printed genealogy agreeing with its own earlier edition, which is one source agreeing with itself, and what he has is a primary document signed by a son. Jan Booijsen is entered as INFERRED. The baptism entry of 21 September 1788 ends it, and it is not on FamilySearch — that collection begins in 1843. → |
| Stephanus Francois Booyzen (1874–1940) — whose son? | This archive placed him as a son of PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYSEN and his second wife JOHANNA MARGARITHA PRETORIUS, on his birth date alone — his own 1940 Sterfkennis names neither parent, because his widow wrote only “oorlede” for both. The 1900 death notice of Elizabetha Margaretha Marais names a STEPHANUS FRANCOIS BOOIJZEN as her son by DAVID SCHALK BOOIJZEN, an unmarried major at Pretoria in 1904 — and the 1874 man died at East Lynne, Pretoria. | Serious | 13 September 2026, LATER: his own marriage register adds to the new reading without settling it. Mosselbaai, 5 September 1905, certificate 1318 — he is thirty, a JONKMAN, a metselaar, and his WOONPLAAS IS PRETORIA; eleven weeks later David Schalk Booijzen of Goede Hoop, Pretoria married again in that city. The 1900 notice calls David Schalk's Stephanus François an unmarried major, which is exactly what this man was. But the register has NO column for parents and NO column for birthplace, so it cannot decide anything. AND HIS OWN ELEVEN CHILDREN ADD A THIRD POINT. His 1940 estate names them, and the eldest is DAVID SCHALK BOOYZEN. If he is David Schalk Booijzen’s son, that boy is called after his grandfather outright; under the reading this archive published, he is called after a great-uncle. Two of the eleven — Ewert Philippus and Susanna Fredrika Aletta — are called straight after his WIFE’S parents, Evert Philip Boshoff and Susanna Frederika Aletta Meyer, which shows this couple did name children after grandparents. The naming argues for the new reading: her father was STEPHANUS FRANCOIS MARAIS, which is exactly where the forename would come from, and there is no Stephanus Francois anywhere in the Pretorius side. But “Serious”, not resolved — two men of one name in one town is precisely the mistake this archive keeps catching itself in, and the 1940 notice still names nobody. The inferred row stands, flagged, until a document settles it. → |
| Anna Maria van der Merwe — married 1805 or 1825? | The tree marries her to Petrus Jacobus Booysen in 1805 at Graaff-Reinet and has her dead “before March 1825”. FamilySearch carries a Dutch Reformed marriage of PETRUS JACOBUS BOOŸZEN and ANNA MARIA VAN DER MERWE dated 9 MARCH 1825, at Cape Town, indexed three separate times. | Resolved | RESOLVED, 13 September 2026. A Dutch Reformed baptism names DAVID SCHALK BOOIJZEN, born 12 DECEMBER 1806, as the son of Pieter Jacobus Booijzen and ANNA MARIA VAN DER MERWE — and he is first of the eight on the 1876 Sterfkennis. They were married BY 1806, so the 1805 marriage at Graaff-Reinet stands and the 1825 Cape Town record is a different couple of the same two very common names. It also rewrites the wall on the ancestor chart, which said “only a family tree puts her here”. It no longer does. WHAT IS STILL OPEN is whether she is the mother of the 1812 man in the direct line; no document says so. The original note, kept: the tree's death date is “before March 1825” and the record is dated 9 March 1825. Either the death date was derived from this very record by someone reading it as an end rather than a beginning, or the 1825 marriage is a different couple entirely — Cape Town is six hundred miles from Graaff-Reinet, and both names are common. The archive is not going to guess which. → |
| John Barry (1796–1853) | Buried at St Hilda's, Bilsdale, Yorkshire on 3 January 1853 — and dies at de Bruins Poort, Eastern Cape, on 8 January 1853, five days later. | Resolved | RESOLVED, 14 September 2026, and this page did not say so for three weeks. THEY ARE TWO MEN, and the Yorkshire one was followed PAST the date the Cape one died: the 1851 census has him at SHIP YARDS, RUSWARP, WHITBY, aged 55, a SHIP OWNER — the only John Barry of that age in the whole Yorkshire census — and John Barry deaths are registered in the Whitby district in 1858 and 1860. He outlived the Cape man by at least five years. THE BILSDALE BURIAL DOES NOT EXIST EITHER: FindMyPast indexes 5,934 Bilsdale burials including the years either side of 1853, and not one Barry among them. AND THE DESCRIPTION WAS WRONG TOO — “a Yorkshire farmer of Bilsdale” is the family tree’s phrase; the censuses show a Whitby ship owner, and Bilsdale is only the residence parish on his 1838 marriage licence. WHAT REMAINS is not a conflation but an absence: the Cape man has no birth, no arrival and no burial, and the 1796 in the heading above belongs to the Yorkshire man. His son’s 1903 registration says only an Irishman, born in Ireland. → |
| John Barry — his parents | Recorded as “Unknown Barry” and “Unknown Barry”, with a brother entered as “Other Barry's - South Africa Barry”. | Fatal | These are placeholders, not people. The Barry line ends here, whatever the profile suggests. → |
| John Augustus Barry I & James Barry | Both sons recorded born 8 June 1819 — one at “?Sunderland? Ireland? High Seas?”, the other in County Cork. | Serious | Twins born in two countries, or one man duplicated. If duplicated, “County Cork” is John Augustus's own birthplace and the Irish claim strengthens. → |
| Margaretha Kolbe (1826–1912) | Marries George Frederick Enslin in 1850 while married to John Augustus Barry, then bears Barry and Enslin children three and a half months apart in 1851. | Resolved | RESOLVED by Margaret Downing’s 1867 death notice, which lists among her children “Mary Elizabeth (dead) who was married to George F. Enslin — left issue of 6 minor children.” The Enslin marriage and children belong to Margaretha’s SISTER. The archive’s own hypothesis, confirmed. → |
| Margaretha Kolbe — census | Recorded in the 1881 census at 52 Arthur Street, Chelsea, London. | Reject | She was in the Cape Colony throughout. A wrong automated match. |
| John Augustus Barry I — census | Recorded in a census at Biddulph, Huron, Canada West, on 12 January 1852. | Reject | He had children born at Burgersdorp in 1851 and 1855. A different John Barry. → |
| Willem Hermanus Booyzen (1851–1905) | Death at Indwe annotated “To be confirmed, not sure” — and his son David Schalk is born in 1907. | Resolved | RESOLVED by the 1905 death registration: he died at Doorn Street, Indwe on 13 September 1905 of a stomach ulcer. The date is right; David Schalk cannot be his son. → |
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy (1819–1863) | Dies 19 May 1863 (probate-sourced) — but Izak (1864) and Stephanus Francois (1875) are recorded as her sons. She also carries three conflicting birth facts. | Serious | Petrus Jacobus remarried and the second wife is missing from the tree. Two “sons” belong to her. → |
| Anna Maria van der Merwe (1785–1825) | Dies before 8 March 1825 — but Hendrik Stefanus is recorded born 23 August 1829. | Resolved | RESOLVED, 13 September 2026. The second marriage is no longer unrecorded. Hendrik Stephanus Booysen's own 1908 death notice — Transvaal estate 14380 — names his mother as ELIZABETHA BOOYSEN, BORN VAN DER MERWE, and gives his age as seventy-nine years eleven months at 11 May 1908, which puts his birth about June 1828, three years after the first wife died. Two van der Merwe wives in succession. The contradiction was never a contradiction; it was a missing row. |
| Margaretha Kolbe — her own parents | Her 1915 death notice records her father as “Kolbe, thinks James was christian name” and her mother as “Unknown”. | Reject | Her father was GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE and her mother MARGARET DOWNING, both named on a standing gravestone at Burgersdorp. The notice is evidence of what the family had forgotten, not of who they were. Reject as fact; keep as testimony. → |
| Margaretha Kolbe — name and birthplace | The 1915 notice calls her “Margaret [Louisa] Elizabeth” and guesses her birthplace as “Believe Colesberg District”. The tree has Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Mary, born Graaff-Reinet. | Serious | Her mother’s 1867 death notice lists her as “Margaret Wilhelmina, married to J. Barry”, which supports the tree against the 1915 guess. The informant in 1915 did not know his own grandparents’ names, so his accuracy on his mother’s is not to be relied on. → |
| Johan Gottlieb Kolbe — place of burial | The tree records “St John the Baptist, Leamington, Warwickshire.” | Resolved | WRONG. The register reads “St John Baptist, in the GERMAN SAVOY CHURCH, in the County of Middlesex” — the German Lutheran chapel in the Strand, a hundred miles from Warwickshire, and the same congregation that holds five of his children and his wife. Someone matched the dedication to the wrong church. → |
| Johan Gottlieb Kolbe — place of death | The tree records “34 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London.” | Resolved | WRONG. His death certificate gives 34 CONDUIT STREET registered in the district of MAY FAIR; the burial register gives “Conduit Street, Regent Street”; his own will says “of Conduit Street, Bond Street.” Lamb’s Conduit Street is in Bloomsbury and lies in the Holborn district — the registration alone rules it out. The tree’s photograph of “34 Lamb’s Conduit Street” is therefore a picture of the wrong building. → |
| The “Kolbe–Downing” couple photograph | A carte-de-visite captioned “Margaret Elizabeth Georgina Downing and George Kolbe” and attached to both their profiles. The woman wears a bustle and cuirass bodice; the man a full beard and watch chain — costume of about 1875–1885. | Fatal | George Kolbe died in 1844 and Margaret Downing in 1867. Neither can be in a photograph taken in the late 1870s. Probably their son George Augustus Kolbe (b. 1836) and his wife — the repeated forename is the obvious route by which the caption went astray. → |
| Kathleen Mary Barry (Booysen) | Listed in the tree as a sister of Catherine Maria Sophia “Kathleen” Barry, also married to a Booysen, with no dates. | Resolved | RESOLVED by John Barry's 1915 death notice, which lists only ONE Barry daughter married to a Boyson. The arithmetic closes: 8 surviving + 2 predeceased + 1 duplicate = the tree's 11. They are the same woman. → |
| John Augustus Barry I — date of death | THREE dates. The tree says 25 August 1903; his own 1915 death notice, sworn by his second son James Henry, says 3 August 1903; and his widow’s 1915 notice, sworn by another son Richard Peter, says August 1904. | Serious | Two legal documents, made in the same year by two different sons, contradict each other and the tree. Nobody was writing from records — they were all writing from memory, twelve years on. → |
| Willem Hermanus Booyzen — age | Age 22 at his marriage in 1879 implies birth about 1857; age 55 at death in 1905 implies about 1850. | Resolved | The 1851 baptism register has now been read: born 4 MAY 1851, entry 2809, baptised 31 October. The death registration is right within a year; THE 1879 MARRIAGE ENTRY IS WRONG BY SIX YEARS. He was 28 when he married, not 22. → |
| Jacobus Nicolaas Booysen / Booyzen | Two brothers, born 1840 and 1841, both dying on 17 November 1882. | Serious | Almost certainly one man entered twice under the two spellings of the surname. → |
| Anna Catharina Booysen | 1842–1960. | Reject | One hundred and eighteen years old. A typing error, probably for 1860 or 1906. |
| George Augustus Kolbe (1802–1844) | Julia Kolbe born 1846, two years after his death; seven consistency issues in all. | Resolved | RESOLVED. His 1845 death notice (estate 7698) and his gravestone both give 1 December 1844, and neither his notice nor his widow’s 1867 notice lists a Julia. Reject the child, keep the date. The same two documents also drop KEETOR PETER BENJAMIN KOLBE, whom the tree gives a 1840 birth — he is in neither list. → |
| George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen (1901–1947) | Death dated 21 February 1947, with burial ten months later on 14 December 1947. | Resolved | RESOLVED by his death notice: he died 11 December 1947 and was buried on the 14th. “21 February” is the date the notice was signed — in 1948. A transcriber merged the two and lost ten months. → |
| The two Gertrude Elizabeths | Two daughters recorded born on 11 May a year apart, both named Gertrude Elizabeth. | Resolved | THERE WERE TWO CHILDREN. Both death certificates exist and differ in every particular: entries 4256 (1946) and 3920 (1947); ages four days and six hours; Queen Victoria Hospital and Turf Club Nursing Home; two doctors; buried at West Park and at Primrose, Germiston. The shared 11 May birthday is real coincidence, not duplication. → |
The one that matters most
"Our great great grandfather was shot and killed by the British."
Neither candidate fits, and one of them is now conclusively out.
Petrus Jacobus Booysen died in 1884 — supported by a Cape probate record. That is fifteen years before the war began. He is out.
Willem Hermanus Booyzen died on 13 September 1905 at Doorn Street, Indwe, of an ulcer of the stomach, after fourteen months of illness, attended by a doctor — three years after the war ended, in his own house, with his eldest son present. Documented He was not shot by anybody. The death registration →
Inferred Three readings survive, and the archive does not choose between them:
- The generations are miscounted. Tersia Booyzen was counting from herself, not from the current researcher. Her "great great grandfather" may be a man this archive has not identified.
- "Shot and killed" is not an execution. It may mean killed in action, or shot during a farm clearance — neither of which would appear on the treason lists.
- The story belongs to a collateral Booysen, not to the direct line at all — which the testimony half-concedes when it distinguishes rebels from joiners within the same surname.
All three are checkable. Forty-four Cape colonists were executed for high treason, and that list is closed. What would settle it →
What is not in dispute
It is worth ending on this. The direct descent itself is unbroken and well sourced from Gerthardus Lodewikus Booysen to David Defranceski. The contradictions above sit on side branches, spouses' records and dates of death — not on the parent-to-child links of the line. Nothing on this page moves anybody out of the family.
The single exception is the Barry line above 1819, where the link to a father genuinely fails. The Barrys →
What this page rests on
Gravestone, Burgersdorp Old Cemeterydocument read hereBurgersdorp Old Cemetery, Eastern Cape — the stone is standing; the photograph is published on this site
Death notice, George Augustus Kolbe, 1845document read hereWestern Cape Archives — KAB MOOC 6/9/35 no. 7698; the image is published on this site
Death notice, John Barry, 1915document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Master of the Supreme Court, estate 925, Grahamstown; the image is published on this site
The documents that do the refuting. A tree is not disproved by another tree, and each item on this page falls to a page somebody wrote at the time.
The full bibliography, with what each source gave and where it is weak →