880 queries · 213 returned nothing · 421 found something
What Has Been Read
A search that returns nothing is only worth anything if the search itself is written down. Every query below was actually run, on the date given, and its result is recorded whether or not it helped. AND A SECOND, FLAT REGISTER SITS BESIDE THE SETS SINCE 7 OCTOBER 2026, FOR A MACHINE RATHER THAN A READER. Record Atlas imports each archive's searched.json, and it reads a list of OBJECTS under searched, rows or entries. This file keys its work under sets, and each row inside is a LIST — a question, an answer, a note and a verdict. So the importer read 0 rows from this archive while reading 1,525 from the other seven, and every search recorded here since the project began has been invisible to the shared map. The sets are what the page is built from and what a person reads; the searched array is the same work stated in the fields the atlas keys on — source, url, film, pages, outcome. The duplication is a known cost and is recorded as one: the two can drift, and the proper fix is to retrofit the sets, which is a deliberate job and not a thing to do in passing.
Why a page of failures. Most family history records only what was found. That makes
it impossible to tell the difference between “there is nothing there” and “nobody has
looked” — and those are completely different statements about an ancestor. Everything below was
actually run, and the wording of each query is given so it can be run again and checked.
Every query, in one list
The sessions below are the story of the work — what was asked in one sitting, and why. This is the index: all 880 queries at once, so the page can answer a question about itself. Both are drawn from the same rows.
880 queries · everything is listed; the filters only narrow it
213 of these 880 returned nothing, and that is the point of the page: a source that came back empty is the difference between «we have not looked» and «it is not there».
| When | What was read | Looked for | What came back |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour yes | Father John Barry, mother a Kolbe, child's own name left blank | NINE BAPTISMS, AND TWO OF THEM WERE NOT IN THIS ARCHIVE 1847 John August · 1848 Henry Jaonas/Hennery James · 1850 George Augustus · 1852 MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA · 1853 William Fredrik · 1855 Catherine Mary Sophia · 1859 Catharina Mary Sophia · 1861 WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS · 1863 Frederik Fortunatus. OPEN QUESTION 13 HAS BEEN ASKING WHICH TWO SINCE THIS SITE WAS WRITTEN, and its own note said the index route was closed. IT WAS CLOSED TO A NAME SEARCH AND WAS NEVER CLOSED TO A RELATIONSHIP SEARCH. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour yes | MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA, baptised Burgersdorp 5 April 1852 | THE INDEX GIVES HER NO SURNAME — EITHER TIME Two separate index passes of the same page read “Margrith Louisa Maria” and “Margreth Louisa Mary”, and the Name column stops there. IT IS THE BLANK NAME COLUMN AGAIN, the failure that hid her sister Catherine Mary Sophia of 1855 for weeks. Parents entered as “Margrith Willemina Kolbe + John Barry”. ark:/61903/1:1:6VYG-SS94 and 1:1:6F4L-76PK; the image 3:1:3Q9M-CSFQ-QLQN is ON FILM 008039088, the register this archive has been sweeping by hand. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour yes | WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY, born 29 September 1861, baptised Graaff-Reinet | INVISIBLE FOR THE OPPOSITE REASON — HE HAS HIS BROTHER'S NAME William Fredrik Barry was born 23 August 1853 and baptised at Burgersdorp. THIS IS A SECOND WILLIAM FREDERICK, EIGHT YEARS LATER, TO THE SAME PARENTS. A search for William Barry returns the 1853 child and stops, and nothing in the result says there is another. BY THIS FAMILY'S OWN PRACTICE THE FIRST MUST HAVE DIED — a baptism is not done twice, which is what this archive concluded about the two Catherine Mary Sophias. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour part | Does the count come right | ELEVEN, WHICH IS WHAT THE 1903 REGISTRATION SAYS Nine baptisms plus HENDRIK NICHOLAAS and RICHARD PETER — both named on their parents' death notices and in no register this archive can find — makes eleven. MARGARET MARY of the death notices is almost certainly MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA: it is her mother's name and there is no other candidate in the sibling group. Inferred from the count and the name, and marked as inferred. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour part | q.filmNumber on the search API | 22,059 RECORDS FOR FILM 008039088 — THE WHOLE INDEXED FILM Which would have made weeks of hand-sweeping unnecessary, if it could be paged. IT CANNOT. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour yes | Can the film be paged out | NO — IT PAGES TO OFFSET 1000 AND THEN SILENTLY RETURNS PAGE ONE At offset 1001 the API gives back the first page again. NO ERROR, NO WARNING, NO CHANGE IN THE REPORTED TOTAL: the response still says “results: 22059” and still says “index: 0”. AN UNCHECKED SWEEP WOULD HAVE RE-READ THE FIRST THOUSAND RECORDS TWENTY-TWO TIMES AND REPORTED THE FILM AS HOLDING 1,400 ENTRIES. Caught by comparing the first name at offset 0 against offset 1400 — identical — and bisecting to the edge. THE FOURTH UNDOCUMENTED BOUNDARY IN A WEEK, and the first that answers WRONGLY rather than emptily. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour part | So is the hand sweep abandoned | NO. 214 IMAGES STILL HAVE TO BE STEPPED. The API will show 1,001 of 22,059 records and no more. What it is good for is exactly what it did here: A TARGETED RELATIONSHIP QUERY, WHERE THE ANSWER IS SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT INSIDE THE FIRST THOUSAND. The film sweep resumes at image 605 of 818. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Vaalbank school file finished, and the Johannesburg directories priced out yes | The remaining twenty-four Vaalbank documents | THE SCHOOL OUTLIVES THE REPUBLIC, AND DS BOOYSEN IS ON EXACTLY THREE OF THE FIFTY-FOUR The 1899 and 1900 files are J.P. Louw alone — inspection reports, railway certificates for abroad, a declaration about the illness of the pupil JM ESTERHUIZEN, three free-boarding pupils leaving on 30 June, and then his own monthly salary certificates running to May 1900. NO FURTHER BOOYSEN APPEARS. And then the school simply continues: TED E600, “VAALBANK 116 SKOOL, LICHTENBURG SKOOLRAAD, STIGTING, 1905–1942”; TED E1954, establishments 1908–1937; a CLEANING ALLOWANCE for Vaalbank No. 116 in 1929 and 1937. THE FARM SCHOOL ON THIS FAMILY'S OWN GROUND RAN FOR AT LEAST FORTY-FOUR YEARS AND HAD A NUMBER. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Vaalbank school file finished, and the Johannesburg directories priced out part | A detail worth a second look | A SCHOOL TRANSPORT ROUTE, VAALBANK TO KAFFERSKRAAL TOD E13/26/71, “TRANSPORT SCHEMES. LICHTENBURG BOARD. VAALBANK – KAFFERSKRAAL”, 1939–1954. KAFFERSKRAAL IS THE POST OFFICE OF THE KWAGGAFONTEIN SCHOOL IN MARICO — the other farm school this archive found, forty years earlier. It may well be a different Kafferskraal; the name is common and Lichtenburg is not Marico. RECORDED AS A COINCIDENCE OF NAMES UNTIL SOMETHING SAYS OTHERWISE. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Vaalbank school file finished, and the Johannesburg directories priced out blocked | Johannesburg street directories, 1905–1935 | NOT FREELY DIGITISED — IT IS A PURCHASE OR A LIBRARY Longland's Johannesburg and Districts Directory exists for the 1890s and is sold commercially as a reproduction; the 1905–1935 run is not online free anywhere this archive can reach. The route is the Johannesburg City Library or a bookseller. NOT A SCREEN QUESTION, and open question 10 — whether the boys went to the mines — stays where it is. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: buying a reproduction, or a reader at the Johannesburg City Library. Neither is a search and both are David's to decide. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Vaalbank school file finished, and the Johannesburg directories priced out no | A replacement address for the SANDF Documentation Centre, looked for again | THERE IS STILL ONLY THE ONE, AND IT STILL BOUNCES sandfdoc@mweb.co.za is the address on the Centre's own directory entries and on every guide that lists it, and it returns 550 relay access denied. WHAT IS LEFT IS THE TELEPHONE, (012) 339-4600, the Schweikert Building at 20 Visagie Street, and archive@dod.mil.za, which did not bounce and has not answered in six days. This is as far as this archive can take it from here. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The gravestone collection swept, with the controls run first no | MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER in the Genealogical Society's gravestone data | NOUGHT AND NOUGHT — AND THE CONTROLS SAY IT IS REAL BARRY returns 54, KOLBE 4, BOOYZEN 3. The database answers and answers a lot. A MONTH AGO THIS ARCHIVE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN “NO MOUNTJOY GRAVESTONES” AND MOVED ON; the number that makes that sentence mean anything is not nought, it is fifty-four. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The gravestone collection swept, with the controls run first yes | KOLBE — four stones, three of them new | VOLKSRUST, UTRECHT AND NEW GELDERLAND “Kolbe, GE — Concentration Camp cemetery, VOLKSRUST” — this archive knew a Kolbe died in that camp and NOW HAS THE INITIALS, which are two of the Commandant's three. “Van der Spuy, MH — Old Utrecht Cemetery, d. 13 August 1946” is MARGARET HARRIET born Kolbe, whose Natal estate NAB MSCE 1639/1946 was found the same afternoon — SHE NOW HAS A GRAVE AS WELL AS A FILE. And “Fourie, MD — New Gelderland, 29 September 1899 to 8 December 1979”, M.D. on a Kolbe-connected stone eighty years after Margaret Downing died. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The gravestone collection swept, with the controls run first yes | BOOYZEN — three stones, and they are one household | A WHOLE FAMILY IN ONE PRIVATE CEMETERY Viljoen JCE (2 Jul 1807 – 11 Dec 1861), Viljoen BC (8 Jan 1807 – 25 Nov 1859) and Bezuidenhout JCE (30 Oct 1831 – 11 Jan 1904), all in the BEZUIDENHOUT FAMILY CEMETERY at Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg. That is JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA BOOIJSEN — b3c4d5e6, baptised 16 August 1807 — WITH HER HUSBAND AND HER DAUGHTER. This archive had her stone and did not have the other two or know they were in the same ground. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The gravestone collection swept, with the controls run first part | A position on what a memoir is worth, since two of them cost walls | A WITNESS, NOT A RECORD — AND THE TWO CLAIMS ARE NOT EQUAL John Montgomery was recalling forty-five and forty-seven years back. The test being used: DOES THE MEMOIR CLAIM SOMETHING IT HAD NO REASON TO INVENT, AND DOES ANYTHING INDEPENDENT TOUCH IT? On KOOLSKOP something does — a library catalogue written from the papers calls Kolbe an LMS missionary, and the Kolbe page had already deduced a mission circuit from the children's birthplaces. Three lines, none aware of the others. ON THE 21ST DRAGOONS NOTHING DOES YET: he is in no name-catalogued discharge series at Kew, and that may be structural or may be a misremembered regiment. THE TWO ARE WRITTEN UP DIFFERENTLY ON THIS SITE FOR THAT REASON AND NOT BECAUSE ONE IS A BETTER STORY. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address yes | The three Booyzens in the camps, read on the University of Cape Town's own pages | AND ONE OF THE THREE DID NOT DIE IN A CAMP GERT JACOBUS BOOYZEN — “Master”, place of death JOHANNESBURG RC, aged 2, DIED IN CAMP: YES, cause “ziekte”, white, single, nationality TRANSVAAL, registration as child: yes. Farm RIETVALLEI, district MARICO. GERTRUIDA MAGDALENA BOOYZEN — “Ms”, place of death VEREENIGING RC, aged 19, DIED IN CAMP: YES, cause “ziekte”, with the note “OR IRENE RC”, so the camp itself is uncertain. Farm RIETVLEI, district HEIDELBERG. JAN GERHARDUS LODEWICUS BOOYZEN — aged 2, cause “ziekte”, and DIED IN CAMP: NO, with NO CAMP AND NO FARM RECORDED AT ALL. OPEN QUESTION 3 ON THIS SITE LISTS ALL THREE AS THOUGH THEY WERE THE SAME KIND OF RECORD. They are not. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address part | Where those records come from | RS 25 TRANSVAAL DEATH LISTS, NATIONAL ARCHIVES, PRETORIA The database names its own source on every page. IT CONFIRMS THE CAVEAT THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY PUBLISHED ABOUT IT — these are DEATH LISTS, so the database records who died far better than who was interned and walked out, and an absence from it is much weaker than a presence. And the cause of death on all three is the same word: ZIEKTE. Illness. The lists recorded no diagnosis. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address part | The 1925 voters' roll entries for Jacobus Nicolas and John Barry Booyzen | THE YEAR IS FREE AND THE ADDRESS IS NOT Both are on the roll for VOTING YEAR 1925. Employment, address, race, town, division, voting district, province and voting number are all behind “Sign up to view”. THE ADDRESS WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE ITEM: both men are on the list of six bound estate files now with a private researcher in Pretoria, and a street and a district would tell her where to look. A SUBSCRIPTION WOULD BUY EXACTLY THE FIELD THAT MATTERS, which is worth knowing precisely rather than in general. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address part | The Civil Death and Unconfirmed Death databases | TWO MEN THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HOLD HENRY JOHN BOOYZEN, born 14 FEBRUARY 1929, died 29 MARCH 1966 — and this archive holds a HENRY JAMES Booyzen born 12 August 1887. A different man and a later one, and the difference is one forename. MARUIS BOOYZEN, born 28 January 1963, died 2 May 2011. Neither is placed. Recorded as names with dates and nothing else, which is what they are. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address part | The Old Voter Rolls and estate finders as tools | THEY ARE BROWSE TOOLS, NOT INDEXES Old Voter Rolls takes a TOWN and lists which rolls exist; the Cape and Transvaal estate finders take a REFERENCE and resolve it to a film. NONE OF THEM SEARCHES A NAME — the name search is the single AIO box, which this archive has already run. Useful for turning a reference into an image, useless for finding a person, and worth writing down so the distinction is not rediscovered. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Cape estate index for Mountjoy, a surname sweep abandoned, and the 1931 six given parents yes | MOUNTJOY in the Cape depot (KAB) | FORTY-TWO, AND THE 1834 MEMORIAL IS REAL KAB CO 3972 ref 17, “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. THE WIDOW OF J MOUNTJOY. REQUESTING REMISSION OF A FINE”, 1834 — already on the errands list and now confirmed present in the index rather than taken from a note. Also MOOC 6/9/15220 (JAMES JOHN MOUNTJOY, 1948), MOOC 6/9/16573 (BURGER, WILHELMINA LOUISA, née MOUNTJOY — the bride of a 1901 marriage found last week in the newspaper transcriptions) and MOOC 6/9/16323 (NEPGEN, ANNIE LOUISA, née MOUNTJOY). AND A WHOLE OTHER MOUNTJOY FAMILY: labour agents and traders in the Transkei — Lusikisiki, Bizana, Mnyameni, Lupatana — from the 1920s to the 1960s, with a Mountjoy Estates (Pty) Ltd registered in 1934. NOT THIS FAMILY SO FAR AS ANYTHING SHOWS. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Cape estate index for Mountjoy, a surname sweep abandoned, and the 1931 six given parents void | DOWNING as a bare surname across all depots | 552 DOCUMENTS — NOT A SEARCH Downing is an ordinary English surname and the first thirty returns contain no Kolbe, Booyzen, Barry or Mountjoy at all. THE PAIRING IS WHAT WORKS AND THE PAIRING WAS ALREADY RUN: KOLBE AND DOWNING returns sixteen, and those sixteen are where the four generations came from. Recorded so that nobody runs the bare sweep again expecting something. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Cape estate index for Mountjoy, a surname sweep abandoned, and the 1931 six given parents part | The parents of the six Kolbes who applied to a Free State court together in 1931 | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, d. 1905, AND HESTER JACOBA JACOMINA LOUW VAB MHG K1431: “KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS. EGGENOTE HESTER JACOBA JACOMINA (GEBORE LOUW)”, 1905. VAB MHG 27114: her own estate, 1935. AND VAB MHG 1/2/1/1 KS3: “BOEDEL ONDER KURATORSKAP” — HER ESTATE PUT UNDER CURATORSHIP IN 1905, which is what happens when there are minor children. THE MECHANISM THAT NAMES THEM IS A FORENAME: one of the six is JACOBUS WYNAND LOUW KOLBE, and LOUW is his mother's maiden name; another is GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, which is his father's. The 1931 application is twenty-six years after the father's death and four before the mother's. INFERRED, NOT PROVED — the index does not list heirs, and the file will. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Cape estate index for Mountjoy, a surname sweep abandoned, and the 1931 six given parents no | Whether that George Augustus Kolbe connects to the 1820 Settler | NOT SHOWN, AND NOT ASSUMED The Settler's name was carried by at least one son and repeats through the Free State Kolbes for a century. A George Augustus Kolbe dying at Bloemfontein in 1905 is the right family of names in the right province, AND THAT IS ALL IT IS. This archive has spent a week refusing to adopt thirty-one plausible children from a tree and is not going to adopt a grandfather from a forename. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The memoir did not need reading, and the ship did void | John Montgomery's serialised memoir, read entire | UNNECESSARY, AND THE REASONING IS THE POINT It runs through The Friend across 1868, 1869 and 1870 under two titles — “Forty-five years ago” and “Fifty years ago: A Few Episodes in the Lives of the British Settlers of 1820” — and it has already produced the Koolskop mission school and the 21st Dragoons. BOTH CAME OUT OF SWEEPING A SURNAME ACROSS THE WHOLE COLLECTION, AND THOSE SWEEPS ARE DONE: Kolbe returns 43 documents and Mountjoy six, across every paper in the archive, and KOOLSKOP APPEARS EXACTLY ONCE IN THE WHOLE COLLECTION — in the passage already read. Reading a long memoir to find what a name search has already found is work that looks like diligence. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The memoir did not need reading, and the ship did no | What the 1870 instalments actually are | THE SALEM PARTY, NOT OWEN'S The 1870 series carries a complete list of the SALEM party of 1820 settlers, sent to Montgomery by W.E. Prynn on 31 December 1869 with asterisks against those still living. VALUABLE AND NOT THIS FAMILY'S: George Augustus Kolbe came out in OWEN'S party. Recorded so nobody reads the list hopefully. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The memoir did not need reading, and the ship did yes | The Nautilus, searched as a ship rather than as a person | A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF THIS FAMILY'S OWN CROSSING JOHN PENNY MANDY led another party on the same vessel and wrote home to his mother in Kent. In a letter of January 1820 he describes THE NAUTILUS DISASTER IN THE DOWNS — a day out of Gravesend, at anchor in the Queen's Channel: “it came on to blow tremendously hard, the sea running mountains high… men, women and children all mixed together, tumbling over one another”; the sea broke into the cabin windows; THE SHIP STRUCK ON THE SANDS and “even the sailors seemed panic struck”. Then a second storm of three days with three tons of water in the forepart. NOT ABOUT THIS FAMILY AND ON THE SAME DECK: a boy four days short of seventeen and a girl of sixteen, both of whom had sworn they were older, were somewhere in that cabin. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The memoir did not need reading, and the ship did part | And it confirms the dates from a second direction | ALGOA BAY, APRIL 1820, AND A BIRTH AT SEA Mandy writes from Algoa Bay on 20 APRIL 1820; this archive has the Nautilus there on 14 April. WILLIAM NAUTILUS MANDY was born aboard on 1 MARCH 1820, “in latitude 18 degrees, longitude six degrees”, a fortnight short of Table Bay and named for the ship; he died at Lushington Valley in 1887. THE ORIGINAL LETTERS WENT TO THE ALBANY MUSEUM AT GRAHAMSTOWN AND WERE DESTROYED IN A FIRE IN THE 1920s — what survives is a descendant's copy, printed in a newspaper in 1970. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented no | CK BARRY, WAKKERSTROOM — “MR. GS KOLBE ASKS TO BE SUPPLIED WITH A COPY OF THE ROAD BOARD LAW”, 1908 | HE IS CYRIL KERSHAW BARRY, AND HE IS AN ATTORNEY A Barry and a Kolbe in one sentence, in the district whose Kolbes this archive has spent weeks trying to attach to the Settler — and this archive holds three Barrys carrying KOLBE AS A FORENAME. It read for about ten minutes like a fourth. FOUR FURTHER DOCUMENTS SETTLE IT: he asks about a Commissioner of Oaths at Wakkerstroom, enquires about a certificate of domicile for MAHOMED MAMOOJEE MOTALA OF LADYSMITH, forwards quitrent on behalf of MR MOLL, and writes on the division of ground in Natal. THAT IS A COUNTRY SOLICITOR'S WEEK AND G.S. KOLBE IS A CLIENT. Set down at length because it was a good mistake to almost make. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented yes | KOLBE in NAB | THIRTY-NINE — AND TWO OF THEM CONFIRM A MARRIAGE THIS ARCHIVE HAD ONLY FROM BAPTISMS MSCE 8509/1923, “KOLBE, ELIZABETH JOHANNA (BORN DU TOIT), S/S FREDERICK FORTUNATUS”, and MSCE 15161/1929, his own, cross-referenced to hers. The Settler's tenth child and his wife, BOTH THEIR ESTATES IN NATAL. And MSCE 21335/1934 gives HENDRIK JOHANNES HOFMEYR KOLBE — one of the two men on the unsent Pietermaritzburg letter — A WIFE: Johanna Maria, born Potgieter. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented yes | MOUNTJOY in NAB | NINE, AND A SECOND BARKLY EAST WOMAN NOBODY HAD MSCE 581/1973, “SHOOTER, MATHILDA ELIZABETH, BORN MOUNTJOY, BORN IN BARKLY EAST” — alongside Christian Mountjoy already on the Pietermaritzburg list. TWO PEOPLE LEAVING BARKLY EAST FOR NATAL IS A PATTERN. Also BOTHMA, WRAY, born MOUNTJOY, born in KOKSTAD — the bride of a 1957 marriage found last week in the newspaper transcriptions, now with a birthplace. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented part | BOOYZEN in NAB | FOUR, AND THE OLDEST IS 1846 NAB RSC 1/5/3 46/1846: “ILLIQUID CASE. PETRUS GERHARDUS BOOYZEN VERSUS DAVID SCHALK VAN DER MERWE.” THE OLDEST BOOYZEN DOCUMENT THIS ARCHIVE HAS FOUND OUTSIDE THE CAPE — and the defendant's name is the one this site spent yesterday proving is a van der Merwe name that entered the Booyzen line by marriage. NO CONNECTION IS CLAIMED: Petrus Gerhardus is not a name in this archive, and a Booyzen in Natal in 1846 is likelier a trekker family. Also MSCE 4064/1974, BOOYZEN, NICOLAAS THEODORUS, BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM — a Booyzen born in the Kolbe district. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented yes | DASCHNER, the whole surname | TWELVE IN THE TRANSVAAL, NONE IN NATAL WILLIAM HERMAN DASCHNER, d. 1963, NOW HAS A WIFE — MILDRED. A HEINRICH DASCHNER died in 1969 and the index marks him CHILD. And a HENRY JAMES DASCHNER appears twice, which is the Barry and Booyzen forename string arriving on a fourth surname by way of Catherine Mary Sophia. SMALL ENOUGH TO WORK ENTIRE, AND NOW WORKED ENTIRE. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented yes | MOUNTJOY in TAB | THIRTY-NINE, INCLUDING A FARM OF THAT NAME TAB SS 2932 R8960/91: the Registrar of Deeds sending title for the farms “MOUNTJOY”, Smaldeel, Bloemhof, Krausberg and Gossard, 1891. TAB PM 29 66/6/1907: “LANDS — MOUNTJOY AND PHILLAMORE'S OCCUPATION — RUSTENBURG DISTRICT”, which is this archive's own district. And W MOUNTJOY'S APPLICATION TO CAPTURE OSTRICH CHICKS, 1906. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented yes | KOLBE in the education series | ONE, AND IT IS AT WAKKERSTROOM TAB OD OR3052/99: declarations from the school at MARTINUS WESSELSTROOM — the old name for Wakkerstroom — “ONDERTEEKEND DOOR DE HEEREN GA KOLBE EN FRANCOIS L…”. A George Augustus Kolbe signing for a school commission in 1899. BARRY in the same series returns nothing. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented void | The farms put through the education series | ABANDONED AS VOID, WITH ONE KEPT BRAKFONTEIN RETURNS 77, KOEDOESFONTEIN 188, GOEDEHOOP 41 — among the commonest farm names in the country, and the results are other people's schools in other districts. A FARM-NAME SWEEP WITHOUT A SURNAME IS NOT A SEARCH. One is worth keeping: OD OR150/95, “CAB MEYER, KOEDOESFONTEIN, WYK ZWARTRUGGENS, RUSTENBURG”, is unmistakably this archive's Koedoesfontein, where Hendrik Stefanus Booijsen died in 1908. IT HAD A SCHOOL IN 1895 AND NO BOOYZEN IS ANYWHERE ON ITS PAPERS. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter no | MOUNTJOY, MONTJOY, MOUNTJOYE and MUNTJOY across the WO series at The National Archives | TWO MONTJOYS IN THE DISCHARGE SERIES, AND NEITHER IS HIM WO 97/1147/67, JOHN MONTJOY, born BARNSTAPLE, Devonshire, 56th Foot. WO 121/44/280, WILLIAM MONTJOY alias WILLIAM MOUNTJOY, born DUBLIN, 16th and 60th Foot. Nothing else in WO 97, WO 119, WO 120, WO 121 or WO 25 under any of the four spellings. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter yes | Is that a negative or an indexing gap | A NEGATIVE, AND THE CONTROL SAYS SO THE CATALOGUE INDEXES THE REGIMENT AS “21ST DRAGOONS (LIGHT)” AND NOT AS “21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS” — which is the form the newspaper used and the form this archive had been writing. Searched the right way it returns 790 documents, NINETY-FIVE OF THEM WO 97 IN A SINGLE PAGE, plus entries in WO 119, WO 121 and WO 25. So the series is name-catalogued, the regiment is in it, and he is not. ONE WORD ORDER WAS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REAL RECORD AND A NIL RETURN, which is the fourth time in a week this archive has met that shape. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter part | Why he is absent, most likely | WO 97 AND WO 121 ARE PENSIONERS' PAPERS A man discharged locally at the Cape who never claimed a Chelsea or Kilmainham pension leaves no discharge document in either. THE REGIMENT WAS IN THE CAPE COLONY FROM 1806 AND LEFT IN SEPTEMBER 1817 (this row said 1816 until 17 September, when five London papers dated the embarkation for India); HE MARRIED AT GRAAFF-REINET IN MARCH 1817. So he was discharged at the Cape and stayed behind when it sailed — which is exactly the kind of man these series do not hold. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter part | What to read instead | WO 12/1450 — THE MUSTERS AND PAY LISTS FOR THE 21ST, 1816–17 (this row said WO 12/1430 until 17 Sep) CORRECTED 17 SEPTEMBER. WO 12/1430 is the 20TH AND 21ST DRAGOONS FOR 1867–1868 — fifty years late and the re-raised regiment, not this one. The 21st Light Dragoons has its own continuous run: WO 12/1446 (1805–06), 1447 (1807–09), 1448 (1810–12), 1449 (1813–15), WO 12/1450 (1816–17), 1451 (1818), 1452 (1819–20). Not name-indexed; they have to be read. A man's disappearance from a muster DATES HIS DISCHARGE, and WO 12/1450 alone covers the window. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter yes | And what that did to the letter | REWROTE IT BEFORE IT WAS SENT The errand as this archive raised it this morning was “WO 97 for the 21st Light Dragoons”. THE LETTER NOW ASKS NOBODY TO LOOK IN WO 97. It sets out what was searched and what the control showed, asks whether the pensioner reading is right, and names the piece it believes it needs. A LETTER THAT ASKS AN ARCHIVIST TO REPEAT A SEARCH ANYONE CAN RUN FROM AUSTRALIA IS A WASTE OF SOMEBODY'S MORNING. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | MSB751, SA Library, Cape Town — found while searching KOLBE AND DOWNING | “GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE … 1820 SETTLER, MISSIONARY … LMS MISSIONARY” A library manuscript collection, not an archive file: “GA KOLBE COLLECTION. Donated by Dr Jean Griffiths, Somerset West, 1985. Photocopy, 4 pages.” IT CORROBORATES A MEMORY THIS ARCHIVE PUBLISHED THE SAME MORNING AS AN INFERENCE — John Montgomery's recollection of a Bushman mission school at Koolskop about 1824. An old man's memoir in a Bloemfontein newspaper and a manuscript donated to a Cape Town library in 1985 have nothing to do with each other AND THEY AGREE. It also settles the trade: the settler roll said CHEMIST, the catalogue says PHARMACIST, the obituary describes a medical practice. One man, one trade, and the missionary work is the part nobody had. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | And the other half of the same catalogue line | A LETTER FROM HIS FATHER IN LONDON, 23 AUGUST 1830 “LETTER, 1830 AUG. 23, FROM JOHAN KOLBE, LONDON, TO HIS SON, GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE ON HIS ORDINATION.” THE TWO MEN WROTE TO EACH OTHER AND THE LETTER SURVIVES. This archive has spent a fortnight trying to connect the tailor of Conduit Street to the settler of Colesberg through directories, censuses and an obituary, and has been beaten by a quota, a bot check and an empty shelf. A letter from London in 1830 is very likely to carry an address at its head — which is the exact question the Brunswick Square muddle turns on. IT IS A PHOTOCOPY, and the catalogue does not say where the original is. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | MCCABE in VAB | THIRTEEN, AND THREE OF THEM MATTER VAB MHG C129: “MCCABE, FRANCIS. EGGENOTES 1) MARIA PETRONELLA ELISABETHA ANTOINETTA RAATH EN 2) ANNA (GEBORE VAN DER MERWE)”, 1872 — HE HAD A FIRST WIFE AND SHE HAS A NAME. VAB 1/3/1/12 BC11: “MCCABE, FRANCIS. INSOLVENTE BOEDEL”, remark “BEVAT GEEN STERFKENNIS NIE” — THE LANDDROST OF BLOEMFONTEIN DIED INSOLVENT, and the index says outright the file holds no death notice, which saves somebody a wasted morning. And M777 now reads in full: “EGGENOTE JOHN GHERSON ELEASAR KOLBE EN FRANCIS MCCABE” — the remarriage is in the archives, not only in a newspaper. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary part | The Kolbe–McCabe marriage this archive had flagged as possibly coincidence | IT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE A Rosa Magdalena Kolbe was baptised at Bloemfontein in 1890 to Frederik Fortuna Kolbe and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA MCCABE, and this archive wrote that it “does not yet know whether that is a coincidence”. FRANCIS McCABE'S FIRST WIFE WAS MARIA PETRONELLA ELISABETHA ANTOINETTA RAATH. A woman carrying that whole four-name string with McCABE as her surname, marrying a Kolbe in the same town, is his daughter, named for her mother. THE TWO FAMILIES JOINED TWICE: he married the Commandant's widow, and his daughter married a Kolbe. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | KOLBE in VAB | 146 DOCUMENTS — A WHOLE FREE STATE KOLBE POPULATION Including KOLBE MOTORS (PTY) LTD suing and being sued through the 1950s and 60s; a JOHN GERSON ELIEZER KOLBE in a civil case of 1939, seventy-one years after the Commandant died; and repeated GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBEs in 1935, 1942 and 1960. THE DEPOT THIS ARCHIVE HAD OPENED TWICE FOR ONE REFERENCE EACH TIME. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | DOWNING as a Kolbe forename | FOUR GENERATIONS, THREE PROVINCES, SIX DOCUMENTS TAB MHG 40293 FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE, d. 1918 · NAB MSCE 1229/1960, his widow, born at VOLKSRUST · VAB MHG 23877 and 801/49, MARGARET DOWNING born KOLBE, twice widowed · VAB MHG 33459, a SECOND Margaret Downing born Kolbe · TAB MHG 5450/68, MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING ROUSSEAU · and PIETER DOWING KOLBE LUBBE in 1959, by which point the surname is Lubbe and both Kolbe and Downing are forenames, with a letter worn off on the way. SHE SIGNED HER MARRIAGE ALLEGATION WITH A MARK IN 1819. HER NAME IS BETTER RECORDED THAN SHE IS. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary yes | Six Kolbes applying to a court together | VAB HG 702/1931 — THE FIRST FREE STATE SIBLING GROUP THIS ARCHIVE CAN NAME “LEONORA STEENKAMP, BORN KOLBE · MARGARET DOWNING FICK, BORN KOLBE · GEORGINA AUGUSTA DE WET, BORN KOLBE · JACOBUS WYNAND LOUW KOLBE · GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE · CATHARINA ELIZABETH MALAN, BORN KOLBE.” Four married daughters and two sons. A GENERATION TOO LATE TO BE THE COMMANDANT'S TWELVE — these are more likely his grandchildren — but applications like this are usually about a parent's estate, so the file should name the parent. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead yes | Every external host this archive points at, linked or named in prose | 34 HOSTS. FOUR GENUINELY DARK. databases.tanap.net, which holds the full transcriptions of the inventory naming eleven enslaved people · the bare national.archsrch.gov.za, though the www form resolves · kzntl.gov.za, the retired KwaZulu-Natal domain · and nationalarchives.gov.za AS THIS ARCHIVE HAD WRITTEN IT, with a dot in the middle. CHECKING ONLY HYPERLINKS WOULD HAVE MISSED ALL OF THEM: this archive cites sources in sentences, not in anchors, and the first version of the tool found five hosts instead of thirty-four. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead yes | The tool's own first answer | IT CALLED THREE LIVE DOMAINS DEAD, AND THIS ARCHIVE NEARLY PUBLISHED IT getaddrinfo asks for an address record, and A GOVERNMENT DOMAIN CAN BE PERFECTLY ALIVE WITH NOTHING BUT MX. dsac.gov.za — the department every Pretoria letter has gone to, cited twenty-five times here — has no website and takes mail. So do dact.kzntl.gov.za and kzndac.gov.za. The tool reported all three as “does not resolve”, and the next edit would have said in public that the Pietermaritzburg addresses were dead. THEY ACCEPT MAIL. The check now asks for the MX before it says dark, and reports “mail only”, which is the true answer and a more useful one. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead part | What that does to the Pietermaritzburg advice | WEAKENS IT, AND THE NOTE HAS BEEN CHANGED The draft letter has been sitting unsent since 14 September on the argument that kzntl.gov.za is a retired domain and the address on the National Archives' 2015 record is “almost certainly dead”. THE DOMAIN TAKES MAIL, AND SO DOES THE NEWER ONE. That does not prove a mailbox is read behind either — a domain accepting mail and a person reading it are different facts — but the reason given for not sending was stronger than the evidence for it. Telephoning first is still the better plan; it is no longer the only defensible one. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead yes | nationalarchives.gov.za, written with a dot | CORRECTED — AND IT WAS IN THE ROW COMPLAINING ABOUT A WRONG ADDRESS The NAAIRS note of 13 September records that the catalogue is a frameset, and ends “written down because the wrong address cost this archive a day”. The host in it was national.archives.gov.za. THE LIVE DOMAIN HAS NO DOT. Corrected wherever it appeared. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead part | Why this check is not in the build | BECAUSE A CHECK THAT FAILS FOR THE WRONG REASON IS ONE PEOPLE LEARN TO IGNORE A network probe inside a build fails when a government website is having an afternoon, which has nothing to do with the change being built. It is run on demand and writes what it finds to a data file the site reads, SO THAT A DARK SOURCE SAYS SO ON THE PAGE THAT DEPENDS ON IT rather than quietly linking into nothing. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name yes | SLIER in de Villiers, volume 3 | ENTRY 876 — A WHOLE FAMILY, AND IT IS HERS “WILLEM SLIER, VAN HAMBURG, gehuwd 19 November 1780 met ANNA CATHARINA FORTMAN — (b) 1 ANNA CATHARINA, GEDOOPT 14 OCTOBER 1787, GEHUWD MET HERMANUS PIETERSE; 2 Wilhelmina Christina, 1789, married an Amsterdammer; 3 Geertruida Johanna, 1791; 4 Wilhelmus Josephus, 1797.” She has been on this site as a birth year and five spellings. SHE NOW HAS A BAPTISM DATE, TWO PARENTS AND THREE SIBLINGS. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name yes | Why her surname has five spellings | BECAUSE IT IS A HAMBURG NAME Slier · Schleher · Sher · Hier, across five sources — and the book says the father came FROM HAMBURG. Schlier or Schleer, written down by Cape clerks who had never seen it. THE SAME ARGUMENT THIS ARCHIVE MAKES ABOUT ITS OWN SURNAME, on a different name, from a different country. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name yes | The Pietersens, two pages on | THE HUSBAND AND THE SON WERE ONE PERSON HERE, AND THEY ARE TWO “HERMANUS PIETERSEN, NAMEN VAN OUDERS ONBEKEND, gehuwd 5 APRIL 1807 met ANNA CATHARINA SLIER — (b) 1 WILLEM HERMANUS, gedoopt 12 Maart 1809; 2 JOHAN CHRISTIAAN, gedoopt 28 April 1810.” This archive built ONE man out of two documents that spell him differently — the 1817 register's HARMANUS PIETERZE and the 1840 notice's WILLIAM PIETERSEN — and a long name looked like the way to reconcile them. IT HALF KNEW: its own page already called the 1851 godfather “his son”. Withdrawn to /corrections/. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name yes | What the split gives back | A PERSON NOBODY HAD, AND A NAME FULLY EXPLAINED JOHAN CHRISTIAAN PIETERSEN, baptised 28 April 1810 — a SECOND half-brother to the Montjoy children, invisible for exactly as long as the two men were one. And the derivation of WILLEM HERMANUS is now complete: the boy of 1809 is WILLEM for his mother's father, WILLEM SLIER OF HAMBURG, and HERMANUS for his own father. The claim that the name enters through a step-relation with no Booyzen blood survives and goes one generation deeper. HALF OF IT IS GERMAN. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name yes | Her dates, filled in | MARRIED AT NINETEEN, WIDOWED TWICE, FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS A WIDOW Married Hermanus Pietersen 5 APRIL 1807; a widow by 9 March 1817 when she married James Montjoy; a widow again by September 1827; died 1885, aged ninety-eight. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name no | DORMEHL in volume 2 | ENTRY 393, AND IT IS NINETY YEARS TOO EARLY “SIEBERT DORMEHL, VAN MARBURG, gehuwd 29 Januari 1792 met Johanna Israel, weduwe van Johan Godlieb Carstedt”, twice remarried; sixth child CHARLOTTA ELISABETH, GEDOOPT 18 JUNI 1802. This archive holds a CHARLOTTA ELIZABETHA DORMEHL who married Hendrik Stefanus Booijzen at Zeerust in 1892. A WOMAN BAPTISED IN 1802 CANNOT BE MARRYING IN 1892. Two women ninety years apart; all the book gives is that the name was already in the founding household. Recorded so that it does not become a link later. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name no | The London directories, by every free route left | GOOGLE BOOKS QUOTA ZERO · HATHITRUST BEHIND BOT PROTECTION · ARCHIVE.ORG HAS NONE Whether John Godloff Kolbe was at BRUNSWICK SQUARE or at 34 CONDUIT STREET needs a London trade directory of the 1810s to 1840s. The books API returns 429 with a daily quota of zero for anonymous callers. HathiTrust answers with a Cloudflare bot check, AND THIS ARCHIVE WILL NOT GO AROUND ONE. archive.org's earliest Post Office London Directory is 1920. The volumes are on the paid genealogy services and at the Guildhall Library and the London Metropolitan Archives, and nowhere free. IT IS A DOOR QUESTION NOW, AND THE DOOR IS IN LONDON — which is where WO 97 is, so the two travel together. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had yes | MOUNTJOY in the newspaper transcriptions — the surname had never been swept | “A SADDLER, WHO WAS DISCHARGED FROM THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS” The Friend of the Free State, 25 November 1869. John Montgomery, founder of Burgersdorp, recalling his arrival at Cradock in January 1822, when the village held about six people, and naming them: “Messrs. SOLOMON and S.M. DE BEER, the Rev. Mr. EVANS, Mr. P. GIE, JAMES MOUNTJOY (A SADDLER, WHO WAS DISCHARGED FROM THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS), the two Messrs. ZIERVOGEL, Mr. HEILBERG, Fieldcornet B.J. VORSTER, and Gert VAN DEVENTER. AFTER SOME TROUBLE I OBTAINED LODGINGS FOR THE NIGHT FROM MR. MOUNTJOY.” THERE IS NO ROOM IN A VILLAGE OF SIX FOR TWO SADDLERS OF ONE NAME. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had yes | What that does to Question 12, marked Blocking since it was written | IT STOPS BEING UNANSWERABLE AND BECOMES AN ERRAND AT KEW His death notice answers “names of the parents of the deceased” with NOT KNOWN. His 1817 marriage register rules a line through the column that should say where he came from — and that blank was there while he stood in the room. NOW BOTH ARE EXPLAINED: he did not arrive as a settler and no passenger list holds him, because HE ARRIVED IN UNIFORM. The 21st Light Dragoons were the cavalry of the Cape garrison from the 1806 expedition. The colony had no way to know where he was from; THE ARMY DID. WO 97 at The National Archives, Kew — Chelsea discharge papers, arranged by regiment before 1855 — gives a soldier's PARISH AND COUNTY OF BIRTH, his age at enlistment and his trade. With WO 12, the musters. The question's own note said “the way in is a Cape arrival record, not an English birth record”. IT WAS RIGHT, AND THE RECORD HAS A NAME. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had yes | The same memoirist, twice in one week | TWO WALLS, NEITHER FOUND BY SEARCHING FOR THE PERSON John Montgomery's “Forty-five years ago” put George Augustus Kolbe at a BUSHMAN MISSION SCHOOL AT KOOLSKOP, on the ground where Colesberg was later laid out. This one puts James Mountjoy in the 21st Light Dragoons. BOTH CAME OUT OF READING A SURNAME SWEEP TO THE BOTTOM RATHER THAN SKIMMING IT, and both were sitting in the reminiscences of one old man who wrote down who he met. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had part | BOOYZEN, BOOIJSEN, BOOYSEN and DASCHNER in the same index | 5, 1, 180 AND NOUGHT — AND ALMOST ALL OF IT SOMEBODY ELSE DASCHNER returns nothing at all in the whole collection. Of the Booyzens: the 1830 Gazette notice of Christina Booyzen already held here; an 1859 intestate estate at MIDDELVELD, DISTRICT BLOEMFONTEIN for JAN LODEWYK BOOIJSEN, who married about 1819 Christina Magdalena de Buijs, widow of Cornelius Faber, and whose estate had become mixed with Faber's; and an 1862 report of a Booyzen TREK-FARMER near the Orange River who seized a party of Bushmen accused of a shooting — “six men, seven women and seven children”. NONE OF IT CONNECTS. The 1862 numbers are set down because the paper recorded them. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had void | BARRY paired with Burgersdorp, Barkly, Indwe and Kolbe | THE ENGINE WILL NOT PAIR — IT RETURNS EVERY BARRY IT HAS Unlike NAAIRS, this index has no AND that can be sent; a two-word query is scored, not filtered, and the results are twentieth-century death notices from Durban. THE NEGATIVE IS VOID rather than informative, and is recorded as void so that nobody — including this archive in a fortnight — reads it as “Barry was searched”. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had blocked | NAAIRS, for the education-series sweep and Francis McCabe's estate | DOWN. “THE CONNECTION TO THE SEARCH MANAGER SERVER IS INACTIVE.” Three items on the work list run through NAAIRS and all three are parked: the OD sweep for the remaining surnames and farms, the rest of the two school files, and the Landdrost's own estate at Bloemfontein. Not a negative about anything — an outage, recorded as an outage. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had yes | A gate for the atlas, which was the one register without one | WRITTEN, AND IT FAILED THE BUILD EIGHTEEN TIMES ON ITS FIRST RUN The Marico entry carried “in the field-cornet's papers” for weeks because NOTHING ON THE SITE POINTED AT IT — no page cited the line, so no page could contradict it. tools/checkatlas.py now refuses a build where a place pinned APPROXIMATE carries no “why”, and warns where a place with events is discussed nowhere on the site. FIRST RUN: 18 FAILURES, every one a farm pinned near its district with no note saying so. All eighteen now say what the pin rests on, and several of them say the pin is weak. THE CHECK WAS WRITTEN TO CATCH ONE OLD MISTAKE AND CAUGHT EIGHTEEN LIVE ONES. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had no | A replacement address for the SANDF Documentation Centre | THERE ISN'T ONE — THE PUBLISHED ADDRESS IS THE DEAD ONE sandfdoc@mweb.co.za bounced with 550 relay access denied on 9 September. It is the ONLY address the Documentation Centre publishes, on its own directory entries and on every guide that lists it. What is left is the telephone (012) 339-4600, the Schweikert Building at 20 Visagie Street, and archive@dod.mil.za, which did not bounce and has not answered. A PUBLISHED ADDRESS THAT BOUNCES IS WORSE THAN NO ADDRESS: everyone is writing into it and nobody knows. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions no | The Baptism Finder — which registers exist for Paarl (Drakenstein), Graaff-Reinet and Stellenbosch | EVERY REGISTER IN THE COLLECTION BEGINS IN 1843 54 registers for Paarl (Drakenstein), 48 for Graaff-Reinet, 55 for Stellenbosch — and sorted earliest first, the first row in every town is 1843–1844. This is the POST-1842 NG KERK ARCHIVE SERIES and it does not reach the eighteenth century at all. THE 21 SEPTEMBER 1788 BAPTISM CANNOT BE GOT FROM THIS COLLECTION, and neither can anything else this archive wants from before 1843. It explains, retrospectively, why weeks of FamilySearch work on this family has produced nothing older than the 1840s. A fact about the filming project, not about the registers — the originals exist, at Cape Town. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions yes | The Baptism Database — MOUNTJOY | SIX, AND FOUR OF THEM ARE A SIBLING GROUP WITH EXACT BIRTH DATES MARIA ELIZABETH, born 12 JUNE 1858 · JOHANNA CATHARINA, born 28 JANUARY 1860 · GEORG HERKULES JOHANNES, born 16 JANUARY 1862, baptised 27 April 1862 · ELSJE PETRONELLA FREDERIKA, born 10 JUNE 1864, baptised 17 July 1864. Roughly two years apart. THE NAMES ARE THE INTERESTING PART — Georg Herkules Johannes and Elsje Petronella Frederika are thoroughly Cape Dutch name-strings on an English surname, baptised in the Dutch Reformed Church. This archive already holds a HERCULES JOHANNES MOUNTJOY born 16 JULY 1866 — same forenames, same day of the month, four years later. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions part | Is the 1860 Johanna Catharina the woman who died at Indwe | A CANDIDATE, AND THE FIELD THAT WOULD DECIDE IT IS THE PAID ONE This archive holds “Johanna Catharina Mountjoy of Indwe” with NO BIRTH DATE AT ALL — she joined the Indwe congregation on 23 July 1907 from Barkly Oost and the register records her dead there in June 1911. A woman born 28 January 1860 would be FIFTY-ONE. NOT ENTERED: this family already contains one Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, born 1819 and dead 1863, so the name repeats within it. WHAT WOULD DECIDE IT IS THE CONGREGATION THE 1860 BAPTISM WAS REGISTERED IN, and the congregation is behind the paywall. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions part | Where exactly the paywall falls | FREE GIVES DATES; PAID GIVES PARENTAGE FREE on a baptism record: names, surname, DATE OF BIRTH, baptism date. “SIGN IN TO VIEW”: baptism place, source, image, entry number, FATHER'S NAMES AND SURNAME, MOTHER'S NAMES AND SURNAME, parents. FOR A PROJECT THAT ALREADY HAS MOST OF ITS DATES AND IS SHORT OF PARENTS, THAT IS THE WRONG HALF — which is exactly why it is worth knowing before paying rather than after. Nothing bought, no account made. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions part | Land & Deeds, opened to look for Vaalbank and Kwaggafontein | IT IS A FILM FINDER, NOT A NAME INDEX It takes A YEAR AND AN AREA, not a farm or a surname, and the areas are NATAL AND THE TRANSVAAL ONLY — no Cape and no Free State, so Leeuwberg and Kaalspruit are out of reach by this road regardless. For 1898, Transvaal it returns FIFTY-SEVEN REGISTERS of Farm Records — volumes RAK 89, 243, 274, 275, 279, 281, 387 and more — each with a link to the film. To find Vaalbank in them somebody has to open a volume and read. A REAL ERRAND, AND NOW A SPECIFIED ONE. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions yes | MOUNTJOY marriages | TWENTY-TWO, 1895 TO 1969 — AND TWO WORTH NAMING “1937 · WILLEM HERMANUS MOUNTJOY × ELSIE SUSANNA DU PLESSIS” — Willem Hermanus is this archive's own name-string, carried by two Booyzens in the direct line, here on a Mountjoy. And “1919 · FRANK MOUNTJOY-BENTLEY × KATHLEEN RITA MILEY FITZPATRICK” — A SECOND HYPHENATED COMPOUND IN THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN SURNAMES, after Kolbe-Booysen. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions yes | DASCHNER — the whole surname | FORTY-FIVE RECORDS, THREE OF THEM MARRIAGES “1900 · CARL AXEL MARTENSON × MINNIE DASCHNER” · “1935 · JOSEPH CHARLES DASCHNER × ELIZABETH HENDRINA MURRAY” · “1935 · GERT ANDRIES VAN JAARSVELD × MARGARET WILHELMINA ELIZABETH JEANETTE DASCHNER”. The smallest of this archive's five families by a long way, and small enough to work entire. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions part | The standing rule, restated because a better search box does not change it | A TRANSCRIPTION IS A LEAD AND THE REGISTER IS THE RECORD Nothing above is entered as fact. Every line is an index entry from a commercial aggregator. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them void | MOOC8 Inventories, the finder on gendatabase.com — MOUNTJOY | ZERO, AND THE ZERO IS NOT A NEGATIVE MOUNTJOY 0 · MONTJOY 0 · SLIER 0 · KOLBE 0. All four families reached the Cape in the NINETEENTH century and MOOC8 as indexed here runs from the 1780s to the 1830s. A ZERO FROM AN INDEX THAT STOPS BEFORE YOUR PEOPLE ARRIVE IS NOT A FINDING. This archive published exactly that mistake this morning about LUUS and is not repeating it four hours later. Recorded as untested, not as searched. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them yes | BOOIJSEN in the same index | THIRTEEN INVENTORIES, 1781 TO 1832 MOOC 8/18.11 (1781, Gerrit Booijsen, Drakenstein) · 8/56.16b (1805) and 8/56.16a (1806), both ZACHARIAS BOOIJSEN of Graaff Reinet · 8/42.46 (1820, ALETTA BOOYZEN, Graaff Reinet) · 8/46.59 (1831, JAN LOWIES BOOIJSEN, Vondelings Fontein, Onder Roggeveld, Clanwilliam) · 8/48.32 (1832, PIET BOOIJSENS), plus seven connected estates. FOUND WHILE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING ELSE. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them yes | MOOC 8/18.11 — the 1781 inventory of Gerrit Booijsen | IT NAMES ELEVEN ENSLAVED PEOPLE SILVIA, LENA, SARA, JANNA, DORINDA, FORTUIJN, MEIJ and FEBRUARIJ VAN DE CAAB; DIJK and FARLA VAN MADAGASCAR; ACHILLES VAN MALLABAAR. Eight born at the Cape, two taken from Madagascar, one from the Malabar coast. The names are the ones given to them — Fortuijn is Fortune, Februarij and Meij are the months they were landed or bought in, Achilles is the classical joke a slave-owner made. THIS PROJECT HAS RUN FOR WEEKS, REACHES BACK TO A MARRIAGE OF 1733, AND UNTIL TODAY THE WORD SLAVERY APPEARED NOWHERE ON IT — because estate inventories had never been opened. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them part | Is it the right Gerrit | ALMOST CERTAINLY, AND PUBLISHED AS ALMOST CERTAINLY De Villiers has b3 GERRIT BOOIJSEN married JOHANNA DU RAND in 1733, father of c4 JAN, a burgher AT DRAKENSTEIN — and the inventory is at Drakenstein. A man who married in 1733 and died in 1781 is seventy-odd. The only other Gerrit in the printed genealogy, b3c4d1, was not baptised until 1771. WHAT SETTLES IT IS THE INVENTORY, WHICH NAMES THE HEIRS. THE IDENTIFICATION IS THE UNCERTAIN PART; THE ELEVEN NAMES ARE NOT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them part | The 1831 inventory of Jan Lowies Booijsen | TEN MORE NAMES, AND A WARNING ABOUT THE INDEX CASTOOR, JAN, PIET, EVA, MALATIE, EVA, MARIE, CATRYN, CLARA, ROSET. The index line runs PERSONAL NAMES AND FARM NAMES TOGETHER IN ONE STRING, so “Knue” and “Onder Roggeveld” sit in the same list as Eva and Castoor. THE TEN ABOVE ARE THE ONES THAT ARE UNAMBIGUOUSLY PEOPLE, and the document has to be read before anybody is counted. 1831 is three years before emancipation at the Cape. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them blocked | The full transcriptions | TANAP IS OFF THE AIR The MOOC8 inventories were transcribed entire by the TANAP project. databases.tanap.net NO LONGER RESOLVES — NXDOMAIN — and the Internet Archive was itself down when this was written, so there is no Wayback copy to fall back on either. EVERYTHING ABOVE IS READ OFF INDEX LINES AND THE LINE IS NOT THE RECORD. MOOC 8/18.11 entire is now the first item on the Cape Town errands list. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened yes | LUUS with BOOYZEN, in a marriage index rather than an estate index | “1928 · CORNELIUS ABRAHAM LUUS × SUSANNA FREDERIK ALETTHA BOOYZEN” THIS ARCHIVE PUBLISHED “LUUS WITH BOOYZEN RETURNS NOTHING” ON 14 SEPTEMBER. It returns nothing FROM NAAIRS, which was the only index asked, and the sentence did not say so. Withdrawn to /corrections/ with cause “scope”. It is the same failure as the row filter and the blank Name column, in a new coat: THE ANSWER WAS ABOUT THE TOOL AND WAS WRITTEN DOWN AS THOUGH IT WERE ABOUT THE WORLD. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened yes | What the site holds for BOOYZEN | 569 RECORDS ACROSS TEN DATASETS, FACET COUNTS FREE Verified Death 190 · National Archives 152 · Estate File 122 · MARRIAGE TRANSCRIPTION 54 · BAPTISM 22 · FamilySearch 22 · CONCENTRATION CAMPS 3 · 1925–1931 VOTER ROLL 2 · Civil Death 1 · Unconfirmed Death 1. FOUR OF THOSE ARE DATASETS THIS ARCHIVE HAD NEVER SEARCHED AT ALL — the marriages, the baptisms, the voters' roll and the camps. The marriages are the gap that mattered: this project has never had a marriage index. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened yes | 1921 · DAVID KOLBE BOOYZEN × MARIA JACOBA SMIT | THE MARRIAGE BEHIND THIS MORNING'S FIND, NOW IN A TRANSCRIPTION The Kolbe-Booysen household of Port Elizabeth was published today off two Eastern Province Herald notices, with the 1921 marriage flagged as coming from a family tree and no document. Same names, same year, in an independent index. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened yes | 1933 · MICHAEL JOHANNES VERMEULEN × BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA BOOYZEN | BETIE OF THE SILVERTON PILLAR GETS A MARRIAGE YEAR She was found last week only through TAB MHG 4300/51, which named her as Michael Johannes Vermeulen's SURVIVING spouse in 1951 and as his second wife. HERE IS THE YEAR SHE MARRIED HIM, from the other end. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened part | 1850 · HENDRIK STEPHANUS BOOIJZEN × ANNA JOHANNA OLIVIER | CORROBORATED — AND WITH ONE NAME SHORTER The marriage that puts this family north of the Vaal in 1850, already on this site. The transcription gives her ANNA JOHANNA where this archive has ANNA CATHARINA JOHANNA. A variant, recorded, not resolved. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened yes | The camps and the voters' roll | THREE AND TWO GERT JACOBUS, GERTRUIDA MAGDALENA and JAN GERHARDUS LODEWICUS BOOYZEN in the University of Cape Town's Born in the Camps database, where this archive had reached one of them once and by accident. And on the 1925–1931 voters' roll, JACOBUS NICOLAS BOOYZEN and JOHN BARRY BOOYZEN — both of them on the list of six estate files now with a researcher in Pretoria. A VOTERS' ROLL GIVES AN ADDRESS AND A DISTRICT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened no | KOLBE — 2,308 records, of which thirty-one born 1843–1869 | AND ALL THIRTY-ONE ARE TREE DATA 1843 to 1869 is exactly the window of the Commandant's twelve children — married 3 April 1843, dead 3 April 1868. For a moment it looks like the answer. EVERY ONE OF THE THIRTY-ONE COMES FROM THE FAMILYSEARCH SLICE, which is other people's trees indexed. NOT A REGISTER, NOT AN ESTATE, NOT A DEATH NOTICE. THIRTY-ONE PLAUSIBLE CHILDREN DO NOT BECOME EVIDENCE BY BEING PLAUSIBLE TOGETHER. Kept as a list to test against documents; none entered. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened part | The one tree name worth writing down anyway | GERSOM ELIEZÄR KOLBE, BORN 1868, DIED 1902 He carries the Commandant's own forenames and was born in the year the Commandant died, and the obituary says the youngest child was an infant. STILL TREE DATA AND STILL NOT ENTERED. What is not tree data is the National Archives run beside it: a JOHN GERSON ELIEZER KOLBE sued by E. Wille and Sons, by John William Pearce and by the Nelspruit Roller Mills, divorced by Hester Johanna Catherina born Hammon, and tried with one Adam Barnard. FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE SAME THREE NAMES, with documents for the first and the last and none in between. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened part | The finders not yet used | SEVEN OF THEM, AND TWO GO STRAIGHT AT OPEN QUESTIONS Cape Estates · Transvaal Estates · MOOC8 INVENTORIES · LAND & DEEDS · Old Voter Rolls · Boer War Soldiers · Legal Gazettes, plus a BAPTISM FINDER listing which Dutch Reformed registers survive for each of 181 towns. MOOC8 is where the Mountjoy inventories are. LAND & DEEDS is where Leeuwberg and Kaalspruit are. The Baptism Finder is how to locate the register holding 21 September 1788. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened part | Terms | COMMERCIAL. LISTS FREE, DOCUMENTS NOT. Nothing was bought, no account was made, and everything above came off the public result pages. WHAT IT IS WORTH TO THIS PROJECT IS NOT THE DOCUMENTS — it is that four of its ten datasets are sources this archive did not know it had not searched. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 part | The letter to the National Archives in Pretoria, 12 September — six Transvaal estate files | ANSWERED. “ALL THE ESTATE FILES YOU ARE REQUESTING ARE BOUND FILES.” Ms Mavis Xaba, Archivist Assistant, Reading Room, NARSSA: “Unfortunately, we are therefore unable to scan these files and provide complete digital copies by email.” THAT IS NOT A REFUSAL, IT IS A PHYSICAL FACT ABOUT THE RECORD — the paper is sewn into volumes and will not lie on a scanner. It explains a great deal about what has and has not been filmed, and it retires an assumption this archive has been making for weeks: that the obstacle was willingness or staff time. She put a private researcher who specialises in estate files on copy. ENGAGING HER IS THE USER'S DECISION AND THE USER'S MONEY, and this archive does not spend either. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 part | And whether any of the six references was wrong | SHE CORRECTED NONE — BUT SHE HAD ALREADY ANSWERED 52653, AND THIS ARCHIVE READ PAST IT The letter singled out TAB MHG 52653 (BOOYZEN, JACOBUS NICHOLS, 1923) as the one file of the six that could not be found on microfilm at all, and asked to be told if the reference needed correcting. THE REPLY SAYS “ALL THE ESTATE FILES YOU ARE REQUESTING ARE BOUND FILES” AND NAMES NO EXCEPTION. Weak evidence — a general sentence is not a file-by-file check — but it is the first thing this archive has had suggesting that reference is real. CORRECTED 22 SEPTEMBER 2026. The researcher, not the institution, had already settled it: on 15 September Anne Brest sent a NAAIRS link to MHG 52653 with “THE DATE IS 1923. DON’T WORRY that it is not appearing after the 52653 number. . some references are like this.” The absent year suffix is normal, and it was the very thing this archive had read as a broken reference. See Corrections. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 yes | G2G — does de Villiers & Pama (1981) still place Petrus Jacobus under JAN? | “YES. b3c4d7 b. 21 SEPT 1788 UNDER JAN b3c4.” Riël Smit, who owns the 1981 edition this archive has never seen. THAT WAS THE LAST ESCAPE ROUTE. The standing objection was that a revision can move a man, and if Pama had relocated Petrus Jacobus the 1876 death notice would stand unopposed. IT DID NOT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 no | Is there any marriage of a Gerhardus Lodewicus to a Magdalena de Beer? | A CAPE GENEALOGIST WENT LOOKING AND FOUND NONE Pieter van Zyl: “I searched for a marriage between a Gerhardus Lodewicus and Magdalena de Beer but could not find one.” The pairing on line 3 of the 1876 Sterfkennis exists in no marriage record anybody has been able to produce. THE MOTHER ON THAT LINE AGREES WITH THE BOOK EXACTLY; the father does not. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 yes | Van Zyl's guess from memory — that a CHILD of Petrus Jacobus carried the name | HE IS RIGHT, AND THE CHILD IS NINE LINES LOWER ON THE SAME SHEET Line 3 of Notice 678: parents, “GERTHARDUS LÖDEWIKUS BOOIJSEN” and “Magdalena de Beer”. Line 12 of Notice 678: eight children, all of age, the fifth being “JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN”. THE NAME IN THE PARENTS' BOX IS THE BACK HALF OF A SON'S NAME, IN ONE CLERK'S HAND, ON ONE PAGE — and the half that was dropped is JAN, which is the name the book gives the father. A grandson named for his grandfather is the ordinary thing in this family, and this archive has a page proving it. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 yes | Who was doing the remembering | HENDRIK STEFANUS, THE SEVENTH CHILD, WHO SIGNED IT H. S. Booijsen countersigned the form beside the veldkornet, four lines below his own name in the children's list. Born about 1828. His grandfather Jan married in 1770 and remarried in 1793, and van Zyl puts his death more than forty years before 1876. HE WAS WRITING THE NAME OF A MAN HE HAD ALMOST CERTAINLY NEVER MET, about a father who was eighty-eight. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 part | Is the pedigree spine being moved to Jan | NO, AND THIS IS DELIBERATE Everything against Gerthardus Lodewikus is SECONDARY. De Villiers is a printed genealogy of 1893; Pama's revision agreeing with it is one book agreeing with its own earlier edition, not two sources agreeing. Against it stands a PRIMARY document signed by a son. THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT LET A BOOK OVERRULE A PAGE BECAUSE THE BOOK IS TIDIER. Jan Booijsen is entered as INFERRED, not documented, and the chart still shows Gerthardus Lodewikus at the top, marked open. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0 part | What would actually end it | THE BAPTISM REGISTER ENTRY OF 21 SEPTEMBER 1788 DE VILLIERS IS NOT A SOURCE, HE IS AN INDEX TO ONE. His entry for Petrus Jacobus was compiled from the Dutch Reformed doopregister, and that entry names the father in a contemporary hand, written within days of the birth, by somebody with no reason to be confused. Graaff-Reinet, Drakenstein and Stellenbosch for September 1788, in that order — b3c4 Jan was a burgher at Drakenstein and the family is at Graaff-Reinet by 1812. FIRST ITEM ON THE ERRANDS PAGE. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | archive.org — geslachtregister02devi and geslachtregister03devi | BOTH VOLUMES, FULL TEXT, IN UNDER A MINUTE They had been sitting behind a link in a forum answer for a day. The whole of this run took one download and some counting. THE COST OF NOT GOING BACK FOR THE SECOND HALF OF SOMETHING SOMEBODY HANDED YOU. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source no | KOLBE in de Villiers | A483 — AND IT IS SOMEBODY ELSE ENTIRELY “Carel Frederik Kolbe, VAN ANHALT DESSAU, burger te Kaapstad, gehuwd 6 Juni 1762 met Maria Magdalena de Wens”, with seven children baptised 1763–1773; volume 3 confirms the son Jacobus's 1799 marriage from the Paulsen side. A GERMAN KOLBE FAMILY WAS AT THE CAPE FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS BEFORE THE 1820 SETTLER LANDED, and it is not his — his father was a London tailor and he came out on the settler ships. Set down deliberately, as the trap it is. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | ANNA MARIA VAN DER MERWE — who she was | BAPTISED 5 OCTOBER 1788, AND SIX SIBLINGS Volume 2, van der Merwe: “(e) 3 WILLEM, gedoopt 30 September 1764, burger te Stellenbosch, gehuwd 7 November 1784 met HESTER MARIA VAN DER MERWE — (f) 1 Johanna Catharina 1787; 2 ANNA MARIA, GEDOOPT 5 OCTOBER 1788, GEHUWD MET PETRUS JACOBUS BOOIJSEN; 3 DAVID SCHALK, gedoopt 10 October 1790; 4 Hendrina Magdalena 1792; 5 Hester Maria 1793; 6 Hendrik Petrus Jacobus 1796.” SHE HAS BEEN A NAME ON ONE BAPTISM FOR THE WHOLE OF THIS PROJECT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | Two babies, fourteen days apart | HE 21 SEPTEMBER 1788, SHE 5 OCTOBER 1788 Volume 1 page 78 for him, volume 2 for her. The same author writing consistently with himself, which is worth exactly that and no more — but it is the first date of any kind this archive has had for her. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source part | Her parents — against WikiTree | THEY DISAGREE, AND THE CONCLUSION SURVIVES BOTH WikiTree makes her a daughter of DAVID SCHALK VAN DER MERWE and ANNA ELIZABETH LOUW, born 1785. De Villiers makes her a daughter of WILLEM VAN DER MERWE and HESTER MARIA VAN DER MERWE, baptised 1788. BOTH CANNOT BE RIGHT AND NEITHER IS BEING ADOPTED. On the tree's version David Schalk is her FATHER; on the book's he is her BROTHER. A CONCLUSION THAT HOLDS UNDER EITHER READING IS THE ONLY KIND THIS ARCHIVE GETS TO KEEP. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | Count the name across all three volumes | ONCE IN PART 1, FIFTEEN TIMES IN PART 2 Part 1 holds the entire BOOIJSEN genealogy, and the string “David Schalk” occurs in it EXACTLY ONCE — “David Schalk, gedoopt 4 Januari 1807”, which is our man, the child born the year after a van der Merwe married into the line. Of the fifteen in Part 2, THIRTEEN ARE INSIDE THE VAN DER MERWE SECTION, generation after generation: 1738, 1739, 1761, 1787, 1790, 1791, 1797, 1800, 1804. DAVID SCHALK IS A VAN DER MERWE NAME and this archive can now say so with a count behind it. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source part | Adriana Christina Viljoen — who she was | PROBABLY HIS FIRST COUSIN Volume 3, VILLION thans VILJOEN: “(e) 12 HERCULES ALBERTUS, gedoopt 30 Maart 1777, burger te Graaff-Reinet, GEHUWD 26 FEBRUARI 1797 MET MAGDALENA BOOIJSEN”, whose seventh child is “ADRIANA CHRISTINA, GEDOOPT 19 AUGUSTUS 1810”. Magdalena Booijsen is b3c4d6 — the SISTER of Petrus Jacobus. Eighteen in 1828, right district, right name. NOT PROVED: de Villiers gives her NO HUSBAND, and the 3 November 1828 Cradock date is itself only on WikiTree. The Cradock marriage register would close it. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | The Booijsen–Viljoen marriages of 1797 | A BROTHER AND A SISTER MARRIED A SISTER AND A BROTHER, THREE MONTHS APART Magdalena Booijsen (b3c4d6) married Hercules Albertus Viljoen on 26 FEBRUARY 1797. Her brother Jan Jonathan Booijsen (b3c4d5) married his sister Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen on 28 MAY 1797. Two households became one twice over in a single year, and thirty-one years later a son of the third sibling married a daughter of the first. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source yes | b3c4d5e6, resolved last week from a gravestone, explained this week | SHE HAS HER MOTHER'S THREE NAMES ENTIRE Jan Jonathan Booijsen and Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen's sixth child is “JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, gedoopt 16 Augustus 1807”. The same mechanism as David Schalk, in the same generation, in the house next door: A DISTINCTIVE NAME ENTERS THIS SURNAME BY MARRIAGE AND IS HANDED STRAIGHT DOWN. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source no | MOUNTJOY, DOWNING, WERDMULLER, SLEER in de Villiers | NOT THERE AT ALL Zero occurrences of Mountjoy, Montjoy, Downing, Werdmuller or Sleer across all three volumes. De Villiers recorded the OLD CAPE families — the Dutch, German and French of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. THE BRITISH AND THE 1820 SETTLERS ARE SIMPLY OUT OF SCOPE, which is a fact about the book and not about the families, and is the reason half this archive will never be found in it. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source blocked | Google Books, to chase the London tailor into a directory | BLOCKED — QUOTA ZERO WITHOUT A KEY books.googleapis.com returns HTTP 429, “quota_limit_value: 0”, for anonymous callers. Item 9 — whether John Godloff Kolbe of the 1844 obituary was at Brunswick Square or at Conduit Street — is not closed and needs a different route. ONE THING DID COME OUT OF IT: a list of 234 London master tailors who met at the Freemasons' Tavern on 22 December 1799 over the Combination Act, printed in The Times of 27 January 1800, includes “KOLBE, JOHN, 18, BROAD-STREET, SOHO”. Right trade, right city, right age, and Soho was the German quarter. NOT CLAIMED, because a John Kolbe in London is not yet this John Kolbe. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | Who was McCabe — the surname the Free State estate index files the Commandant's widow under | FRANCIS McCABE, LANDDROST OF BLOEMFONTEIN The Friend, 29 February 1872, with an obituary under it: son of DR McCABE, a Staff-Assistant Surgeon attached to the British Army on the Cape Frontier, born at one of the military posts in what is now British Kaffraria on 29 SEPTEMBER 1817; “married his second wife about ten months since — THE WIDOW OF THE LATE COMMANDANT J.G.E. KOLBE, OF KAFIRBERG, NEAR THIS TOWN”; died suddenly of heart disease on 23 February 1872, aged 54. THIS ARCHIVE HAS BEEN SAYING FOR DAYS THAT IT DID NOT KNOW WHO McCABE WAS. He was the town's own magistrate. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | How long the second marriage lasted | ABOUT FIFTEEN MONTHS Married about April 1871, widowed 23 February 1872. She had been widowed on 3 April 1868 with twelve children, and she outlived the second husband by twenty-four years. HIS OBITUARY COUNTS BOTH FAMILIES: “four sons and two daughters, BESIDES A LARGE FAMILY OF STEP-CHILDREN”. For about eleven months there were eighteen children attached to one household. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | How he died | A CART INTO A SLUIT, ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE STATE'S INDEPENDENCE He had spent 23 February superintending the burghers' annual target shooting for the government prize. At 5:15 he set off by spring-cart with four horses, Adjutant van Rensburg of the Free State Artillery and a servant, for the Diamond Fields, meaning to sleep at his own farm UITVLUGT on the Modder River. At half past seven, in deceptive moonlight, ONE HOUR'S RIDE SHORT OF THE FARM OF MR G.F. ENSLIN, the cart went into a sluit washed out by the rains. G.F. ENSLIN IS ALREADY IN THIS ARCHIVE — he placed the 1863 notice saying Maria Elizabeth Kolbe had died intestate. Here he is a landmark on a road at night. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | Any of the twelve children, by name | ONE — “JOHN KOLBE, JUN.” Free State criminal court, reported in The Friend in the second half of 1869: a horse thief pleaded guilty to driving off, in October 1868, from the farm SPRINGFIELD, WARD UPPER MODDER-RIVER, DISTRICT BLOEMFONTEIN, a black mare and foal belonging to “ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, WIDOW OF LATE J.G.E. KOLBE”, a blue schimmel mare and foal belonging to “JOHN KOLBE, JUN.”, and a chestnut riding horse belonging to “JEPHTS, A MAN OF COLOR, NOW RESIDING AT LEEUWBERG”. Six months after the death, a son is holding stock in his own right beside his mother. AND A MAN WHO WOULD OTHERWISE BE IN NO DOCUMENT AT ALL IS NAMED IN THE SAME SENTENCE, WITH PROPERTY OF HIS OWN. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | Where the farm actually was | ABOUT TWO HOURS' RIDE FROM BLOEMFONTEIN The Friend, 13 January 1870, an auction advertisement dated Bloemfontein 30 November 1869: “The farm, WILDEBEESTKOOI, ADJOINING THE FARM LEEUBERG, THE PROPERTY OF THE LATE J.G.E. KOLBE, ABOUT TWO HOURS RIDE FROM THE TOWN OF BLOEMFONTEIN.” THIS ARCHIVE PINNED LEEUWBERG AT FAURESMITH TWO DAYS AGO, 130 KM AWAY, AND PUBLISHED THE PIN WITH ITS OWN OBJECTION ATTACHED. The objection was right. Withdrawn to /corrections/ and the pin moved. Kafferberg, Kaalspruit, Leeuberg, Wildebeestkooi and Springfield are one neighbourhood. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve part | What the Settler did before Colesberg existed | HE KEPT A MISSION SCHOOL FOR BUSHMEN ON THE GROUND THE TOWN WAS LAID OUT ON The Friend, first half of 1869, “FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, by John MONTGOMERY, Founder of Burghersdorp”, describing a journey from Cradock about 1824: “I continued my journey towards the Orange River, BY KOOLSKOP, WHERE THE FATHER OF THE LATE LAMENTED COMMANDANT KOLBE CONDUCTED A BUSHMEN MISSION SCHOOL, AND WHICH IS NOW COLESBERG.” Colesberg was laid out in 1830. RECORDED AS AN INFERENCE: Montgomery is recalling forty-five years back and names the man only as somebody's father. It is also specific, and from a man who founded a town in the same district. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | A fourth public office for the Commandant | FOREMAN OF THE JURY, BLOEMFONTEIN, 1866 A forgery trial before Mr van Soelen — the same official who spoke at Kolbe's graveside two years later. “The jury, through their foreman, MR. J.G.B. KOLBE, OF KAFFERBERG, brought in a verdict of Not Guilty.” The initials are printed J.G.B. for J.G.E., in his own town's paper, in his own lifetime. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve part | A grandson | “LITTLE JANNIE”, TEN YEARS OLD, KILLED BY LIGHTNING IN 1884 — FATHER UNCERTAIN “The eldest son of Mr. John KOLBE, ‘little Jannie’, a promising youth ten years old, was struck dead by the electric fluid on his father's farm FIVE HOURS TO THE NORTHWARD OF BLOEMFONTEIN.” The Natal Witness index carries the same death and names the father GEORGE. TWO PAPERS, TWO FATHERS. If the John of 1884 is the John Kolbe junior of 1868, this is the Commandant's grandson, and this archive is not going to decide that on a preference. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve yes | KOLBE-BOOYSEN — the compound the Name page called a tree oddity | IT IS A HOUSEHOLD IN PORT ELIZABETH, AND IT IS IN PRINT TWICE Eastern Province Herald, 16 October 1944: “SAWTELLE – KOLBY-BOOYSEN. The engagement has been announced between LEVINA (FINNIE), only daughter of Mr and Mrs D. KOLBE-BOOYSEN, of Port Elizabeth, to Raymond Patrick, only son of Mrs D. Sawtelle, of Cambridge, England.” And 19 April 1945: “KOLBE-BOOYSEN – KRUGER… Hilda, only daughter of Lieut. and Mrs F. Kruger of Heidelburg, Transvaal, to WILLIAM (S.A.A.F.), son of Mr and Mrs D. KOLBE-BOOYSEN, of Port Elizabeth.” D IS DAVID — David Kolbe Booyzen, married Maria Jacoba Smit 1921. A TOWN AND TWO CHILDREN. And the headline spells it KOLBY and the body KOLBE, four words apart. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve no | The rest of the forty-three | MOSTLY SOMEBODY ELSE, AND SET DOWN AS SUCH A Kolbe girl of eleven drowned in a dam in the HANTAM district in 1874, saving a Hottentot girl who also drowned; Rev. F.W. KOLBE of the Paarl on a subscription list; Dr Kolbe the editor of the S.A. Catholic Magazine, ill in the Transkei in 1899; a watch-repair suit at Grahamstown in 1872; a Kolbe who swam three miles up a river after failing to save a drowning Australian in 1900; and two Cape Town society marriages of 1890. NONE OF THEM CONNECTS TO ANYTHING HERE and none is being adopted because the surname is rare enough to tempt. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for no | TAB CJC 906/76, 906/77, 907/104, 907/109, 907/123, 907/125, 907/126 — all seven detail records pulled | NOTHING BEYOND THE INITIALS Every one of the seven reads, in full: “CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION BURGHERS. MARICO. XX BOOYZEN.” No remarks field, no farm, no forename, no amount. THE INDEX LINE IS THE WHOLE RECORD. This archive has spent two days treating these seven as a lead that could be worked at a screen. They cannot. Moved to the errands page, which is where a thing belongs when the only remaining step is a door. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | BOOYZEN AND MARICO, Transvaal depot | TEN DOCUMENTS — SEVEN CLAIMS AND THREE NOBODY HAD ASKED FOR The other three are TAB source OD, the education files of the South African Republic, and all three are about a school: a subsidy application, a book order and a set of quarterly returns, each headed “H DE VRIES, JGL BOOYZEN, KWAGGAFONTEIN, DISTRIK MARICO, PK KAFFERSKRAAL”. The first carries a remarks field pointing at an earlier file, OR13059/97. THE REMARKS FIELD IS THE THREAD. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | Pull the thread — KWAGGAFONTEIN in the Transvaal depot | 72 DOCUMENTS; 48 OF THEM THIS SCHOOL From 4 October 1897, when G.E. ter Haar of Kafferskraal asked the government for a teacher, to April 1900, when the teacher asked for his cheque to be sent to the landdrost and the war ended the file. In between: the school commission finds a teacher (N. de Vries); a telegram — “wagon leaves Thursday to fetch teacher De Vries, is everything in order?”; inspection reports by inspector T.C. Stoffberg; a dispute over when the teacher moved into his house; a subsidy chased; school furniture bought; holidays; and two pupils leaving. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | Which of the forty-eight carry the surname | EIGHT, AND ALWAYS IN THE SAME PLACE JGL Booyzen is named on the subsidy application, two book orders, all four quarterly returns, the explanation of an adverse balance of £61-6-0, and a letter of May 1899 telling the department that IN HIS OPINION £8 TOO LITTLE SUBSIDY HAD BEEN PAID, with reasons. He is on none of the holiday notices, form requests or railway certificates, which the teacher sent alone. THAT IS THE SHAPE OF A SCHOOL COMMISSION'S TREASURER, not a teacher and not a parent. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for part | Which JGL Booyzen | NOT ANSWERED, AND NOT GUESSED The elder Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus, born about 1818, DIED AT VAALBANK ON 25 MAY 1885 and cannot be this man. His namesake born 4 December 1855 would be forty-two in 1898 and is a man of whom this archive has said for months that nothing is known of what became of him. Marico adjoins Lichtenburg; this family is documented in Marico from 1892. IT IS ALSO ONE OF THE COMMONEST NAME-STRINGS IN THE SURNAME. Recorded open. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | The spelling, in one office, over ten months | BOOYZEN, BOOYSEN, BOOIJZEN — THE SAME MAN January 1898 BOOYZEN; 12 February BOOYSEN; 9 May BOOYSEN; 1 July BOOYZEN; 20 October BOOIJZEN; 15 December BOOYSEN. One man, one farm, one government department, one register series, one year. NOTHING IN THIS ARCHIVE HAS SHOWN THE POINT SO CLEANLY: the z is not a branch and the ij is not a generation, it is whichever clerk had the pen. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | BOOYSEN AND ONDERWYZER, Transvaal depot | SIXTEEN — AND ONE OF THEM IS ON THIS FAMILY'S OWN FARM Most are other Booysens running other farm schools across the republic: Wonderboom, Hartsenbergfontein, Kareeboomputten, Zeekoefontein. But OR19199/98 and OR19484/98 read “DS. BOOYSEN (ONDERWYZER JP LOUW) VAALBANK DISTRICT LICHTENBURG POSTMERK RIETKUIL” — VAALBANK IS THE FARM WHERE JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN DIED IN 1885 AND HIS DAUGHTER IN 1920. He sends the school's power of attorney and eighteen pence in stamps to the government bookkeeper, and co-signs the fourth-quarter returns. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | And the best of the three Vaalbank files | OR2037/99, 6 FEBRUARY 1899 — SCHOOL MATERIALS FOR ORPHANS “DS. BOOIJSEN, LOUW (ONDERWIJZER), VAALBANK, DISTRIK LICHTENBURG, PK RIETKUIL. VRAAGT INLICHTINGEN OVER HET VERSCHAFFEN VAN LEERMIDDELEN AAN WEEZEN, NAAR AANLEIDING VAN EEN GEVAL TEN HUNNEN.” Asks how school materials may be provided to orphans, arising from a case among them. It is the only document in this archive in which a Booysen writes to a government about a child who is not his own. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for part | Is DS. a pair of initials or the Dutch Ds. for dominee | CANNOT BE READ FROM AN INDEX LINE David Schalk is this family's most used name-string, and DS. on this farm in 1898 would put a named relative on it. BUT SIX WEEKS EARLIER THE SAME SCHOOL WROTE “JP LOUW DS VAN ROOJEN” IN EXACTLY THE SAME SLOT, and Ds. van Rooijen is far more likely a minister. One abbreviation, two readings, and this archive will not choose between them to make the better story true. The file settles it in a sentence; it has gone on the errands page. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for yes | The atlas line that said “in the field-cornet's papers” | WRONG, AND CORRECTED IN PLACE The papers are the education department's. A field-cornet appears in the bundle exactly once, valuing the teacher's dwelling in May 1898, in a document sent by somebody else. The line had been written from a memory of the record rather than from the record, and it survived because nothing on the site cited it. AN EVENT WITH NO CITATION IS AN EVENT NOBODY CAN CHECK. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Nine places put on the atlas — items 4 and 6 yes | The seven towns, which needed no argument | PHILIPPOLIS · BETHULIE · UITENHAGE · PIET RETIEF · HOOPSTAD · STEYNSBURG · QUEENSTOWN All seven came out of two days' work and none was on the map. PHILIPPOLIS is where the 1868 obituary says the Settler's children grew up — a fourth independent source for what this archive had inferred from baptism places. BETHULIE is where FREDERIK FORTUNATUS was born in 1839 and where he brought his own youngest daughter to be baptised FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER. UITENHAGE is where the eldest son was born in 1822, two years after the landing. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Nine places put on the atlas — items 4 and 6 part | LEEUWBERG, where the Commandant died | PINNED AT FAURESMITH, ON ONE LAND FILE A Free State land file of 1903 reads “LEEUWBERG NO 465 DIST. FAURISMITH EXTENT ABOUT 1 200 MORGEN”. That is a farm of the right name in the right province THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER HE DIED THERE, and nothing more. Farm names repeat. THE PIN CARRIES THE CAVEAT ON THE MAP. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Nine places put on the atlas — items 4 and 6 part | KAALSPRUIT, where he lived and lies | PINNED AT BLOEMFONTEIN, ON A PAIR OF NAMES His own advertisement of 9 March 1864 is signed from “Kafferberg, Kaalspruit”. A Free State soil-conservation district is registered as “KAALSPRUIT – KAFFERRIVIER (BLOEMFONTEIN)” — THE SAME TWO NAMES PAIRED, in the district whose bank he directed and whose paper he advertised in. A NAME PAIR IS NOT A SURVEY BEACON and the pin says so. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Nine places put on the atlas — items 4 and 6 part | The part that does not fit, said out loud | FAURESMITH AND BLOEMFONTEIN ARE 130 KILOMETRES APART The obituary says he died at LEEUWBERG and that he “settled on the farm where he died and now lies buried on KAALSPRUIT”. Those cannot both be true of two farms that far apart. EITHER ONE OF THIS ARCHIVE'S TWO IDENTIFICATIONS IS WRONG, OR THE OBITUARY IS LOOSE. Both pins are marked approximate and the contradiction is printed with them rather than smoothed over by choosing one. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first yes | The Friend, 10 April 1868 — five days before the Grahamstown Journal | THE GRAHAMSTOWN VERSION IS A REPRINT, AND IT DROPS A LINE The Friend is the Free State paper and printed it first. Its wording: “OF THE EIGHT SONS AND FOUR DAUGHTERS HE HAS LEFT BEHIND HIM, one daughter alone is married, the youngest being but an infant.” THE GRAHAMSTOWN REPRINT SAYS ONLY “OF FOUR DAUGHTERS”. So the twelve children are EIGHT SONS AND FOUR DAUGHTERS, which this archive did not know an hour ago. The transcriber also notes that the obituary “continues for a further half column, but is very difficult to read” — SO THERE IS MORE, AND IT IS NOT TRANSCRIBED. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first part | Two transcriptions of one sentence, disagreeing on the farm | KAALSPRUIT AGAINST “[RANDSPRUIT]” Grahamstown: “settled on the farm where he died and now lies on KAALSPRUIT”. The Friend: “now lies buried on [RANDSPRUIT]”, the brackets the transcriber's own admission of doubt. ONE OF THE TWO IS WRONG AND THIS ARCHIVE COULD NOT SAY WHICH. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first yes | And the man settles it himself, four years earlier | “J.G.E. KOLBE, Kafferberg, KAALSPRUIT, 9 March 1864” A lost-property advertisement in the Friend, signed with his own address as the paper printed it. KAALSPRUIT IS RIGHT AND THE BRACKETED READING IS WRONG. The advertisement does a second job: it concerns “a promissory note, date 9th March 1864, DRAWN BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE IN FAVOR OF J.G.E. KOLBE, payable 4 months after date for £154 Stg”, lost on the Market Square at Bloemfontein. THE SETTLER'S ELDEST SON AND HIS TWIN-BORN BROTHER, IN ONE DOCUMENT, OVER A DEBT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first yes | The Friend, 23 October 1863 — an estate notice, printed twice | A SISTER'S DEATH, DATED AT LAST “Derwyl MARIA ELIZABETH KOLBE zonder testament na te laten is overleden en de nagebleven echtgenoot G.F. ENSLIN … als executeur is aangesteld.” MARY ELIZABETH KOLBE DIED INTESTATE and her husband George Frederick Enslin was appointed executor of her estate. This archive had “bef. 1867”, inferred from a baptism. IT IS NOW BEFORE 23 OCTOBER 1863, from a notice her own husband placed in the paper. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first part | A note on how the address is printed here | AS THE PAPER PRINTED IT, AND NOT USED AS A LABEL The 1864 advertisement gives his address with a place-name that is a racial slur in South African English. This archive quotes the advertisement as it stands, because that is what quoting a document means, and does not carry the word anywhere else — the farm is indexed as KAALSPRUIT. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive part | NAAIRS · KOLBE AND DOWNING | SIXTEEN DOCUMENTS, AND NO DEATH NOTICE FOR HER A WILL OF HER OWN, MOOC 7/1/295 no. 70, made in 1854 — ten years after she was widowed. Her husband's 1844 WILL, 1845 INVENTORY and 1845 APPRAISEMENT, MOOC 7/1/180 nos. 52–54. And MOOC 13/1/253 no. 2, “DOWNING, MARGARET. WIDOW OF KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS. LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT”, 1869. The account of 1869 fits a death in late 1867 and does not decide between 1867 and January 1868. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive yes | Then the stone, which this archive has had all along | “BORN IN LONDON 23 FEBRUARY 1803 AND DIED AT BURGHERSDORP 2_ NOVEMBER 1867” The Burgersdorp monument is ON THE KOLBE PAGE, photographed, and its caption quoted the inscription as far as “ALSO HIS RELICT MARGARET DOWNING…” AND STOPPED THERE. The next two lines carry an EXACT BIRTH, where this archive had “c. 1804”, and SETTLE THE DEATH AT 1867. A TRANSCRIPTION THAT STOPS BEFORE THE END OF AN INSCRIPTION IS NOT A TRANSCRIPTION. The day of death is a 2 and a digit that will not resolve at any magnification, and is not guessed. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive yes | And the newspaper, put in its place | “ABOUT THREE MONTHS SINCE” WAS NEARLY FIVE Yesterday this archive set the obituary of 15 April 1868 against its own 1867 and published the discrepancy rather than resolving it — which was right, because it could not then resolve it. THE STONE RESOLVES IT. What the obituary got right was the PLACE: Burgersdorp, which this archive did not have. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive yes | A name that keeps travelling | MARGARET DOWNING, AS A FORENAME PAIR, INTO 1949 MHG 23877 — FICK, LAMBERTUS HENDRIK, “eggenote MARGARET DOWNING (gebore KOLBE)”, 1932. MHG 33459 — DU PLESSIS, MARGARET DOWNING, nooiensvan KOLBE, 1941. MHG 801/49 — KRUGER, MARGARET DOWNING, nooiensvan KOLBE, VOORHEEN FICK, 1949 — the same woman as the 1932 file, remarried. A LONDON BRIDE OF 1819 IS STILL BEING NAMED IN FULL, AS A FORENAME, IN THE TRANSVAAL IN 1949. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive part | Also picked up in passing | MHG 40293 — KOLBE, FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING, 1918 The Wakkerstroom man's Transvaal estate reference, which this archive did not have. NOT READ. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13 yes | NAAIRS · WERDMULLER · 266 documents, never searched before | THE SETTLER'S FOURTH DAUGHTER HAS THREE FILES KAB MOOC 7/1/332 no. 205 — “KOLBE, AUGUSTA LOUISA. WIFE OF COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER VAN ELGG. WILL”, made 1868, FILED 1873. KAB MOOC 6/9/145 no. 9981 — her DEATH NOTICE, 1873. KAB MOOC 13/1/299 no. 93 — her LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT, 1874, which means there was something to distribute. THE WILL IS THE FIRST DOCUMENT READ HERE THAT TIES HER TO THAT MAN BY ANYTHING BUT A NEWSPAPER. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13 yes | The date that settles yesterday's open question | SHE DIED 1873. HE REMARRIED 7 JULY 1874. A year and a month — which is what a widower does. Yesterday this archive published the Werdmuller descent as “a chain with a gap in it”, the gap being whether CHARLES ANDREW belonged to the first marriage or the second. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13 yes | And a document that puts father and son in one line | GSC 2/1/1/41 no. 60, 1882 — “C.A. WERDMULLER AND COMPANY” “ILLIQUID CASE. CHARLES ANDREW WERDMULLER AND COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER TRADING AS CA WERDMULLER AND COMPANY VERSUS … ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF DEBT.” FATHER AND SON IN BUSINESS TOGETHER IN THE YEAR THE FATHER DIED. A son of the 1874 marriage would have been SEVEN in 1882 and NINE when Charles Andrew married in 1884. HE CAN ONLY BE A CHILD OF THE FIRST MARRIAGE, and the first wife is the Settler's daughter. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13 part | The loophole that is left, named rather than ignored | AN EARLIER WIFE, BEFORE AUGUSTA LOUISA C.J.O. Werdmuller is in the Cape Supreme Court from 1854, so he was an adult two decades before she died. If there was a wife before her, Charles Andrew could be hers. HIS 1882 DEATH NOTICE — KAB MOOC 6/9/187 no. 4160 — LISTS HIS CHILDREN AND WOULD CLOSE IT. It is now the most wanted page on the Cape errand, because it decides whether a Victoria Cross married a great-granddaughter of the 1820 Settler. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13 part | A namesake, found without looking | FREDERICK FORTUNATUS WERDMULLER OF MALMESBURY Cape Supreme Court, 1907, twice in one year; an estate of his own in 1953, MOOC 6/9/20496. This archive has followed FREDERIK FORTUNATUS from Kolbe in 1839 to Barry in 1863 to Booÿsen in 1899. HERE IT IS ON A WERDMULLER — and Augusta Louisa Kolbe married a Werdmuller. Not shown to be her descendant. It is not a name that travels by accident. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State archives, opened for the first time yes | NAAIRS · VAB · KOLBE — a depot this archive had never searched | 146 DOCUMENTS The Free State repository has been sitting there through the whole project. It was opened the morning after the newspapers revealed that the Settler's eldest son lived and died in the Orange Free State. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State archives, opened for the first time part | His estate | VAB MHG K71 — KOLBE, JOHN GERSON ELEAZAR “EGGENOTE ANNA JACOBA (GEBORE VAN DER MERWE)”, 1868. The obituary gave him twelve children and named none of them. A DEATH NOTICE LISTS THE CHILDREN. This is the document that would answer the largest gap in this archive, and it is not filmed. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State archives, opened for the first time yes | And the one that is better | VAB MHG M777 — “MCCABE, ANNA JACOBA. NOOIENSVAN VAN DER MERWE. EGGENOTE JOHN GHERSON”, 1896 SHE REMARRIED. Widowed in 1868 with twelve children, she died twenty-eight years later as MRS MCCABE, which is why no search for a Kolbe widow would ever have found her. HER NOTICE WOULD NAME THE SAME TWELVE AS ADULTS — with their married surnames, which the 1868 one cannot. Found by searching the surname KOLBE and reading a row that is filed under M. |
| 15 Sep 2026 | The Free State archives, opened for the first time part | A coincidence recorded rather than followed | THERE IS A SECOND KOLBE–McCABE MARRIAGE ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE, baptised at Bloemfontein on 6 July 1890, daughter of FREDERIK FORTUNA KOLBE and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA MCCABE. Two Kolbe–McCabe marriages in one small Free State world, twenty years apart. THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT KNOW WHETHER THAT IS ANYTHING and writes it down so that it is not discovered twice. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end — item 5, and a tool that will not be driven part | Why FreeBMD was the right place to start | SEVEN BROTHERS DIED BEFORE DECEMBER 1844 The 1844 obituary makes George Augustus “the last remaining of EIGHT SONS of John Godloff Kolbe Esq. of Brunswick-square”. Civil registration in England begins in SEPTEMBER 1837, so any brother who died between 1837 and 1844 should be in the GRO death index — and FreeBMD has transcribed that period. THE OTHERS DIED TOO EARLY AND WILL NEED PARISH REGISTERS. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end — item 5, and a tool that will not be driven void | The search itself | THE FORM WILL NOT BE DRIVEN FROM A SCRIPT, AND THIS IS RECORDED AS A TOOL FAILURE The visible submit buttons are “Find Additional” and “View Saved”, both of which want a saved-search FILE — clicking one returns “You must supply the name of a file containing a saved search”. The real Find button is written into the page by JavaScript and is not in the form's element list. Posting the fields directly with find=Find returns a 105 KB page containing the query echoed back and NO RESULT ROWS. NO SEARCH WAS ACTUALLY RUN. NOTHING IS RECORDED AS A NEGATIVE, because nothing was asked. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end — item 5, and a tool that will not be driven no | Items 6 and 7, which were queued behind it | NOT STARTED BRUNSWICK SQUARE AGAINST CONDUIT STREET needs London directories; the CAPE MEDICAL PRACTICE needs colonial medical registers. Both were to follow the FreeBMD run and neither was begun. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Pietermaritzburg address, checked before anything is posted yes | The National Archives' own entry for the repository | POSTAL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE CONFIRMED Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, identifier NAB. Street 231 PIETERMARITZ STREET; postal PRIVATE BAG X9012, PIETERMARITZBURG 3200; telephone 033 342 4712; fax 033 394 4353; contact person THE PROVINCIAL ARCHIVIST. These agree across every source found and are safe. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Pietermaritzburg address, checked before anything is posted part | The email address | TWO OF THEM, AND ONE IS ALMOST CERTAINLY DEAD The official page gives pmbarchives@dact.kzntl.gov.za on a record last edited on 2 JULY 2015, and kzntl.gov.za is a RETIRED KwaZulu-Natal government domain. Current listings give pmbarchives@kzndac.gov.za, which matches the department's live domain. THE ARCHIVE THAT PUBLISHES THE ADDRESS HAS NOT UPDATED IT IN ELEVEN YEARS. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Pietermaritzburg address, checked before anything is posted part | What to do about it | POST IT, OR TELEPHONE FIRST This archive sent the Pretoria enquiry on 13 September into a mailbox it could not confirm and has had no answer. The recommendation here is the postal address, which is certain, or a call to 033 342 4712 to ask for the current email. THE LETTER IS DRAFTED AND DELIBERATELY NOT SENT; sending it is the user's. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch has signed out, and it fails in the worst possible way blocked | The image viewer, for the Burgersdorp register sweep | REDIRECTS TO THE SIGN-IN PAGE Items 1 to 4 of the standing queue — finishing the register sweep, re-checking the thirty blank-index images, sweeping the whole film for nameless rows, and reading images 427 and 513 as images — ALL STOP HERE. The sweep stopped at image 604 of 818 and can be resumed from there. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch has signed out, and it fails in the worst possible way void | The search API, which looked fine | IT ANSWERS 200 AND RETURNS THE WRONG WORLD A query this archive ran successfully six hours ago — q.surname=Kolbe with f.recordCountry=South Africa — NOW RETURNS ZERO ENTRIES WITH HTTP 200. Drop the country filter and it returns 26,126 candidates, EVERY ONE OF THEM FROM THE UNITED STATES CENSUS OF 1950. The South African Dutch Reformed registers, the Transvaal and Cape estate indexes and the civil death series are simply not in the corpus any more. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch has signed out, and it fails in the worst possible way void | Why this is the dangerous kind of failure | A LOGGED-OUT SEARCH LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE AN EMPTY ARCHIVE No error, no warning, no redirect — a valid JSON body with results:0. Every negative this archive might have written in the last hour — “Gabriel Stephanus not followed out of the font”, “Angeline unidentified”, “Susanna Margaretha Downing Kolbe unattached” — WOULD HAVE BEEN A LIE, and would have read exactly like the true negatives beside it. IT IS THE THIRD TIME TODAY THE SAME SHAPE HAS APPEARED: NAAIRS ORing two keywords, this archive's own row filter dropping thirty-six documents, and now a signed-out API returning an empty world. A FILTER THAT DROPS WHAT IT CANNOT SEE IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A SOURCE THAT HOLDS NOTHING. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch has signed out, and it fails in the worst possible way blocked | Items 8, 9, 12 and 19, which needed it | NOT RUN, AND NOT WRITTEN UP AS NEGATIVES The three unfollowed children of Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe; Angeline Kolbe of Wakkerstroom; Susanna Margaretha Downing Kolbe; and the phthisis-against-sclerosis question for Henry James Booyzen. ALL FOUR ARE WAITING ON A SIGN-IN AND NONE OF THEM IS RECORDED AS A MISS. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico yes | Re-run the BOOYZEN sweep without the row filter | 194 ROWS, 184 UNIQUE — THE EXACT COUNT This morning this archive published “148 of 184 — thirty-six documents were not reached”. ALL TEN PAGES HAD BEEN WALKED. The thirty-six were dropped by a condition in this archive's own harvesting code that required a description longer than three characters, which silently discards every row the index leaves short or blank. A CAVEAT THAT BLAMED THE SOURCE FOR A HOLE THIS ARCHIVE DUG. Withdrawn to /corrections/. It is the same failure as the blank Name column in the Burgersdorp register, one layer up: A FILTER THAT DROPS WHAT IT DOES NOT RECOGNISE LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE AN ARCHIVE THAT DOES NOT HOLD IT. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico yes | What was hiding in the thirty-six | SEVEN COMPENSATION CLAIMS BY BURGHERS, MARICO, 1903–1904 CJC 906/76 JPJ BOOYZEN · CJC 906/77 PJ BOOYZEN · CJC 907/104 GL BOOYZEN · CJC 907/109 JPJ BOOYZEN · CJC 907/123 L BOOYZEN · CJC 907/125 JC BOOYZEN · CJC 907/126 HE BOOYZEN. MARICO IS ONE OF THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN DISTRICTS — Brakfontein, Vaalbank, Koedoesfontein, Zeerust, Driefontein and Zwartruggens are all in or beside it. Seven men of this surname claiming from the state for what the war cost them, in one district, in two years. AND ONE OF THEM IS INITIALLED G.L. NONE IS READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico part | And the oldest Booyzen paper in the country | CJ 2633 · 29 — BOOYZEN, CHRISTINA. TESTAMENT. 1779 Also CO 3879 · 521, “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, WIDOW OF WW TEUTER”, 1810 — and the Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette of 1 January 1830 carries “CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, Widow of WILLEM WOUTER VENTER, aged 79 years”. TEUTER AND VENTER MAY WELL BE ONE CLERK'S HAND READ TWO WAYS. Not this family so far as anything shows, and set down because a 1779 will is older than anything this archive has. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico yes | Item 13 — the six missing Silverton children, asked of the estate index | ONE OF THE SIX, AND HER HUSBAND'S NAME TAB MHG 4300/51: “VERMEULEN, MICHAEL JOHANNES, 1951. PREDECEASED SPOUSE ELSIE KATRINA VERMEULEN. SURVIVING SPOUSE BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA VERMEULEN (BORN BOOYZEN).” THAT IS BETIE. She was his second wife and she outlived him. Found by putting VERMEULEN and BOOYZEN to the index TOGETHER — the relationship trick again, not a name search. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico no | The other five — Ousie, Evert, Pietie, Johan, Hennie | NOT IDENTIFIABLE, AND NOT GUESSED LUUS with BOOYZEN returns NOTHING. The 184 hold four Petrus Jacobus Booyzen estates and a Johann Frederik of 1974, and this archive already has SIX men called Petrus Jacobus in this family — so a match on a forename is worth nothing here. FIVE OF THE TWELVE SILVERTON CHILDREN REMAIN UNPLACED and this archive would rather say so than fill them in. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom stones, read part | PIET RETIEF · KOLBE G.A. 1836–1913 & A.M. 1843–1907 | GEB. 23 FEB. 1836 — WHICH IS THE TWIN'S YEAR EXACTLY “VADER EN MOEDER — G.A. KOLBE — GEB. 23 FEB. 1836 — OVERL. 7 JAN. 1913 — A.M. KOLBE — GEB. 4 MEI 1843 — OVERL. 21 SEP. 1907 — VAN HUN KINDERS.” The Settler's ninth and tenth children were TWINS BORN AT BURGERSDORP IN 1836 and this archive has never had a day for either; this would date both. IT IS INITIALS AND A YEAR, NOT A NAME AND A PARENT, and it is entered as inferred. It would also give the other George Augustus Kolbe — born Burgersdorp 2 October 1861 — a father aged twenty-five. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom stones, read part | PIET RETIEF · KOLBE P.J. 1865–1919 | INITIALS AGAIN, AND ONE ILLEGIBLE DIGIT “P.J. KOLBE — GEB. 1_ AUG. 1865 — OORL. 28 NOV. 1919 — RUS SAG.” The day will not resolve at any magnification and is left as a gap. Thirty years younger than the stone beside it and very likely a son of it; NOTHING ON THE STONE SAYS SO. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom stones, read yes | WAKKERSTROOM · MERWE Maria Johanna, van der, nee KOLBE 1886–1953 | A DATE, AND SIX CHILDREN BY THEIR HOUSEHOLD NAMES “IN LIEFDEVOLLE HERINNERING AAN ONS MAMMIE — MARIA JOHANNA VAN DER MERWE (GEB. KOLBE) — 26 OKT. 1886 – 1 OKT. 1953 — Wat hy doen is wel gedaan” — and beneath it MARTZI · P.S. · JUDIE · PIETMAN · CHARL EN SUZAN. Her birth moves from a year to a date. SIX GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN OF THE 1820 SETTLER, NONE OF THEM PREVIOUSLY IN THIS ARCHIVE. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom stones, read yes | The pattern, now at three | THIS FAMILY BURIES ITS DEAD IN ONE GRAMMAR The Booyzens at SILVERTON list twelve children on a centre pillar. The Kolbes at WAKKERSTROOM use the same double-stone-and-pillar form. This one sets six household names under a mother's dates. TWO FAMILIES FOUR HUNDRED MILES APART, DOING THE SAME THING — and it keeps producing children who are on no register this archive can reach, because A REGISTER RECORDS A BIRTH AND A STONE RECORDS WHO WAS LEFT. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life yes | Grahamstown Journal 1868, second quarter — a hit this archive had already seen and not opened | A FULL OBITUARY FOR JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE He was two lines in a table: “John Gerson Eliezar ‘Jan’, 1822, Uitenhage”. The obituary gives BORN 7 JULY 1822, MARRIED 3 APRIL 1843 to ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, DIED 3 APRIL 1868 ON HIS WEDDING ANNIVERSARY at the farm LEEUWBERG, of TYPHUS OR TYPHOID CAUGHT ON COMMANDO. Settled on KAALSPRUIT about 1850. COMMANDANT OF THE DISTRICT, JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, DIRECTOR OF THE BLOEMFONTEIN BANK, DEACON, and a speaker in the VOLKSRAAD in May 1867. THE ROW ABOVE IT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS WAS READ THIS MORNING AND THIS ONE WAS NOT. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life part | The household in that obituary | A WIDOW AND TWELVE CHILDREN, NOT ONE OF THEM NAMED Four daughters, only one married, the youngest an infant. TWO SONS HAD SERVED WITH HIM IN THE FIELD and “proved themselves amongst the bravest of our burghers”. Twelve grandchildren of the 1820 Settler in one household and this archive has none of them. IT IS THE LARGEST SINGLE GAP THE NEWSPAPERS HAVE OPENED. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life yes | The deathbed passage | “THIS STATE HAD TAKEN TOO MUCH LAND FROM THE BASUTOS” He said it to the doctor and the others at his bedside; said he had always thought so and had said so in the Raad at the “corn peace” of May 1867; and asked them to RESCIND THEIR RESOLUTION, ANNUL THEIR PROTEST AND TREAT WITH THE GOVERNOR for an equitable boundary. A man dying of a fever he caught fighting that war, asking his own government to give the land back. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life yes | And the obituary describes his parents | A CONTEMPORARY CORROBORATION OF THE WHOLE LONDON STORY “His parents came out with the settlers of 1820; HIS FATHER WAS OF GERMAN EXTRACTION, IF NOT BIRTH, BUT RESIDED AND MARRIED IN LONDON.” This archive built that from a Soho baptism, a London Gazette partnership notice and the 1841 census — none of which the writer of 1868 had in front of him. It also confirms from a fourth direction that the father “became a Missionary to the Griquas at PHILIPPOLIS, and most of his family grew up there”. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life part | The date that does not fit, left not fitting | MARGARET DOWNING “DIED IN BURGHERSDORP ABOUT THREE MONTHS SINCE” Printed 15 April 1868, which puts her death in JANUARY 1868. This archive has 1867, off her own death notice. A form with a date beats a journalist rounding — but this archive has been caught once already by an estate filed thirteen years after the death it recorded, so the discrepancy is published rather than resolved. HER PLACE OF DEATH IS NEW EITHER WAY: BURGERSDORP, where her husband lies. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life part | Grahamstown Journal, 9 February 1872, quoting the Colesberg Advertiser | “TERRIBLE WARNING” — A KOLBE SUES A WATCHMAKER An action before the Resident Magistrate between MR. GEO. KOLBE, plaintiff, and MR. T. NELSON, WATCHMAKER, defendant, over a watch entrusted for repair “which, despite repeated promises, the latter neglected to repair or to deliver”. Not a genealogical fact, and kept anyway: it is the only glimpse this archive has of a Kolbe of Colesberg on an ordinary Monday. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back yes | newspapers.eggsa.org · WERDMULLER | TEN HITS, AND FIVE OF THEM BUILD A FAMILY AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE, the Settler's fourth daughter, born Graaff-Reinet 1829, has been in this archive as a name with a surname in brackets and nothing else. Her husband is now a man with three dates and a town; her son is named; her son's wife has a death and an obituary; and her granddaughter has a wedding. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back yes | Eastern Province Herald, 21 July 1874 | THE VON ELGG, PRINTED BY SOMEBODY WHO WAS NOT A GENEALOGIST “MARRIED at Burghersdorp BY SPECIAL LICENCE, on Tuesday the 7th July 1874, by the Rev. William Cromar, COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER D'ELGG to Miss ELIZABETH JOHANNA CATHARINE VORSTER, both of Burghersdorp.” And it raises a question this archive cannot answer: WAS AUGUSTA LOUISA DEAD BY 1874, or is this a son of the same name? |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back yes | Queenstown Free Press, 19 February 1884 | C.J.O. WERDMULLER IS DEAD, AND HE HAD AT LEAST TWO SONS “CHARLES ANDREW WERDMULLER, OF STEYNSBURG. SECOND SON OF THE LATE C.J.O. WERDMULLER, OF BURGHERSDORP”, married at Wesley Church, Queenstown, to CHARLOTTE ANNE CALLAGHAN, eldest daughter of Hugh Callaghan Esq. of Ashby Manor. A MAN BORN 14 FEBRUARY 1857 — the nameless Burgersdorp baptism found this same morning — WAS TWENTY-SEVEN THAT WEEK. The two finds met in the middle and neither was looking for the other. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back yes | Queenstown Free Press, 1891 | DEAD AT THIRTY-TWO, LEAVING TWO LITTLE GIRLS “DIED — At HOOPSTAD, Orange Free State, on Tuesday, the 17th February, 1891, at the age of 32 years, after a long illness, CHARLOTTE ANNE WERDMULLER … leaving a husband and TWO LITTLE GIRLS to mourn their loss.” A correspondent's obituary adds that she had reached Hoopstad only months before, in indifferent health, with a disorder of the heart that proved organic. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back yes | South Africa, a weekly journal, 1909 | A VICTORIA CROSS MARRIES INTO THE LINE “MARTINEAU — WERDMULLER — On July 31, at East London, HORACE ROBERT MARTINEAU, V.C., of Durban, to AMY WERDMULLER, SECOND DAUGHTER OF CHARLES WERDMULLER, J.P. OF HOOPSTAD, O.R.C.” She is one of the two little girls of 1891. THIS ARCHIVE PRINTS THE TWO LETTERS AS THE JOURNAL PRINTED THEM and has NOT gone looking for which action he won it for — that is somebody else's page, and borrowing it is exactly the temptation this archive exists to resist. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back part | The link that is not proved, stated rather than smoothed over | NOTHING NAMES CHARLES ANDREW'S MOTHER If he is the child of 14 February 1857 then Augusta Louisa Kolbe is his mother and Amy is a great-granddaughter of the 1820 Settler. If he belongs to his father's 1874 marriage he is no relation — and a man marrying in 1884 as a SECOND son cannot be. THE DATES FAVOUR KOLBE STRONGLY AND THE DOCUMENTS DO NOT SAY IT. Recorded as a chain with a gap in it. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back no | newspapers.eggsa.org · ELGG | NOTHING The search engine will not match a fragment inside D'ELGG. The full surname has to be asked for. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line yes | The comment, thirteen minutes old when it was read here | HE PREDICTED WHAT IS ON THE PAGE WITHOUT HAVING SEEN THE PAGE “His real dad, Jan, was already dead for more than 40 years when Petrus Jacobus died… Quite possibly, the informant ‘thought’ the dad's name was G L. I searched for a marriage between a Gerhardus Lodewicus and Magdalena de Beer BUT COULD NOT FIND ONE. If I remember correctly, THERE WAS A CHILD OF PETRUS CALLED GERHARDUS LODEWICUS ON HIS STERFKENNIS.” |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line yes | Check it against the document this archive has read and photographed | THERE IS. HE IS THE FIFTH CHILD IN LINE 12. JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN. The name this archive takes from LINE 3 for the dead man's FATHER is the back half of his SON'S name, EIGHT LINES BELOW, ON THE SAME SHEET, IN ONE CLERK'S HAND. And the half that gets dropped — JAN — is the name de Villiers gives as the real father, b3c4d7. THE ARCHIVE HAS BEEN LOOKING AT BOTH HALVES FOR WEEKS AND DID NOT PUT THEM TOGETHER. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line part | What it does to the dispute | IT TAKES EVIDENCE AWAY AND ADDS NONE This is not a proof that the father was Jan, and this archive is NOT swapping one unproved father for another on the strength of a good reading. What it does is REMOVE THE 1876 STERFKENNIS AS DECISIVE EVIDENCE FOR GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS — and line 3 is the only place that name has ever been found. THE OLDEST QUESTION ON THIS SITE JUST GOT HARDER, which is the correct direction for it to move. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line no | Pieter van Zyl's own negative, recorded because it is one | NO MARRIAGE OF A GERHARDUS LODEWICUS TO A MAGDALENA DE BEER He looked and could not find one. This archive has not repeated the search and records his, attributed. A man who cannot be found marrying the woman his son's death notice gives him is not thereby disproved — but the absence is now on the page. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line part | Riël Smit, two hours earlier | THE ONLY GERHARDUS IN DE VILLIERS & PAMA (1981) IS b3c1d1 GERHARDUS LORET “Maybe the Loret changed to Lodevicus over time.” Baptised September 1770, son of Booij — which makes him Petrus Jacobus's FIRST COUSIN and EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD in 1788. He cannot be the father. The suggestion is still worth keeping: it is the only Gerhardus in the printed genealogy at all, and a remembered cousin is exactly the kind of name an informant reaches for. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line part | And the books this archive did not have | PARTS 2 AND 3 ARE ON ARCHIVE.ORG TOO Riël Smit posted links to all three parts of Oude Kaapsche Familien. This archive downloaded Part 1 on 13 September and never looked for the others. NOT YET READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project no | First, exhaust the index, so the grind is not done for nothing | NINE SEARCHES, ALL RETURNING THE SAME SEVEN CHILDREN Child surname as BARRY, BERRY, BARRIE, BARY, BARREY, BARRI and BARI — the engine fuzzy-matches, so all seven return one set. Mother as KOLBE, KOLBER and COLBE. And a search on the PARENTS alone — father John, mother Margaretha/Margret/Margaretwina, place Burgersdorp — which returned NOTHING for 1854–1858. THE INDEX ROUTE WAS GENUINELY EXHAUSTED BEFORE A SINGLE IMAGE WAS OPENED. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project yes | The film viewer carries an index panel under every image | THIS IS THE TOOL, AND IT WAS THERE ALL ALONG Film 008039088 — 818 images, not the 534 this archive had written down. Under each image is a table: NAME, BIRTH DATE, PARENT NAME, SECOND PARENT'S NAME, EVENT TYPE, EVENT DATE, EVENT PLACE, for every entry on that page. THE HANDWRITING NEVER HAD TO BE READ. Stepping the viewer and harvesting that table gives about ten entries an image at two and a half seconds each. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project yes | Images 338 to 604 — 1853 to 1859, about 2,400 indexed entries | ONE BARRY BAPTISM: CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA, BORN 10 JULY 1855 Image 427. Baptised 22 July 1855 at Burgersdorp, father JOHN BARRY, mother MARGARET LOUISA KOLBE. THE TENTH CHILD. And her sister has the same name: on 25 December 1859 at Dordrecht the same parents baptised another CATHARINA MARY SOPHIA, born 4 August 1859 — the woman who married into the Booyzens. A BAPTISM IS NOT DONE TWICE, so the first child died and the name was given again, which is the ordinary Cape practice. This archive has no burial for her and dates the death only as before August 1859. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project yes | WHY NO SEARCH COULD EVER HAVE FOUND HER | THE NAME COLUMN IS EMPTY The index row for image 427 reads: “ | 10 Jul 1855 | John Barry | Margaret Louisa Kolbe | Baptism | 22 Jul 1855 | Burgersdorp”. THE CHILD IS INDEXED WITH NO NAME AT ALL. Her forenames are written plainly on the page and simply were not keyed. NO SEARCH BY SURNAME, FORENAME OR SPELLING VARIANT CAN RETURN A RECORD THAT HAS NEITHER. The parents are indexed; the child is not. That is a class of invisible record this archive did not know existed, and it is worth more than the one child it produced. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project yes | A second nameless row, in the same sweep | THE SETTLER'S FOURTH DAUGHTER HAS A CHILD Image 513: born 14 FEBRUARY 1857, baptised 10 April 1857 at Burgersdorp, mother AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE, father COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER. She is the Settler's daughter born at Graaff-Reinet in 1829, and THIS IS THE FIRST OF HER CHILDREN THIS ARCHIVE HAS EVER SEEN. Name column empty again. TWO NAMELESS ENTRIES IN 267 IMAGES AND BOTH BELONG TO THIS FAMILY. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project no | The eleventh child | STILL MISSING Not at Burgersdorp between 1853 and 1859, and the sweep was complete across that ground. What is left: 1851–1852 before this register opens, the Dordrecht register after 1863, and the real possibility that a child was born and died between two known baptisms and was never entered anywhere. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project part | What the sweep cannot vouch for | ABOUT THIRTY IMAGES RETURNED NO INDEX ROWS Some of those are genuinely blank pages. This archive cannot say all of them are — the panel may simply not have loaded inside the wait. THE NUMBER IS WRITTEN DOWN RATHER THAN ROUNDED AWAY, and anyone repeating this should re-visit the zeros. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger yes | Did anyone answer the post of 13 September? | TWO ANSWERS, BOTH WITHIN EIGHTEEN HOURS, BOTH USEFUL This archive asked whether the “Form of information of death” cited on WikiTree profile Booyzen-12 was the sterfkennis it has been trying to read since the FamilySearch films started refusing images. THE FORUM WORKED. Two answers, five upvotes each, from PIETER VAN ZYL. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger yes | Is the “Form of information of death” the document this archive wants? | NO — AND THAT IS THE ANSWER, NOT A DISAPPOINTMENT “The Form of Information of a Death or AANGIFTE VAN 'N STERFGEVAL is usually the form that concentrates on the registration of the death by Government. IT DOES NOT USUALLY CONTAIN the information about the spouse's name, parents' names and children. On the other hand the STERFKENNIS or Death Notice gives more information to enable the probate to be processed. It is connected to the will and sent to the Master's office.” SO NOBODY HAS ALREADY READ THE PAGE THIS ARCHIVE WANTS. The letter to Pretoria remains the only route to MHG 10/57, and a week of hoping otherwise is closed in one paragraph by somebody who knows the record series. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger yes | What came back that was not asked for | A BAPTISM REGISTER, UPLOADED TO THE PROFILE Ark 1:1:6KPT-T3Z4, Dutch Reformed Church Registers: HENRY JAMES BOOŸSEN, BORN 12 AUGUST 1887, BAPTISED 27 NOVEMBER 1887, parents WILLEM HERMANUS BOOŸSEN and CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA BARRY. VERIFIED HERE against the index rather than taken on trust. THE 12 AUGUST 1887 HAS NOW COME FROM A TREE, THEN A GRAVESTONE, THEN A CHURCH REGISTER, IN THAT ORDER — which is exactly backwards, and is how it usually goes. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger part | And a claim this archive has NOT verified | CARPENTER, RETIRED MINER OF LANGLAAGTE ESTATES, DIED OF PHTHISIS “He was a carpenter when married and a retired miner of Langlaagte Estates when he died of Phthisis.” THIS ARCHIVE HAS CORONARY PULMONARY SCLEROSIS, off the Johannesburg burial register it read itself. Phthisis is the Rand miner's disease, and a retired Langlaagte man dying of it in 1956 fits everything else known about him — but the two causes are not the same word, and this archive has read one of the two documents and not the other. RECORDED AS REPORTED AND NOT AS ESTABLISHED. A knowledgeable stranger on a forum is not a document either. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger part | A method note fell out of verifying the ark | THE INDEX MANGLES BARKLY EAST THREE DIFFERENT WAYS IN ONE RESULT SET One search for the children of Willem Hermanus Booysen returns the same town as “BEAUFORT, Cape Province” (Henry James, 1887), “BARKLY WEST, Cape Province” (a membership entry for the same man, same date), and “BARKLY, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA” (Richard Peter, 1894). THE REGISTER SAYS BARKLY OOST EVERY TIME. Anyone filtering FamilySearch by normalised place for this family will lose most of it, and that is worth knowing before the next sweep. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Tolosberg on Jeppe's map of 1899 — the hill three Booyzens were taken on yes | Find a digitised Jeppe 1899 at a resolution that can be read | STANFORD HAS SHEET 6 AS A 75 MB JP2, SERVED OVER IIIF purl.stanford.edu/jd589rh6196 — “Jeppe's map of the Transvaal or S.A. Republic and surrounding territories”, 16,423 × 24,548 pixels, with a IIIF endpoint that will cut any rectangle at native resolution. Sheet 6 is the SOUTH-EAST sheet, roughly 30.3°–33°E and 25°–28°S, which is exactly the ground. THE MAP IS FREE AND HAS BEEN FREE THE WHOLE TIME. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Tolosberg on Jeppe's map of 1899 — the hill three Booyzens were taken on yes | The Elands River valley, four tiles at native resolution | EVERY FARM IS NAMED AND NUMBERED — AND THERE IS NO TOLOSBERG Waterval 161, Kindergoed, Elandshoek, Eerste Geluk, Groot Geluk, Nooitgedacht 345, Vlakplaats, Kaalbosch, Schoonspruit, Kietspruit, Weltevreden, Treurfontein, Uitkomst, Doornhoek — and WATERVAL BOVEN and WATERVAL ONDER stations on the Delagoa Bay railway, with GODWAAN STATION to the east. About twenty-five kilometres by twenty, at the scale the surveyor drew it. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Tolosberg on Jeppe's map of 1899 — the hill three Booyzens were taken on no | Does Jeppe name hills at all? — because a negative is worthless if he does not | HE DOES, AND IN A FORM THAT WOULD HAVE CAUGHT IT MAUCH BG. is printed in italic across a range north of the valley; SPITSKOP, TAFEL KOP, PEERDS KOP, ZWART KOP, ZUIKERBOSCHKOP, SILVERKOP, VAALKOP and BOSCHKOP all appear as named summits. A hill called TOLOSBERG would have been written TOLOS BG. and would have been found. THE TEST IS SOUND AND THE ANSWER IS NO. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Tolosberg on Jeppe's map of 1899 — the hill three Booyzens were taken on part | What the negative is worth | IT DOES NOT MOVE THE PIN AND IT DOES NOT BREAK THE SOURCE The single source for the capture says “Tolosberg in the Waterval Valley, Eastern Transvaal”, and this archive placed the pin at Waterval Boven by inference. Jeppe's silence means the name was LOCAL, or SPELT OTHERWISE, or NEVER A SURVEYED FEATURE — commandos named ground by what they called it, not by what the Surveyor-General called it. The pin stays where it is, still marked as an inference, AND IT IS NOW A TESTED ONE. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes yes | newspapers.eggsa.org · KOLBE | 43 HITS — AND ONE OF THEM IS THE 1820 SETTLER'S DEATH NOTICE IN PRINT GRAHAMSTOWN JOURNAL, THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 1844. Eighteen days after he died, four hundred miles from the farm. It gives EIGHT SONS where this archive knew of one, BRUNSWICK SQUARE where the census gives Conduit Street, a man who RENDERED MEDICAL ADVICE TO THE DISTRICT OF COLESBERG FOR MANY YEARS where his own death notice says “Agriculturist”, and a cause of death — an affection on the lungs, after nearly a year ill. IT IS THE RICHEST SINGLE DOCUMENT FOUND IN THIS ARCHIVE IN WEEKS AND IT COST FOUR MINUTES. The collection had been named here as unused for days. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes part | The same notice, tested rather than swallowed | TWO OF ITS FACTS ARE WRONG It says AGED 44; he was born 7 December 1802 and died 1 December 1844, five days short of forty-two. It says TEN CHILDREN; this archive counts twelve born and one dead in infancy, which leaves eleven. Both are printed on the page beside the find. A newspaper death notice is written by the grieving and set by a compositor four hundred miles away. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes part | newspapers.eggsa.org · BOOYZEN | FIVE, AND TWO ARE WORTH KEEPING Eastern Province Herald 1862: “BOOYZEN is a trek-farmer, and was with his brother and brother-in-law digging for water at a place called DEEP FOUNTAIN, within two hours of the ORANGE RIVER” — a Booyzen at work, in a sentence, in 1862. Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette, 1 January 1830: “CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, Widow of WILLEM WOUTER VENTER, aged 79 years, 2 months and 16 days” — born about October 1750, which is older than anything else in this archive. NEITHER IS SHOWN TO BE THIS FAMILY. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes part | newspapers.eggsa.org · MOUNTJOY | SIX, AND ONE IS A MOUNTJOY AT CRADOCK IN 1869 The Friend of the Free State, 1869: “On reaching CRADOCK I found that the Captain was there before me, and had told MOUNTJOY to try and induce me to stay.” Cradock is one of this archive's own places. NOT READ IN FULL, and not connected. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes no | newspapers.eggsa.org · DASCHNER | NOTHING Zero across thirty-eight papers. The surname reached Indwe from Germany and went to the Rand, and it never got into a Cape newspaper column that anyone has transcribed. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes no | newspapers.eggsa.org · BOOIJSEN | ONE, AND IT IS NOT THIS FAMILY A single hit in The Friend of the Free State, 1859. The ij spelling that dominates this archive's own registers is almost absent from the newspapers. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes void | A METHOD NOTE | THE SEARCH BOX IS NOT A FORM newspapers.eggsa.org runs Geek ElasticSearch: posting the form returns the page and nothing else. The results are drawn by script as you type. It has to be driven as a page — set the value, fire an input event, wait — and not fetched. AN HOUR WAS SPENT POSTING TO AN ENDPOINT THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO ANSWER. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | NAAIRS · RSA · BOOYZEN, all 184, walked page by page | 148 ROWS READ OF 184 — AND THE SHORTFALL IS SAID OUT LOUD The summary screen pages twenty at a time and this sweep took ten pages. THIRTY-SIX DOCUMENTS WERE NOT REACHED, and this archive is not going to call 148 a complete enumeration. What follows is what 148 rows contain. THE COUNT HAS BEEN QUOTED HERE FOR WEEKS — “184 RSA Booyzen documents” — WITHOUT ANYONE EVER OPENING IT. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time yes | Eight gravestones found this morning, looked up in the estate index this afternoon | EIGHT JOINS, FROM TWO COLLECTIONS THAT DO NOT SPEAK TO EACH OTHER DAVID SCHALK — stone “David S. 1907–1966”, Zandfontein · estate MHG 7653/66. CHARLIE JOHN — stone 1909–1962, Brenthurst · MHG 9371/62. CASPER JOHANNES — stone 1920–1972, Braamfontein · MHG 6160/72. FREDRICK — stone 1899–1970, West Park · MHG 11193/70. ANDRIES ARNOLDUS — stone 1918–1975, West Park · MHG 3100/1975. MARIA CHRISTINA NEE OOSTHUIZEN — stone 1920–1955 · MHG 86/56. WILLEM HERMAN — stone 1946–1965, a boy of nineteen · MHG 1403/1965. JACOBUS FREDRIK JANSE — stone 1939–1957 · MHG 1909/57. EVERY ONE OF THE EIGHT AGREES ON THE YEAR. The stone gives the household name, the index gives the registered name. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | The fourth Middelburg stone, the one this archive could not place | SHE HAS A CAPE ESTATE: MOOC 6/9/4898, 54123 “BOOYZEN, CATHARINA JOHANNA HELENA, NEE BEYLEVELD. ESTATE PAPERS. 1937.” Read this morning as an unplaceable stone in the same cemetery as three of this family; by the afternoon she has a file that would name her parents, her husband and her children and settle the question in one page. NOT READ, and it is now near the top of the list. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | Magdalena Johanna Booyzen, born Bezuidenhout | MHG 2510/55 — HER OWN ESTATE The woman whose birth date, 8 May 1870, is written beside her name in the Wonderboom deeds register, and whose Rebecca Street stone corrected this archive's reading of that register. Her estate file is MHG 2510/55. NOT READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | The two oldest Booyzen death notices in the Cape series | 1843 AND 1856 MOOC 6/9/30 · 6167 DU PLESSIS, JOHANNA (NEE BOOYZEN), 1843 — already read here, and already established as NOT this family. MOOC 6/9/76 · 4223 BOOYZEN, CORNELIA MARGARIETHA (NEE FOUCHE), 1856 — NOT READ, and older than all but one document in this archive. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | A Booyzen born at Wakkerstroom | MSCE 4064/1974 — BOOYZEN, NICOLAAS THEODORUS. BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM. The town this archive spent the morning proving its KOLBES moved to. A Booyzen born there is almost certainly a coincidence — Booyzens are everywhere in the Transvaal — and it is recorded as one, because the alternative is to notice it in six months and mistake it for a pattern. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time part | Names this archive has spent the project chasing, on other people's estates | ADRIANA CHRISTINA, CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA MOOC 6/9/321 · 2120 PRETORIUS, ADRIANA CHRISTINA, NEE BOOYZEN, DEATH NOTICE, 1893 — and Adriana Christina Viljoen is one of the most-linked names in this archive. MHG 5581/64 GROBLER, CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA, BORN BOOYZEN — the Kolbe name, carried into a fourth surname. NEITHER IS SHOWN TO BE CONNECTED, and both are set down. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked yes | DASCHNER · all repositories | TWELVE DOCUMENTS — THE WHOLE SURNAME IN SOUTH AFRICA Two are this archive's own: MHG 1928/42 Joseph Heinrich, and MHG 3734/46 Catherine Mary Sophia born Booyzen. NEW: MHG 2703/63 DASCHNER, WILLIAM HERMAN, and MHG 10287/69 DASCHNER, HEINRICH. The remaining eight are divorce and hire-purchase cases in the Witwatersrand and Transvaal courts, 1949–1980, and belong to a later generation. A SURNAME SMALL ENOUGH TO READ ENTIRE IS A GIFT, and this one was never asked before today. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked yes | MOUNTJOY · all repositories | 136 DOCUMENTS, THIRTY-FOUR OF THEM ESTATES Including MOOC 6/9/5047 numbers 58379 and 58380 — MOUNTJOY, JAMES JOHN and MOUNTJOY, MARIA LOUISA BERTHA NEE KUMM, CONSECUTIVE NUMBERS, both 1938 — which are the two people on the Barkly East gravestone found this same morning, “MOUNTJOY John James -1937 & Marie Louis -1934”. THE STONE AND THE ESTATE INDEX FOUND EACH OTHER WITHIN THE HOUR, from two collections that do not talk to one another. Also MSCE 600/1974 MOUNTJOY, CHRISTIAN, BORN IN BARKLY EAST, and MSCE 581/1973 SHOOTER, MATHILDA ELIZABETH (BORN MOUNTJOY), BORN IN BARKLY EAST — two Natal estates for people born in this archive's town. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked part | BARRY · all repositories | 5,022 DOCUMENTS — NOT A WORKABLE SEARCH Barry is a forename, a company name, a place and a surname belonging to a large and unrelated Cape family. The index has no date filter and no place filter on the summary screen. IT HAS TO BE PAIRED, and this is recorded as a limit of the method rather than as a negative. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked no | BARRY AND BURGERSDORP · BARRY AND INDWE | ONE AND NONE The one is a municipality file. Burgersdorp and Indwe hold nothing for this surname in the national index — which is the opposite of what this archive expected, Burgersdorp being where the Barry children were christened. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked yes | BARRY AND BARKLY | TWO DOCUMENTS AND BOTH OF THEM MATTER SAB, VWR 2, B645/8/38, 1937: “AANSOEK DEUR PLAASEIENAAR BARKLY-OOS. RPK BARRY. BYWONER RPK BARRY (SEUN).” A FARM OWNER AND A BYWONER, BOTH R.P.K. BARRY, FATHER AND SON, on one place, with the Department of Social Welfare between them. And NAB, MSCE 2183/1958: “BARRY, HENRY JAMES KOLBE. BORN IN BARKLY EAST, CAPE PROVINCE. UNMARRIED. DECEASED ESTATE.” THE BARRY FORENAME AND THE KOLBE SURNAME IN ONE MAN, born in this archive's town, dying unmarried in Natal. NEITHER FILE IS READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked void | A METHOD NOTE — NAAIRS ORs two keywords unless you say otherwise | BARRY WITH BURGERSDORP RETURNED 6,245, WHICH IS MORE THAN BARRY ALONE The form has a select between each keyword box, defaulting to AND on screen; posted without it, the index ORs them. For an hour this looked like a rich seam. With the operator sent, the same query returns ONE document. A SEARCH THAT RETURNS MORE THAN ITS OWN FIRST TERM IS NOT A SEARCH, and the number should have been the tell. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last yes | gravesgauteng.eggsa.org · surname BOOYZEN, anywhere | 39 LINES ACROSS TWELVE CEMETERIES West Park, Braamfontein, Bezuidenhout Park, Brenthurst in Brakpan, Rynsoord in Benoni, Edenvale, Sterkfontein, Panorama in Roodepoort, and in Pretoria: SILVERTON, ZANDFONTEIN, REBECCA STREET, BRONKHORSTSPRUIT and Wonderboom-suid. Five of the thirty-nine were already read here. This is the first time the rest have been listed. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last part | The 1940 estate's eleven children, looked for by their married surnames | FIVE OF THE TWELVE SILVERTON CHILDREN NOW HAVE DATES BESSIE — “BEKKER Ignatius Michael 1908–1981 & ELIZABETHA MARGARETHA BOOYZEN 1909–1982”, SILVERTON, her parents' own cemetery, and the estate says she married a Bekker. HENNA — “DU PLESSIS Gerhardus Ebenhaezer 1911–1988 & JOHANNA CATHARINA BOOYZEN 1913–1982”, Rebecca Street, and the estate says she married a Du Plessis. FANIE — “BOOYZEN STEPHANUS FRANCOIS 1918–1991 & Elena Jacoba HORN 1921–1989”, Silverton. OUBOET — “BOOYZEN DAVID S. 1907–1966 & Rachel M. 1909–1973”, Zandfontein, born two years after the 1905 marriage. WILLIE — “BOOYZEN Willie 1920–2000 & Enid MOUTON 1926–2000”, Silverton. ALL FIVE ARE MATCHES ON A NAME, A SURNAME-BY-MARRIAGE AND A CEMETERY. NONE IS A DOCUMENT, and all five are entered as inferred. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last part | WILLIE, tested rather than accepted | THE WEAKEST OF THE FIVE, AND SAID SO The stone gives only the household name — the one thing that cannot tell a son from a nephew. A WILLIE BOSHOFF BOOYZEN 1962–1993 lies in the SAME CEMETERY carrying his grandmother's maiden name, so there is more than one Willie at Silverton. The cemetery fits and the date fits and nothing else does. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last no | The four still missing from the pillar | OUSIE, BETIE, EVERT, PIETIE, JOHAN, HENNIE — six, not four Susanna Fredrika Aletta, who married a Luus; Beatrix Magdalena Catharina, who married a Vermeulen; Ewert Philippus; Petrus Jacobus; Johan Abraham Frederik; Hendrik Rudolph Philippus. NONE FOUND under a Booyzen stone or under the husband's surname in the Gauteng collection. LUUS and VERMEULEN have not yet been searched, and that is the next errand. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last yes | A Booyzen born in 1807, in a family graveyard in Johannesburg | ALREADY IDENTIFIED — AND THIS ARCHIVE FORGOT IT FOR AN HOUR “VILJOEN J.C.E. nee BOOYZEN 1807-1861”, Bezuidenhout family cemetery. Seeing it in the eGGSA list this archive wrote that it claimed no connection and set it down as a coincidence of three surnames. THAT WAS A REGRESSION. The same stone was worked out days ago from the GEN database: she is JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, baptised 16 August 1807, Heese code b3c4d5e6, and she is DAVID SCHALK BOOIJSEN'S FIRST COUSIN — he is b3c4d7e1. Her husband B.C. Viljoen and her daughter Judith Cornelia Etresia Bezuidenhout, born at Graaff-Reinet in 1831, are on the same page of this archive. THE COINCIDENCE OF VILJOEN, BEZUIDENHOUT AND BOOYZEN IN ONE PRIVATE GRAVEYARD IS NOT A COINCIDENCE and this archive had already said so. Left here as written rather than deleted, because an archive that finds the same thing twice and calls it new the second time has a problem worth showing. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last no | Gauteng · LUUS and VERMEULEN — the errand named in the row above, run the same hour | NEITHER WOMAN IS THERE The 1940 estate says Susanna Fredrika Aletta married a LUUS and Beatrix Magdalena Catharina married a VERMEULEN. The Gauteng collection holds about 40 Luus stones and about 40 Vermeulen stones and NOT ONE carries either woman — no Susanna Fredrika Aletta Luus, no Beatrix Magdalena Catharina Vermeulen, under a maiden name or a married one. They did not stay on the Rand, or they are not photographed. OUSIE AND BETIE ARE STILL MISSING, and so are Evert, Pietie, Johan and Hennie. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today void | A METHOD NOTE FIRST, because it produced four false negatives | THE PROVINCIAL SEARCH SCRIPTS ARE NAMED BY A TWO-LETTER CODE, NOT BY THE PROVINCE The Eastern Cape posts to /cgi-bin/ecdosearchGraves.pl, and this archive guessed the others by expanding the subdomain — gautengdosearchGraves.pl and so on. EVERY ONE OF THOSE RETURNED NOTHING, and nothing looks exactly like a negative. The real names are ggdosearchGraves.pl, ncdosearchGraves.pl, mpdosearchGraves.pl, read off each province's own form. THE FOUR ZEROES WERE THROWN AWAY RATHER THAN RECORDED. A search you got wrong is not a source that holds nothing. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today part | Eastern Cape · BARRY | HUNDREDS, AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM SOMEBODY ELSE'S The Cape Barrys are a large and well-known family with no shown connection here. The list is not workable by eye and this archive is not going to pretend it worked it. NOT DONE — it needs a date filter or a place filter, and the form has neither. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today part | Eastern Cape · MOUNTJOY | TWELVE STONES, AND TWO OF THEM AT BARKLY EAST MOUNTJOY John James -1937 & Marie Louis -1934, and MOUNTJOY Fritz J. 1893–1973 & Aletta J. BRITS 1895–1976, both in BARKLY EAST MAIN CEMETERY — which is this archive's own town. Two more at MIDDELBURG MAIN, the same cemetery as the four Booyzen stones. Also Maclear, East London, King William's Town, Aliwal North. PHOTOGRAPHS LOCATED, NOT YET READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today part | Gauteng · MOUNTJOY | TWELVE MORE, AND A KEYS AMONG THEM “KEYS William H. -1915 & Johanna C. MOUNTJOY -1942” at Krugersdorp Burgershoop. KEYS is a surname this archive has already had to answer a question about. Also KLEYNHANS Petronella C.A. nee MOUNTJOY 1870–1964, MOUNTJOY George 1889–1963 at Brenthurst, and three at WEST PARK, where this family's Johannesburg dead lie. NOT YET READ. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today no | Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga · DASCHNER | NONE IN EITHER A German surname that arrived at Indwe and went to the Rand; it is not in the Cape collection at all. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today part | Gauteng · DASCHNER | SIX, INCLUDING THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN COUPLE “DASCHNER Joseph Heinrich 1883–1942 & Catherine Mary Sophia BOOYZEN 1891–1946” at West Park, already read. FIVE MORE NOT IN THIS ARCHIVE: Albert Alfred 1962–1964; David and Catherine 1909–1989 at Rynsoord, Benoni; Joseph C. 1911–1992 and Elizabeth H.; Willie 1915–1963 and Millie HARDING; and MARGARET WILHEMINA ELIZABETH JEANETTE DASCHNER 1913–2009, who married a van Jaarsveld — a woman carrying the Barry forenames entire, two generations on. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today yes | Mpumalanga · KOLBE — the one this archive did not expect | THIRTEEN, TEN OF THEM AT WAKKERSTROOM Including BOTH George Augustus Kolbes, their wives, Daan, Freddie, Martha Angeline, Maria Johanna van der Merwe, and three more — Augie, Esther and Cora — on one stone. Plus two at PIET RETIEF: “KOLBE G.A. 1836–1913 & A.M. 1843–1907”, and 1836 is the birth year of the Settler's twin son, born at Burgersdorp. NOT READ; it is the next errand. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today yes | Gauteng · KOLBE | ELEVEN, AND TWO MORE DOWNINGS “ROUSSEAU ... & MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING KOLBE 1901–1996” at Zandfontein, Pretoria, and “KOLBE Elizabeth Cathrina 1902–1952 :: KOLBE PETER DOWNING 1972–1976” at Sterkfontein, Krugersdorp — a child of four. THE LONDON SURNAME IS STILL TRAVELLING IN 1972. Also a FREDERIK FORTUNATUS KOLBE 1903–1969 at Brenthurst and a GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE 1928–1989 at Primrose: both of this family's Kolbe names still in use on the Rand in the twentieth century. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today part | graveseastcape.eggsa.org · surname BOOYZEN · exact match | EIGHT STONES, AND NOT ALL OF THEM AT MIDDELBURG Four at MIDDELBURG main cemetery, which is what this archive came for. But also TWO AT CRADOCK, Deary Avenue — Jan Hendrik 1922–1987 and Yvonne 1926– — and TWO AT HUMANSDORP. Cradock is one of this archive's own places. Those four are not entered as people: one of them has no death date, and this archive does not put a possibly living person on a page. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today yes | BOOYZEN Gert Jacobus 1870–1951 — the photograph, read | THE BIRTH CONFIRMED FROM A SECOND SOURCE, THE DEATH NARROWED, AND THE DAY REFUSED “IN DANKBARE HULDE AAN ONS GELIEFDE VADER EN OUPA — GERT JACOBUS BOOYZEN — GEB. 19 JAN. 1870 — OORL. 2_ AUG. 1951 — SY GENADE WAS VIR MY GENOEG.” 19 JANUARY 1870 is exactly what this archive had, and this is the first source for it that is not the death notice it came from. The death goes from a bare year to AUGUST 1951. THE DAY IS A 2 AND THEN A DIGIT THAT WILL NOT RESOLVE at any magnification, so it is left as a gap rather than guessed at. “VADER EN OUPA” makes him a grandfather, which no document here had said. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today yes | BOOYZEN Isabella Fredericka nee COETSEE 1874–1930 — the photograph, read | HER BIRTH IS NOW A DATE: 15 APRIL 1874 “TER GEDAGTENIS AAN — ISABELLA FREDERICKA BOOYZEN (GEB. COETSEE) — GEB. 15 APRIL 1874 — OORL. 31 MAART 1930 — HEMELSE RUS.” This archive had “c. May 1874”, worked back from an age on a notice. An exact date cut on a stone beats a month inferred from an age, so the entry moves to 15 April. THE DEATH MATCHES TO THE DAY and is now the THIRD independent source saying 1930 against the 1943 once published here. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today yes | BOOYZEN Pieter J. 1904–1937 — the photograph, read | ONE WORD CARRIES THE WHOLE STONE “HIER RUS — MY GELIEFDE SEUN — PIETER J. BOOYZEN — GEB. 29 DES. 1904 — OORL. 7 JUNIE 1937 — NA DIE KRUIS DIE KROON.” Both dates confirm this archive exactly. THE READING IS IN THE SECOND LINE: “MY geliefde seun”, not “ONS” — ONE surviving parent, not two. His mother had been dead SEVEN YEARS. So his father cut the stone, and then lay down beside them both fourteen years later. THE GRAMMAR OF THE INSCRIPTIONS GIVES THE ORDER THE HOUSEHOLD WENT IN. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today no | BOOYZEN Catharina Johanna Helena nee BEYLEVELDT 1855–1937 — the photograph, read | A FOURTH BOOYZEN IN THE SAME GROUND, AND NO CONNECTION THIS ARCHIVE CAN FIND “HIER RUS — CATHARINA JOHANNA HELENA BOOYZEN (GEB. BEYLEVELDT) — GEB. 7 JANUARIE 1855 — OORL. 16 MAART 1937.” The Cape Province civil register carries her as BOOYZEN BYLEVELD LANGENBOG BOOYZEN — a chain of surnames that is its own biography — and dates her birth 1857 where the stone says 1855. Her Cape probate names her husband JOHANNES HENDRIK. SHE DIED TWELVE WEEKS BEFORE PIETER J. WENT INTO THE SAME CEMETERY. Same surname, same town, same year: exactly the shape that gets two families welded into one. Written down as a negative rather than left out. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate yes | Re-read the photograph at four times scale, to be sure of the twelve | OUBOET · OUSIE · BESSIE · BETIE · HENNA · EVERT · ✝BABA · FANIE · WILLIE · PIETIE · JOHAN · HENNIE Confirmed at magnification. The seventh line carries a BIRTH STAR AND A CROSS and the word BABA, where every other line carries a name. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate yes | Set the twelve against the eleven children named on his 1940 estate | EVERY ONE OF THE ELEVEN IS CLAIMED EXACTLY ONCE, AND BABA IS LEFT OVER Nine go by ordinary Afrikaans diminutive — Bessie←Elizabeth, Betie←Beatrix, Henna←Johanna, Evert←Ewert, Fanie←Stefanus, Willie←Willem, Pietie←Petrus, Johan, Hennie←Hendrik. Two are not names at all: OUBOET is eldest brother and OUSIE eldest sister, and they fall to David Schalk, who heads the estate list, and to Susanna Fredrika Aletta, the one daughter the diminutives leave. NOTHING IS UNASSIGNED EXCEPT BABA. THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE TWELFTH CHILD REAL: not the count, but the fact that the count has nowhere else to go. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate part | The weak link, named rather than hidden | HENNA Henna can stand for Hendrina as readily as for Johanna. There is no Hendrina on the estate, which is why the match is made — but it is the one of the nine that rests on an absence. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate yes | Does the archive have this shape already? | YES, ONCE — AND IT IS THE SAME LESSON Joseph Heinrich Daschner's 1942 death notice named ELEVEN children; the Brixton burial register produced a TWELFTH, George Downing Daschner, three months and five days old, buried 1925. A DEATH NOTICE LISTS THE LIVING. A GRAVESTONE, CUT BY THE FAMILY, LISTS THE CHILDREN. Two documents of different kinds, and the difference between them is worth more than either alone. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate no | Baba's birth date, sex, name or order | NOTHING The stone gives a star, a cross and a word that means baby. This archive enters the child under that word and claims nothing else. A Pretoria burial register or the Silverton cemetery register would be the next place to look, and neither has been searched. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household part | q.surname=Kolbe · q.givenName=Angeline · South Africa — the errand as set | ANGELINE KOLBE, AGED 28, DIED WAKKERSTROOM 15 NOVEMBER 1900 The record is thin and honest about it: female, surname Kolbe, aged 28 years, died 15 Nov 1900 at Wakkerstroom, registered in the Transvaal civil deaths. NO PARENTS, NO HUSBAND, NO CAUSE. SHE IS NOT THE VOLKSRUST CAMP GRAVE the errand asked her to be reconciled with — that is a G.E. Kolbe aged 35, and Angeline is 28, a year earlier, in a different town, when the Volksrust camp was barely open. THE RECONCILIATION FAILS, and the right answer is that they are two women. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | The same search, read across | AND A SIXTY-DAY-OLD CHILD AT VOLKSRUST MARTHA ANGELINE KOLBE, born 9 October 1901, died 8 December 1901, buried at “VOLKSRUST”. — “BURIED AT VOLKSRUST” was withdrawn on 14 September 2026: her stone is in WAKKERSTROOM MAIN CEMETERY, and the index gave the district rather than the grave. Age on the civil death register: 0. She lived sixty days and every one of them was inside the war. Volksrust held a concentration camp. This archive has read no camp register naming her and so records the burial place and not the cause — but it will not pretend the date is a coincidence either. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | q.surname=Kolbe · q.fatherGivenName=Frederik Fortunatus — ask the index for a FATHER, not a person | EIGHT CHILDREN, AND A WIFE THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT KNOW EXISTED FREDERIK FORTUNATUS KOLBE, the Settler's tenth child, born at Bethulie in 1839, married ELIZABETH JOHANNA DU TOIT. Their children are baptised at COLESBERG in 1863, 1865, 1868, 1873, 1876 and 1877; at HOPETOWN in 1870; and at BETHULIE in 1881, which is his own birthplace forty-two years on. The eldest is a GEORGE AUGUSTUS, named for a grandfather nineteen years dead. This archive had held Frederik Fortunatus as a name and a date of birth and nothing else. The relationship search is what opened him. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | The eldest son, followed to the far end | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE — COLESBERG 1863 TO WAKKERSTROOM 1954, AGED 91 Baptised Colesberg 11 Oct 1863, born 29 July. Died Wakkerstroom 28 September 1954, aged 91 — AND 29 JULY 1863 TO 28 SEPTEMBER 1954 IS EXACTLY 91. Married MARTHA SOPHIA KLOPPER, aged seventeen, about 1885; she died 14 Oct 1950 aged 83. A PRISONER OF WAR IN 1902, aged 40, residence Wakkerstroom — the fourth man in this archive taken in that war and the only one who is not a Booyzen. His daughter Maria Johanna's 1953 estate file names the household outright: father George Augustus Kolbe, mother Martha Sophia Klopper. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | q.surname=Kolbe · q.anyPlace=Wakkerstroom, read against the Colesberg fonts | THREE OF THE EIGHT ARE IN THE EASTERN TRANSVAAL MARGARET HARRIET, baptised Hopetown 1870, marries Dirk Jacobus Aspheling van der Spuy at Wakkerstroom aged 24. ELIZABETH JOHANNA, baptised Colesberg 1876, marries John Charles Pattison at Wakkerstroom aged 21. Both ages agree with the font to the year. WITH THEIR BROTHER THAT IS THREE OF EIGHT, FOUR HUNDRED MILES FROM WHERE THEY WERE CHRISTENED. Yesterday the convergence was proved by a name — Frederik Fortunatus DOWNING Kolbe, a London surname in the Transvaal. THIS IS THE BETTER PROOF: a name can be coincidence, a family moving cannot. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | Daniel Jakobus Kolbe, civil death 1918 | THE INDEX MANGLED THE LINE THAT PROVES THE DESCENT His death registration carries a relationship where a name should be: “G A Kolbe's son”, which the index has read as a surname and printed as “G A KOLBELSSON”. That misprint is what ties the two 1918 graves — Daan, 19 June, aged 25, and Freddie, 2 November, aged 27 — to the old man who outlived them by thirty-six years. FOUR MONTHS APART IN 1918 IS THE INFLUENZA. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household part | q.surname=Kolbe · q.givenName=George Augustus, all of them | AT LEAST TWO MEN OF THAT NAME IN THE TRANSVAAL AT ONCE — AND THIS IS A WARNING, NOT A FIND One born COLESBERG 1863, dead Wakkerstroom 1954 aged 91. One born BURGERSDORP 1861, dead Standerton 8 November 1934 aged 73 — Burgersdorp being where the Settler is buried and where his twin son George Augustus was born in 1836. A third George Augustus, aged 27, marries SUSANNA MARGARETHA SWART in the Free State register with residence given as Wakkerstroom, and THIS ARCHIVE CANNOT SAY WHICH MAN THAT IS. A “Susanna Margaretha DOWNING Kolbe” also stands in the Transvaal probate index — a second carrier of the London surname, unattached. Set down so that nobody later merges two men into one. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household yes | q.surname=Klopper · q.givenName=Martha Sophia | THE MARRIAGE, AND HER OWN DEATH “George Augustus Kolbe and Martha Sophia Klopper”, Transvaal civil marriages 1870–1931, the bride aged 17 and born 1868. And “Martha Sophia Klopper Kolbe”, born 1867, died 14 October 1950 aged 83. SHE IS THE FOURTH BRIDE IN THIS ARCHIVE MARRIED BEFORE EIGHTEEN, and the third in the Kolbe line — after Margaret Downing at fifteen and the Settler himself at sixteen. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household no | Volksrust camp register, for Martha Angeline Kolbe | NOT READ The burial is indexed from BillionGraves, not from a camp register. Until a camp register is read this archive records that a two-month-old was “buried at Volksrust” in December 1901 — “BURIED AT VOLKSRUST” was withdrawn on 14 September 2026: her stone is in WAKKERSTROOM MAIN CEMETERY, and the index gave the district rather than the grave. and does not write the word camp into her entry. The register is the next errand. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household no | Angeline Kolbe, against the eight Colesberg fonts | SHE FITS NONE OF THEM Aged 28 in November 1900 puts her birth near 1872. Martha Angelina was born January 1868 and Catharina Maria Louisa July 1873; neither is 28 in 1900. She is most likely a daughter-in-law, married into the surname. THIS ARCHIVE WILL NOT GUESS WHICH SON. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household part | The POW record itself, read rather than indexed — ark 1:2:4126-8XTJ | WO 108/368 — AND IT TAKES BACK WHAT IT GAVE The full entry: GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, AGE 40, NATIONALITY TRANSVAALER, RESIDENCE WAKKERSTROOM, PRISON NATAL, event 1902, from “List of Boer prisoners of war, numbers 1-32561, 1899-1902”, WO 108/368 at The National Archives. HELD IN NATAL, not shipped — unlike the three Booyzens taken at Tolosberg, who sailed on the City of Cambridge. The residence is what made this archive claim him for the Colesberg-born man. THE AGE UNMAKES IT: he was 39 in 1902, and the Burgersdorp-born George Augustus of 1861 was 40. Withdrawn to /corrections/ the same hour it was published. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The entity audit — sweeping for other things that travel through data yes | Sweep the 642 built pages for a double-escaped entity | NOTHING LEFT The bug the reader caught: three way-in cards on the home page passed their arrow as a DATA STRING — the arrow written as an HTML entity, ampersand r-a-r-r semicolon — and a string prop is escaped on output, so the page printed those five characters where an arrow belonged. Arrows written straight into markup were never affected. Having fixed the three, this sweep asks the built site whether the same fault is anywhere else. IT IS NOT. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The entity audit — sweeping for other things that travel through data yes | Ask the same of the source rather than the output — every entity sitting inside a quoted prop or data value in site/src | NO ENTITY ANYWHERE ELSE IN PROP OR DATA POSITION The source is asked as well as the output, because a page can exist without having been rebuilt. 429 em dashes, 306 arrows, 244 middots, 85 right single quotes, 74 en dashes and 69 right double quotes are in use across the site as entities, and every one of them is in markup, where escaping never touches it. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The entity audit — sweeping for other things that travel through data yes | Every file in site/src/data, for an entity written into data | NONE people.js, places.json, searched.json, corrections.json and the rest are clean, which is the root of it — the home page's three cards were the only place an entity had been written into something that would later be escaped. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The entity audit — sweeping for other things that travel through data yes | Then: a check in tools/drift.py, so it cannot come back | THE BUILD NOW FAILS ON A DOUBLE-ESCAPED ENTITY The check reads the built pages, not the source, so it catches the SYMPTOM whatever the cause — an escaped entity reaching a reader is a bug no matter which prop or which component put it there. It is absolute, with no exception for a page that means to quote one; this page wanted to and spells the arrow out in words instead, because a check with an exception is a check that will be excepted. Tested by planting one in the built home page: the build failed and named both the entity and the page. THE READER FOUND THIS ONE BEFORE THE BUILD DID, WHICH IS THE WRONG WAY ROUND, and that is what the check is for. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom PROVED — a man who carries both family names yes | q.surname=Kolbe · q.anyPlace=Wakkerstroom · South Africa | FREDERIK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE Born 1891 at WAKKERSTROOM, died there 2 NOVEMBER 1918, Transvaal probate 1918. HE CARRIES BOTH OF THIS FAMILY'S KOLBE NAMES AT ONCE. FREDERIK FORTUNATUS is the Settler's son, whom this archive already calls “the source of the Fortunatus name across three families”. DOWNING is MARGARET DOWNING, whom George Augustus Kolbe married at St Leonard's Shoreditch in 1819 — a London surname with no business in the eastern Transvaal except through that marriage. One man, born seventy-two years after the wedding, carrying both. THE CONVERGENCE IS NO LONGER A CONVERGENCE; the Wakkerstroom Kolbes are this family's Kolbes. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom PROVED — a man who carries both family names yes | The same search, read across | The gravestones all resolve Every stone found this morning now has a record behind it. DANIEL JAKOBUS KOLBE, born 1893, died 19 JUNE 1918 at Wakkerstroom — the stone's “Daan 1893-1918”. FREDERIK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE, died 2 NOVEMBER 1918 — the stone's “Freddie -1918”. TWO YOUNG MEN OF ONE FAMILY DEAD FOUR MONTHS APART IN 1918, which is the influenza. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, born 1863, died 28 SEPTEMBER 1954 — the stone's 1863-1954, and his wife MARTHA SOPHIA KLOPPER is named as the mother of MARIA JOHANNA KOLBE, born 1886 at Wakkerstroom, died 1 October 1953, who is the “van der Merwe née Kolbe” stone. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE born 1861 married SUSANNA MARGARETHA SWART — the 1861-1934 stone. And MARGARET HARRIET KOLBE, born 1871, married DIRK JACOBUS ASPELING VAN DER SPUY — the Utrecht stone found through NAAIRS yesterday. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom PROVED — a man who carries both family names part | Two more worth following | A war death and a war record ANGELINE KOLBE, born 1872, DIED AT WAKKERSTROOM ON 15 NOVEMBER 1900 — in the middle of the war, in a district that had a concentration camp at Volksrust twenty miles away, and NAAIRS's gravestone data holds a “GE KOLBE, died between 1899 and 1901, aged 35” in that camp cemetery. Not the same person on the figures, and the first time a woman of this surname has been found dying in that district in those years. And GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, born 1862, resident WAKKERSTROOM, with a MILITARY record of 1902 — neither read. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Wakkerstroom PROVED — a man who carries both family names part | What this does to the Colesberg question | It says where the children went George Augustus Kolbe, the 1820 Settler, died at Wurtemburg, Colesberg, in 1844 leaving nine children, and this archive loses sight of most of them. THIS IS WHERE A BRANCH WENT: north-east to the Transvaal–Natal border, to Wakkerstroom and Piet Retief, taking FORTUNATUS, GEORGE AUGUSTUS and DOWNING with them, and still using all three seventy years later. NO INDIVIDUAL IS YET ADOPTED into the family: no document read names the Settler as their ancestor, and the estates that would — NAB MSCE 2032/1969 and 965/1956 — are Pietermaritzburg files past the 1950 close of the filmed Natal probate series. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Cape genealogical codes, resolved — and G2G answers back twice more yes | b3c4d5e6, resolved from the volume already downloaded | A FIRST COUSIN OF DAVID SCHALK The gravestone at Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg, reads “JCE VILJOEN, NEE BOOYZEN, born 02-07-1807, died 11-12-1861”, citing Heese as b3c4d5e6. Walked in de Villiers 1893, which this archive downloaded this morning: b3 = GERRIT, married Johanna Durand 1733; c4 = JAN, baptised 29 January 1741; d5 = JAN JONATHAN, baptised 11 July 1779, married 28 May 1797 to JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA VILJOEN; and e6 = “JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, GEDOOPT 16 AUGUSTUS 1807”. Born 2 July, baptised 16 August — six weeks, exactly right. SHE IS THE ARCHIVE'S DAVID SCHALK BOOIJSEN'S FIRST COUSIN: he is b3c4d7e1, she is b3c4d5e6, both grandchildren of Jan. She married a Viljoen, as her mother was one, and lies in Johannesburg. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Cape genealogical codes, resolved — and G2G answers back twice more yes | G2G answer 2 · Pieter van Zyl | The code confirmed independently “On the Booijsen side (page 78 of Kaapsche Familien part 1): B3 Gerrit B x Johanna du Rand. B3C4 Jan B x Magdalena de Beer. B3C4D7 PETRUS JACOBUS B BAPTISED 21 SEPT 1788 x ANNA MARIA V D MERWE.” That is this archive's own reading of the page, arrived at separately and stated in the same notation. Riël Smit added the archive.org links for all three parts. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Cape genealogical codes, resolved — and G2G answers back twice more part | G2G answer 3 · Riël Smit — and it goes straight at Question 0 | Gerhardus LORET, not Lodewikus? “The only Gerhardus Booysen in DE VILLIERS & PAMA (1981) is B3C1D1 GERHARDUS LORET (BOOIJSEN) BOOYSEN, baptised Sep 1770 in Drakenstein. Maybe the LORET changed to LODEVICUS over time.” This archive found that man in the 1893 text without knowing what to do with him — “Gerhardus Loret, gedoopt 16 September 1770”, a son of BOOIJ Booijsen and Magdalena du Plessis. TWO THINGS FOLLOW AND THEY PULL OPPOSITE WAYS. It is a genuine candidate for the name on the 1876 Sterfkennis, offered by a senior member from the revised 1981 edition this archive has never seen. BUT HE IS b3c1d1 — a son of BOOIJ, not of JAN — so he is Petrus Jacobus's FIRST COUSIN, not his father, and at eighteen in 1788 he is a poor fit for it besides. The likeliest reading is that the 1876 informant reached for a remembered family name and attached it to the wrong man. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Cape genealogical codes, resolved — and G2G answers back twice more blocked | The reply this archive owes them | Blocked — the session lapsed A reply is drafted in substance and cannot be posted: the WikiTree session has expired and the page offers only Log In. What it should say — that the book was downloaded and read, that b3c4d7 matches independently, that b3c4d5e6 resolves to Judith Cornelia Theresia and settles a Johannesburg gravestone, and ONE QUESTION WORTH ASKING THEM: does de Villiers & Pama (1981) still put Petrus Jacobus under JAN, or did the revision move him? That is the whole of Question 0 in a sentence, and a member with the 1981 edition open could answer it in a minute. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Wakkerstroom convergence, tested part | eGGSA Mpumalanga · BOOY | Eight stones at Wakkerstroom Booysens and Booyzens are at Wakkerstroom as well as Kolbes: Nicolaas Gerhardis Franscoas 1866–1943, Pieter Jacobus 1890–1960, J.S. 1900–1983, Magritha Cornelia née v.d. Merwe 1898–1938, Jacobus G. 1929–1968, Nicolaas Gerhardis Francois 1919–1938, Daniel Johannes Andries Booyens 1917–1995, and one with the z — JOHANNES STEPHANUS BOOYZEN 1922–1995. Forename-resonance only; BOOYSEN and PIETER JACOBUS are far too common to argue from, and nothing here is claimed. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Wakkerstroom convergence, tested yes | NAAIRS · KOLBE AND WAKKERSTROOM | SIXTEEN DOCUMENTS, AND THE RARE NAME IS IN THEM The Booysen side proves nothing; the KOLBE side does much better. (1) NAB CSO 1908/4469: “C K BARRY, WAKKERSTROOM. MR. G S KOLBE ASKS TO BE SUPPLIED WITH A COPY OF THE ROAD BOARD LAW” — A BARRY AND A KOLBE IN ONE DOCUMENT AT WAKKERSTROOM, which are precisely the two surnames joined by the 1846 marriage at the head of this archive's Kolbe line. (2) NAB PVS 2644/1912: “FF KOLBE — permission to move one bull from Wakkerstroom to Saxony, Utrecht”. (3) NAB MSCE 2032/1969: “KOLBE, FREDERIK FORTUNATUS HOFMEYR. BORN IN NAAUWPOORT, WAKKERSTROOM”, deceased estate, wife born Badenhorst. (4) NAB MSCE 965/1956: “KOLBE, HENDRIK JOHANNES HOFMEYR. BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM”. (5) SAB CEN E1573, 1911–1913: “GA KOLBE, WAKKERSTROOM” — which sits exactly on the Piet Retief gravestone of G.A. KOLBE 1836–1913. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Wakkerstroom convergence, tested part | What the convergence actually rests on | FREDERIK FORTUNATUS Not the place and not the Booysens — the NAME. This archive already calls Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe “the source of the Fortunatus name across three families”, and it is a son of GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, the 1820 Settler. FORTUNATUS IS NOT A NAME THAT TURNS UP TWICE BY ACCIDENT. It is at Wakkerstroom in 1912 and again on an estate for a man born at Naauwpoort in that district. Beside it sits GEORGE AUGUSTUS, on three separate stones there and at Piet Retief, and a Barry in the same 1908 file. TAKEN TOGETHER THE WAKKERSTROOM KOLBES ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY THIS FAMILY'S KOLBES, a generation or two on from Colesberg. NOT PROVED: no document yet read names the Settler as their ancestor, and none has been adopted. The test that would settle it is estate MSCE 2032/1969 or 965/1956, either of which should name parents. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga no | Northern Cape · KOLBE | One stone, modern “KOLBE George 1930-2000 & Bettie 1923-2003”, De Aar new cemetery. That is the entire Kolbe presence in the photographed Northern Cape collection. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE DIED AT THE FARM WURTEMBURG, COLESBERG, ON 1 DECEMBER 1844, and the memorial of 1839 puts him on KNAP DAAR in the same district. Neither farm, and no stone of his, is in the collection. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga no | Northern Cape · BOOY | 193 stones, two at Colesberg, neither ours The province holds 193 Booy-family stones, overwhelmingly at Upington, Postmasburg, Hartswater and De Aar. COLESBERG ITSELF HAS TWO: Lewiesa Booyse, 1957–2011, and Helena Booysens, born 1931, on a Marais stone — both modern, both in the cemetery beside the N1. THE COLESBERG COVERAGE IS THIN, and the district where this family's Kolbes farmed in the 1830s and 1840s is effectively unphotographed. A clean negative with its reason attached. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga part | Mpumalanga · KOLBE | Thirteen stones, and the name three more times Twelve of the thirteen are at WAKKERSTROOM and PIET RETIEF, on the Transvaal–Natal border — a Kolbe community this archive did not know existed. And THE NAME IS THERE THREE TIMES OVER: “KOLBE G.A. 1836-1913 & A.M. 1843-1907” at Piet Retief; “KOLBE GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1861-1934 & Susanna Margaretha 1861-1940” at Wakkerstroom; and “KOLBE GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1863-1954 & Martha Sophia KLOPPER 1867-1950”, also Wakkerstroom. This archive's George Augustus Kolbe was the 1820 Settler, born 1802 and dead at Colesberg in 1844; these three are born 1836, 1861 and 1863. Also there: P. J. Kolbe 1865–1919, Martha Angeline 1901–1901, and DAAN 1893–1918 with FREDDIE, also 1918 — two young men dead in the influenza year. NONE IS CLAIMED. What is claimed is that the forename travelled, as Margaret Downing's did. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga part | Volksrust camp cemetery, looked for and not found here | In the index, not in the photographs NAAIRS's GEN database gives “GE KOLBE, died between 1899 and 1901, aged 35, Concentration Camp cemetery, Volksrust”. That stone does NOT appear among the thirteen Kolbe records in eGGSA's photographed Mpumalanga collection. The two bodies of data are the same society's work from different doors, and they do not hold the same things — worth knowing before either is treated as complete. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga part | One convergence worth following | Wakkerstroom, twice FamilySearch's full-text search returned, among its South African collections, “VOTERS' LIST (MALE) 1931 — WAKKERSTROOM” for the surname BOOYZEN. The gravestones now put a KOLBE community in the same small border town. Booyzens and Kolbes at Wakkerstroom is either coincidence or the family, and nobody has tested which. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed yes | Gauteng · surname BOOY | 640 stones, 38 with the z The archive has read ten Johannesburg burial REGISTERS and had a photograph of none of those graves. The Gauteng collection holds thirty-eight Booyzen-spelt stones across West Park, Braamfontein, Bezuidenhout Park, Brenthurst in Brakpan, Rynsoord in Benoni, Edenvale, Sterkfontein, Panorama, and four Pretoria cemeteries — Silverton, Zandfontein, Rebecca Street and Bronkhorstspruit. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed yes | Four stones that are certainly this family | Every date matches “BOOYZEN STEFANUS FRANCOIS 1874-1940” and “BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA NEE BOSHOFF 1889-1977”, a joint stone at SILVERTON, PRETORIA — he died at East Lynne in 1940 and she is given a death year for the first time. “BOOYZEN HENRY JAMES 1887-1956” at WEST PARK. “BOOYZEN JOHN BARRY 1884-1952” at BRENTHURST, BRAKPAN — this archive had him as “c. 1884” with NO DEATH AT ALL and an estate number, MHG 769/52, on a film that will not open; the stone supplies both the year and the town. And “DASCHNER JOSEPH HEINRICH 1883-1942 & CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA” at WEST PARK — the Indwe marriage, on one stone, in Johannesburg. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed part | A fifth stone that closes a loop | Petrus Jacobus Booyzen 1873–1947 “BOOYZEN PETRUS JACOBUS 1873-1947 & MAGDALENA JOHANNA BEZUIDENHOUT”, REBECCA STREET CEMETERY, PRETORIA. Two threads from earlier today meet on it. The Wonderboom South transfer register names “Boedel wyle P. J. Booyzen” passing to “MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN”, and “M. J. BOOYZEN, BORN BEZUIDENHOUT, widow” — a couple this archive could not identify. And the prisoner register gives PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYZEN, aged 27, of Pretoria, taken at Tolosberg on 25 April 1901, which puts his birth about 1874. A Petrus Jacobus Booyzen born 1873 and buried at Pretoria with a wife born Bezuidenhout fits both. STRONG AND NOT PROVED — the stone names no parents. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed part | And two confirmations of other people's work | WikiTree and NAAIRS both hold up “BOOYZEN WILLEM HERMANUS 1925-1996 & CYNTHIA ROSALIND 1927-” at RYNSOORD, BENONI is WikiTree's Booysen-831, which gives him born 25 October 1925 and married to Cynthia Rosalind Hoeftman at Johannesburg in 1955. And “VILJOEN J.C.E. NEE BOOYZEN 1807-1861” at BEZUIDENHOUT PARK is the stone NAAIRS's GEN database produced this morning from the other direction. Neither is claimed for this family; both show the sources agreeing. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed yes | The six photographs, downloaded and read | Every one gave more than its index line The gallery serves an HTML wrapper at the .JPG address; the image itself is at a /cache/ path inside it, and fetching that with a referer works. SIX STONES READ. Stefanus Francois Booyzen — born 29 SEPTEMBER 1874, not “about October”, on a double stone at Silverton whose centre pillar lists TWELVE CHILDREN by household name, one marked dead. John Barry Booyzen — 26 APRIL 1884 to 23 JANUARY 1952, where this archive had “c. 1884” and no death at all. Henry James Booyzen — GEB. 12.8.1887, putting on a gravestone the date this archive had marked as coming from WikiTree and not from a document. Catherine Mary Sophia Daschner, BORN BOOYZEN with the z, born 22 APRIL 1891 exactly as her Barkly Oost baptism says, died 14 July 1946; her husband Joseph Heinrich Daschner, 27 December 1883 to 19 April 1942. And Petrus Jacobus Booyzen, 29 May 1873 to 25 March 1947, with MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN GEB. BEZUIDENHOUT, GEB. 8 MEI 1870 — which is the number written beside her name in the Wonderboom deeds register, and identifies her beyond doubt. IT ALSO FORCED A CORRECTION: she was widowed in 1947, so the 1907 date read off that ledger row was a column mis-alignment, and is withdrawn. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's gravestone photographs — and two of this family are in them yes | How the graves site is organised | Nine provincial subdomains graves.eggsa.org is only a front door. The collection is split by province, each with its OWN SUBDOMAIN AND ITS OWN SEARCH, and there is no way to search all of them at once — the site says so itself. For this family: graveseastcape (Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Middelburg, Barkly East, Dordrecht, Indwe), gravesnortherncape (Colesberg), gravesgauteng (Johannesburg, Pretoria), gravesmpumalanga (Volksrust). The Eastern Cape search is a CGI form at /Search/ecsearchGraves.htm posting to /cgi-bin/ecdosearchGraves.pl, and it works. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's gravestone photographs — and two of this family are in them yes | Eastern Cape · surname BOOY | 203 stones, eight spelt with a z Most are Booyens and Booysen families with no connection here. Filtering to the Z SPELLINGS leaves eight, and FOUR OF THEM ARE IN ONE CEMETERY — MIDDELBURG MAIN CEMETERY: Catharina Johanna Helena née Beyleveldt 1855–1937, GERT JACOBUS 1870–1951, ISABELLA FREDERICKA NÉE COETSEE 1874–1930, and Pieter J. 1904–1937. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's gravestone photographs — and two of this family are in them yes | BOOYZEN Gert Jacobus 1870–1951 · BOOYZEN Isabella Fredericka nee Coetsee 1874–1930 | BOTH ARE THIS ARCHIVE'S PEOPLE Gerrit Jacobus Booÿsen was born 19 JANUARY 1870, the only child on his father's 1884 death notice, and he married ISABELLA FREDERIKA COETSEE AT MIDDELBURG on 23 March 1896. His estate is TAB MHG 5155/51 — a 1951 file this archive has never been able to read because the film returns 403. THE STONE GIVES HIM 1870–1951. Hers gives 1874–1930, which matches her own death notice and independently confirms this archive's correction that she died in 1930 and was simply not reported until 1943. They married at Middelburg and they are buried at Middelburg, a few stones apart. PHOTOGRAPHS LOCATED AND NOT YET READ: the inscriptions may carry more than the index line does. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — the right country's papers, opened yes | The addresses, which have all just changed | Every indexed link is dead eggsa.org/newspapers/ now returns 404 and so does every deep link Google still holds for it. The collections have moved to SUBDOMAINS: NEWSPAPERS.EGGSA.ORG for the newspaper extracts and GRAVES.EGGSA.ORG for the gravestone photographs. Recorded first because anyone following an older citation will conclude the resource is gone, and it is not. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — the right country's papers, opened part | The search, which does not work | Browse instead The site runs a Geek ElasticSearch widget that does not respond to a form POST or to scripted input, and Joomla's own com_search is not installed — /index.php?option=com_search returns “Component not found”. THE CONTENT IS STILL REACHABLE: each newspaper has a page, each page lists its quarters, and each quarter is a single full-text transcription of ten to eighteen thousand characters that can be fetched and read straight through. That is the method, and it works. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — the right country's papers, opened yes | What is actually there | The family's own town paper Titles include the CAPE FRONTIER TIMES, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, CAPE TIMES, DAILY REPRESENTATIVE, EASTERN PROVINCE HERALD, FORT BEAUFORT ADVOCATE, GRAHAMSTOWN JOURNAL, QUEENSTOWN FREE PRESS — and the GRAAFF-REINET HERALD, transcribed by Sue Mackay from CO53/43 at the National Archives, Kew, covering 1852 to 1856 in ten quarters. Graaff-Reinet is where this family is oldest and where its baptisms run from 1788 to 1857. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | eGGSA's newspaper extracts — the right country's papers, opened no | Graaff-Reinet Herald · 1852 Oct–Dec, 1853 Jan–Mar, Apr–Jun, Jul–Sep | Four quarters, no family Fetched and read in full for BOOY, BOOIJ, KOLBE, MOUNTJOY, MONTJOY and VILJOEN. NOT ONE OCCURRENCE across roughly 55,000 characters of advertisements, notices and reports. A scoped negative and a small one: four quarters of ten, in one paper of twenty, in a five-year window. What it establishes is that the method works and the reading can be trusted — the transcriptions are genuine running text, not indexes. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gravestones — NAAIRS's GEN database, and eGGSA part | GEN · BOOYZEN | Three stones, all Bezuidenhout Park The Genealogical Society's gravestone data, reached through NAAIRS rather than eGGSA. Three stones at the BEZUIDENHOUT FAMILY CEMETERY, Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg, recorded by P Holden in 1989 — and the Booyzen is in the inscriptions, not the surnames. “JCE VILJOEN, NEE BOOYZEN. Born 02-07-1807. Died 11-12-1861. Wife of BC Viljoen” — cited to JA HEESE, SOUTH AFRICAN GENEALOGIES, CODE b3c4d5e6. Her husband BC Viljoen, 1807–1859, is cited to de Villiers and Pama as b3c4d2e11f4. And their daughter JUDITH CORNELIA ETRESIA BEZUIDENHOUT, née Viljoen, was BORN 30 OCTOBER 1831 AT GRAAFF-REINET and died at Doornfontein in 1904. NOT ADOPTED: a Booyzen woman born July 1807 cannot be a sister of David Schalk, baptised January 1807, so she is a cousin at best. But she is of his generation, at his parish, and she has a HEESE CODE — the second time in two days a source has pointed at Heese with a number attached. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gravestones — NAAIRS's GEN database, and eGGSA yes | GEN · KOLBE | A camp death, and a name that lasted eighty years Four stones. Two matter. FIRST: “GE KOLBE. Died between 1899 and 1901. Aged 35 years.” — CONCENTRATION CAMP CEMETERY, VOLKSRUST. Question 3 asks whether this family's women and children were in a camp and answers “searched, and not found” — but that search was run on BOOYZEN against a database built largely from camp death lists. Here is a KOLBE of thirty-five dead in a camp. Not this archive's person on any evidence yet, and the first camp death to touch any of its surnames. SECOND: “MARGARET or MARGARIT DOWNING FOURIE, NEE KOLBE. Born 29-09-1899. Died 08-12-1979” — New Gelderland Cemetery, Lower Tugela, Natal, recorded twice by different compilers. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE MARRIED MARGARET DOWNING AT SHOREDITCH IN 1819. Eighty years later a Kolbe girl is christened MARGARET DOWNING KOLBE, and she is buried in Natal in 1979. Also: Margaret Harriet van der Spuy, née Kolbe, died Utrecht 1946. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | Gravestones — NAAIRS's GEN database, and eGGSA yes | eGGSA — and the newspapers this family is actually in | The Cape papers, not the British ones The photo library did not surface a Booyzen stone for Graaff-Reinet, Cradock or Colesberg on the searches run. What it did surface is a resource this archive has never touched and badly needs: eGGSA'S NEWSPAPER EXTRACTS — the EASTERN PROVINCE HERALD, FORT BEAUFORT ADVOCATE, QUEENSTOWN FREE PRESS, SOUTH AFRICAN COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER and others, transcribed and indexed, with BOOYSEN entries across the 1860s to the 1890s including a Pieter Booysen described as a trek-farmer in 1862. THIS CORRECTS A CONCLUSION DRAWN HOURS EARLIER. Searching 108 million pages of BRITISH papers for this family returned almost nothing, and that was recorded as a limit of the medium. It is not: it is a limit of the COUNTRY. The family's notices are in Cape colonial papers, and those are here, free, and unread. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, working again — and KOLBE had never been searched in it yes | The NAAIRS address, resolved | national.archsrch.gov.za This archive recorded on 13 September that “the bare hostname no longer resolves”. It does — the catalogue is a FRAMESET at nationalarchives.gov.za/naairs.htm and the SEARCH lives on a DIFFERENT HOST: http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl. Sixteen databases including RSA (all repositories), KAB, TAB, VAB, NAB and GEN, the Genealogical Society's gravestone data. Session-bound URLs, five search boxes with And/Or/Not/Adjacent/Near, and an optional date range. Written down because the wrong address cost this archive a day. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, working again — and KOLBE had never been searched in it part | RSA · KOLBE | 708 documents The Kolbes have never been put to NAAIRS. Fourteen rows of searching in September covered Booyzen, Booijzen, Mountjoy, Montjoy, de Beer and Barry — and not once the surname that carries the 1820 Settler, the Conduit Street tailor and the name that runs through this family for four generations. 708 is too many to read; it is recorded as the size of the gap. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, working again — and KOLBE had never been searched in it yes | RSA · KOLBE AND COLESBERG | Six, and the first is a farm KAB, source LG, volume 552, system 02, REFERENCE 664, part 1, 1839: “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. LAND. REVEREND G KOLBE. REQUESTING THAT CERTAIN GOVERNMENT GROUND ADJOINING HIS FARM KNAP DAAR IN DISTRICT OF COLESBERG BE SURVEYED AND PUT UP FOR PUBLIC AUCTION.” This archive has George Augustus Kolbe dying at the farm “WURTEMBURG”, Colesberg, on 1 December 1844, and describes him as having preached across the Orange River. Here he is FIVE YEARS EARLIER, formally styled REVEREND, holding a farm called KNAP DAAR and petitioning the government about the ground next door. STRONG BUT NOT PROVED: the memorial gives an initial, not a full name. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, working again — and KOLBE had never been searched in it part | The other five of the six | Two estates, two war permits NAB MSCE 414/1960 — Oosthuizen, Pierre Francois, born Colesberg, spouse ADRIANA HENRIETTA JOHANNA, BORN KOLBE, deceased estate. NAB MSCE 131/1959 — BEUKES, PETRONELLA JACOBA ADRIANA, BORN KOLBE, BORN IN COLESBERG, deceased estate. Two Kolbe-born women of Colesberg with estate files, neither in this archive. And two Anglo-Boer War movement permits: VAB SRC volume 7, RC2170, 28 MAY 1901 — “PERMISSION GRANTED FOR MRS. G KOLBE AND CHILD TO PROCEED TO COLESBERG”; and TAB SOPOW volume 39, 1902 — “APPLICATIONS BY JC KOLBE TO PROCEED TO COLESBERG”. SOPOW is the Staff Officer for Prisoners of War, the same series that holds this family's three Booyzen prisoners. The sixth match is a London Missionary Society guide entry and is not a Kolbe document. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Savoy registers, located — and RootsChat, which could not be used blocked | RootsChat, for the German Lutheran congregations and the Savoy registers | Account wall “You are not allowed to search for posts in this forum. Please login below or register an account.” RootsChat's search is closed to visitors, and registering an account is not something this archive does on the user's behalf. NOT SEARCHED. The question it was going to be asked — where the Savoy chapel registers are — turned out to have a better answer somewhere free and citable, so nothing was lost. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The Savoy registers, located — and RootsChat, which could not be used yes | The National Archives Discovery catalogue, instead | RG 4/4625–4631 The registers of the GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH, SAVOY, STRAND are at The National Archives in series RG 4, the non-parochial registers surrendered to the Registrar General. DEATHS AND BURIALS: RG 4/4625, RG 4/4626, RG 4/4628, RG 4/4631. BIRTHS AND BAPTISMS: RG 4/4627, RG 4/4629. Two of the eight pieces the catalogue returns are marked available for download. THIS MATTERS DIRECTLY: this archive already cites Johan Gottlieb Kolbe's burial there on 26 November 1845, ENTRY 55, GRAVE 7 — and that entry sits in one of the four Deaths and Burials pieces above. The register it came from now has a reference, and can be checked rather than trusted. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette — free, and it had a document nobody here had looked for yes | text=Kolbe · 1834–1838 · thegazette.co.uk | ONE notice, 29 September 1836 The London Gazette, ISSUE 19424, PAGE 1702, published 29 SEPTEMBER 1836. The OCR is rough and the reading is given cleaned, with the original's damage noted: “TAKE notice, that the Copartnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTTLOB KOLBE and DAVID FLETCHER, of CONDUIT-STREET, BOND-STREET, in the County of MIDDLESEX, TAILORS, has b[een dissolved]…” (the scan gives “Coaftnership”, “Gbttlob” and “t'onduit-Sireet”). FOUR THINGS AT ONCE, from a free and citable printed source: the name in the form JOHN GOTTLOB, matching both the 1803 baptism and the 1845 death registration; the trade TAILOR, which this archive had from the death record alone; CONDUIT STREET in 1836 — five years before the census and nine before he died there; and a BUSINESS PARTNER, DAVID FLETCHER, whom this archive had never heard of. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette — free, and it had a document nobody here had looked for part | What the notice does not say | Why the partnership ended The visible OCR stops at “has b…”. A dissolution notice normally goes on to say from what date, which partner continues the business, and who settles the debts, and both partners sign. None of that has been read: the Gazette's page view is a scanned image rather than text, and the full wording needs the PDF. Recorded as located and part-read, not as read. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FreeBMD — never used before, and it had exactly one thing to give yes | Deaths · surname Kolbe · 1845–1846 · England and Wales | ONE entry, and it is him “Deaths Dec 1845 — KOLBE, JOHN GOTTLOB — ST GEO HAN SQ — VOL 1, PAGE 35.” The only Kolbe death registered in England and Wales across two years. Three things come off it. The DISTRICT is St George Hanover Square, which is the same registration district the 1841 census gives for Conduit Street, so the census and the death index agree without either knowing about the other. The NAME is entered “JOHN GOTTLOB” — not Johan Gottlieb — which is precisely the form used at his son George Augustus's baptism at St Anne's Soho in 1803, “son of John Gottlob and Mary”. And VOL 1 PAGE 35 is a certificate reference: the certificate itself would give cause of death, occupation, and the NAME AND ADDRESS OF THE INFORMANT, who in a household of three unmarried women is likely to be one of them. NOT ORDERED. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FreeBMD — never used before, and it had exactly one thing to give part | What FreeBMD cannot do for this family, stated so nobody tries | Civil registration starts in 1837 The other London events are all EARLIER and will never be in this index: John Gottlob and Mary at Soho in 1802, George Augustus's baptism at St Anne's in February 1803, and the Shoreditch marriage of 1819. Those are parish records and stay parish records. FreeBMD's entire purchase on this family is the one 1845 death — which is why it took one search, and why it was worth doing. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy part | What the London places actually are | Kolbe and Downing Worth stating before anyone searches: the four London places on the atlas — ST ANNE'S SOHO, ST LEONARD'S SHOREDITCH, 34 CONDUIT STREET and the GERMAN SAVOY CHURCH — belong to the KOLBE and DOWNING lines, not to the Montjoys. The Montjoy line has no London place at all: James Montjoy is “born Europe about 1782” and his 1840 death notice answers his parents NOT KNOWN. Anyone hoping the London records will reach the Montjoys is looking at the wrong family's city. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy part | LastName=Kolbe · EventYear=1819 ±1 · KeywordsPlace=Shoreditch | The marriage is indexed, three times Three entries for GEORGE KOLBE, Shoreditch 1819, in ENGLAND MARRIAGES 1538–1973 — two filed under Middlesex and one under London, which is the same event indexed three ways. This archive has read the marriage itself and knows what it says: he was sixteen and she fifteen, both swore they were twenty-one, and she signed with a mark. THE INDEX ADDS NOTHING TO THAT, and is recorded because a place on the atlas with no attached record looks unsearched when it is not. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy no | LastName=Kolbe · KeywordsPlace=London | 433, and none of them ours 94 parish records, 255 census, 45 directories, 36 travel — and the ones that surface are Woolwich and Plumstead Kolbes of the 1900s, a Streatham Kolbe of 1881, and passenger lists to the Cape in 1902 and 1957. The Georgian German-tailor Kolbes of Soho and Conduit Street are not what a bare surname search in London returns. They need to be approached by event and parish, not by name. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy yes | FindMyPast, as a tool — recorded for whoever comes next | Three frictions worth knowing ONE: the results URL takes KeywordsPlace, and a place passed as “placename” is silently ignored — 20,309 results against 12 for the same search. TWO: the NEWSPAPER results URL cannot be reached by parameters at all; /search-newspapers/results?keywords= only works once the form has been clicked, and a direct navigation bounces to the landing page. THREE: result rows resist programmatic clicking, so opening a transcript is a manual step. None of this is a reason not to use it; all of it is a reason to budget more time than the searching itself takes. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy no | Newspapers: keywords=Tolosberg, all 108 million pages | 0 results “We can't find any matching articles for tolosberg.” The name appears NOWHERE in the British and Irish press. That is a scoped negative with real weight: it explains why the place is in no battle list and no gazetteer, and it means the capture of forty-two Boers with two guns on 25 April 1901 was never reported in Britain under that name. The place is real — a prisoner register and a medal roll both carry it — and the British papers never heard of it. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy no | Newspapers: keywords=Booysen · keywords=Daschner | 3,262 and 42, none usable The Booysen spelling returns 3,262 against Booyzen's 7, and Daschner 42 — all of them modern, British or unrelated. Recorded as a limit of the medium rather than of the search: BRITISH PAPERS DID NOT PRINT THE NAMES OF INDIVIDUAL BOER PRISONERS. The Scheepers charge sheet is the exception because it was a trial. Anyone expecting this family to appear in the British press should expect war reporting and nothing else. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy yes | LastName=Kolbe · EventYear=1841 · KeywordsPlace=Conduit Street, London | THE HOUSEHOLD, FOUR YEARS BEFORE HE DIED 1841 England census, HO107, piece 734, book 1, folio 11, page 15, SCHEDULE 38 — St George Hanover Square, sub-district MAY FAIR, street CONDUIT STREET. “JOHN G KOLBE, male, age 76, birth year 1765, birth county as transcribed: FOREIGN.” Two things follow. The archive corrected the family tree's “Lamb's Conduit Street” to 34 Conduit Street from his death record; the census puts him in Conduit Street four years earlier, INDEPENDENTLY. And “FOREIGN” is the first document here to say in its own words that he was not English — the German origin had been an inference off a German church burial. THREE WOMEN share the schedule: MARIANNE, 35, CHARLOTTE, 30, and AMELIA A., 25, none of whom this archive had. No Mary: George Augustus's mother, named at his 1803 baptism, is not in the house. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy yes | 1851 census · LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · b.1796 ±2 · Yorkshire | ONE man in the whole county HO107 piece 2374, folio 563, page 12, SCHEDULE 46: “JOHN BARRY, Head, MARRIED, male, age 55, birth year 1796, birth town WHITBY, occupation SHIP OWNER, full address SHIP YARDS, RUSWARP, WHITBY.” He is the ONLY John Barry born about 1796 in the 1851 Yorkshire census. The 1838 licence gives a man of the same birth year whose RESIDENCE parish was Bilsdale Midcable — residence, not birth — so a man born at Whitby, living at Bilsdale when he married Margaret Jackson in 1838, and back at Ruswarp by 1851 is one life, not two. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy no | 1841 and 1851 censuses · LastName=Barry · KeywordsPlace=Bilsdale | 0 and 0 No Barry of any forename is indexed at Bilsdale in either census. The Bilsdale connection rests entirely on the residence parish given on the 1838 marriage licence, which is consistent with a man who lived there briefly and is not evidence of a family seated there. Recorded because “a Yorkshire farmer of Bilsdale” is how the family tree describes him, and the censuses do not support the farm or the seat. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy yes | England & Wales Deaths · John Barry · Whitby district | 1858 and 1860 — and that closes Question 6 Two John Barry deaths are registered in the WHITBY district, in 1858 and in 1860. Set against the 1851 census, where the county's only John Barry of that age is a Whitby ship owner alive at Ruswarp, the conclusion is plain: THE YORKSHIRE JOHN BARRY BORN 1796 DIED IN YORKSHIRE, AT LEAST FIVE YEARS AFTER THE CAPE MAN DIED AT DE BRUINS POORT IN 1853. Question 6 asked this archive to break one profile holding two men. It is broken — not by finding the Cape man, but by following the Yorkshire man past the date the Cape man died. CAVEAT, and it is a real one: the death index gives no age, so neither Whitby death is tied to him by anything but district and period. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy no | 1851 census · Kolbe · Conduit Street, then all London | Gone, and only a governess left ZERO Kolbes at Conduit Street in 1851 — he had died in 1845 and the household had broken up. In the whole of London in 1851 there is ONE Kolbe: “J Kolbe”, female, unmarried, 25, born London 1826, occupation GOVERNESS, a VISITOR at 4 Camberwell New Road Alfred Place, Lambeth. Too young by a decade to be Marianne, Charlotte or Amelia. The three women of schedule 38 are not in the 1851 London census under their own surname. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy part | Kolbe · London · 1836–1856 | Amelia married, and four other Kolbes surface AMELIA ANN KOLBE married at ST PANCRAS in 1854 — indexed twice, in England & Wales Marriages 1837–2005 and England Marriages 1538–1973. That is the Amelia A. of the 1841 Conduit Street schedule, aged 25 there and marrying thirteen years later. Four others, none tied to this family and all recorded so the next person does not have to find them again: EMANUEL CHRISTOPHER KOLBE, BORN 1766, buried at Bermondsey St Mary Magdalen 1836 — one year younger than Johan Gottlieb and worth testing as a brother; GEORGE KOLBE, died 1848, Westminster St Margaret; ELIZABETH KOLBE, died 1852, Strand; and JANE DAY KOLBE, in the London Gazette in 1852 and married in 1853. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy part | A lead that does NOT need a subscription | J. G. Kolbe in the London Gazette, 1836 The search returns “KOLBE, J. G., 1836, LONDON GAZETTE 1665–2018”. The Gazette prints bankruptcies, dissolutions of partnership, and naturalisations — any of which would say what a German tailor in Mayfair was doing in 1836, nine years before he died. THE LONDON GAZETTE IS FREE AT thegazette.co.uk AND FULLY SEARCHABLE, so this one should not be spent on a trial. Written down here because it was found on one and is worth following on none. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time part | The state of it before today | ONE query, 9 Sep FindMyPast has been used exactly once in this project: a search for MOUNTJOY born about 1782, which returned 12,984 results and was abandoned as untractable. That is the whole of it. Every British and Irish wall in this archive — John Barry of Bilsdale, John Augustus Barry born at sea to a mother “born Neagle”, James Montjoy the saddler, the Kolbes in London, the Downings in Shoreditch — had never been put to it. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time yes | Search syntax, established | KeywordsPlace, not placename Recorded because it cost time. The results URL takes FirstName, LastName, YearOfBirth, YearOfDeath, EventYear, Keywords and KEYWORDSPLACE. A place passed as “placename” is SILENTLY IGNORED — the same search returned 20,309 results with it and 12 with KeywordsPlace. Anyone repeating this work should check the result count changes when they add a place. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time yes | LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · KeywordsPlace=Bilsdale, Yorkshire | THE YORKSHIRE MAN, DOCUMENTED Yorkshire, Archbishop of York Marriage Licences Index 1613–1839, record GBPRS/OR/YORK/M/00137233/1, page 21, sequence 3: “JOHN BARRY, age 42, birth year 1796, residence parish BILSDALE MIDCABLE, Yorkshire”, licence dated 2 OCTOBER 1838, intended marriage at HELMSLEY, to MARGARET JACKSON, 35, of the parish of BEADLAM, Yorkshire. Question 6 says one profile holds two men — a Yorkshire farmer of Bilsdale and a man who died at de Bruins Poort in the Cape — and until now the Yorkshire half was an assertion off a tree. IT IS NOW A RECORD, with a parish, an age, a date and a wife. It does not by itself prove the two are different men, since a man of 42 marrying in 1838 could have had an earlier family; what it does is give the archive a second John Barry it can actually hold. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time no | FirstName=John Augustus · LastName=Barry · Keywords=Neagle | Two hits, both American Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, 1861. Not this family. Broadening to LastName=Barry with Keywords=Neagle gave 193, overwhelmingly directories and North America. The mother's surname from the 1915 death notice is not, on this evidence, a way into the Irish records by keyword alone. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time part | LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · YearOfBirth=1796 ±3 · KeywordsPlace=Yorkshire | Two Yorkshire men, not one 358 hits resolve into at least two John Barrys born 1795–96 in the North Riding, and NEITHER is obviously ours. A BILSDALE man: the 1838 marriage licence to Margaret Jackson. A WHITBY man: baptised at Whitby St Mary the Virgin 1795, a marriage licence in 1839, the 1841 census at Whitby, the 1851 census at RUSWARP, WHITBY — and an entry in BRITAIN, MERCHANT SEAMEN 1835–1857. The seaman is tempting, because John Augustus Barry's death notice says he was born AT SEA in 1819; but a man in the Whitby census in 1851 is a poor fit for a death at de Bruins Poort in 1853, and nothing here names a son. A third John Barry born 1796 married at STOKESLEY in 1852. Recorded so the next person knows the North Riding holds several and that the name alone will not separate them. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time part | Newspapers: keywords=Booyzen, 107,989,139 pages | 7 articles, 3 of one story The results URL is /search-newspapers/results?keywords= — reached only by clicking the form; URL parameters alone bounce back to the landing page. Of seven articles, three are the same charge sheet from THE TRIAL OF SCHEEPERS (Sunderland Daily Echo 25 Jan 1902 p3; Edinburgh Evening Dispatch 23 Jan 1902 p4; and a third under “Operations in the Northern Transvaal”). The charge, reconstructed across three OCR readings: “Barbarous act, contrary to customs of war — PIETER BOOYZEN, JOHN VAN DER BERG, PORTLOCK RUBIDGE and ALBERT VAN DER BURGH, PRISONERS OF WAR, PLACED IN FIRING [line]”, at ABERDEEN, 21 May 1901. That is Commandant Gideon Scheepers, tried and shot in January 1902, and this Pieter Booyzen is a man held BY a commando, not riding with one — a Cape context, three weeks after our three were taken at Tolosberg. NOT ADOPTED, and noted only because Aberdeen is a district this family appears in. The remaining four articles are noise: a Johannesburg suburb spelt Booyzens, a mining share, and a Bradford Northern rugby player. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time part | Keywords=Booyzen across all record sets | A war grave in Plymouth 33 hits, of which 22 census and 7 military. One is worth writing down: JAN BOOYZEN, born 1898, died 1918, in LIVES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR and the COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION DEBT OF HONOUR, buried at PLYMOUTH (EFFORD) CEMETERY, United Kingdom. A twenty-year-old South African of this surname who died in Britain in 1918 and lies there still. No connection to this family is claimed or tested. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened no | Full-text search, q.text=Barry Kolbe, South Africa | 0 results The first hope was that full-text search — which reads unindexed images rather than volunteer indexes — could reach the two missing Barry children. It cannot. South African full-text coverage does NOT include the Dutch Reformed church registers. That is a clean negative and it closes the last screen route to those two children. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened yes | Full-text search, q.text=Booyzen | ~140 hits, 7 pages, 4 collections What the coverage DOES include, and what this archive has never once searched: VOTER RECORDS, SOUTH AFRICA, VOTING RECORDS 1925–1931 · DE LIST, CAPE PROVINCE, MILITARY RECORDS 1901–1903 · LAND RECORDS, SOUTH AFRICA, FARM RECORDS 1895 and 1895–1955. The military one lands on the Anglo-Boer War years and the rebel question; the land ones land on Question 11, the farm. All four are full-text searchable, which is a different kind of access from anything this archive has used. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened part | RAK 2508, “Ewaton Book 2” — the land-register index, images 14 and 15 | Four Booyzen entries, with folios An alphabetical index in three columns, SURNAME · CHRISTIAN NAME · FOLIO, read from the image and not from the AI transcript, which is unreliable. The Booyzen block reads: “Booyzen · Catharine Mary [S…] · 2492” and “Jacobus Nicolaas · 201”; “Booijzen · Matthys Joh… · 1866”; “Booijzen · Jacobus Nicholas · 2267”; “Booyzen · Jacobus Nicolaas · 1931, 1939”. TWO OF THOSE NAMES ARE IN THIS ARCHIVE. Jacobus Nicolaas Booyzen is the eldest of the eight on the 1863 death notice, who “ended in the Transvaal” with estate TAB MHG 52653 and nothing else attached to him — and Evaton is in the Transvaal. The Catharine Mary reading is the family's signature female name and the hardest of the four to be sure of. NOTHING IS ADOPTED: a surname in a land index is not an identification, the folios have not been followed, and the ledgers those folios point into are a different volume from this index. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened part | RAK 2384, Wonderboom South — the folios followed into a transfer register | Three Booyzen transfers, one dated 1907 Image 219 of 261, image group 121082126. A deeds transfer register for WONDERBOOM SOUTH, which is Pretoria — the district where David Schalk Booysen was living at GOEDEHOOP when he remarried in November 1905. Three rows carry the name. (1) “E. S. D. Gey van Pittius (gel. Schulte)” to PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYZEN, 1939, £25. (2) “Boedel wyle P. J. BOOYZEN” — the estate of the late P.J. Booyzen — to MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN. (3) “M. J. BOOYZEN (born BEZUIDENHOUT), Wed.” to DAVID SCHALK BOOYZEN, 9 APRIL 1907. The household reads Petrus Jacobus, David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna — which is this archive's direct line name for name, and is exactly why it is being written down as a lead and not as a finding. NOT PROVED AND NOT ADOPTED. If the David Schalk of April 1907 were this archive's David Schalk Booysen, born Cradock 1848, it would carry him seventeen months past the last date held for him and give him land; but the transferor is a widow born Bezuidenhout and this archive's man married a widow born Stols, so the household may be a different branch entirely. The next step is the deed itself, not this ledger line. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened yes | “De List”, Military Records 1901–1903, image 51 of 69 — read from the image | THREE BOOYZENS, PRISONERS OF WAR A printed Anglo-Boer War prisoner-of-war transport list, South Africa Government Archives (Pretoria), image group 008019246, volume no. 10469–32561. Three consecutive entries: “18463 BOOYZEN, STEPHANUS FRANCOIS, 28” · “18464 BOOYZEN, PETRUS JACOBUS, 29” · “18465 BOOYZEN, DAVID SCHALK, 54”. All three on the SAME SHIP, the CITY OF CAMBRIDGE, sailing 3 JUNE 1901, all three entered from PRETORIA, PRETORIA. Consecutive prisoner numbers on one transport means taken together. This archive has asked for years whether the family fought and has only ever been able to answer for the CAPE, where the roll holds no Booysen. This is the TRANSVAAL side, and it is a different question with a different answer. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened yes | SO/POW film 008019246 — what the nine items actually are | A much fuller register exists The De List that produced the three Booyzens is ITEM 3 of NINE on the film “Archives of the Staff Officer, Prisoners of War, Cape Town, 1900–1903 (SO/POW)”, 1,058 images. ITEM 1, 292 images, is a far better record: “PRISONERS OF WAR IN CAPE PENINSULA” and “PRISONERS OF WAR AT CAPE TOWN AND NATAL”, ruled into Pris. No. · Surname · Christian Name · Age · HOME ADDRESS · TOWN OR DISTRICT · FIELD CORNETCY OR COMMANDO · WHERE CAPTURED · DATE OF CAPTURE · Date of Receipt · Remarks. Home address, commando and place of capture are exactly what the De List does not give and exactly what this archive needs. It is organised in BATCHES BY ARRIVAL — each batch headed “Prisoners of War received at Cape Town from [dates], Nos. N to M” — and alphabetical by surname within each batch. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened no | Bisecting Item 1 to Nos. 18463–18465 | A different number series Bisected from image 7 (nos. 10646+) through 63 (15084–15644) and 106 (~17014) to images 139 and 140, which cover 18403–18894. THE THREE NUMBERS DO NOT BELONG TO OUR MEN THERE: 18463, 18464 and 18465 in this register are ERASMUS HERMANUS, PIETER and JOHANNES CHRISTOFFEL DE BEER. So the De List's numbers are a SEPARATE SERIES and cannot be used to locate anyone in the fuller register, despite both volumes being catalogued “no. 10469-32561”. Worth recording because the opposite assumption is the obvious one to make. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened part | The B surnames in the May–June 1901 batch, checked | Five Booysens, none ours Our three sailed on 3 June 1901, so the batch whose captures run late April to early June is where they should be. Its Booysens are 18511 JAN JOHANNES ANTHONY of Sweet Klip, Standerton, Wolmaransstad commando, taken at Weltpoort 26 May 1901; 18512 ALBERTUS BENJAMIN of Lydenburg, taken at Boschveld 26 April 1901; 18513 PIET VAN ZYL, 23, STAATS ARTILLERY, taken at Schraalhaans 1 June 1901; 18514 WILLEM ADRIAN; and 18515 GERHARDT JACOBUS of Jackalskraal, Winburg, Vet River commando. NOT ONE of them is Stephanus Francois, Petrus Jacobus or David Schalk. The three remain to be found by checking the B pages of the other batches — a bounded browse, and not done. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened yes | The B pages of the 5 April–27 May 1901 batch, walked | ALL THREE FOUND, with their commando Image 126 of item 1: “18463 Booysen, Stefanus Francois, 26 · 18464 Booysen, Petrus Jacobus, 27 · 18465 Booysen, David Schalk, 53”, each with home address PRETORIA, town or district PRETORIA, FIELD CORNETCY OR COMMANDO PRETORIA, WHERE CAPTURED TOLOSBERG, DATE OF CAPTURE 25 APRIL 1901. Two other Booysens bracket them and belong elsewhere — 18462 Adrian Jacobus of Fauresmith, Edenburg commando, taken at Springhaan Nek in December 1900, and 18466 Gert of Bloemfontein, taken at Kaffirskraal in October 1900. The register separates those two as cleanly as it groups ours. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened yes | Tolosberg, looked up | A war record for the man Not in any gazetteer reachable by search, not in the standard battle lists, not in a day-by-day 1901 war diary. It is in the medal-roll database at angloboerwar.com, kept by Dr David Biggins — and the entry is about THIS man by THIS NUMBER: “Booysen was one of 42 Boers captured on 25 April 1901 at TOLOSBERG IN THE WATERVAL VALLEY, EASTERN TRANSVAAL, together with 2 guns and much stock. He was sent to INDIA as PoW No 18463.” Quoting a City Coins auction catalogue of November 2020 describing his ABO medal, the same entry makes him a ZARP — the ZAR's police, based at Pretoria — under Commandant J. P. de la C. Schroeder, in action at TALANA, MODDER SPRUIT, COLENSO, PLATRAND (WAGON HILL) where he was WOUNDED IN THE RIGHT LEG, SPION KOP and DALMANUTHA. Strong secondary evidence: the medal and the application have not been seen here, and it is the prisoner number rather than the name that ties it to the register. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid blocked | q.givenName=Petrus Jacobus · q.surname=Booi* · 1786–1790 · South Africa | Date filter ignored The decisive record — the baptism of 21 September 1788, which names the father and would settle de Villiers against the 1876 Sterfkennis — does NOT surface. The endpoint returns 19th and 20th century entries regardless of the birthLikeDate range, and the same happened with anyDate on Graaff-Reinet. This is consistent with what Question 0 already says: the 18th-century Cape registers are not name-indexed and have to be read page by page. NOT a negative about the register, a negative about the index. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid part | q.surname=Booij* · q.fatherGivenName=Jan · q.motherSurname=de Beer | de Villiers corroborated twice The mother filter did not bite and the wildcard dragged in Dutch Booijink and Booijman families. But two entries land squarely on de Villiers' page 78: Petrus Jacobus Booijzen, born 1814, of GERRIT BOOIJZEN and ANNA ELISABETH THERON; and Anna Susanna Booijze, baptised 12 May 1805 at Graaff-Reinet, of JAN JONATHAN BOOIJZE and JUDITH CORNELIA ETRESIA VILJOEN. The book gives Jan's sons Gerrit married to Anna Elisabeth Theron in 1791 and Jan Jonathan married to Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen in 1797. TWO OF JAN'S SONS CONFIRMED FROM RECORDS, independently of the book — which raises what the book says about the third son, Petrus Jacobus. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid yes | q.surname=Barry · q.fatherGivenName=John Augustus · South Africa | Nine children, a whole household The query Question 13 named as untried. It does not answer which two of the eleven are missing — these are grandchildren, not children — but it hands this archive a family it did not have at all. John Augustus Barry II, who was a name on two death notices with no wife and no issue, married ALIDA JACOBA VAN ELLINCKHUIZEN and had NINE children baptised at Burgersdorp and then Dordrecht, 1871 to 1889. The eldest is a THIRD Catherine Mary Sophia. The seventh is ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY — the Kolbe name in a fourth generation, sixty-two years after the Settler landed. A fourth John Augustus appears at ELLIOT by 1908, the same village where Henry James Booyzen married in 1912. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid yes | The two 1848 Barry index entries, opened and compared | One man, not two Henry Jaonas Barry (baptism indexed 13 Nov 1868) and Hennery James Berry (baptism indexed 13 Nov 1848) share a birth date of 13 July 1848, share parents John Barry and Margret Willemina Kolbe, sit in the same collection, and are BOTH attached in the FamilySearch tree to one person: James Henry Barry, 1848–1939, L6J6-JHX. The film's own title closes the question — “Graaff-Reinet. Baptism Records 1846–1851” cannot contain an 1868 baptism. Gained: an exact birth and baptism for James Henry Barry, and the correct place, Graaff-Reinet, against the Cape Town and Tulbagh the index gives. Lost: the tenth-child candidate. Image located, apid:TH-909-70517-31299-17, and NOT yet read. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid yes | Film 008119684, image 930 — the entry itself, read | Entry 603, and a name's origin “603 · Het Kind is N. HENRY JAMES · Get. 13 July 1848 · Gedoopt 13 Novr 1848 · V. John Barry · M. Margret Willemina Kolber · Gt: Petrus Jacobus Joubert, CATHARINE SOPHIA MARIA KOLBER.” The year is 1848 in the clerk's hand, the forename order is HENRY JAMES rather than James Henry, and the godmother — whom this archive held as plain “Catharine Kolbe” — carries CATHERINE MARIA SOPHIA eleven years before her sister gave it to the daughter this archive had been treating as the head of that chain. The namesakes page called it a Barry name. It is a Kolbe name. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid no | q.motherSurname=Olivier · q.fatherGivenName=Hendrik Stef* — the three untraced daughters, again | Thirty hits, none ours The relationship search that worked on the Kolbes fails here, and the reason is worth writing down: OLIVIER is common enough, and “Hendrik Stefanus” frequent enough as a forename pair, that the engine returns Strydoms, Le Rouxs and Rossouws from Jamestown to Oudtshoorn and not one member of this household. A method is not a key; it works where the names are rare. Anna Johanna Maria, Elesabettha Maria Cornelya and Magdalena Johanna Booijsen remain exactly where they were. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid yes | Film 008119684, image 876 — John Augustus Barry II's font, 1847 | Three Kolbes at the font Entry 80: “Het Kind N. JOHN AUGUST · Get. 13 Maart 1847 · Gedoopt 12 April 1847 · V. JOHN BERRY · M. MARGARETWINA KOLBE · Gt: JOHN KOLBE, MARGARET KOLBE, AUGUSTA KOLBE” — the third witness the least certain of the three. Read with entry 603 of the year after, where the godmother is Catharine Sophia Maria Kolbe, the pattern is plain: at both fonts every witness is a Kolbe, and the forenames this archive has been calling Barry names are the names of the people standing at them. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid no | q.surname=B*rry · q.motherSurname=Kolb* and Col* — every spelling the index uses | Seven children, and four known ones missing The mother is indexed as Kolbe, Kolber, Kolbee, Colbe, Colby and Colbee, and her forenames run Margret Willemina, Margret Lowisa, Margaretha Louisa Willemina, Margarita Elizabeth Willemina and Margerite Elizabeth Wellemina. Sweeping all of them returns SEVEN baptisms — 1847, 1848, 1850, 1853, 1859, 1861, 1863 — and not one name this archive did not already hold. THE IMPORTANT PART IS WHAT IS ABSENT: Hendrik Nicholaas, Richard Peter, Margaret Mary and Kathleen Mary are all NAMED ON THEIR PARENTS' DEATH NOTICES and none of the four is in the index. So the index cannot find four children this archive knows existed, which settles that it will not find the two it does not. This route is CLOSED, and closed for a demonstrable reason rather than a discouraging one. What is left is the registers themselves — Graaff-Reinet, Burgersdorp and Dordrecht — read across the gaps at 1851-1852, 1854-1858 and after 1864. |
| 14 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid blocked | The register that would settle it, located and measured | One book, 534 images The two missing Barry children, if they were born in the gap, are in a single volume: BURGERSDORP. BAPTISM RECORDS 1852–1866, image group 008039088, 534 images — it covers 1854 to 1858 entire, and the years on either side. Landmarks for bisecting it: 1853 is at IMAGE 54 (entry for William Fredrik Barry, 23 October), and 1866 is at IMAGE 528. That is roughly 36 images a year, which puts the 1854–1858 gap at about IMAGES 70 TO 250. There is NO NAME INDEX at the back — 528 onward are ordinary 1866 entries. NOT YET READ: this is a sequential browse of some 150 images and it was not attempted in the session that located it, deliberately, because the viewer's image-number box does not reliably move the single-image view (the grid view does jump, and is the way in). Written down so the job resumes rather than restarts. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? no | familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au · subjectfamilyname=BOOYZEN · births, marriages and deaths | Nothing at all The spelling this archive uses does not occur once in Queensland's register between 1829 and 1996. Neither does BOOYSENS, nor SLIER, nor SCHOEMAN. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? no | · subjectfamilyname=BOOYSEN | Two, and neither is ours Betty Beatrice Booysen, who died in 1977, was born an Appleby of English parents. Jasper van Graan Booysen, who died in 1994, is the son of Hendrik Hermanes Booysen and Dorothea Catharina van Graan — an Afrikaans household, and a real one, but no Hendrik Hermanes and no van Graan appears anywhere in this archive. A shared surname and a shared country of origin are not a join. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? no | · MOUNTJOY, KOLBE, DASCHNER, PRETORIUS, OLIVIER, ENGELBRECHT, ENSLIN | Fifty-nine rows, all other families The Queensland Kolbes are a German Catholic family who married Wiemers and Thurners at Toowoomba. The Queensland Daschners descend from Josef Daschner and Fany Wagner, Bavarians — not from Joseph Heinrich Daschner of Stutterheim. Most OLIVIER hits are the word used as a given name, in the Barkus family. The Pretorius rows are Afrikaans and unconnected: Ben Johannes Pretorius married Edith Watts Treasure at Brisbane in 1918, and neither name is in this archive. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? yes | What the null actually closes | One standing question, answered Queensland's index covers births to 1926, marriages to 1951 and deaths to 1996. Across that whole span no member of this family registered a birth, a marriage or a death in Queensland. The family's arrival in Brisbane is as recent as this archive says it is, and there was no earlier Australian branch to find. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? yes | Boijens-9 and De_Beer-638 — following the contradiction one generation up | Contradiction explained Jan Booysen married Magdalena de Beer on 21 January 1770 and married again on 15 DECEMBER 1793, so his wife was dead by then; this archive's Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer died in 1843. Fifty years apart, which is the objection Question 0 raised against the 1793 will when it declined to adopt it — the reasoning was right, and the will is now positively HIS. The tree's own de Beer profile explains the rest: codes b6c2 AND b6c6, baptisms in 1745 and 1754, and a sibling list holding both a Magdalena and a Magdalena Elizabeth. Two women merged into one profile. Gained: a candidate for our woman's parents, Zaccharias de Beer and Anna Pretorius, and a second printed reference, de Villiers and Pama Vol 1 p. 78. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? part | The Booysen surname index on WikiTree, and the parent-field search | 952 profiles, 5 ours The Booyzen index holds 13 profiles; the BOOYSEN index holds 952, and this family lives in both — Booysen-267 and Booysen-293 were reached by following parent links, not by searching. Swept for Gerthardus, Gerhardus, Lodewikus, Willem Hermanus, Jacobus Nicolaas, Ockert, and for all Booysens born at Graaff-Reinet. NO Gerthardus Booysen exists on WikiTree at all. One near-name worth keeping: Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booysen (1871–1920, a different family) — proof that JAN and GERHARDUS LODEWIKUS travel together as forenames in this surname. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? no | Heese, Suid-Afrikaanse Geslagsregisters — a route that does not wait on the forum | Not found from here WorldCat gates its results behind an acceptance of OCLC's terms, which this archive will not click through. Trove returned nothing for the title in Books & Libraries, so no Australian holding was identified. The realistic routes left are the Genealogical Society of South Africa and eGGSA, or the G2G question already posted. Recorded as tried and unresolved rather than untried. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation? yes | de Villiers 1893, read in full instead of asked about | Four agree, the father does not Pieter van Zyl answered the G2G question within a day and named the book as downloadable. It was downloaded from archive.org and read rather than trusted. Page 34 confirms his answer exactly: Zacharias is the FIFTH child of Matthijs Andries (b5, not WikiTree's b6), and it is the 1754 Magdalena, not the 1745 one, that carries “zie Booijsen”. Page 78 then gives Petrus Jacobus of 21 September 1788 as the seventh child of JAN Booijsen and that Magdalena, with David Schalk of 4 January 1807 as his son. One Petrus Jacobus of that date in the book, one David Schalk of that date, and no Lodewikus anywhere in the volume. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked yes | wikitree.com/genealogy/Booyzen — the whole surname index | 13 profiles The archive had eleven MyHeritage trees, Geni and the FamilySearch tree listed under “Other trees holding this family”, and the word WikiTree appeared nowhere in the project. Of the thirteen Booyzen profiles, FIVE are this family: Petrus Jacobus (1788), David Schalk, Hendrik Stefanus, Henry James and Jacobus Nicolaas. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked part | Booysen-267 — Petrus Jacobus, b. bef 21 Sep 1788, d. 1 Sep 1876 | A different father Identical birth and death dates to this archive's man, and the parents given as JAN (Boijens) BOOYSEN and MAGDALENA DE BEER against this archive's GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN and Magdalena de Beer, which come off line 3 of the 1876 Sterfkennis No. 678. Same mother, same son, two husbands. The profile cites HEESE, SUID-AFRIKAANSE GESLAGSREGISTERS, DEEL 1, P. 331 — the book Question 0 has named from the start and never had a page number for. Nothing changed: a read document outranks a tree. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked yes | Booysen-293 — Hendrik Stefanus, d. 11 May 1908 Rustenburg | Our man, and behind us Age at death “79 & 11 months”, the 1850 Potchefstroom marriage to Anna Johanna Olivier, then Charlotta Dormehl at Zeerust — all matching. Its parentage line reads “Elizabetha ? (Anna Maria ?) van der Merwe”: another researcher reached this archive's oldest contradiction and left it as a question mark. The 1908 death notice, TAB 14380, settles it as Elizabetha. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked part | Booyzen-12 and Booyzen-11 — Henry James and Jacobus Nicolaas | Four dates this archive lacked Henry James born 12 August 1887 (this archive had “c. 1887” off a burial age) and married Dorothea Regina Barry on 17 June 1912 AT ELLIOT. Jacobus Nicolaas married Jacomina Jacoba Jansen van Rensburg on 12 February 1866 at Middelburg — a wife this archive did not have at all, though the profile's own source line dates that marriage 1899. All FROM A TREE, none adopted into the family data. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked no | Booyzen-2 — Hendrik Stiphanis, 1830–1905, Graaff-Reinet | Not this family Son of Jan Hendrik Booysen and Cornelia Margaretha Voetzé, and married three times — the first of them, on the profile's own figures, at TWELVE YEARS OLD. Ruled out, and worth recording as the reason a name match is not an identification. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked part | Henry James Booyzen's profile sources — “Form of information of death” | Somebody has the sterfkennis Estate MHG 10/57 is one of the six files on the FamilySearch films that refuse images, and it is in the letter to the National Archives in Pretoria. The WikiTree profile manager cites a death notice for the same man. That is a person who has seen a document this archive cannot reach. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked part | G2G — a public question, posted | Live, 0 answers yet Question 2082757, “Has anyone seen the sterfkennis in Transvaal estate MHG 10/57 (Booyzen, 1956)?”, in Genealogy Help under south_africa, south_african_roots, booysen and death_notice — the four tags that actually carry traffic, checked against live G2G rather than guessed. It asks for the parents, birthplace, occupation and children off the one document that would settle Henry James Booyzen, and offers the Johannesburg cemetery entry in exchange. Nothing has come back yet and this row will say so until something does. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back no | q.givenName=Elesabettha Maria Cornelya · q.surname=Booy* | One hit, already held Her mother's 1891 estate 6332 returns her persona and nothing else — no baptism, no marriage, no death, no estate. Elesabettha Maria Cornelya Booijsen exists in this archive because a clerk listed her among seven children in 1891, and after this search she still exists on that single line. The other two untraced Olivier daughters return the same nothing. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back no | q.surname=Booij* · q.motherGivenName=Elizabetha · q.motherSurname=Van der Merwe · births 1824–1840 | No child of that couple The search asks the index for anyone born to Petrus Jacobus Booijzen and Elizabetha van der Merwe across the whole plausible span of their marriage. It returns other Booijens and Booijzen households and not one child of theirs. If she bore children who were baptised, the register carrying them is not indexed. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back no | q.givenName=Hendrik Stef* · q.surname=Booij* · births 1824–1834 | Only the 1850 marriage This was the direct test. His own baptism would have named both his parents in one line and settled her in a second document. It is not there — the only return is Q29M-ZJGY, the 1850 Potchefstroom marriage this archive already has. So ELIZABETHA VAN DER MERWE still rests on exactly one piece of paper: the 1908 death notice of her son. Three routes tried, three closed. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back part | q.surname=Barry · q.motherSurname=Kolbe · recordCountry=South Africa | One new name, one already held John Barry's 1903 registration says ELEVEN children; his notice names eight and his wife's names nine. This query — asking the index for every Barry child of a Kolbe mother rather than for a person — returns the known ones and two that are on neither notice. Only ONE of the two is new. WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY, baptised 29 September 1861, was already on William Barry's page, entered the day the Burgersdorp register was read; this archive wrote him up as a find for an hour before checking its own data, and the correction is logged. The new name is HENRY JAONAS BARRY, born 13 July 1848 and baptised at twenty years old on 13 November 1868 — a date that fits the sixteen-month gap after John Augustus II better than the “about 1847” this archive carries for James Henry. INDEX ONLY, double-indexed to two villages, and nothing has been added to the family on it. The register has to be read. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back blocked | The same query, re-run for the record identifiers | HTTP 403, and it stayed FamilySearch closed the window after two calls, and unlike every other refusal this week it did not reopen. Waits of four, twenty-five, thirty and forty seconds all returned 403, and the block then spread off the search service and onto the site itself — an ordinary results page loaded in a browser with a body of ZERO characters. Nearly an hour of rests did not clear it. So the record identifiers needed to reach the two baptism images were never retrieved, and the relationship search run on the FATHER instead of the mother — the obvious next query, and the one with a real chance at the second missing child — was never run at all. Marked BLOCKED and not NOTHING: the index was not asked. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: a signed-in FamilySearch session, which returns the record identifier the API refuses to an anonymous caller. It is the same sign-in the Burgersdorp sweep is parked behind, so one login clears both. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | David Schalk Booysen after November 1905 — and the rest of the 1876 eight no | DAVID SCHALK BOOYSEN, born 9 June 1848 — his death | not found Alive and fifty-six at GOEDEHOOP, PRETORIA on 27 November 1905, and this archive loses him there. No estate file in the indexed Transvaal probate records — the only David Schalk Booyzen there is a CHILD on the 1940 Stephanus Francois estate. No civil death that can be him: the candidates are a Cradock man born 1870, a Rustenburg man born 1859 (eleven years out), a Pretoria man born 1907 and a Clayville man born 1889. The 1859 Rustenburg death of 7 March 1930 is the nearest and is NOT adopted. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | David Schalk Booysen after November 1905 — and the rest of the 1876 eight no | The other seven children of Petrus Jacobus Booysen and Anna Maria van der Merwe | 1 of 8 indexed Searched by MOTHER (Anna Maria van der Merwe) and by FATHER (Petrus/Pieter Jacobus Booijzen) across 1806–1830 in all South African collections. Exactly ONE comes back — DAVID SCHALK, born 12 December 1806. The other seven of the eight on the 1876 Sterfkennis are not in the indexed baptism registers under either parent. The 1876 notice remains the only document that names them at all. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | David Schalk Booysen after November 1905 — and the rest of the 1876 eight no | Richard Peter Booyzen's widow | still not found Rechecked. His 1918 registration says MARRIED; the civil marriage index carries no Richard Peter Booyzen who can be him. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | David Schalk Booysen after November 1905 — and the rest of the 1876 eight no | JOHANNA ELENA STOLS, his second wife — her death | not found The last route to his death date: a widow's notice names her pre-deceased husband. Searched under BOOYZEN, BOOYSEN and LOWIES for any death 1906–1945. Nothing that can be her. So the route is CLOSED, not merely untried — neither David Schalk Booysen nor his second wife has a findable death, and the trail ends at Goedehoop in November 1905. Added to the Pretoria errand as an index search rather than a file request. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Following the estate numbers out of a marriage register's last column yes | Estate 4795, cited for the groom | found and read Elizabetha Margaretha Booijzen, born Marais — the death notice that opened David Schalk Booysen's whole household. Read entire. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Following the estate numbers out of a marriage register's last column part | Estate 7081, cited for the bride | found, index only Charles Petrus Barend Lowies, born district Cradock about 1849, died Pretoria 5 June 1905, twelve children, parents Jan Lowies and Elisabetha Maria Lubbe. The IMAGE was not opened: FamilySearch began refusing record-page requests part-way through the session — “Access Denied, Error 15, this request was blocked by our security service”. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Following the estate numbers out of a marriage register's last column no | Richard Peter Booyzen's wife | not found His 1918 death registration says MARRIED, so there is a widow. The South African civil marriage index carries no Richard Peter Booyzen who can be him — the Richards it does carry belong to other families. She has no name. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed no | Petrus Jacobus Booyzen, b. May 1882, d. May 1961, buried Johannesburg | not claimed The best of the four. A birth in May 1882 would make him Kathleen Barry's eldest, ahead of John Barry in 1884, and Petrus Jacobus is the most-repeated forename this family has. That is a name and a gap, and there is no document. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed no | Petrus Jacobus VAN BLERK Booyzen, b. 1872, d. 17 Mar 1949, West Park | not claimed VAN BLERK is a mother's surname carried as a forename and there is no Van Blerk anywhere in this family. A different Booyzen household on the Rand. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed no | Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booysen, buried Johannesburg 17 Dec 1943 | not claimed The name is exactly right — it runs from Gerthardus Lodewikus at the top of this line to the man who died at Vaalbank in 1885. But the 1855 child of that name would be 88 in 1943, the register gives NO AGE, and the name is common in the wider family. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed no | John Zacharia Booysen, d. 25 Nov 1918, buried Brixton 26 Nov, aged 29 | REJECTED ZACHARIA reaches nothing in this family, and his death is a civil registration which names no parents, so nothing could tie him either way. Recorded only because three Booysens went into Brixton in eight weeks in the influenza and the shape of that is worth keeping. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed part | Richard Peter Booyzen, d. 25 Oct 1918, Turffontein | CLAIMED, inferred The one that IS adopted, and on three grounds and no document: his mother's brother's forename; a birth about 1894 in the exact gap in her children; and a birthplace of C. OF G. HOPE on the registration, which is the migration all her children made. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Grahamstown depot, swept for Barry, Mountjoy and Booyzen yes | BARRY, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 18 personas, 1 estate All of them are ONE document — John Barry's own 1915 notice, estate 925, which this archive has read entire. The index even carries NEAGLE BARRY as a person, which is the surname the informant gave for his grandmother and could not follow with a Christian name. The rest of the Grahamstown Barrys — Van Reenen, Dirk Gysbert, Durban, Phyllis, Thomas — are a different Barry family on the same film. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Grahamstown depot, swept for Barry, Mountjoy and Booyzen no | MOUNTJOY, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 8 personas, 2 estates John James Mountjoy 1923 and a George Mountjoy family group of 1919–20 (Susan Elizabeth, d. 13 Sep 1920 at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff, b. 1887 Maclear; with Ivy Elizabeth, Gwendoline Hazel, Edna Iris and Daphne Joyce). Flagstaff and Maclear are Transkei, a different Mountjoy household, and NOT ADOPTED. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Grahamstown depot, swept for Barry, Mountjoy and Booyzen no | BOOYZEN, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 8 personas January, Jonas, Sarah, Martha, Meetje, Aletta, Johanna, G — Middelburg and Basutoland, 1850 to 1920. A different Booyzen family entirely and this archive does not claim them. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Grahamstown depot, swept for Barry, Mountjoy and Booyzen part | And the lesson from estate 1291 | a finding aid, not an absence Margaretha Kolbe's probate was GRANTED AT GRAHAMSTOWN and is INDEXED UNDER KIMBERLEY. Three earlier searches for it failed because they trusted the collection label. A depot sweep that searches by place will not find a record filed under the wrong one. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, re-run on the grandsons — and the reason for dismissing it withdrawn no | The seven TAB CJC claims — JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE — against the GRANDSONS, who are now named | one fit of seven This archive could not run this test in September because it could not name a single grandson. It can now: PJ (Petrus Jacobus, b. 20 Apr 1851), OJS (Ockert Johannes Stephanus, b. 15 Sep 1852), AJM, EMC, ACJ, MJ and HSN (Hendrik Stefanus Nicolaas, b. 31 Jan 1862, DEAD IN 1891) from the first marriage; and in the next generation PJ (1889), OJS (1894), HSN (1882) and DA (Diederik Arnoldus, 1887). Against JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE only PJ fits, and Petrus Jacobus is the commonest name this family has. The initials test still fails. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, re-run on the grandsons — and the reason for dismissing it withdrawn yes | BUT: the ground the dismissal stood on | withdrawn The reason given for setting the seven Marico claims aside was “that is NOT this family, who were Cape”. That sentence is now false twice over. HENDRIK STEFANUS BOOIJZEN MARRIED AT ZEERUST, THE PRINCIPAL TOWN OF MARICO, ON 14 APRIL 1892; and his wife CHARLOTTA ELIZABETH DORMEHL lived at DRIEFONTEIN, GROOT MARICO and DIED THERE ON 6 FEBRUARY 1902 — during the war, in the district the claims come from. He signed her death notice at Zeerust in August 1902. This family was in Marico, documented, on both sides of the war. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, re-run on the grandsons — and the reason for dismissing it withdrawn part | Where that leaves it | unresolved, and honestly so The claims are still not tied to a named man. What has gone is the excuse for not looking. The CJC series is not name-indexed and the seven claims are numbers — CJC 76, 77, 104, 109, 123, 125, 126 — that only the Reading Room can open. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, re-run on the grandsons — and the reason for dismissing it withdrawn yes | And a compensation claim that DOES exist | 1 Not in Marico. DAVID SCHALK BOOIJZEN, at Pretoria, answering question ten of his wife's 1900 death notice: “none. Compensation claim filed.” See /documents/#marais-1900. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Johannesburg cemetery registers — the whole family, swept yes | Booyzen · Booysen · Booijzen · Daschner · Mountjoy · Lerena, exact surname, collection 4453927 | 298 entries Ten of them are this family and each turns a year into a day: Kathleen Barry (grave 9760), Willem Hermanus of Indwe and Susanna Adriana (grave 6889, together), Henry James, Joseph Heinrich Daschner, Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas, George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen, George Downing Daschner, and two infants at Brixton the archive did not have. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Johannesburg cemetery registers — the whole family, swept part | Grave numbers | 2 of 10 The index rows carry name, age, date and cemetery; the grave number is on the register image, and only two have been read page by page so far. The rest are a morning's work. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Johannesburg cemetery registers — the whole family, swept part | The 1918 influenza | 3 burials, 1 claimed Richard Peter Booyzen, 24, buried 27 October 1918 at Brixton — claimed as kin on the naming and the gap in the children, marked INFERRED. John Zacharia Booysen, 29, buried 26 November, and Johanna A. Booysen, nought days, on 19 December: NOT claimed. No forename in this family reaches them and Booysen is common on the Rand. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen (1852–1921) — an estate of his own yes | Transvaal probate index — Ockert / Okkert / Ocker / Ocken against Booysen / Booyzen / Booijsen | 6 hits, 0 of them his Every hit is him as somebody else's relative: four duplicate copies of his son Diederik Arnoldus's 1935 Sterfkennis 87882, where he is the father; and two copies of his own father's 1908 notice 14380, where he is entered Child. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen (1852–1921) — an estate of his own yes | Transvaal Civil Death, 1869–1954 | 1 hit OKKER JOHANNIS STEPHANUS BOOYSEN, 69, died 16 January 1921 at Klerksdorp. A civil registration NAMES NO PARENTS — which is the whole difficulty with this series and why the archive keeps going back to Sterfkennisse. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen (1852–1921) — an estate of his own no | Browsing the films for 1921 by estate number | not possible The Transvaal probate films are not ordered by estate number, so there is nothing to browse along. If an estate was raised for him it is not name-indexed. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along part | BOOYZEN — Cape depot only (KAB) | 39 documents What this archive searched, every time, for the whole project. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along yes | BOOYZEN — all repositories (RSA) | 184 documents What it should have searched. 145 documents unseen. This family left the Cape about 1907 and the entire last generation died in Johannesburg, so their estates are in the TRANSVAAL depot — and NAAIRS offers an “All Archives Repositories” database on the same selection page used every time. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along yes | TAB MHG — the direct line | 5 estate files BOOYZEN, JOHANNA MARIA born PRETORIUS (2945/44); BOOYZEN, GEORGE DOWNING MOUNTJOY (1095/48); BOOYZEN, JOHN BARRY (769/52) — the son who signed the 1905 form; BOOYZEN, HENRY JAMES (10/57); and DASCHNER, CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA born BOOYZEN (3734/46). |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along yes | TAB MHG — two of the 1863 children | 2 estate files BOOYZEN, JAN GERHARDUS LODEWIKUS (O/2899, 1885), the seventh child; and BOOYZEN, JACOBUS NICHOLS (52653, 1923), the eldest and the only “Major” on that list. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along yes | TAB MHG — both sons of the second marriage | 2 estate files BOOYZEN, STEPHANUS FRANCOIS (2428/40) and BOOYZEN, GERT JACOBUS (5155/51). Both filed with a z. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along no | BOOYZEN + KATHLEEN · BOOYZEN + CATHERINE | nothing for her Still no estate for Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen née Barry, who died at Mayfair in 1940. Her “Military Pensioner” entry remains unexplained. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along part | TAB CJC — Claims for Compensation, Burghers | 7 Booyzen claims The post-war compensation series Open Question 11 has been asking for. It exists. But all seven claims are MARICO, Transvaal — the same district as the Booyzen children who died in the camps — and that is NOT this family, who were Cape. The series is now named correctly; the Cape equivalent is still untouched. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence no | BOOYSEN + WILLEM + HERMANUS | 0, everywhere There is NO estate file for Willem Hermanus Booyzen — the man at the centre of the family story — in any archives repository in South Africa. He died at Indwe in 1905 leaving nothing to administer. Set that beside his father's estate of 1884, which recorded "moveables only, such as wearing apparel": two generations, and between them not one estate worth opening. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence no | BOOYZEN + MINE / MINER / MYN | 0 each The testimony ends "the boys initially all got jobs on the mines". No Booyzen mining record appears anywhere in the national archives index. That index covers GOVERNMENT files, not private mining company employment registers, so the negative is a weak one — but every occupation this archive has actually read for these men points elsewhere: boer then mason, tree nurseryman, clerk on the South African Railways. Not one miner among them. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence no | BOOYZEN + FOREST HILL / MAYFAIR | 0 each The Johannesburg addresses appear on certificates but nowhere in the archival index. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence part | BARRY + BARKLY (all repositories) | 2 documents SAB VWR B645/8/38 (1937): an application by a FARM OWNER AT BARKLY-OOS, R.P.K. BARRY, with his son of the same initials as bywoner. Given this family's Barry–Kolbe naming — Henry James Kolbe Barry, Anthon Rector Kolbe Barry — R.P.K. is very likely Richard Peter Kolbe Barry. That ties the Cape Rebel of Jerpoint, the R. P. Barry who signed the 1915 notice at Manorowen, and five mortgage bonds of 1895–1903 into one landholding man at Barkly East. Tighter, still not proof. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence no | BOOYSEN + CATHERINE / KATHLEEN (all repositories) | 33 documents, none hers Still no estate anywhere for Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen née Barry, who died at Mayfair in 1940. Her “Military Pensioner” entry is now the longest-standing unexplained thing in the archive. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Cape Rebel register no | BOOYSEN | 26 found Every one from the Northern Cape or Griqualand West — Kenhardt, Campbell, Koopmansfontein, Daniel's Kuil, Aberdeen. None from Barkly East, Dordrecht, Wodehouse, Indwe, Lady Grey or Elliot. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Cape Rebel register no | BOOYZEN | 0 Nothing, in any of the fifteen registers. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Cape Rebel register yes | BARRY | 4 found And two of them are in this family's district: FRED J. BARRY of Ivanhoe, Barkly East / Wodehouse, tried June 1901; and RICHARD PETER BARRY of Jerpoint. Identity unproven. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Cape Rebel register yes | SCHOEMAN, D. W. | 1 found DANIEL WILLEM SCHOEMAN, plaasboer of CAERLAVEROCK, tried June 1901 — the month before the family married in his house. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Joiners register part | BOOYSEN | 1 found J. J. BOOYSEN of HEILBRON, Orange Free State — four hundred miles away, in a different country at the time. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Joiners register no | BOOYZEN | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | University of Cape Town · British Concentration Camps of the South African War no | BOOYZEN | 5 found All Transvaal: Gert Jacobus, aged 2, died Johannesburg camp, farm Rietvallei, Marico; Gertruida Magdalena, aged 19, died Vereeniging camp, farm Rietvlei, Heidelberg; Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus, aged 2. None from the Cape. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | University of Cape Town · British Concentration Camps of the South African War no | BARRY | 0 Nothing in the entire database. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | University of Cape Town · British Concentration Camps of the South African War no | BOOYSEN + Catherine / Kathleen / John Barry / Willem Hermanus | 0 each None of this family's given names appears. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | University of Cape Town · British Concentration Camps of the South African War no | BOOYZEN + Catharina | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time yes | MOUNTJOY (re-run, no date filter) | 18 documents ≤1930 The archive previously reported MOUNTJOY as 42 documents of which “all 22 dated 1930 or later were read”. Twenty earlier documents were never opened. They include JAMES MOUNTJOY'S OWN WILLS of 1818 and 1827 and an 1834 Colonial Office memorial from his widow. A filter applied for convenience was written up as if it were the whole search. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time yes | MOUNTJOY, wills | 2 references KAB MOOC 7/1/104: 42 — MOUNTJOY, JAMES. WILL (1818), joint with SLIER, ANNA CATHARINA, WIFE OF JAMES MOUNTJOY; and MOOC 7/1/104: 43 — the same pair again in 1827, the year he died. Made a year after their 1817 marriage and again at his death. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time yes | MOUNTJOY, Colonial Office | 1 reference KAB CO 3972: 17 — “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. THE WIDOW OF J MOUNTJOY. REQUESTING REMISSION OF A FINE”, 1834. A petition in her own voice, seven years after his death. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time part | BARRY + RICHARD + PETER | 7 documents Five of them mortgage bonds in the name RICHARD PETER BARRY — 1895, 1897 twice, and 1903 twice. A property-holding farmer of that name in the Cape across the war years. Corroboration for the Cape Rebel of Jerpoint, not proof. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time no | JERPOINT | 0 The farm name does not appear anywhere in the Cape Town Archives index. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time no | BARRY + JERPOINT / BARRY + IVANHOE | 0 each Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time yes | BOOYSEN + CONSTABLE · BOOYSEN + MIDDELBURG | 9 documents One police constable at Middelburg, 1904–07, filed four times as BOOYSEN and three times as BOOYZEN — twice both ways inside 1905. The best evidence on this site for what the two spellings meant to the people writing them, and it narrows the archive's own reading of the 1905 death form. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) part | MOUNTJOY | 42 documents All 22 dated 1930 or later were retrieved and read. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) yes | MONTJOY | 4 documents The spelling nobody had tried — and two of the four are the Mountjoy–Booysen junction itself, including the 1840 and 1863 death notices. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | MOUNTJOY + HERKLAAS / HERCULES / WODEHOUSE / BARKLY | 0 each There is no estate file for Hercules Johannes Mountjoy under any spelling. The estates around him run 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1948 unbroken, so this is an absence, not a gap in the index. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) yes | BOOYZEN | 39 documents Earliest 1779 — KAB CJ 2633: 29, the testament of Christina Booyzen. The z is a hundred and twenty years older than the war. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) yes | BOOIJZEN | 3 documents Earliest 1792. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | DE BEER + MAGDELENA | 0 No estate for Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer, d. 1843. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BEER + MAGDELENA + ELISABETH | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYSEN + MAGDELENA | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOIJSEN + MAGDELENA | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYSEN + GERTHARDUS | 0 No estate for the man at the top of the male line. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYSEN + GERHARDUS | 15 documents None of them his. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYZEN + GERHARDUS | 0 Nothing. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYSEN + LODEWIKUS / LODEWICUS | 7 documents All one later man, Willem Johannes Lodewicus. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS) no | BOOYSEN + BEER | 3 documents One near-miss deliberately NOT adopted: KAB NCD 2/1: 49, a notarial will of 1793 for “Jan Booysen, married to the late Magdalena de Beer”. Wrong husband's name, and a wife dead fifty years before ours. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch no | Full-text search: “Johannes Mountjoy” | 0 The full-text collection does not cover Cape probate. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch part | Probate collection, MONTJOY / MOUNTJOY | 2 indexed Only the 1863 pair. The 1840 death notice is NOT name-indexed and had to be found by interpolating reference numbers across 2,223 images. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch yes | Marriage, MONTJOY 1817 | 3 indexings Two carried no image. The third, under the spelling MONTYOY, did. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Anglo-Boer War Museum · Farm List void | Caerlaverock / Manorowen / Wolwekloof | 0 VOID, not informative. This register turns out to be an ORANGE FREE STATE land roll — farm number, morgen, square roods, owners — covering only Winburg, Fauresmith, Vrede, Rouxville, Bethlehem, Bloemfontein, Hoopstad, Kroonstad and Philippolis. A control search on “Dordrecht” returns 670 Cape Rebels and 0 farms. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | First World War service records no | Sons of Kathleen Barry, killed in service | 0 The archive's own hypothesis — that a son died in the war and that is why she is recorded a “Military Pensioner” — was searched and DISPROVED. The claim was reframed on the page rather than quietly dropped. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | First World War service records blocked | Commonwealth War Graves Commission | not searched Behind a bot check. This archive did not attempt to circumvent it, and records that as the reason. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: nothing here — the Commission's register is complete and public, and a nil return from it is a real negative rather than a wall. This row is marked blocked wrongly; it should be a negative, and it is left as it is until somebody re-reads the original search rather than rewriting the label from memory. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | First World War service records blocked | SANDF Documentation Centre, written to | half delivered The enquiry was sent 9 September 2026 to both published addresses. archive@dod.mil.za delivered and has not replied; sandfdoc@mweb.co.za bounced — 550 relay access denied — and that is the address published almost everywhere for the Centre. Recorded because an unanswered letter and an undelivered one are different things. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Master of the Supreme Court · the office's own index of death notices, 1834–1912 no | “Beer, de” — the whole run | read on film Particles are indexed separately in this book, so de Beer files under B. The Magdalena entries are Magda Catha du Plessis (1872), Magda de Beer (1865), Magda Vermeulen (1883), Magda Eliz Troskie (1863), Magda Jacomina Nel (1850) and Magda Greef (1839/40). There is NO Magdelena Elisabeth, and nothing dated 1843. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | Master of the Supreme Court · the office's own index of death notices, 1834–1912 part | BOOYSEN — the whole run | read on film Page 436 onward, alphabetical by christian name with a death-notice number and year against each. A working index of every Booysen death notice reported to the Master between 1834 and 1912. |
| 9 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast · world records no | MOUNTJOY, born about 1782 ±5 | 12,984 results Not tractable. The archive has no discriminator beyond a trade and a date — “a saddler, in the Cape by March 1817” — and thirteen thousand results cannot be narrowed by that. Recorded so the next person does not repeat it: the way in is a Cape arrival record, not an English birth record. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal estate films yes | TAB MHG 2945/44 — Anna Johanna Maria Booyzen, born Pretorius | Read in full Indexed under her husband George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen as “Spouse”, which is why it was first mistaken for his estate. Sterfkennis, both parents named with a street address, six children with birth dates, all minors. One correction to the archive. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal estate films part | TAB MHG 1095/48, 5155/51, 769/52, 10/57, 3734/46, 52653, O/2899 | Located, not yet read Seven of the nine still to open. References banked on the Sources page so this resumes rather than restarts. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate index, by collection part | Surname BOOYZEN, exact, collection 2520237 (Transvaal probate, 1869–1961) | 150 personas The whole indexed surname in one Transvaal collection, read in two pages of a hundred and fifty. Confirms the Stephanus Francois file (1940) and the Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus file, and shows that the 1946–1957 estates this archive is chasing are NOT name-indexed — they will have to be found by browsing film. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate index, by collection yes | Surname DASCHNER, exact, same collection | 16 personas, 12 on one page TAB MHG 1928/42 in full: Joseph Heinrich Daschner, his parents, his wife “born Booyzen”, and eleven children. Read from the image, not the index — the index gives one child's birth year as 1923 where the document says 1922. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate index, by collection no | Given name MOUNTJOY, same collection | 15,558 results, first 40 read Useless as run: the engine treats Mountjoy as fuzzy and returns every Montgomery, Montjoy and Montmorency in the Transvaal. Recorded because the failure is instructive — an exact-match toggle exists for surnames in this API and not for given names. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate index, by collection no | Surname DASCHNER — Minnie Bertha Sophia | One notice, unrelated Charles Bruce Rennie, miner, of Booysens, Johannesburg, died 1936; his pre-deceased wife was a Minnie Bertha Sophia Daschner. No Booyzen connection. Kept as the archive's cleanest example of the Booysens-suburb trap. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate, reading the whole surname yes | BOOYSEN + PETRUS JACOBUS, exact surname, collection 2520237 | Two personas, one document Sterfkennis No. 678 of 1876 — Petrus Jacobus Booijsen, b. Graaffreinet, d. 1 Sep 1876 district Rustenburg, aged 88, parents NAMED. The oldest document this archive has read, and it was sitting in a name index the whole time. Found only because the search stopped asking for the nine references NAAIRS had given and started reading the surname. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate, reading the whole surname part | BOOYZEN, exact surname, same collection, second page of results | Two more notices read in full Magdalena Susanna Maria van den Berg, born Booyzen (d. 1920, Vaalbank, district Lichtenburg), whose father is entered as Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booyzen; and Anna Johanna Booijzen, born Cradock about 1823, died 1891 on a farm in the district of Rustenburg, with children called Petrus Jacobus, Magdalena Johanna and Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas. Right names, right districts, right decades. NEITHER WAS PROVED TO BE KIN when this was written — and the second of them SINCE HAS BEEN. The farm is BRAKFONTEIN, not Boekfontein, and the maiden name is OLIEFIER, not Alberts: she is Anna Catharina Johanna Olivier, the first wife of Hendrik Stefanus Booijsen, and she died on the family's own farm. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Transvaal probate, reading the whole surname no | TAB MHG O/2899 — Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booyzen, 1885 | Not this document The persona indexed under that name in the Transvaal probate collection turned out to be a FATHER named on somebody else’s 1920 death notice, not the 1885 estate. The NAAIRS reference stands and is still unread. Recorded because the two were briefly conflated here. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Cape probate, the whole surname at once yes | MOUNTJOY, exact, collection 2517051 (Cape probate, 1822–1990) | 61 personas — the complete indexed surname Everything this archive was still chasing in the Cape, on one screen. Estate 58379 and 58380 read in full; the 1840 James Montjoy notice re-identified in the same list; and Hercules Johannes’s single hit opened and found to be his mother-in-law’s. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Cape probate, the whole surname at once no | MOUNTJOY + Hercules Johannes | One hit, and it is not his His name is on his mother-in-law’s 1902 notice, in her list of children. The index keys every name on the page. Confirms rather than overturns this archive’s finding that he has no estate file. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · Cape probate, the whole surname at once yes | Film 007735716, images 766–771, read directly | Four documents Not a name search at all. Once the film and image number were known, the pages either side of a death notice could be read in sequence — which is how the liquidation and distribution accounts were found. This is the route to the six Transvaal estates that are not name-indexed. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | The register, used as a search tool for the first time yes | Filter the register for INDWE | 68 entries, four of them new A Willem Hermanus Booijzen taking church membership at Indwe in 1907, and two Booyzen children baptised there in 1908 and 1910 — two and five years after the Willem Hermanus this archive had dying at Indwe in 1905. All four read from the register images. The register was built to hold leads; this is the first one it handed over. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | The register, used as a search tool for the first time yes | FamilySearch, South Africa, Civil Marriage Records — BOOYZEN + ROODT | One certificate Indwe, 21 September 1908, certificate 13. The document that carries the word MIJNWERKER. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | The register, used as a search tool for the first time no | Booyzen + Roodt, any later marriage or death | Nothing further No death record and no second marriage found for Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe, and nothing yet for either Roodt woman after 1910. The Indwe registers past 1910 have not been read forward. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Transvaal probate index, read against itself yes | TAB MHG O/2899 — who is actually the deceased? | Jan Gerardus Lodewicus Booijzen, 67, b. district Graaff-Reinet, d. 25 May 1885 Vaalbank Two index passes over the same estate (arks 1:1:QPTJ-R6KB and 1:1:Q2DG-52P9) agree, and one of them states the relationship: Deceased. Born about 1818, so not the nephew born in 1855 this archive had attached it to for months. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Transvaal probate index, read against itself no | An image for estate O/2899 | None offered The FamilySearch record page says “Check Image Availability” where every other estate in this archive says “View original document”. The file is at the Transvaal Archives in Pretoria and has not been seen. The correction above rests on the index, checked against the 1876 and 1920 Sterfkennisse, both read from the image. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Transvaal probate index, read against itself no | Any death record for Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booysen, b. 4 Dec 1855 | Nothing With the estate taken off him there is no date and no place. Recorded as an open name rather than a closed life. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · can the last six Transvaal estates be read at all? no | Film access across the whole collection, 762 films, 007805260 to 007831001 | Open to 007830062. Closed from 007830063. Twenty-eight films from 007830063 onward were requested and twenty-eight returned HTTP 403. Those are the films whose indexed records reach 1946 and later. Film 007830062, the one immediately before the line, serves its images normally. This is an access boundary, not a gap in the index. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · can the last six Transvaal estates be read at all? no | TAB MHG 3734/46, 1095/48, 5155/51, 769/52, 10/57 | All five behind the line Nothing to be done from here. The originals are at the Transvaal Archives Depot in Pretoria. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · can the last six Transvaal estates be read at all? no | TAB MHG 52653 (1923) — in the open half | Cannot be located Not name-indexed under any spelling of Booyzen, Booysen or Booijzen. And the films are NOT ordered by estate number: image 100 of three films in the same numeric neighbourhood produced a 1920 Sterfkennis, a 1938 death notice, and a Chinese clan genealogy. The interpolation trick that found the 1840 Montjoy notice has nothing to interpolate along here. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · can the last six Transvaal estates be read at all? no | q.filmNumber as a search term | Works alone; silently ignored with a surname Recorded because it nearly produced a false negative. q.filmNumber=007830063 alone returns 211 personas. Add q.surname=Booyzen and the result is 150 — which is the count for the surname across the WHOLE collection. The film filter is dropped without a word. Any search combining the two is a search of the whole collection wearing a disguise. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the whole BOOYZEN surname in the CAPE probate collection yes | BOOYZEN, exact, collection 2517051 (Cape probate, 1822–1990) | 29 personas — small enough to read entire The Transvaal collection holds 150 under this spelling; the Cape holds 29. Two of them are estate 84992 of 1943 — Isabella Fredrika Booyzen born Coetzee, and her husband and son — and the file is spelled with a z by the Master's office throughout. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the whole BOOYZEN surname in the CAPE probate collection yes | Estate 84992, read from the image | A death in 1930, filed in 1943 Corrected a date this archive had taken off the reference number. Also gave her parents, her three children, and the death of a son it had been carrying as living. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the whole BOOYZEN surname in the CAPE probate collection part | The oldest Booyzen in the Cape probate series | 1843, and not this family Johanna Booyzen, born about 20 March 1754, died 16 June 1843 at Cape Town. Read because her dates match the only two this archive has for Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer. They match to the year and she is somebody else entirely. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the whole BOOYZEN surname in the CAPE probate collection no | MOOC 7/1/268: 87 (the 1845 will) and MOOC 13/1/221: 6 (the 1866 account) | Still not located Neither is name-indexed. The Cape films carry readable target boards — DEATH NOTICES, or DECEASED ESTATES with a year and a starting estate number — and every 19th-century board read so far says DEATH NOTICES. The separate wills and liquidation-account volumes are not evidently in this collection at all. The catalogue, which would settle it, is blocked to this archive: every catalog API path returns 403 from FamilySearch's security service. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, tested on names no | The seven TAB CJC compensation claims, by initials, against the eight children on the 1876 Sterfkennis | Three fit, four do not JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE against David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna, Petrus Jacobus, Anna Eliezabet, Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus, Eliezabet Cornelia, Hendrik Stefanus, Anna Maria. PJ, GL and L fit; JPJ, JC and HE do not. With a family this repetitive about forenames that is roughly what chance gives you, and by 1903 the 1876 children were dead or in their eighties — a real claimant would be a grandson, a generation beyond what this archive can name. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Marico question, tested on names no | Where the Marico JPJ was born | Pietermaritzburg, Natal, 1841 The index gives the man behind two of the seven claims as born at Pietermaritzburg and dead at Rhenosterfontein, district Marico, in November 1900. This family is Graaff-Reinet. It is the one hard fact in the comparison and it points away. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested yes | What IS the Cape equivalent of the Transvaal CJC? | THE WAR LOSSES COMPENSATION COMMISSION, 1902 Named at last. KAB, source NA, volume 564, reference A1068: “War Losses Compensation Commission, Sub-Commissioners Captain E. J. Whindus and Mr H. H. Bunn”, 1902. This archive has been asking for “Cape Colony compensation claims” for weeks without knowing what they were called. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested no | KAB · BOOYZEN and BOOYSEN against COMPENSATION and LOSSES | Nothing, except one 1947 workmen's claim BOOYZEN returns 39 documents in the Cape depot and none of them mention compensation or losses. BOOYSEN returns 2,370 and exactly one in combination: a Workmen's Compensation Act 1941 claim at King William's Town, 1947–49, naming D. B. Booysen. Nothing to do with the war. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested no | The control — is the Commission indexed by claimant at all? | NO, AND THE ZERO ABOVE IS THEREFORE WEAK SMIT, SCHOEMAN and BARRY also return nothing under LOSSES in the Cape depot. The two BOTHA hits are a 1935 locust and arsenical-poisoning stock claim from a magistrate's series. The Commission's records are catalogued by sub-commissioner and volume, not by the people who claimed. A name search cannot reach them, so a name search finding nothing means very little. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested no | NAAIRS wildcards | THE ASTERISK RETURNS ZERO Recorded because it silently manufactures false negatives. BOOY* in the Cape depot returns 0 documents. BOOYZEN, spelled out, returns 39. Four searches run here with an asterisk were discarded and re-run. Anyone using NAAIRS should assume the wildcard does not expand. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested yes | The NAAIRS address | The bare hostname no longer resolves national.archsrch.gov.za does not resolve at all. www.national.archsrch.gov.za does, and is the address the National Archives' own help page links to. Noted because the database on which much of this archive rests appears dead if you type it from memory. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Cape Master's Index of Estates, 1834–1912 — read at Barry no | BARRY, every entry, 1834–1912 | Three pages, and this family on none of them The index is alphabetical with the death-notice number beside each name. Barry runs 232–234. Not Richard Peter, not Frederick Fortunatus, not Dorothea Regina, not Hendrik Nicholaas, not Kathleen Mary, not Catherine Maria Sophia — and not John Augustus, who died in 1903, or Margaretha, who died in 1912. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Cape Master's Index of Estates, 1834–1912 — read at Barry part | Why the absence is not an absence | Both notices are dated 29 March 1915 This archive has already read them. The index closes in 1912 and they were filed in 1915 — twelve years after John Augustus died. The estate route to identifying the Cape Rebel Richard Peter Barry is therefore closed for this period, not merely empty. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | The Cape Master's Index of Estates, 1834–1912 — read at Barry yes | Locating the pages | Eleven probes Film 007844477 runs to 612 images and carries no name index of its own. Its length was found by bisection, then page numbers were read off the top of a sample — about 1.9 pages per image — and Barry was reached in four rounds: images 20, 35, 50, 65, then 85, 95, 105, then 112, 117, 122, then 125. Recorded because it is the technique that will be needed again. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Indwe congregation, and Barkly East by place yes | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, membership Indwe 23 July 1907 | Read from the register Lidmaten register page 336: arrived FROM BARKLY OOST on 23 July 1907, and the remarks column records her dead at Indwe in June 1911. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Indwe congregation, and Barkly East by place no | Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe, after September 1910 | Nothing No third baptism, no later marriage, no death in the Dutch Reformed index. He is twenty-four at his daughter's baptism and then gone from anything this archive can reach. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Indwe congregation, and Barkly East by place yes | BARRY ranked by place — Barkly East | Six people worth keeping q.anyPlace does not filter but it does rank, and the right Barrys come to the top. Richard Pieter Kolbe Barry (b. 1899), James Henry (c.1847–1939), Harriet Louisa of Manorowen (d. 1912), Cornelia Herculena Petronella of Cherryville (d. 1909), John Gerson Eliazer (1893–1941), Theunis Christoffel (1895–1963). All index entries, none read from an image, and every person page says so. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Indwe congregation, and Barkly East by place yes | Where John Barry's 1915 estate was administered | GRAHAMSTOWN, not Cape Town A second and independent reason why no member of this family appears in the Cape Master's Index of Estates 1834–1912. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Cape civil death registers, Barkly East yes | JOHN BARRY, died 1903, Barkly East | Entry 74 — read in full “Irishman born in Ireland.” Carpenter. Manor Owen Ward IV. 25 August 1903. Eleven children. Signed by Richard Barry, son present at death. Answers open question 5 and corrects two things this archive had published. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Cape civil death registers, Barkly East yes | HARRIET LOUISA BARRY, died 1912 | Read in full Of Manorowen, dead of typhoid at Cherryville aged eighteen, buried at Manorowen, her father H. N. Barry signing. Entered as DUTCH. Confirms Cherryville as a third Barry farm and dates the family's assimilation to one generation. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Cape civil death registers, Barkly East part | RICHARD PIETER KOLBE BARRY — whose son? | Richard Pieter Barry and Jeannie Maria Catharina Botha Baptised at Barkly West, 26 April 1898. It does not prove the father is the Richard Peter Barry on the Cape Rebel roll, but it puts a married Richard Peter Barry with children in that district in 1898. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch · the Cape civil death registers, Barkly East yes | The children of Hendrik Nicholaas Barry and Anna Johanna Maria Schoeman | Four baptisms, 1888–1900 Ruben Jacobus Hosea (Dordrecht, 1888), Dorothea Regina (Slang River, 1892), Henriette Louisa (Barkly West, 1894) and Ellen Hendrika (1900). Two are named for their aunt and uncle, which is why this archive now carries two Dorothea Reginas and two Rubens and keeps them apart. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | An audit of this archive's own negatives yes | Every search recorded on this site, checked for an asterisk | CLEAN — none The NAAIRS wildcard returns zero rather than expanding, which would silently turn any wildcard search into a false negative. Every row on this page and every query in the working notes was re-read. The only asterisk in the notes is markdown emphasis. No negative published by this archive was built with one. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | An audit of this archive's own negatives part | The estates of the 1876 children | Hendrik Stephanus found; the others not yet David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna, Anna Eliezabet, Eliezabet Cornelia and Anna Maria remain unsearched or unfound. Their brother's estate turned out to carry their mother's name, so the rest are worth the same effort. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | An audit of this archive's own negatives no | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, died Indwe June 1911 | Not in the Cape civil death index The church register records her death; the civil index does not return her under Mountjoy or Montjoy at Indwe or Wodehouse. Recorded as a scoped negative. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | An audit of this archive's own negatives part | The Roodts of Indwe | A large family, and the two mothers not separable yet The Indwe registers carry Roodt baptisms through 1906–1926 under Jan Gabriel, Hermanus Johannes, Andries Johannes Taylor and Pieter Johannes. A Susanna Adrana Elizabeth Roodt was baptised at Indwe on 19 September 1908 and a Cornelis de Klerk Roodt on 31 May 1907. Which household the two mothers of 1908 and 1909 belong to is not yet established. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Grahamstown, the depot nobody had searched yes | John Barry's 1915 estate, 925 — the whole page | Read entire Film 007810152, image 228. Eight children named, against eleven on the 1903 registration. Two of this archive's people withdrawn as children and re-placed as grandchildren. Margaretha Kolbe's death dated to 2 August 1912. The marriage placed at “Burghersdorp (probably)”. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Grahamstown, the depot nobody had searched no | The estates either side of it on the same film | Not this family Images 229, 230 and 231 are Louw, van der Vyver and van Zyl — the estate numbers 926, 927 and 928 run consecutively and the Barry file is a single page. There is no liquidation account bound with it. |
| 13 Sep 2026 | Grahamstown, the depot nobody had searched no | Margaretha Kolbe's own 1915 estate | Not yet located Her notice is said to have been filed the same day by another son. It is not on the images either side of 925 and has not been found. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Westminster Rate Books 1634–1900, surname Kolbe | 121 entries, 1800–1831 Under twenty-four spellings of one forename. Broad Street North in 1800; CHURCH STREET SOUTH, ST ANNE'S SOHO from 1811 to 1831. Brunswick Square in none of them. A search for “Gottlieb” alone would have found one entry in twenty-four. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Westminster land tax, 1829 | One entry John Gottlieb Kolbe, Church Street, Westminster St Anne Soho — the same address the rate books give, from a different series. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | England Births & Baptisms, surname Kolbe, London 1790–1850 | Ten children of one couple Juliet Rosinia 1792, Mary Ann 1794, Elizabeth 1795, CHARLES 1798, JOHN HENRY 1800, GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1803, FREDERICK CHARLES 1805, CHARLES SAMUEL 1807, Frederica Carolina 1813, Jane Day 1819. Mother Mary in every one. FIVE OF THE EIGHT SONS NAMED. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | George Augustus Kolbe's own baptism, as a control | 2 Feb 1803, matches Father John Gottlow Kolbe, mother Mary, Westminster. This archive already held that date from another route, so the register can be trusted for the other nine. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho no | Frederick Kolbe, baptised Westminster 16 Dec 1816 | Rejected Right surname, right parish, and a gap in the family's run exactly there. Father GEORGE, mother ELIZABETH, batch C72301-7. Not a brother. Rejected by reading the transcript rather than the result row. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho no | Henry Kolbe, baptised Southwark 2 Feb 1800 | Rejected Father Henry, mother Susannah. Not a brother. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | England & Wales Non-Conformist Burials, surname Kolbe | Seven burials, all German Lutheran TNA RG 4/4631, one duplicated in RG 4/4630. Charles Samuel d. 1807 aged 1y 10d; Frederick Charles d. 1809 aged 4y 6w; Frederica Carolina d. 1814 aged 11 months; MARY d. 2 Aug 1814 aged 46; MRS MARY d. 15 Aug 1824 aged 36; JOHN HENRY d. 13 Apr 1832 aged 32. TWO WIVES, BOTH CALLED MARY. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho no | England & Wales Non-Conformist BAPTISMS, surname Kolbe | Nothing, and the set may not exist here RG 4/4627 and RG 4/4629, the German Lutheran baptism registers, were not found on FindMyPast under any dataset name tried — a search for ANY surname with the keyword “German Lutheran” in that set returns nothing, so the set is absent rather than the name. THE THREE MISSING SONS ARE PROBABLY IN THEM. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Westminster Burials, surname Kolbe | The 1845 burial, with a church name JOHN GOTTLOB KOLBE — died 18 Nov 1845, buried 26 Nov 1845 at ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET, page 7, year of birth 1764. The tree said the German church of the Savoy, entry 55, grave 7. The date and the seven match; the church does not. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Old Bailey Court Records, surname Kolbe | One trial, and a brother speaking Two rows in a 154-row surname sweep, nearly scrolled past. Trial t18190113-149, 13 January 1819: Richard Kerr indicted for stealing a coat worth six pounds from JOHN HENRY KOLBE, who deposes “MY FATHER IS A TAILOR, AND LIVES IN CHURCH-STREET, SOHO”. The full text is free at oldbaileyonline.org and always was. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Westminster Baptisms — the county set, not the FamilySearch index | 13 entries, and an ELEVENTH CHILD The national index gives the place as “Westminster” and nothing finer. Westminster Archives' own registers NAME THE PARISH — St Anne Soho for Elizabeth, Charles, George Augustus, Frederick Charles, Charles Samuel and Jane Day; St James Piccadilly for Juliet Rosinia, Mary Ann and John Henry. AND THEY HOLD LOUISA MARIA KOLBE, BORN 13 MAY 1810, BAPTISED 4 JULY 1810 AT ST ANNE'S SOHO, father John Gottlob, mother Mary — who is not in the FamilySearch index at all. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | Westminster Marriages, surname Kolbe | Two marriages nobody had ELIZABETH KOLBE AND JOHN MILNE, 1817, ST CLEMENT DANES, both of that parish. JOHN HENRY KOLBE AND MATILDA FORD, 26 APRIL 1819, ST MARGARET WESTMINSTER, both of that parish — THREE MONTHS AFTER HE STOOD IN THE OLD BAILEY, and he was eighteen. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho yes | The GRO marriage index, surname Kolbe, London 1825–1875 | Four, two of them new JANE DAY KOLBE, 1853 Q3, City of London, vol AM 1170 p.33 — the youngest of the eleven, married at thirty-four. MARY ANN MARIA FORD KOLBE, 1847 Q1, Whitechapel, vol AZ 840 p.16 — and FORD IS MATILDA'S MAIDEN NAME, carried as a forename. Very probably John Henry's daughter, and written down as the inference it is. Also Maria Kolbe 1838 Stepney and Amelia Ann Kolbe 1854 St Pancras, the latter already held. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | British Army Service Records, surname Mountjoy, no year | Read wrongly at first Every visible result is 1914–20, which reads as “this is the First World War set”. It is a composite. A year filter proves it, and without one the answer would have been a false negative dressed as a wrong period. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | Regiment = “21st Dragoons” | 342 records, WO 22, WO 23, WO 121 All pension series. NO WO 97 AT ALL. A negative against this string alone would have been worthless. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways yes | Regiment = “21st Regt Of Light Dragoons” | 128 records, WO 97 only, 1793–1813 THE STRING THAT MATTERS, and it was found by testing seven guesses at the regiment name rather than accepting the first that returned rows. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | Regiment = “21st Light Dragoons” and “21st Hussars” | 66 and 574 WO 22, 23, 76, 97, 121, 131. Swept for completeness. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | All four strings swept in full — 1,110 records | No Mountjoy in any spelling Not Mountjoy, Montjoy, Monjoy, Mountjoye or Montjoie. The alphabetical run through the Ms goes Martin to Morrison in one sweep and Moses straight to Napier in the other. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways yes | Controls: WO 23/136 (1806–07) and WO 23/147 (1817–26) | 18 and 12 men of the regiment Mark Allen to Jno Warnsnop; Jno Allen to Adam Ross. James Mountjoy's own window at the Cape is indexed and populated. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | Pre-1860 Mountjoys in the whole set | Eighteen, none of them his regiment 36th Foot (WO 97/533, WO 23/39, WO 22/61, WO 22/106), 44th Foot (WO 23/140, WO 121/72, WO 23/40, WO 22/10), 60th Foot and KRRC (WO 23/138, WO 121/171), and one WILLIAM MONTJOY, 1801, 60th Rifles, WO 121/44. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | Why the negative is not a surprise | The series are pension series WO 22, WO 23 and WO 121 are all Royal Hospital Chelsea pension records, and FindMyPast's WO 97 for this regiment stops at 1813. A man discharged at the Cape after that who stayed and set up as a saddler would never enter any of them. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways no | What the WO 97 string actually resolves to | “Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1760–1913” THE EXACT SERIES THIS ARCHIVE NAMED AS THE ANSWER TO QUESTION 12, fully indexed with BIRTH PARISH, BIRTH TOWN, BIRTH COUNTY, BIRTH COUNTRY, AGE AT ATTESTATION and DATE OF ATTESTATION. Its 128 men of the regiment attested between 1793 and 1813, and the distribution peaks where his enlistment would fall — 35 in 1800, 25 in 1799, 10 in 1801, 9 in 1805. Born England 95, Ireland 26, Scotland 2, Wales 2, and one each Switzerland, Germany, unspecified. THE SENTENCE THIS ARCHIVE WANTS IS AVAILABLE FOR 128 OTHER MEN AND NOT FOR HIM. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | Margaret Downing, born London 23 Feb 1803 | Not in any London register Control: 28 Downing baptisms in London 1801–1807, 14 in Westminster's own registers 1798–1810, 239 Downings in Westminster Baptisms overall. NO MARGARET IN 1803. The nearest name is Margaret Mary Elisabeth, Chelsea, 1807. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | Margaret Downing in the Roman Catholic banns of St Patrick's, Soho Square | Rejected Two streets from the Kolbes' own door, which is why it was checked. Banns dated 22 September 1861, groom Henry Shea. Not her. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | John Barry buried at St Hilda's, Bilsdale, 3 January 1853 | Does not exist Control: FindMyPast's Yorkshire Burials holds 5,934 BILSDALE burials from the Ryedale FHS transcripts, with entries at 1849, 1851, 1857, 1859 and through the 1860s. BARRYS AMONG THEM: ZERO. Barry baptisms at Bilsdale: zero. Barry burials elsewhere in Yorkshire: 771. Barry burials anywhere in Yorkshire in 1853: one, at Sheffield, no forename. John Barry burials in Yorkshire, all years: 66, running 1837 then 1856. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | John Augustus Barry, a Cork baptism to a mother “born Neagle” | Nothing in the Catholic registers Control: 12,273 Cork Roman Catholic baptisms for 1818 alone; 71 John Barry baptisms in Cork 1816–1820. John Barry baptisms in ALL Ireland with a mother surnamed Nagle: four — 1811, 1845, 1860, 1876. None between 1816 and 1820. Under Neagle or Nagel: none. LIMIT: this tests the Catholic registers only, and Cork's Church of Ireland registers largely burnt in 1922. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | The four South African surnames | FindMyPast is thin here, as expected Barry 814, Booysen 126, Kolbe 37, Booyens 27, Mountjoy 9, BOOYZEN 0, DASCHNER 0. Almost all of it is British records about South Africa: passenger lists leaving the UK, Boer War prisoner lists, British newspaper notices. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | R_177176049779, cited here for Petrus Jacobus Booysen's 1812 birth | THE REFERENCE DOES NOT OPEN Recorded once from a search run without a subscription and never seen. Opened twice on a live full subscription: FindMyPast's own transcript page returns a 500 error both times. A reference cited and unread is exactly what this archive corrects other people for. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open no | Three David Schalk Booysens, prisoners of war, 1901 | A lead and not yet a finding TNA WO 108/368, list of Boer prisoners 1–32561. Aged 53 of Pretoria and Boksburg; aged 41 of VAALBANK, LICHTENBURG; aged 33 of KAPSTEINKOP, CRADOCK. All sent to Cape Town and Natal. Two of the three sit on this family's own ground — but this archive has already shown David Schalk is a van der Merwe name before it is a Booysen one. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened yes | thegazette.co.uk, text=Kolbe, 1815–1850 | Five notices, four of them new The free Atom feed at /all-notices/notice/data.feed returns the OCR text with the search term highlighted. THIS ARCHIVE FOUND THE 1836 NOTICE MONTHS AGO AND NEVER RAN THE SAME SEARCH AGAIN WITH THE DATES WIDENED. The other four had been sitting there the whole time. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened yes | 12 May 1824, issue 18027 p.796 | Father and son, Church Street Soho “the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTLOB KOLBE AND JOHN HENRY KOLBE, OF CHURCH-STREET, SOHO, in the County of Middlesex, TAILORS, was this day dissolved.” A third independent source for the Soho address, after the rate books and the son's own deposition. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened yes | 9 October and 16 November 1824, issues 18069 p.1668 and 18080 p.1900 | The son in the insolvent debtors' lists Petitions to be heard at Portugal-Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields, Friday 5 November 1824. “KOLBE, JOHN HENRY (SUED AS HENRY KOLBE), FORMERLY OF NO. 22, NORFOLK-STREET, MIDDLESEX-HOSPITAL, AND LATE OF NO. 4, MANSFIELD-PLACE.” He was twenty-four, and his stepmother had died that August. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened yes | 21 March 1845, issue 20455 p.930 | A partner nobody knew about, eight months before the death “the Copartnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTLIEB KOLBE AND RICHARD DAVIES, OF CONDUIT-STREET, BOND-STREET, TAILORS, has been dissolved by mutual consent.” Still calling himself a tailor in March 1845; dead in November; “Esq. of Brunswick-square” in December 1844. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened no | The same search for the other four surnames, 1800–1920 | Run, and empty MONTJOY: 14 hits, every one of them the chancery cause list “Lord Montjoy v. Duchess of Buckinghamshire”, reprinted annually from 1877 to 1911. MOUNTJOY: 378 hits, all English — a service reservoir at Durham, solicitors at Cardiff, a bankrupt at Cinderford, Colonel Mountjoy Martyn. BOOYZEN: 0. DASCHNER: 0. BOOYSEN: 6, all of them the Booysen Land and Mining Company, wound up in 1895. NOTHING OF THIS FAMILY. Control: the same feed, same date range, returned the five Kolbe notices, so the search works. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6 no | Barry in the 1841 census, Yorkshire (North Riding) | 50, and none at Bilsdale Whitby 22, Scarborough 13, Brompton 10, Allerston 2, Lythe 2, Fylingdales 1. Registration districts Whitby 25, Scarborough 23, Pickering 2. NOTHING IN THE HELMSLEY DISTRICT, which is the district Bilsdale is in. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6 no | Barry in the 1851 census, Yorkshire (North Riding) | 52, and none at Bilsdale Ruswarp 8, Whitby 7, Sneaton 7, Brompton 10, Easingwold 4, Fylingdales 3, Hinderwell 2, Great Smeaton 2, Lythe 1, Eston 1, Filey 1. Districts Whitby 26, Scarborough 17, Easingwold 4, Guisborough 3, Northallerton 2. AGAIN NOTHING AT HELMSLEY. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6 yes | The only John Barry born 1796 in the North Riding | FOUND, and he is nothing like the tree JOHN BARRY, SHIP OWNER, SHIP YARDS, RUSWARP, WHITBY. 1841: HO107/1265 book 11 folio 38 page 4 schedule 1116, head, aged 45, with Jno, Mary, Ann and Catharine. 1851: HO107/2374 folio 563 page 12 line 6 schedule 46, head, married, aged 55, born Whitby, with Mary b.1809, Catherine b.1832, Elizabeth b.1836. THE SAME HOUSE TEN YEARS APART, and alive in the spring of 1851. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6 no | Holly Bower, Bilsdale | No Barry there in either census The farm the profile names. Nothing. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6 yes | A note on how the place filter behaves | Recorded for the next session FindMyPast's KeywordsPlace filter is SCORED, NOT FILTERED — a search for Barry at Bilsdale returns 112 rows of Barrys anywhere, ranked. Parish, SubDistrict and RegistrationDistrict are not filterable on the census sets at all. COUNTY IS, and “Yorkshire (North Riding)” cuts 3,255 Barrys to 52. That is the field to use. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the Boer prisoner-of-war list, WO 108/368 yes | Kolbe in Prisoners of War 1715–1945, South Africa | Six men, each with a farm GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE of WAKKERSTROOM, 40, a Transvaaler, folio 709 — ALREADY IDENTIFIED ON THIS SITE FROM THE GRAVESTONES as George Augustus Kolbe of Burgersdorp, born 2 October 1861; the folio number is all this sweep added. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE of Sterkfontein, Bethulie, 32, a Free Stater, folio 581. ANDRIES FREDERICK KOLBE of LEEUWBERG, Bloemfontein, 45, folio 431. Williem Johannes of Panfontein, 54, folio 603. Ian Henry of Linberg, 51, folio 294. Pietrus Emelius Strucker of Bossiespan, Fauresmith, 24, folio 381. FIVE OF THE SIX ARE IN THE SOUTHERN FREE STATE, which is the country the Settler preached in. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the Boer prisoner-of-war list, WO 108/368 yes | Booysen and Booyens in the same set | 54 and 20 Including three DAVID SCHALK BOOYSENS — aged 53 of Pretoria and Boksburg, aged 41 of VAALBANK, LICHTENBURG, and aged 33 of KAPSTEINKOP, CRADOCK, the last recorded as a British Subject. Also a PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYSEN, 27, of Pretoria and Pietersberg — right name, wrong generation, recorded so that he is not later mistaken for the one this archive holds. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the Boer prisoner-of-war list, WO 108/368 no | Mountjoy in the same set | Nothing in South Africa Zero. The only Mountjoy anywhere in the set is B L Mountjoy, Great Britain, 1944. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the Boer prisoner-of-war list, WO 108/368 yes | A transcription rule that will cost somebody a day | Recorded This index renders JAN AS “IAN”, systematically — Ian Henry Kolbe, Ian Gert Booysen, Ian Lodewyk Booysen, Ian Jonathan Booysen, Ian Adriaan Booyens. A SEARCH FOR JAN RETURNS NOTHING. It also writes Willem as Williem and Petrus as Pietrus. Search the surname and read down. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch — the Savoy German Lutheran baptism register no | FamilySearch personas API, Kolbe, London 1806–1820 | Useless for this The API is SCORED, NOT FILTERED — an exact-surname request returned 71,076 results led by Colby, Colbert and Kolbes in Maryland. It ranks; it does not restrict. Recorded so the next session does not spend an hour on it. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch — the Savoy German Lutheran baptism register yes | FamilySearch catalogue, keyword “Savoy German Lutheran” | THE REGISTER EXISTS AND IS FILMED koha:176759 — “Church records of German Lutheran Church, 1694–1840”, German Lutheran Church (Savoy, Westminster), filmed 1967 from the originals at the Public Record Office. Text in German, ALL VOLUMES HAVE A NAME INDEX. Three films: DGS 8004264 (births and baptisms 1694–1840, marriages to 1754, burials to 1771 — 537 images), DGS 8087181 (deaths and burials 1722–1840, baptisms by family 1719–1782), DGS 8220012 (a 1986 refilming). |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch — the Savoy German Lutheran baptism register no | Opening film 008004264 on a signed-in account | EVERY ONE OF THE 537 IMAGES IS PADLOCKED Not some of them — image 1 to image 537. Digitised and withheld: viewable only inside a FamilySearch Center or an affiliate library, because the custodian is The National Archives. A SEVENTH KIND OF SHUT DOOR: photographed, catalogued, counted and locked by contract. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch — the Savoy German Lutheran baptism register yes | The catalogue search URL that works | Recorded /search/catalog/results?q.keywords=… . The ?q.text= form returns “Something Went Wrong”, and the JSON endpoint rejects q.text with “Unable to map supplied value=text to query term”. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “Kolbe” + “Conduit-street”, 1832–1836 | KOLBE AND FLETCHER IN THE 1834 MASTER TAILORS' LIST The roll of “considerably more than three hundred of the Master Tailors of the metropolis” who met at Willis's Rooms on 29 April 1834 to resist the Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union. Printed in the Morning Post 30 Apr, Globe 30 Apr and 10 May, Old England 4 May, Morning Herald 10 May, London Courier 10 May, True Sun 10 May, Public Ledger 12 May. SEVEN NEWSPAPERS, ONE LINE — and it puts him at Conduit Street by April 1834, closing the gap between the 1831 rate book and the 1836 Gazette notice. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “Kolbe” + “tailor”, 1820–1850 | 150 articles, and the son's trade Law Chronicle, 13 January 1825: “KOLBE John Henry, of Norfolk-street, Middlesex-hospital, LAST OF MANSFIELD-ST., KENTISH TOWN, TAILOR, DRAPER.” The Gazette gave the addresses and not the trade, and “Mansfield-Place” turns out to be Mansfield Street, Kentish Town. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “Kolbe” + “Soho”, 1795–1832 | 45 articles, a house number and a runaway Morning Herald, 6 June 1832: “Letters addressed A. Z., MR. KOLBE, 5, CHURCH-STREET, SOHO, will be punctually attended to” — the rate books give the street, this gives the number. AND Morning Advertiser, 31 December 1832: “LEFT HIS HOME, MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, FREDERICK KOLBE, ABOUT 16, dark hair and eyes, with an impediment in his sight. Any information addressed MRS. KOLBE, NO. 18, GERRARD-STREET, SOHO.” That is the Frederick this archive rejected in the morning — so THERE WERE TWO KOLBE HOUSEHOLDS IN SOHO AT ONCE. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | The May 1824 dissolution | Reported in at least six London papers The News 23 and 24 May, New Times 17 May, Nation 17 May, Globe 17 May, Sunday Morning Herald 16 May, Fleming's Weekly Express 16 May: “J. H. Kolbe and J. G. Kolbe, Church-street, Soho, tailors.” ALL OF THEM PUT THE SON'S NAME FIRST, where the Gazette put the father's. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “Nautilus” + “settlers”, 1819–1821 | The Settler's ship, named before it sailed London Courier and Evening Gazette, 12 November 1819, and the British Press the next day: “the Ministers are preparing to receive Settlers proceeding to the Cape of Good Hope. In the Port of London — Chapman, 558 tons; NAUTILUS, 403; Agamemnon, Diadem, and Ocean.” |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages no | “Mountjoy” + “Cradock” | 488 articles, every one a coincidence The engine is proximity-ranked rather than strictly AND, and Mountjoy Square and Mountjoy Place in Dublin swamp it. Nothing of this family. Recorded because the count looks like a find and is not one. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | What the newspaper engine is, for the next session | Recorded Operation searchNewspaperArticles on the same GraphQL endpoint. Variables: filters.keywordsFilter (a string, quoted phrases honoured), filters.namesFilter, filters.exactKeywords, filterQuery.publicationDate {from,to}, filterQuery.coverageCountry — WHICH INDEXES BRITISH PAPERS BY THE COUNTRY THEY REPORT ON, not where they were printed. pagination {startFrom, rows}, ordering {by: RELEVANCE|DATE, direction}. 108,257,031 pages, 2,952 titles. THE COVERAGE_COUNTRY FACET HAS NOT YET BEEN USED AND IS THE OBVIOUS NEXT MOVE FOR THE CAPE. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “Kolbe” + “Colesberg” and “Kolbe” + commando, 1900–1902 | A Kolbe commando, and a general captured May 1901: “Kritzinger, with 200 men, has passed through this district. The HERTZOG, BRAND AND KOLBE commandos…” — London Evening Standard, Globe and Westminster Gazette 21 May, Leominster News 24 May. September: “KOLBE'S ATTITUDE IS DOUBTFUL. He is reported to have expressed a wish to surrender” — Derby Daily Telegraph and Derby and Chesterfield Reporter. November: “GENERAL KOLBE CAPTURED” near Reddersburg — Birmingham Mail 21 Nov, Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser 23 Nov. COLESBERG, BETHULIE, REDDERSBURG, BLOEMFONTEIN IS LEEUWBERG COUNTRY, and 1901 is when Commandant Kolbe's sons would have been commanding. NOT CLAIMED AS ANY NAMED MAN. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “G. A. Kolbe”, 1910–1920 | PRESIDENT OF THE ORANGE FREE STATE AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION Daily Telegraph 26 June 1914, the delegate list: “Mr. G. A. KOLBE (BETHULIE)”. Western Daily Press, Dundee Courier, Cork Free Press and Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2 July 1914: “Mr G. A. KOLBE, President of the Orange Free State Agricultural Association and Chairman of the Orange Free State delegation.” Daily Malta Chronicle, 22 July: he sends a telegram of respectful greeting to QUEEN WILHELMINA. Same initials and same district as the POW of 1901, thirteen years apart. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages no | The coverage facet, and the limit it shows | NO SOUTH AFRICA AT ALL FindMyPast's own COVERAGE_COUNTRY facet lists England, Scotland, Wales, both Irelands, India, Barbados, China, Jamaica, Australia and New Zealand. THERE IS NO SOUTH AFRICAN TITLE IN THE CORPUS. Everything found above is the Cape and the Free State seen from Fleet Street through Reuter's wire. It is not a substitute for the South African papers and eGGSA remains the only route into those. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages yes | “21st Light Dragoons” + “Cape”, 1806–1825 | 258 articles, and the regiment at the Cape London Courier and Evening Gazette, 2 January 1812: “CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. The 21st Light Dragoons are in the highest state of discipline. The following is a Copy of General Orders given [by] SIR JOHN CRADOCK, after reviewing that regiment…” — James Mountjoy's regiment, at the Cape, reviewed by the Governor whose name the town he settled in carries. NOT YET READ IN FULL. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers yes | “21st Light Dragoons” + “Cape of Good Hope”, 1806–1825 | 67 articles, read in date order Not a search for a Mountjoy. A search for the REGIMENT, which can be followed where the man cannot. Sorting is ordering:{by:'PUBLICATION_DATE'} — 'DATE' returns a 400. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers yes | When they arrived | May 1806, from York by way of Portsmouth Bath Journal 5 May, Limerick Gazette 6 May, Hampshire Chronicle 19 May 1806. Part of them went on to SOUTH AMERICA in August 1806 (Caledonian Mercury) and came back to the Cape in 1807 (Government Gazette (India), 10 December). |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers yes | Reinforcements | October 1810 and a draft of 140 men in October 1813 Oxford Journal 27 Oct 1810: “a large reinforcement of officers and men are to be sent out by the first ship.” Star 26 Oct 1813: “a detachment of 140 men for the 21st Light Dragoons… embarked for the Cape of Good Hope.” THREE POSSIBLE ARRIVAL WINDOWS FOR HIM, all now dated. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers yes | WHEN THEY LEFT | SEPTEMBER 1817 — AND HE MARRIED IN MARCH Extract of a letter from the Cape dated 1 and 10 September 1817, printed in the Sun and Star 14 November, Public Ledger and Morning Herald 15 November, Hampshire Chronicle 17 November: “THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS HAVE EMBARKED FOR INDIA.” JAMES MONTJOY MARRIED AT GRAAFF-REINET ON 9 MARCH 1817. His discharge now has a deadline. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers yes | Why a man would take his discharge | Parliament said it out loud Globe, 4 March 1809: “it was thought an unaccountable circumstance, that the 21st light dragoons should [be] sent to the Cape of Good Hope, WHERE THEY COULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO.” Eleven years of garrison duty and one review — by SIR JOHN CRADOCK, who gave his name to the town Mountjoy settled in. |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers no | Two things that are not evidence and are worth knowing | Recorded The regiment's colonel was GENERAL BANASTRE TARLETON (Sun, 9 November 1812). And a detachment of about 100 of them was at ST HELENA guarding Napoleon in October 1817 (Star, Oxford Journal, Belfast News-Letter). |
| 16 Sep 2026 | The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers no | What it does not do | It does not name him No Mountjoy appears in any of the 67 articles. WO 97 still holds none of that regiment, and the reason still stands — the pre-1855 discharge papers hold only men discharged TO A PENSION. WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THAT THE MUSTER BOOKS NOW HAVE A TARGET: WO 12 at Kew lists every man by name, quarter by quarter, and the quarters that matter are 1806, 1810, 1813 and everything up to September 1817. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter yes | The full WO 12 run for the 21st Light Dragoons | TWELVE PIECES, AND ONE OF THEM IS THE ERRAND Discovery sps.recordSeries=WO 12: WO 12/1441 (1779), 1442 (1798–1800), 1443 (1801–02), 1444 (1803), 1445 (1804), 1446 (1805–06), 1447 (1807–09), 1448 (1810–12), 1449 (1813–15), WO 12/1450 (1816–17), 1451 (1818), 1452 (1819–20), then nothing until 1863 because the regiment was disbanded in 1820 and re-raised. WO 12/1450 IS THE SINGLE PIECE THAT COVERS HIS DISCHARGE — held at Kew, no access conditions recorded. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter no | WO 12/1430, the piece this archive put in a letter to Kew | WRONG BY FIFTY YEARS Discovery gives it as “20TH AND 21ST DRAGOONS, 1867–1868”. It is the re-raised regiment, not the one that garrisoned the Cape. The letter was drafted on 15 September and never sent; the piece has been corrected in the draft and the draft now says in terms that an earlier version had it wrong. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter no | Soldiers' description books for the regiment | NOT FOUND, AND THE NEGATIVE IS QUALIFIED WO 25 searched for the regiment returns 28 documents and every one is an OFFICER — services of officers, not description books of men. That may mean no description book for the 21st survives, or that the books are catalogued by piece without the regiment in the title. THIS ARCHIVE CANNOT TELL WHICH FROM HERE, and the Kew letter now asks rather than asserts. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter yes | The departure date, checked against the catalogue | 1817, not 1816 — and the error was in three files The 15 September rows said the regiment left the Cape in 1816. On 16 September five London papers dated the embarkation for India to a letter of 1 and 10 SEPTEMBER 1817. The catalogue does not settle it either way — WO 12/1450 covers 1816–1817 as one piece — but the newspapers are five independent printings of one dispatch and the 1816 figure had no source at all. Corrected in searched.json, worklist.json and letters.json. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter yes | A control on the search itself | 733 documents under the catalogue's own spelling The regiment is indexed “21st Dragoons (Light)” and not “21st Light Dragoons” — first found on 15 September and still true. Searched that way the API returns 733 records; WO 97 entries come back as full lives, e.g. “THOMAS ANDERSON Born BISHOPWEARMOUTH, Northumberland, Served in 21st Dragoons (Light), Discharged aged 44, 1799–1818”. THE FIELD THIS ARCHIVE WANTS IS IN THE TITLE OF EVERY ONE OF THEM, for ninety-five other men. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled yes | Surname KOLBE in the 1841 census, England Wales and Scotland | FOUR, AND THEY ARE ONE HOUSEHOLD John G b.1765, Marianne b.1806, Charlotte b.1811, Amelia A b.1816 — all at St George Hanover Square. THE CONDUIT STREET HOUSEHOLD WAS THE ENTIRE SURNAME IN BRITAIN, not merely the part this archive holds. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled no | The same search, 1851 / 1861 / 1871 | 1 / 1 / 7 1851: J Kolbe b.1826, LAMBETH — none of the four. 1861: John Kolbe b.1836, St Marylebone. 1871: seven, a later arrival. A variants search is useless here — it fuzzes to Colbey and Kilby and returns 14,245. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled yes | Every KOLBE death registered in England and Wales, 1837–1867 | FOUR John Gottlob 1845 St George Hanover Square · George 1848 Westminster St Margaret · Elizabeth 1852 Strand · CHARLOTTE 1867 LAMBETH. And the one Kolbe in the whole 1851 census is at Lambeth too. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled yes | Every KOLBE marriage registered in England and Wales, 1837–1867 | FOUR Maria 1838 Stepney · Mary Ann Maria Ford 1847 Whitechapel · JANE DAY 1853 City of London · AMELIA ANN 1854 St Pancras. EIGHT CIVIL RECORDS FOR A WHOLE SURNAME IN THIRTY YEARS. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled yes | What the two tables say together | THE 1851 BLANK IS THE RECORD FAILING, NOT THE FAMILY ENDING Three women vanish from the census between 1841 and 1851 and at least two were alive after it — Amelia Ann married in 1854 and a Charlotte died at Lambeth in 1867. A CENSUS ABSENCE READS LIKE AN EXTINCTION AND IS VERY OFTEN AN INDEXING ACCIDENT. This archive learned the same thing about itself the same morning, from the other side. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled no | And the thing that got harder | The three women match no baptism in the family's run Their 1841 ages, rounded down to the nearest five, put them born about 1802–06, 1807–11 and 1812–16 — in and around the gaps at 1808–1812 and 1814–1818, WHICH ARE THE SAME GAPS THE THREE MISSING SONS MUST SIT IN. The 1841 census records no relationships; that column begins in 1851. THEIR PLACE IN THIS FAMILY IS AN INFERENCE FROM LIVING IN THE HOUSE and is now marked as one on all three records. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | Film 008039088, images 605–818 | 2,046 BAPTISMS, 1858–1866, NO IMAGE SKIPPED 191 in 1859, 309 in 1860, 279 in 1861, 212 in 1862, 325 in 1863, 273 in 1864, 328 in 1865, 123 in 1866. 391 DISTINCT PARENT SURNAMES — Kruger 160, du Plessis 131, Venter 117, Fourie 105, de Klerk 104 at the head of it. A complete slice of one Karoo town across eight years. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye no | Can the personas API sweep a film — tested properly this time | NO, AND HERE IS THE PROOF q.filmNumber ALONE returns 22,059. q.filmNumber + q.surname=Barry returns 6,852,654 — WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT q.surname=Barry RETURNS ON ITS OWN. The film filter is not weakened when another term joins it; IT IS DISCARDED. A nonsense surname with the film still returns 77,556. So the film cannot be partitioned by name or date to get round the 1000-offset wrap, and there is NO API ROUTE TO A WHOLE FILM. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | What replaced the hand sweep | POST /search/filmdatainfo/image-data The endpoint behind the viewer's own Image Index panel. Takes an image ARK, returns every indexed record on that image as GEDCOM-X with child, both parents, birth and baptism dates, place, AND A FULL CITATION WITH THE RECORD ARK. The per-image ARKs come out of the thumbnail strip. 214 images in about ten minutes instead of 214 screenshots. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | THE OFF-BY-ONE THAT WOULD HAVE SHIFTED EVERY ROW | Caught before any data was read THE VIEWER'S IMAGE NUMBER IS ONE MORE THAN THE URL'S ?i= — ?i=604 displays as “Image 605 of 818”. The thumbnail labels are display numbers, so a map built from the strip is 1-based while the API wants the 0-based i. FOUR KNOWN ARKS WERE CHECKED AGAINST FOUR ACTUAL NAVIGATIONS before the sweep began. Getting it wrong shifts every row by one page and nothing anywhere says so. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, image 637 | ALREADY HELD — CONFIRMED, NOT DISCOVERED She has been in this archive for days as a daughter of George Mountjoy and Maria Sophia Botha, baptised on a leap day, who married William Henry Keys — one of the thirteen Mountjoy children. THE SWEEP REACHED HER FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION and returns the same two dates, 1:1:6FHW-89ND, image 637. That is a confirmation and a citable reference. THE FIRST WRITE-UP OF THIS SWEEP CALLED HER A NEW CHILD; the duplicate person record it created was caught by the build's own name-collision check before it reached a page. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | George Augustus Kolbe, image 685 | THE MAN ON THE WAKKERSTROOM STONE GETS PARENTS Born 2 OCTOBER 1861, baptised 12 January 1862 at Burgersdorp, father G. A. KOLBE, mother ANNA MARIA VILJOEN — 1:1:6FWF-YVJT. Yesterday this archive identified him from a gravestone and from the age on WO 108/368 folio 709, and wrote that the descent was not documented. IT IS NOW DOCUMENTED ONE GENERATION BACK. Two younger siblings in the same book: ANNA JOHANNA 1863 and PETRUS JACOBUS 1865. WHETHER THE FATHER IS THE SETTLER'S TWIN SON IS NOT CLAIMED. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | Fredrik Fortunatus Steenkamp Werdmuller, image 673 | A SENTENCE WITHDRAWN — HE IS AUGUSTA LOUISA’S SON This archive held a FREDERICK FORTUNATUS WERDMULLER from a 1907 Cape Supreme Court petition and a 1953 estate, with no birth, no parents, and a line reading “NOT SHOWN TO BE HER DESCENDANT”. Image 673 shows it: born 25 April 1861, baptised 19 May, father C.J.O. WERDMULLER, mother AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE — 1:1:6FW6-WXGS. The Settler's fourth daughter gave her child her brother's name. AND IT DATES HER: she was bearing his children in 1861, thirteen years before his second marriage. ONE STEP NOT TAKEN — the 1907 man is of MALMESBURY and the child was baptised at BURGERSDORP, and nothing read here joins them. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye no | Blank Name columns in the 2,046 | TWO, AND NEITHER IS OURS Image 666, baptised 17 February 1861, only parent named Fredrica Geertruida Elizabeth Kezar. Image 792, baptised 27 August 1865, only parent named Francina Helena Magda Steenkamp. THAT FAILURE IS THE WHOLE REASON THIS REGISTER HAD TO BE SWEPT RATHER THAN SEARCHED — it is what hid Catherine Mary Sophia Barry in 1855. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye no | Two Booysen couples at image 691 | NOT THIS FAMILY, AND RECORDED SO Jacobus Alewyn, born 5 January 1862 to Andries Johannes Daniel Kruger and CORNELIA ETRESIA BOOYSEN. Maria Helena Charlina, born 8 December 1861 to JAN JONATHAN BOOYSEN and Cornelia Margaretha de Villiers. NEITHER COUPLE IS IN THIS ARCHIVE AND NEITHER IS CLAIMED. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye yes | What the first write-up got wrong | TWO OF THE FIVE WERE ALREADY IN THE ARCHIVE The section as first drafted called all five rows new. Johanna Catharina Mountjoy was already held in full, and Frederick Fortunatus Werdmuller was already held as a man without a birth or parents. THE BUILD CAUGHT THE FIRST — drift.py refused on a duplicate name — AND NOTHING WOULD HAVE CAUGHT THE SECOND, because it was entered under a different spelling. Both records were folded into the ones that existed and the page now says which is which. THE RULE THIS COSTS: a sweep that returns a name must be checked against the register before it is called a find, not after. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | Surname KOLBE in “South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, Estate Files 1846–1950” | SIXTY-FOUR ENTRIES Reached by taking the collection id out of a persona's sourceDescriptions and passing it as f.collectionId — WHICH DOES FILTER, unlike almost everything else on that endpoint. The archive has read NONE of the sixty-four files. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe, the Settler's tenth child | A DEATH, AFTER THE RECORD CARRIED A DASH “FREDERICK FORTUNABIS KOLBE, BORN 1839 KAAP PROVINSIE, DIED 23 NOVEMBER 1929 AT UTRECHT”, probate 1929 — 1:1:QLR2-XFJC. Ninety years old, on the Natal border, from a mission station on the Orange River. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | Elizabeth Johanna du Toit, his wife | DEATH AND BIRTHPLACE, WHERE THE RECORD SAID “NOT YET FOUND” “ELIZABETHA JOHANNA DU TOIT KOLBE, BORN 1845 BREDARSDORP K PROVINSIE, DIED 12 JULY 1923, SAXONY UTRECHT NATAL”, probate 1923 — 1:1:QLRL-HRQV. Seven hundred miles from the Bredasdorp she was born in, and six years before her husband. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | The heirs on both estates | NINE CHILDREN, AND THE DAUGHTERS UNDER BOTH SURNAMES George Augustus · GABRIEL STEPHANUS · MARTHA ANGELINA · Margaret Harriet Kolbe VAN DER SPUY · FREDERICK FORTUNATUS · Catharina Maria Louisa Kolbe LOUW · Elizabeth Johanna Kolbe PATTISON · Petronella Jacoba Adriana Kolbe BEUKES · Adriana Henrietta Johanna Kolbe OOSTHUIZEN. AN ESTATE FILE IS WHERE A MARRIED DAUGHTER IS WRITTEN UNDER BOTH NAMES, which is the only thing that lets her be followed. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | The three “not followed out of the font” | ALL THREE FOLLOWED GABRIEL STEPHANUS alive 1923 and 1929. MARTHA ANGELINA alive 1923 and 1929 AND STILL WRITTEN KOLBE, where five sisters are written under married names. CATHARINA MARIA LOUISA MARRIED A LOUW — 1:1:QLRL-WTBN and 1:1:QLR2-ZDB5. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | The Angeline question | ANSWERED BY EXCLUSION Martha Angelina's record warned that an ANGELINE KOLBE died at Wakkerstroom in 1900 and a MARTHA ANGELINE KOLBE was “buried at Volksrust” in 1901 aged two months, and that this archive would not guess. SHE IS NEITHER: she was alive in 1923 and 1929. The Volksrust infant now has her own dates — BORN 9 OCTOBER 1901, DIED 8 DECEMBER 1901, Transvaal civil death and BillionGraves. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | A ninth child | FREDERICK FORTUNATUS KOLBE, BORN 1872 COLESBERG Died 10 September 1944 at Vryheid, probate 1944 — 1:1:QPHZ-2361 — and named among his mother's heirs in 1923. HIS BIRTH YEAR FALLS IN THE ONE GAP IN HIS PARENTS' BAPTISM RUN, between Hopetown 1870 and Colesberg 1873. This archive's own note was careful and said EIGHT ARE IN THE REGISTERS; the ninth is not. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | Where they all went | UTRECHT, VRYHEID AND A FARM CALLED SAXONY Both parents die at Utrecht, one son at Vryheid, and the estates are at Pietermaritzburg. Utrecht and Vryheid sit either side of Wakkerstroom on the Natal–Transvaal border. THIS IS NOT THREE CHILDREN WHO HAPPENED TO MARRY IN ONE TOWN. It is a household that moved from the Orange River to the Natal border and stayed. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht yes | ANNA MARIA VILJOEN KOLBE, in the same index | THE OTHER BRANCH WENT THERE TOO 1:1:QPHZ-23XS. She was found this morning in the Burgersdorp baptism register as the mother of the OTHER George Augustus Kolbe — the one born 2 October 1861 and buried at Wakkerstroom. BOTH KOLBE HOUSEHOLDS END UP IN THE SAME CORNER OF NATAL, and nothing yet joins them to each other. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last no | The civil death registration, index only | NAME, AGE, DATE — AND NO CAUSE “South Africa, Civil Death Registration, 1953–1967”, 1:1:6Z9Q-2TFG: Henry James Booyzen, male, 69 years, born 1887 Cape Province, died 8 December 1956 Johannesburg. THE INDEX CARRIES NO CAUSE OF DEATH, which is why the question could not be settled from a search. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last yes | The image behind it | FILM 007751812, IMAGE 356 — AND IT IS OPEN Image ARK 3:1:3Q9M-C91L-VSFR-R. A FORM OF INFORMATION OF A DEATH, provided by the National Archives of South Africa, fully legible. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last yes | Cause of death | COR PULMONALE WITH SILICOSIS Line 12, in the doctor's hand: “Cor pulmonale with Silicosis”, and beneath it “contributing cause:- Broncho pneumonia”. Duration of last illness, line 13: two years, seven days. Medical practitioner Dr A. L. Agranat. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last yes | PHTHISIS | NOT THE CAUSE — IT IS ON LINE 11, THE ALLOWANCE Line 11 is “Pensioner or Recipient of Maintenance Allowance” and the typed word against it is PHTHISIS. HE WAS A CERTIFIED MINERS' PHTHISIS PENSIONER. The G2G report that he “died of phthisis” read the right document and the wrong line. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last yes | “Coronary pulmonary sclerosis”, off the Johannesburg burial register | A MANGLING OF LINE 12 Cor pulmonale became “coronary pulmonary”; silicosis became “sclerosis”. BOTH OF THIS ARCHIVE'S TWO CAUSES TRACE TO ONE SHEET OF PAPER AND NEITHER WAS RIGHT. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last yes | Four things the form gives that nobody had | Identity number, birth date, address, doctor IDENTITY NUMBER 331-452322. DATE OF BIRTH WRITTEN AS 12-8-1887 — the fourth independent statement of it, after a family tree, a gravestone and a church register. RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 3 FIFTEENTH AVENUE, MAYFAIR, JOHANNESBURG, which is the parish where his niece married Nuno Lerena in 1949. And the informant, at 6 Jorissen Street Braamfontein, is described as “PERSON CAUSING BURIAL” — which the form distinguishes from a relative. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last no | An attribution worth a second look | FamilySearch prints the dotted domain The image attribution reads “Provided by NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF SOUTH AFRICA · www.national.archives.gov.za”. THIS ARCHIVE CORRECTED THAT EXACT DOTTED FORM ON 15 SEPTEMBER — the live domain is nationalarchives.gov.za with no dot. The correction stands; FamilySearch's own attribution carries the dead form. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here yes | Indwe, every family surname, Dutch Reformed collection | THE REGISTER THAT MATTERS IS THE LIDMATE ROLL The two Indwe entries this archive already had — Willem Hermanus Booijzen confirmed 31 May 1907, and a Mountjoy dying in 1911 — sit in the MEMBERSHIP register, not the baptisms. That is where a colliery town's incomers are written down, and knowing which book holds your people is half of knowing where to read next. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here yes | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy at Indwe | A JOINING DATE: 23 JULY 1907 1:1:6PR3-HNWZ. This archive had her death there in June 1911 and nothing before it. SHE JOINED SEVEN WEEKS AFTER WILLEM HERMANUS BOOIJZEN WAS CONFIRMED IN THE SAME CONGREGATION. Not relatives — neighbours, which is a fact and was not one before. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here no | Barkly East, five surnames, everything dated after 1910 | THIRTY-SIX ENTRIES, AND NEARLY ALL ALREADY HELD Checked one by one: Harriet Louisa Barry d. 7 Sep 1912 Manor Owen; Henry James Kolbe Barry, whose 23 June 1939 is already on his record; John Gerson Eliazer Barry; James Jonathan Mountjoy d. 22 Dec 1937; Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Mary Kolbe d. 2 Aug 1912 Manorowen. A SWEEP THAT RETURNS ALMOST NOTHING NEW IS A MEASUREMENT OF HOW THOROUGHLY THE GROUND WAS ALREADY WORKED. The work-list row assumed otherwise. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here yes | Catherine Mary Sophia Barry BAXTER | THE ONE GENUINELY NEW NAME Born 1883 at Barkly East, died 18 November 1914, probate 1916 — 1:1:7JXY-LVMM. The forenames are this family's exactly; there are already two women of that name here, of 1855 and 1859. PROBABLE, NOT PROVED — nothing read here names her parents. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here no | A Booysen cluster at Indwe, 1925–1932 | RECORDED AND CLAIMED BY NOBODY Four men join that congregation — DAVID SCHALK 2 May 1925, PIET FREDERICK 14 May 1927, PETRUS JACOBUS 16 May 1931, WILLEM ADRIAAN — and three couples baptise children there. The forenames are this family's and the town is the one its miner worked in. BUT NOT ONE OF THE WIVES IS A NAME THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS, and a Booysen at a Cape colliery is not evidence of anything. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here yes | A near-miss that nearly went the other way | THREE LETTERS OF A FORENAME A first pass matched RACHEL MARGARITA MARAIS against this archive and reported her already held. She is not. The match was the fragment “Rachel Marg” hitting RACHEL MARGARETHA WILLIAMSE, a different woman on a 1900 death notice at Pretoria. HAD IT STOOD, AN UNRELATED INDWE HOUSEHOLD WOULD HAVE BEEN WELDED TO THIS FAMILY. |
| 17 Sep 2026 | Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here no | One discrepancy, recorded and not adopted | The matriarch's birth year The index gives “Margaret Louisa Elizabeth Kolbe Barry, birth 1831 BELIEVE Colesberg” where this archive has 1826. The hedge is the index's own word and the death date agrees to the day. 1826 STANDS until something better than a hedged index entry moves it. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself no | Does the letter carry an address at its head? | NO — “London” AND NOTHING FINER This was the question the enquiry most hoped for. An 1844 obituary puts the family at BRUNSWICK-SQUARE; the rate books, the Gazette, the census and the burial register put him in Soho and then Conduit Street. THE LETTER DOES NOT SETTLE IT. Recorded as plainly as the finds, because a document that arrives and does not answer the question is still a result. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | Is “LMS missionary” from the papers or from the donor? | FROM THE PAPERS, IN THE FATHER'S OWN HAND “MR MILES had called at our house & informed me that YOU HAD BEEN FULLY ACCEPTED BY THE [L.M.S.] AS ONE OF THEIR MISSIONARIES”, and “DR PHILIP was exceedingly glad to hear of your being accepted”. John Philip was the LMS superintendent at the Cape and had carried the previous letter. INDEPENDENT OF JOHN MONTGOMERY'S MEMOIR, which was written down forty-five years after the fact. TWO WITNESSES TO THE MISSION, FORTY-FIVE YEARS APART. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | What are the other pages? | The four pages ARE the letter There is no second item in the collection. The catalogue's “photocopy, 4 pages” is the letter and nothing else. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself no | Where is the original, and who was Dr Griffiths? | THE BACKGROUND FILE HOLDS NOTHING FURTHER “Unfortunately the Background File does not give any further information on the donation or any other donations by Dr. Griffiths.” The whereabouts of the original is not recorded and cannot be pursued from that end. A CLEAN NEGATIVE FROM THE ONLY PLACE THAT COULD HAVE ANSWERED IT. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | “kind love from your Sisters & brother” | THE LINE THAT DATES THE OBITUARY SISTERS PLURAL, BROTHER SINGULAR, August 1830. Of the EIGHT SONS the 1844 obituary counts, EXACTLY TWO WERE ALIVE — George Augustus at the Cape and Henry in London with dropsy. HENRY DIED 13 APRIL 1832. From that day George Augustus was “the last remaining of eight sons”, and the Grahamstown Journal did not say so until December 1844. THE OBITUARY IS CORROBORATED AND THE DATE IT BECAME TRUE IS NOW KNOWN. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | Henry, from his father's pen | DROPSY, AND “RESIGNED TO THE CATASTROPHE” This archive had John Henry Kolbe's font, his 1819 Old Bailey deposition, his 1819 marriage, his 1824 bankruptcy and his 1832 burial. IT NOW HAS HIS ILLNESS AND HIS FATHER'S GRIEF, twenty months before the end. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | Elizabeth Kolbe, who married John Milne in 1817 | SHE IS BETSEY AND SHE LIVES IN EDINBURGH “MILNE with ELIZABETH & family had transferred their residence to EDINBURGH… BETSEY likes the situation very well.” Four days ago she was a line in the Westminster marriage index. A NICKNAME IS SOMETHING NO REGISTER EVER GIVES. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | Charlotte Kolbe | AN INFERENCE NO LONGER On 17 September this archive marked Marianne, Charlotte and Amelia of the 1841 Conduit Street household as INFERRED daughters, because they matched no baptism and the 1841 census records no relationships. “CHARLOTTE SENDS YOU AN EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE.” Her record moves from inf to doc. MARIANNE AND AMELIA ARE STILL INFERRED. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | What else is in it | A suit of black clothes, two kings and a baboon “A SUIT OF BLACK CLOTHES, hope they may be wide enough for you, as I understand that you are stout as long” — clerical black for a newly accepted missionary — with a sash, a waistcoat and last year's newspapers. The death of GEORGE IV on 26 June and WILLIAM IV “a King after the people's heart”. The FRENCH REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 as three-week-old news. And a request that his son ask the Society whether a baboon story in a magazine called THE MIRROR is true. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself no | An unasked-for second document | A DSAB ENTRY BY DR KAREL SCHOEMAN — NOT YET READ Two pages written for the DICTIONARY OF SOUTH AFRICAN BIOGRAPHY, found in the Background File, by Dr Karel Schoeman of the National Library, WITH A LIST OF BRONNE (SOURCES). It is a secondary work, but Schoeman was a serious historian and the source list is the useful part. THIS ARCHIVE HAS NOT READ IT. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself no | Can the marriage of Miss Mary Field to Mr Bellew, a surgeon, be found? | NO — AND THE NEGATIVE IS CONTROLLED SIX WAYS The letter of 23 August 1830 says “the eldest, Miss Mary, THAT WAS, has married a MR BELLEW, A SURGEON”, so the marriage is before that date. FindMyPast, using the SpouseLastName filter with a nonsense-value control returning 0: FIELD × BELLEW RETURNS ONE RECORD IN THE WHOLE LIFE EVENTS COLLECTION AND IT IS 1854 AT STEPNEY — twenty-four years too late. Exact spellings BELLEW, BELLOW, BALLEW, BELEW, BELLEWE and BELLOWS, each against 1823–1835: ALL ZERO. Widened to 1814–1844: STILL ZERO. The variants engine is worse than useless — it collapses Bellew into Bell, Boyle and Balow and returns 1,724 rows. EITHER THE MARRIAGE IS OUTSIDE FINDMYPAST’S LONDON COVERAGE, OR A SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD MAN MISSPELLED A SURNAME HE HAD HEARD SPOKEN. The five friends named in that letter remain the only people in it this archive cannot reach. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself yes | The story from The Mirror — can it be found after all? | YES — AND IT IS BY JAMES HOGG The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, VOLUME XIV (1829), pp. 313–318: “SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS — A SINGULAR LETTER FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA. COMMUNICATED BY MR. HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.” Fiction, printed as a settler’s letter home, by the author of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Chief KAROO offers oxen and “a choice virgin to boot” for the wife; “he foretold I should repent it”; CAPTAIN JOHNSTONE and nine British soldiers; the wife carried across the river by “a band of pongos, (ourang-outangs)”; found as their QUEEN. FIVE EARLIER SEARCHES FAILED BECAUSE THEY HUNTED A SURNAME THAT DOES NOT EXIST — the narrator is anonymous and it is his SON who is called William. THE TAILOR WAS RIGHT: “here we look upon the Story as a fictious & romance”. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Who wrote the DSAB typescript? | KAREL SCHOEMAN — AND THE LIBRARY SAID SO IN THE COVERING EMAIL Melanie Geustyn, Senior Librarian, National Library of South Africa, with the Background File in front of her: “The author, KS, WOULD BE DR. KAREL SCHOEMAN who worked here at the National Library.” HER “WOULD BE” IS A LIBRARIAN’S HEDGE AND THE RIGHT ONE — the typescript carries initials and a date, not a signature — but she reads them with the institution’s own knowledge behind her. This archive reasoned its way to the same answer from the inside and published it as an inference it would not assert, HAVING NOT READ THE SENTENCE THE ATTACHMENTS WERE ATTACHED TO. Logged as a correction. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Does the Background File say anything more about the donation, or about Dr Jean Griffiths? | NO — AND THAT IS AN ANSWER, NOT A SILENCE “Unfortunately the Background File does not give any further information on the donation or any other donations by Dr. Griffiths.” A librarian went to the off-site vaults, pulled the accession file and looked. WHERE THE ORIGINAL OF THE PHOTOCOPY IS REMAINS UNKNOWN, and so does whether the catalogue’s “LMS missionary” came from the papers or from the donor — that second question was asked and has not been answered. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Does the DSAB entry agree with this archive where both have the same fact? | YES — ON NINE POINTS, FROM NINE DIFFERENT DOCUMENTS The 1802 birth; J.G.E. Kolbe 1822–68 at Leeuberg as a commandant; Margaret Downing 1803–1867; the 1819 London marriage at a very young age; the apothecary’s trade on the settler roll; the farm Wurthemberg; ten children; Philippolis from March 1831 (this archive has a daughter born there that year). EVERY ONE OF THOSE THIS ARCHIVE GOT FROM A REGISTER, A STONE, AN OBITUARY OR AN ADVERTISEMENT, and the entry cites none of them. That is what makes the single disagreement worth reporting. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Is the entry right that the Settler’s father was a German apothecary? | NO — HE WAS A TAILOR, AND THE ARCHIVE CAN PROVE IT SEVEN WAYS 121 Westminster rate book entries, the printed roll of 234 master tailors of 1799, the master tailors’ list of April 1834, three London Gazette dissolutions all reading TAILORS, the 1841 census occupation column, the Westminster burial register, and John Henry Kolbe’s deposition on oath at the Old Bailey in 1819. THE TRADE IS THE SON’S, MOVED ONE GENERATION UP. The entry is accurate wherever its author had a record; the one thing he had no record for is the one thing he got wrong. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Does the entry’s “Knapdaar” contradict the obituary’s “Wirtemberg”? | NO — THE ENTRY SAYS THEY ARE THE SAME FARM “die plaas Wurthemberg (soms ook aangegee as Knapdaar)”. The heading alone looked like a conflict and the body resolves it. What this archive gains is A SECOND NAME TO SEARCH in the deeds records and NAAIRS. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Was MSB 751 written “on his ordination”, as the catalogue says? | NO — THE ORDINATION WAS 25 MAY 1833 Two years and nine months after the letter. The letter reports acceptance as a missionary, which is a different step, and the entry supplies a third — mission assistant on 8 February 1828. THE ARCHIVE HAD REPEATED A FINDING AID AS THOUGH IT WERE THE DOCUMENT. Logged as a correction. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | “Extract from the journal of Messrs Melvill and Kolbe”, Transactions of the Missionary Society (1829) — is it online? | FOUND — AND THE REASON THE FIRST SEARCH FAILED IS THE INTERESTING PART THE PRINTED VERSION IS FILED UNDER THE OTHER MAN’S NAME. Full citation: “Extracts of the Journal of Messrs Melvill and Kolbe, ADDRESSED TO THE REV. RICHARD MILES, Superintendent of the Society’s Missions in Africa, Philippolis, 25 NOV. 1828”, Council for World Missions (LMS) Archives — WHICH IS SOURCE 4 ON THE DSAB’S OWN LIST, two lines above source 6, and the entry never says they are the same document. “An edited version, dated 18 Nov. 1828, appears in MELVILL (1829).” Legassick quotes it: the travellers met refugee groups with “no other means of subsistence than the wild animals found in these parts” — THE FIRST WORDS OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE’S THIS ARCHIVE HAS READ, and they are about famine. AND THE JOURNEY IS PRINTED IN FULL IN A BOOK STILL SOLD: Karel Schoeman (ed.), Early White Travellers in the Transgariep, 1819–1840 (Protea Book House, 2003), p. 30. The Google Books API refuses this archive entirely — HTTP 429 to every query — and the same searches through the ordinary Books interface returned all of this in four minutes. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Sibree, A register of missionaries, 4th ed. (LMS, 1923) — is it online? | NOT FOUND under that title on the Internet Archive It would give his LMS service dates in a single printed line, which is exactly what is wanted to test 8 February 1828, 25 May 1833 and 19 June 1837. Searched, not found, and left on the work list. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Is there any published corroboration of the Bethanie claim of 1834, independent of this entry? | NO — IT LOOKED LIKE TWO WITNESSES AND IT IS ONE An encyclopaedia article states that the Berlin Missionary Society founded Bethanien for the Korana in September 1834 on the advice of the LMS’s G.A. Kolbe at Philippolis — AND ITS FOOTNOTE CITES SCHOEMAN’S OWN 1985 BOOK, Die Huis van die Armes. THE DRAFT ENTRY AND THE ARTICLE REST ON THE SAME MAN’S RESEARCH. This archive nearly published it as independent corroboration and it is not. A claim repeated in two places can still be a single witness. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Are the Griqua Council’s own papers for 1836 in print? | YES — AND THE ENTRY COULD NOT CITE THEM Karel Schoeman (ed.), Griqua Records: the Philippolis Captaincy, 1825–1861, Van Riebeeck Society II/25 — 162 official and semi-official documents including the Philippolis Law Book and the correspondence between the Captaincy’s officials and the missionaries. PUBLISHED AFTER THIS TYPESCRIPT WAS TYPED — this row said TWO YEARS until 11 October 2026, when the catalogue record was read and gave 1996, which is four. It is the obvious place to test the 1836 accusation, the Hendricks agitation and the acquittal. Available as a purchasable eBook from HIPSA; no free digitisation found. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Is a portrait of George Augustus Kolbe known to exist? | THE ENTRY NAMES TWO A likeness of him AS A YOUNG MAN, in 1992 with C.J. du Plessis of Ruigtevlei, district Bethulie, reproduced in Burger Olivier’s So onthou ons die oewerbewoners van ou “Grootrivier” (1973); and a CHARLES BELL WATERCOLOUR OF A CHURCH SERVICE AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834 WITH KOLBE IN THE PULPIT, in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, reproduced in The Journal of Andrew Smith, ed. Lye (1975). THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS NO LIKENESS OF ANYBODY BORN BEFORE 1850. Neither has been seen. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names yes | Can the Charles Bell picture of Kolbe be found? | YES — AND IN A COUNTRY THE ENTRY DOES NOT MENTION University of Edinburgh, Centre for the Study of World Christianity, CSWC 60 — five photographs, 1834–1840, photograph copies of sketches by C. Bell of African congregations. ITEM 3 IS “MR. KOLBE… AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834”. The DSAB sends the reader to the Africana Museum in Johannesburg for the original watercolour and says nothing of Scotland; Edinburgh’s catalogue says nothing of Johannesburg. The other four sitters include JEAN-PIERRE PELLISSIER, who is source 9 on the DSAB’s own list. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names no | Does Edinburgh describe him correctly? | NO — IT CALLS HIM “A MORAVIAN MISSIONARY?” With the question mark. He was LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, on the NLSA’s catalogue of MSB 751 and on his own father’s letter of 23 August 1830 — “fully accepted by the [L.M.S.] as one of their Missionaries”. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THIS ARCHIVE HAS BEEN IN A POSITION TO CORRECT AN INSTITUTION RATHER THAN BE CORRECTED BY ONE, and the letter that does it can ask for a copy of the photograph at the same time. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names part | Is the “Mr Miles” of the 1830 letter the Richard Miles of the 1828 journal? | VERY PROBABLY — AND IT IS AN INFERENCE, NOT A DOCUMENT Richard Miles, formerly pastor of Brigg in Lincolnshire and appointed to Demerara, was sent to Cape Town TO ACT AS DR PHILIP’S SUBSTITUTE WHILE PHILIP WAS IN ENGLAND. Philip was in England from 1826; Miles was acting Superintendent at the Cape in 1828, which is why Kolbe addressed his journal to him there; by 1830 Philip was back and Miles was in London, calling at a tailor’s house in Soho. THE LETTER SAYS ONLY “MR MILES” AND GIVES NO FORENAME, so the office, the continent and the dates carry it and nothing else does. Published as an inference and marked as one. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview yes | Does the full-resolution reading contradict anything already published? | NO — NOT ONE WORD The heading “London August 23. 1830”, the opening “Dear George”, the L.M.S. acceptance, Mr Miles calling at the house, Dr Philip carrying the earlier letter, HENRY AND THE DROPSY AND “RESIGNED TO THE CATASTROPHE”, Milne and Betsey removed to EDINBURGH, Charlotte’s Evangelical Magazine, the suit of black clothes, George IV and William IV, the French revolution of July 1830, and — the line the whole argument rests on — “KIND LOVE FROM YOUR SISTERS & BROTHER”. ALL CONFIRMED FROM THE FILE. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview yes | Was Dr Philip only the courier? | NO — HE IS IN THE ROOM, AND HE IS PLEASED “Dr Philip was exceedingly glad to hear of you being accepted by the L.M.S. as you may well imagine, HE HAS PROMISED TO WRITE TO YOU A LETTER BY THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY.” This archive had him as a man carrying an envelope. HE IS IN LONDON IN AUGUST 1830, he has heard the news, and he undertakes to write to George himself. THAT LETTER, IF IT WAS WRITTEN, IS ANOTHER DOCUMENT WITH GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE’S NAME ON IT, and the place to look is the CWM archive at SOAS that holds his journal. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview part | Who is the “John” the clothes are for? | VERY PROBABLY THE COMMANDANT, AGED EIGHT “I have enclosed also a Jacket & waistcoat for John & a further Jacket also for him, tell him HIS OLD FATHER has sent it him, & TO MAKE HASTE TO FILL THEM OUT.” Clothes for a growing child. George Augustus’s eldest son was JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE, BORN 7 JULY 1822 — eight years old in August 1830, and the man who died a commandant at Leeuwberg in 1868. IF THAT IS HIM, THIS IS THE EARLIEST DOCUMENT IN THIS ARCHIVE THAT MENTIONS HIM. “His old father” is the difficulty and is not glossed over: the writer is the boy’s GRANDFATHER. Marked as an inference. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview yes | Does the letter name anybody outside the family? | YES — FIVE PEOPLE, AND NONE OF THEM IS ANYWHERE ELSE HERE Mr & Mrs STANHOPE; Mr WARNER and Mrs WARNER; MRS FIELD AND HER DAUGHTERS, of whom “the eldest, Miss Mary, that was, HAS MARRIED A MR BELLEW, A SURGEON, whom I do not know whether you may recollect”. This archive has had the Soho household entirely through official paper — rate books, a census, the Gazette, a burial register. THESE ARE THE FIRST PEOPLE IN IT WHO SIMPLY KNEW THEM. A surgeon named Bellew marrying a Miss Mary Field about 1829–30 is searchable. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview part | What is the story from The Mirror that he asks his son to check? | TWO PAGES, AND THE STRANGEST THING IN THE LETTER A Scottish colonist, “either Williams, or Williamson”, settled close to the Xhosa; orang-outangs raid his fruit; he shoots a young one that proves to be a chief’s son; weeks later MRS W. IS CARRIED OFF; he suspects a Xhosa chief who had offered oxen and “2 or 3 of his finest caffre women” for her and been refused, whose messenger had said “YOU WILL REPENT OF YOUR OBSTINACY”; he raises a company of soldiers under CAPT JOHNSON and is on the point of war when a witness is produced who saw an orang-outang carrying a woman across the river; the chief then furnishes his own men to help, and after nearly two years she is found living among the animals AS THEIR QUEEN. THE FATHER DOES NOT BELIEVE IT — “here we look upon the Story as a fictious & romance” — and writes to the one man he knows who is actually there to ask “whether that report may be founded in truth, or falsehood”. THE NUMBER OF THE MIRROR HAS NOT BEEN FOUND. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview no | Do the margins give the street address after all? | NO — AND THEY ARE THE ONLY LINES NOT READ Pages two and four carry notes written across the fold about HOW TO DIRECT THE BOX, naming the Revd MR MURRAY and DR PHILIP. They are partly illegible at this resolution and are NOT GUESSED AT. Everything else in four pages has been read. Brunswick Square against Conduit Street remains open. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet yes | Is Sibree’s Register (LMS, 1923) online? | YES — FREE, 225 PAGES, AND THIS ARCHIVE SAID IT WAS NOT A complete PDF at missiology.org.uk. This archive searched the INTERNET ARCHIVE, found nothing under that title, and published “not found”. THAT WAS A NEGATIVE ABOUT ONE SHELF REPORTED AS A NEGATIVE ABOUT THE WORLD — the same fault this archive names on /method/ as the reason a nil return is worthless without a control. The Google Books API refuses this machine outright (HTTP 429 to every query); the ordinary web search found it in one attempt. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet yes | Does it hold George Augustus Kolbe? | YES — ENTRY 278, AND IT IS HIS WHOLE MISSION LIFE “Was previously connected with the GRAAFF REINET MISSIONARY SOCIETY, and laboured AMONG THE SLAVES around Graaff Reinet. Was accepted provisionally by MR. MILES, FEB. 8, 1829, which action was confirmed by the Directors, JULY 29, 1829. First laboured with MR. CLARK, at the BUSHMAN STATION, CALEDON RIVER. Thence proceeded to PHILIPPOLIS, arriving there, MARCH 13, 1831. On MAY 26, 1833, he was ordained by the French missionaries, Messrs. LEMUE, PELLISIER, AND ARBOUSSET. His connection was dissolved by the Directors, JUNE 19, 1837.” Index: service 1829–1837. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet yes | Who was the “Mr Miles” who called at the tailor’s house in 1830? | THE MAN WHO ACCEPTED HIM — NOT A MESSENGER “Accepted PROVISIONALLY BY MR. MILES, Feb. 8, 1829, which action was CONFIRMED BY THE DIRECTORS, July 29, 1829.” Richard Miles was Acting Superintendent of the LMS at Cape Town from 1825, sent to stand in for Dr Philip while Philip was in Britain. AND IT EXPLAINS THE FATHER’S ADVERB: provisionally by Miles, confirmed by the Directors, and a father told his son had been “FULLY accepted”. The letter is using the Society’s own vocabulary correctly, because the officer concerned was in the room. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet part | Does Sibree agree with the DSAB draft? | ON THREE POINTS EXACTLY, AND NOT ON THREE OTHERS AGREE: the Graaff-Reinet society and the slaves, almost word for word; Clark and the Bushman station; the dissolution on 19 June 1837 to the day. DIFFER: acceptance 8 February 1829, not 1828; Philippolis 13 March 1831, which is finer than Schoeman’s “March 1831” and agrees with it; ordination 26 MAY 1833 not the 25th, and by LEMUE, PELLISSIER AND ARBOUSSET — three men, WITH NO CASALIS. Pellissier is source 9 on Schoeman’s own list. BOTH ARE PRINTED WORKS AND NEITHER IS THE MANUSCRIPT; this archive gives both and prefers neither in print. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet no | Was F.W. Kolbe of the Rhenish Mission related to this family? | NO — AND THE LMS’S OWN REGISTER IS THE ONE THAT IS WRONG Sibree, entry 522: “KOLBE, Frederick William. Born, Nov. 3, 1821, in South Africa. SON OF REV. G. A. KOLBE (No. 278).” Died at Cape Town 25 December 1899 aged 78; author of an English–Herero Dictionary. Schoeman: “F.W. Kolbe (1821–99) van die Rynse Sendinggenootskap was NIE aan hierdie familie verwant nie.” SAME MAN, SAME SOCIETY, SAME YEARS. AND HE CANNOT BE ADOPTED ON SIBREE’S WORD: 3 November 1821 agrees with his age at death, and the Settler’s known eldest was born 7 JULY 1822, which agrees with HIS age at death. EIGHT MONTHS APART. Sibree also gives a sister, CHARLOTTE KOLBE born 25 December 1829, who married Rev. William Sykes at Paarl in 1860. NOT ADOPTED, NOT DISMISSED, AND ON THE WORK LIST. RESOLVED THE SAME AFTERNOON. THREE INDEPENDENT WORKS AGAINST SIBREE: the New Catholic Encyclopedia on his son Monsignor F.C. Kolbe — “the son of a WESTPHALIAN (GERMAN) PROTESTANT MISSIONARY who had married the daughter of a member of the London Missionary Society”; S2A3, which names him FRIEDRICH WILHELM KOLBE, Rhenish missionary and Herero scholar, married at Cape Town in 1849 and at Okahandja by April 1850; and DSAB VOL. 5 (1987), which has its own entry on him and was in print five years before Schoeman wrote, which is why the draft marks him with an asterisk. SIBREE HAS TWO KOLBES IN SOUTH AFRICA, ENTRIES 278 AND 522, AND A COMPILER JOINED THEM. Charlotte Kolbe born 25 December 1829 goes with him. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror yes | What does the settler roll actually say? | “KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS 20. CHEMIST. W MARGARET 19.” From Nash’s Settler Handbook, page 98, published in full at 1820settlers.com. HE WAS SIXTEEN — born 7 December 1802 and sailing from Gravesend on 3 December 1819, four days before his seventeenth birthday. SHE WAS SIXTEEN. About three years added to each. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror yes | Is the roll consistent with the marriage allegation? | NO — AND THAT IS THE INTERESTING PART At Shoreditch on 20 January 1819 both swore to being “of the age of Twenty-one Years and upwards”, because a minor could not marry by licence without a parent’s consent. ELEVEN MONTHS LATER HE IS TWENTY AND SHE IS NINETEEN. Nobody twenty-one and upwards in January is twenty in December. THEY WERE NOT MAINTAINING A FICTION; THEY WERE TELLING EACH DOCUMENT WHAT IT NEEDED. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror yes | What became of Owen’s party? | IT COLLAPSED IN 1821, AND IT EXPLAINS THE GAP Fifty-two people, No. 3 on the Colonial Department list, joint-stock and recruited in London by THOMAS OWEN OF 9 CAREY STREET, HORSEFERRY ROAD, WESTMINSTER, correspondence handled by his father the REV J OWEN OF FULHAM. Located at SPANISH REED PLACE near the Kap River. Owen — “this querulous man”, per Special Commissioner Hayward — REFUSED TO DRAW RATIONS FOR HIS PEOPLE; his brother W.S. Owen replaced him; Owen left early in 1821 and the party dispersed. THE SETTLER WAS EIGHTEEN, WITH NO LEADER, NO RATIONS AND NO LOCATION, and the next record of him is the Graaff-Reinet mission about three years later. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror yes | Is there an original roll to go back to? | THREE CAPE ARCHIVES REFERENCES, AND NO SHIP’S RETURN CO 6137/1,4 (the list under Owen’s direction), CO 8543 (Hayward’s notes) and CO 3917 (THE MEMORIAL OF INDEPENDENT SETTLERS ABOARD THE NAUTILUS). A MEMORIAL IS A PETITION AND A PETITION IS SIGNED — that one could carry his signature at seventeen. Nash records that NO AGENT OF TRANSPORTS’ RETURN HAS EVER BEEN TRACED for the Nautilus, so these three are the whole basis of the roll. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror no | Can the story from The Mirror be found? | NO — SEARCHED AND NOT FOUND Two of the father’s four pages go on it and he asks his son to say whether it is true. Searched Google Books and the open web on the story’s own terms — “ourang outang” and “orang outang” with carried off, wife, colonist, Caffre, Mirror, 1829 and 1830 — AND GOOGLE BOOKS RETURNED NO MATCHES AT ALL. Recorded so nobody repeats these terms. NEXT: the runs of The Mirror on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, searched volume by volume rather than by phrase, and the names WILLIAMS or WILLIAMSON with CAPT JOHNSON. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The CWM archive at SOAS — searched, and it is item-level yes | Does SOAS hold anything in George Augustus Kolbe’s own hand? | FOUR JOURNALS, 1828 TO 1834 CWM/LMS/05/05/100 — “Extracts from the Journal of JOHN MELVILL AND GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, during a tour to the north-eastwards of Philippolis, 13–22 NOV 1828”, which is THE MANUSCRIPT BEHIND SOURCE 6 and carries the days of the journey. /102 — extracts, Philippolis, 1828–1831. /106 — Journal, Philippolis, 1831–1834. /108 — Journal, Philippolis, 6 Oct 1832 – Sep 1833. UNTIL THIS AFTERNOON THE SUM OF HIS OWN WORDS IN THIS ARCHIVE WAS ONE SENTENCE QUOTED AT SECOND HAND. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The CWM archive at SOAS — searched, and it is item-level yes | Is the correspondence for the year of the accusation identifiable? | YES — AND IT IS A SINGLE BOX CWM/LMS/05/02/02/044, South Africa 1835, WHICH THE CATALOGUE SAYS CONTAINS “GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, PHILIPPOLIS” among its correspondents; /046, South Africa 1836; and the 1837 file. The sub-series note gives the boxes: 1835 is Box 14B and 1836–1837 IS BOX 15. The accusation and the dismissal are in one box, and this archive has been repeating a one-sentence summary of them. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The CWM archive at SOAS — searched, and it is item-level no | Is there a portrait of a Kolbe at SOAS? | YES — AND IT IS THE WRONG KOLBE CWM/LMS/01/09/02/01/525, Missionary Portraits — “SYKES, CHARLOTTE NÉE KOLBE (S. Africa 1858–1887)”. She is the sister of the Rhenish missionary Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe, whom the same afternoon’s work placed outside this family. RECORDED SO THAT NOBODY HERE MAKES SIBREE’S MISTAKE IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The CWM archive at SOAS — searched, and it is item-level yes | Does the archive corroborate the F.W. Kolbe resolution? | YES — FROM A FOURTH DIRECTION Reports by Frederick Kolbe from PAARL in 1867, 1868, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873 and 1875 and from STELLENBOSCH in 1876; incoming letters from GEORGE in 1854, Paarl from 1858 and Cape Town to 1899; and in the 1893 file, “Frederick Kolbe, Cape Town — DEATH OF MRS KOLBE [NÉE ISABELLA MARIA ELLIOTT]”. That is the S2A3 entry matched to the person, in the Society’s own files. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted yes | Is this the same circular trap as the MyHeritage result? | NO — AND THE DIFFERENCE IS THE WHOLE POINT The earlier search returned THIS FAMILY’S OWN TREE handed back through MyHeritage, which corroborates nothing. THE COMMANDANT’S TWELVE CHILDREN HAVE NEVER BEEN IN THIS ARCHIVE AT ALL — his 1868 obituary counts them and names none, and a work-list row has stood for a fortnight asking for the estate that would name them. A collaborative tree naming them is INDEPENDENT of anything here. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted yes | Does it agree with anything this archive can check? | TWICE, AND NEITHER IS A COINCIDENCE THE COMPILERS COULD HAVE ENGINEERED One: the profile gives his wife as MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTE and his daughter as ROSA MAGDALENE — and this archive holds, from the BLOEMFONTEIN BAPTISM REGISTER, a ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE baptised 1890 to Frederik Fortuna Kolbe and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA McCABE. Two: it lists MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING ROUSSEAU as his daughter, and this archive holds TAB MHG 5450/68 under exactly that name — AN ORPHAN INDEX ENTRY THAT NOW HAS A FATHER. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted part | Is it therefore evidence? | NO, AND TWELVE PEOPLE ARE NOT BEING ENTERED ON IT One source attached, four profile managers, added in 2014. IT IS A LIST WORTH WORKING, WHICH IS WHAT SCHOEMAN’S BIBLIOGRAPHY WAS. The difference between a tree and a source is not that one is always wrong — it is that ONE HAS TO BE TESTED AND THE OTHER HAS ALREADY BEEN. The document that tests it is VAB MHG M777 at Bloemfontein, already on the work list, and it is now a better thing to order because there is something to check it against. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted part | Does it settle the Kolbe–McCabe question this archive raised? | IT OFFERS AN ANSWER, AND IT IS THE OBVIOUS ONE The Commandant’s widow ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE married FRANCIS McCABE, Landdrost of Bloemfontein, about April 1871; McCabe died in February 1872 leaving “four sons and two daughters, BESIDES A LARGE FAMILY OF STEP-CHILDREN”. Her son then married a McCABE. THE TWO HOUSEHOLDS WERE ONE FOR ELEVEN MONTHS. This archive called it a possible coincidence; on this reading it is a stepfamily marrying within itself, which is ordinary. NOT PROVED — the marriage record would prove it. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted no | Is this Frederik Fortunatus one of the men this archive already holds? | NO — HE IS A FOURTH OF THE NAME Born 22 October 1857 at BLOEMFONTEIN and dead there 18 December 1930. NOT the Settler’s tenth child (born 1839 at Bethulie, died 23 November 1929 at Utrecht), and NOT Frederick Fortunatus Downing Kolbe (died 1918, TAB MHG 40293). THIS ARCHIVE WITHDREW A CLAIM WITHIN THE HOUR ONCE BEFORE over two men sharing a name in one town, and the caution is recorded before anything is built on him. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted yes | Had this archive ever opened the FamilySearch FAMILY TREE? | NO — NOT ONCE, IN A FORTNIGHT OF USING FAMILYSEARCH DAILY Every FamilySearch citation on this site is a RECORD — an indexed register entry with an ark. THE FAMILY TREE IS A DIFFERENT THING, a single collaborative tree the whole site edits, and /sources/ lists it among the leads. people.js mentions it ZERO TIMES. David opened it and sent the link. THE PEDIGREE AT LJNY-BLP RUNS STRAIGHT UP THIS ARCHIVE’S OWN SPINE — Frederick Fortunatus Kolbe 1859–1930, John Gerson Eliezar Kolbe 1822–1868, George Augustus Kolbe 1802–1844, John Gottlob Kolbe 1765–1845 — and it has those three generations right. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted yes | Does the FamilySearch tree match documents held here? | THREE MORE TIMES ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE 1824–1896 against VAB MHG M777, her 1896 estate. PIETER GERHARDUS CLOETE ROUSSEAU 1898–1968, husband of Margaretha Maria Downey Kolbe, against TAB MHG 5450/68 — THE ESTATE YEAR IS HIS DEATH YEAR. ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE 1890–1946 against her 1890 Bloemfontein baptism, already held. TWO ORPHAN INDEX REFERENCES HAVE ACQUIRED PEOPLE AND A BAPTISM HAS ACQUIRED A DEATH. Still not evidence; it is a lead list that has passed the test. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted no | Where does it lose? | MARY LARMAN, AND NOT NARROWLY The tree gives her 1768–1819. This archive holds TNA RG 4/4631 FOLIO 62 — DIED 2 AUGUST 1814, BURIED 5 AUGUST, AGED 46. A tree’s year against a burial entry giving the day, the burial and the age is no contest. AND THE TWO TREES DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER on Frederik Fortunatus — Geni 1857, FamilySearch 1859 — WHICH SHOWS THEY ARE NOT INDEPENDENT WITNESSES. Where they agree, one may have copied the other. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage yes | Is there a Downing–Pooley marriage before civil registration? | YES — EXACTLY ONE, AND IT IS IN DEVON JOHN DOWNING married MARY POOLEY, 10 MAY 1802, WELCOMBE (BISHOP’S TRANSCRIPTS), DEVON, Anglican — Devon Marriages and Banns, GBPRS/M/514168016/1, transcribed by the Devon Family History Society. Against 231,425 Downing records and 65,460 Pooley records in the Life Events collection, TWELVE match the pair at all, of which three are indexed marriages and the other two are 1882 and 1955. THE DATE IS NINE MONTHS AND THIRTEEN DAYS BEFORE MARGARET DOWNING’S BIRTH ON 23 FEBRUARY 1803. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage yes | Does the county fit? | YES, AND FROM A DIRECTION THAT KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT This archive’s own family tree puts the Downings in DEVON — Edward Downing m. Mary HEARD, Thomas Downing m. Mary TRICK, John Trick m. Margaret HOOPER. Trick, Heard and Hooper are Devon names and WELCOMBE IS A NORTH DEVON PARISH ON THE CORNISH BORDER. The tree and the register agree about the county independently. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage part | Can it be tied to Margaret Downing? | NO — AND THE DOCUMENT THAT WOULD DO IT IS NOT THERE SHE WAS BORN IN LONDON. A couple married in a remote North Devon parish with a child in London nine months later is possible and is not shown. NO BAPTISM FOR MARGARET DOWNING IN LONDON IN 1803 WAS FOUND — the collection was searched by name and year and returns nothing of the kind. A baptism naming both parents is what would settle it. THIS IS A CANDIDATE AND NOT A FINDING. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage no | Was the name that launched the search even right? | THE TWO TREES DO NOT AGREE The FamilySearch Family Tree calls her MARY KING POOLEY. The family tree this archive was built from calls her MARY P KING — SURNAME KING, WITH AN INITIAL. So the “P” may be Pooley, or “Pooley” may be somebody’s later reading of the “P”. THE SEARCH MAY HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR A SURNAME THAT IS NOT HERS. They differ on her husband too: John Paul Downing is 1769–1839 in one and 1765–1839 in the other. HER OWN DEATH NOTICE, THE ONLY DOCUMENT EVER ASKED, SAYS “BOTH DEAD” AND NAMES NEITHER PARENT. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage yes | Does the FindMyPast Keywords filter actually filter? | YES — TESTED WITH A NONSENSE VALUE The driver notes record that KeywordsPlace and YearOfBirth are SCORED and do not restrict. Keywords had never been tested. LastName=downing with Keywords=zqxwvkj returns 0 where the same search without it returns 231,425, and with Keywords=pooley returns 12. KEYWORDS FILTERS. Added to the driver note, because a filter that only ranks is how a nil return becomes a lie. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage no | And under KING, the other surname the trees give her? | NOTHING THAT FITS — AND THE KEYWORD FIELD IS POISONED “King” as a keyword returns 144 records for 1790–1806 and ALMOST EVERY ONE IS KING’S LYNN. A surname that is also half a place-name destroys the field. Run properly on SpouseLastName, DOWNING × KING for 1790–1806 RETURNS THREE RECORDS AND THEY ARE ONE NORFOLK EVENT INDEXED THREE TIMES — a MARY DOWNING at King’s Lynn and Norwich in 1790. Wrong person, wrong county, wrong direction. UNDER EITHER SURNAME THERE IS NO LONDON MARRIAGE FOR A JOHN DOWNING in the years this family needs. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage yes | Is there a better filter field than Keywords for a marriage? | YES — SpouseLastName, AND IT IS NOT IN THE DRIVER NOTES The marriage transcripts carry SpouseFirstName and SpouseLastName as fieldIds, and SpouseLastName WORKS AS A FILTER: a nonsense value returns 0, “pooley” returns exactly the three indexed Downing–Pooley marriages. IT IS THE RIGHT TOOL FOR A MARRIAGE SEARCH and it is immune to the King’s Lynn problem. Added to the driver note in notes/for-the-estate.md, along with the finding that KEYWORDS FILTERS where KeywordsPlace only scores. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage no | Is there a London baptism for Margaret Georgina Elizabeth Downing in 1803? | NO — AND AFTER A PROPER CONTROL, THAT IS A REAL NEGATIVE Five Margaret Downing baptisms exist for 1801–1805: two at Edinburgh and three at MADELEY, SHROPSHIRE, one event indexed three times. NONE IN LONDON. Under “Georgina”: zero. Nonsense-forename control: zero. THIS ARCHIVE FIRST CONCLUDED THE COVERAGE WAS AT FAULT, ON THE GROUND THAT ONLY ONE OF 1,131 DOWNING BAPTISMS IN 1800–1806 IS IN LONDON. THAT WAS THE WRONG CONTROL. Counting one surname by county tests where the Downings were, not whether the index reaches London. THE RIGHT CONTROL IS A COMMON NAME: of 100 SMITH baptisms in the same window, THIRTY-SEVEN ARE LONDON, MIDDLESEX OR WESTMINSTER. THE COVERAGE IS EXCELLENT. So the nil stands, and it means either she was not baptised in an Anglican London parish or HER FAMILY WAS NOT A LONDON FAMILY — which is what a couple married in North Devon in May 1802 with a child born in London in February 1803 would look like. Logged as a correction. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage no | Is DOWNING a West Country surname, as the Welcombe case would like it to be? | NO — AND THIS ARCHIVE TOOK HALF ITS OWN ARGUMENT BACK The Welcombe candidate rested partly on county: the family tree puts the Downings in Devon through TRICK, HEARD and HOOPER, and Welcombe is a North Devon parish. IF THE SURNAME ITSELF WERE WEST COUNTRY THAT WOULD STRENGTHEN IT. A sample of 160 of the 1,131 baptisms, tallied by county: YORKSHIRE (WEST RIDING) 20, SUFFOLK 16, NORFOLK 16, CORNWALL 14, Staffordshire 9, Yorkshire 9, Shropshire 7, DEVON 5. DOWNING IS A NATIONAL NAME and the West Country is about an eighth of it, behind Yorkshire. The Devon argument stands only on the tree’s own specific ancestry and gains nothing from the geography of the name. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage no | Did the Welcombe couple stay in Devon? | YES — AND THAT ENDS IT Every Downing record in the parish of Welcombe: 1792 Ann burial, 1792 William marriage, 1793 Thomas baptism, 1795 Damaris baptism, 1798 Mary baptism, 1800 Peter burial, 1801 Philip baptism, 1802 JOHN MARRIAGE, 1803 JOHN BAPTISM, 1806 William baptism, 1809 Emmey baptism, 1810 Elizabeth baptism, 1834 MARY BURIAL, 1839 John burial. THEY BAPTISED A CHILD THERE THE YEAR AFTER THE WEDDING AND KEPT DOING IT. The Pooleys are equally rooted — baptisms 1792, 1801, 1813 and a burial in 1810. MARGARET WAS BORN IN LONDON IN FEBRUARY 1803. The Welcombe couple never went anywhere. WITHDRAWN. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage part | Where did “Pooley” come from, then? | VERY PROBABLY FROM THIS SAME SEARCH, RUN BY SOMEBODY ELSE The last line of the Welcombe list is A MARY DOWNING BURIED THERE IN 1834 — and both trees give Margaret’s mother as dying in 1834. A researcher hunting her parents finds THE ONLY DOWNING–POOLEY MARRIAGE IN ENGLAND and A MARY DOWNING BURIAL IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT YEAR IN THE SAME TINY PARISH, and attaches both. THAT IS THE SEARCH THIS ARCHIVE RAN TODAY, REACHING THE SAME TWO RECORDS, AND STOPPING ONE QUESTION EARLIER. So “Mary King Pooley, 1768–1834” is likely a reconstruction rather than a record — which also explains why this archive’s own copy of the tree calls her MARY P KING. Two compilers, the same fragments, two different guesses. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The tailor’s own marriage — a controlled negative, and an Act of Parliament no | Is there a Kolbe–Larman marriage in FindMyPast? | NO — ZERO, BOTH DIRECTIONS KOLBE × LARMAN and LARMAN × KOLBE both return 0 across the whole Life Events collection, using the SpouseLastName filter. A nonsense spouse also returns 0, so the filter is restricting rather than ranking. THE TREE’S “MARY LARMAN” HAS NO MARRIAGE BEHIND IT IN THIS INDEX. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The tailor’s own marriage — a controlled negative, and an Act of Parliament yes | Does the index reach this family’s parish at all? | YES — AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE NIL WORTH ANYTHING The control is a marriage this archive already holds: the eldest Kolbe daughter married GEORGE KOTTLICH KOHLBECK at ST ANNE’S, SOHO in 1811. FindMyPast indexes the BANNS — “1810 · KOHLBECK · St Anne, Soho, Middlesex · Westminster Banns” — a year before the wedding, in the family’s own church. THE COVERAGE REACHES THIS HOUSEHOLD, THIS PARISH AND THIS PERIOD, so the Larman zero is not a hole in the index. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The tailor’s own marriage — a controlled negative, and an Act of Parliament no | Could they have married in the German Lutheran church instead? | NO — CLOSED BY STATUTE, NOT BY SEARCHING Under HARDWICKE’S MARRIAGE ACT OF 1753 — which this archive already invokes for the sworn ages at Shoreditch in 1819 — every marriage in England except those of QUAKERS AND JEWS had to be performed in an ANGLICAN PARISH CHURCH to be legal. Foreign Protestant congregations were not exempt. THE SAVOY CONGREGATION COULD BURY THEM AND BAPTISE THEM; IT COULD NOT MARRY THEM. This archive holds five of their burials in TNA RG 4/4631 and had never asked whether a marriage could be there. It could not. |
| 20 Sep 2026 | The tailor’s own marriage — a controlled negative, and an Act of Parliament part | So where is it? | THREE DOORS LEFT, AND THE LIKELIEST IS NOT IN ENGLAND (1) An English parish FindMyPast does not index — possible; London coverage is wide, not complete. (2) “LARMAN” IS SIMPLY WRONG — the person record here has always said her surname is not known, the name comes from the family tree alone, AND THE SAME TREE WAS CAUGHT TODAY GIVING MARGARET DOWNING’S MOTHER TWO DIFFERENT SURNAMES IN TWO VERSIONS. (3) THEY DID NOT MARRY IN ENGLAND: he was born in Württemberg in 1765, gave his birth county as “FOREIGN” in the 1841 census, and the first child of the house was baptised in London in 1792 when he was twenty-seven. WHERE HE WAS BEFORE 1792 THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT KNOW. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here yes | Is there a published descendant report for this family that nobody here has read? | YES — FORTY-ONE PAGES, FREE, AND FOURTEEN YEARS OLD “Kolbe Family Tree”, southafricanbarryfamilytree.wordpress.com, 29 December 2012: a Register Report for JOHAN GOTTLOB KOLBE, the London tailor, running the descent out through the Barrys and crediting ANNE LEHMKUHL as researcher. This archive cites eGGSA twenty-seven times and had never seen this. It is a compiled tree and is treated as one. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here yes | Does it corroborate the 1819 marriage this archive holds only as an allegation? | YES, AND IT ADDS NOTHING — WHICH WAS WORTH CHECKING BEFORE SAYING OTHERWISE It gives 20 January 1819 at ST LEONARD, SHOREDITCH. That looked at first like the parish row 119 is writing to Grahamstown for. It is not: this archive's own sources already record the allegation as “20 Jan 1819, St Leonard Shoreditch”. The report agrees with a document already held. A second witness to a fact is not a new fact. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here part | Does it name a child of the Settler this archive does not hold? | YES — JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE Listed ninth of thirteen. There is no Casmier, Casimir or Kasimir anywhere in this archive's people. FROM A COMPILED TREE AND NOT ADOPTED — but it is a name, and names are testable in the Colesberg and Burgersdorp registers this archive already reads. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here part | Does it explain the forename RECTOR, which this archive has never been able to place? | POSSIBLY, AND IT IS THE BEST THING IN THE REPORT This archive holds ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY, baptised at Burgersdorp in 1883, a great-grandson of the Settler, and has recorded the Kolbe in his name without ever accounting for the Rector. The report lists PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE as two separate children where this archive holds a single PETER BENJAMIN KOLBE with no dates and the note “Of the Kolbe children”. A great-uncle called Rector would explain a great-nephew called Rector. THIS IS A NAMESAKE ARGUMENT AND NOT A PROOF, and it may instead be one man split in two by a compiler. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here no | Where does it conflict with documents this archive actually holds? | THREE PLACES, AND THE DOCUMENT WINS EACH TIME MARGARET DOWNING born 23 December 1803, against the Burgersdorp stone's “BORN IN LONDON 23 FEBRUARY 1803”. Her death placed at BARKLY EAST, against the same stone's “DIED AT BURGHERSDORP”. And JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE dead on 4 April 1868, against the Grahamstown Journal's 3 April — the date the paper itself notes was his wedding anniversary. The report does supply “25” where the stone's day will not resolve, but a compiled tree is not the witness that settles a digit a photograph refuses. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here no | Is it internally consistent? | NOT EVERYWHERE, AND THE ARITHMETIC SHOWS IT CATHERINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE is given born 14 November 1824, died 7 July 1901, “At 75 years and 8 months”. Those two dates are seventy-six years and seven months apart. If the age is right the birth is November 1825; if the birth is right the age is wrong by eleven months. A report that carries its own arithmetic can be checked against itself, and this one fails the check in at least one place. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here blocked | Is there anything in the genealogy.com forum thread on GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE? | UNKNOWN — IT IS BEHIND BOT PROTECTION AND WAS NOT READ genealogy.com/forum/regional/countries/topics/southafrica/5263/ is a thread titled for the Settler by name, and it may hold descendant correspondence. It cannot be read from here. A direct fetch returns two bytes, an ordinary fetch returns HTTP 403, and a browser lands on a Cloudflare interstitial. Working around bot protection is not something this archive will do, so the thread is recorded as unread rather than as empty. A null from a challenge page is not a null. It opens normally in an ordinary browser — this is a two-minute job for a person and an impossible one from here. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: the thread is public and the block is a bot check, not a paywall — so it needs a pair of human eyes on the page rather than a fetch. David opening the URL in his own browser and pasting the thread would settle it in a minute, and that is the whole remedy. Failing that, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine may hold a capture taken before the bot check was added. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa no | Is graves.co.za a source this archive should be using? | NO — THE DOMAIN IS PARKED It answers HTTP 200 with 114 bytes — a single <script> whose window.onload sets window.location.href to /lander — and /lander returns an empty reply. A 200 and a redirect script is not a website. It is recorded so that nobody adds it to a list of places to look. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa no | Does FindAGrave hold graves of this family in South Africa? | NO, AND THE CONTROL IS ONE OF OUR OWN STONES GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE OF WAKKERSTROOM died 28 September 1954 and this archive holds a photograph of his stone. A FindAGrave search for KOLBE died 1954 ±1 returns 119 records and not one of them is South African — Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Dresden, Vienna, Prenzlau. The man whose grave we can see is not in it. So FindAGrave's South African coverage does not reach this family, and any negative it returns is about FindAGrave. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa no | Is there a Willem Kolbe on FindAGrave dying about 1941? | NO — BUT READ THE ROW ABOVE BEFORE USING THAT firstname=Willem&lastname=Kolbe&deathyear=1941±5 returns no matches, and the filter is genuinely restricting: the same search without the forename returns 678. So the nil is real as a statement about the index. It is not evidence that the General has no grave, because the index does not reach the country he is buried in. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa no | Did the location filter do what the page said it was doing? | NO, AND IT LIED TWICE IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS First: locationId=country_204 is MALAWI. Searching BOTHA with it returned exactly one record — Zomba Town Cemetery, Malawi — while the page displayed a chip reading “South Africa ×”. Second: dropping the id and passing only location=South+Africa makes the filter silently do nothing at all — 7,116 Kolbe results from Germany, the United States, Australia and Egypt, still under a chip reading “South Africa”. THE DISPLAYED FILTER IS NOT THE APPLIED FILTER. Had I taken the first result at face value I would have written “no Kolbe graves in South Africa” off a query about Malawi. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa yes | What is the rule to carry away from this? | A FILTER THAT CANNOT BE SEEN WORKING HAS NOT BEEN SEEN WORKING Both faults produced confident, plausible, well-formatted answers. The Mazza archive hit the same shape at Antenati, where fq= and facets= are accepted and ignored and the unfiltered count comes back looking like a filtered one. Test the filter with a query whose answer you already know, in the same request shape, before you trust anything it returns — and prefer a control drawn from your own holdings, because it tests coverage and filtering at once. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector — testing the two names the 2012 compiled report has and this archive does not blocked | Is there a baptism for JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE, listed ninth of the Settler's thirteen children? | NOT ANSWERED — NO REGISTER WAS REACHED Nothing was searched, because nothing could be. The registers that would settle it are on FamilySearch, and FamilySearch answered the search URL with its sign-in page. This archive does not enter credentials. No negative is recorded against the name, because no search of any register happened — see the row below for what this nearly became. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: David signed in, or row 93's FamilySearch affiliate library, which is already open for a different film. 21 SEPTEMBER, LATER — THE REASON GIVEN FOR THIS BLOCK IS PROBABLY WRONG. It was recorded here that FamilySearch answered with its sign-in page and therefore that the account was signed out and only David could unblock it. The Lerena session, chasing the same service the same afternoon, has shown that the account was never signed out — another session ran the same searches in the same minutes and got 3,652 and 3,967 with the account name in the nav bar. Each browser context carries its own cookie jar, and one can lose auth and recover by itself. SO THE REMEDY IS A FRESH TAB, NOT A PERSON, and this row should be retried before it is treated as needing anybody. It could not be retried here because Chrome became unreachable. The verdict stays blocked because no register was in fact reached; what is withdrawn is the reason. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector — testing the two names the 2012 compiled report has and this archive does not blocked | Are PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE two children, or one Peter Benjamin split in two? | NOT ANSWERED — AND THE TREES THAT REPEAT IT ARE SHUT TOO The paper that settles it is a baptism, and no register was reached. The compiled report is not an independent witness to itself, so the question was put to Geni, which holds a George Augustus Kolbe page — Geni serves nothing to a fetch and nothing to a browser here, returning an empty body both ways. eGGSA's gravestone library — this archive's usual free route, and a gravestone naming a Rector in that generation would answer it as well as a baptism — refused navigation outright. So all three routes were shut, and none of them shut in a way that says anything about the names. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector — testing the two names the 2012 compiled report has and this archive does not void | Does “Rector Kolbe”, “Casmier Kolbe” or “Peter Benjamin Kolbe” appear in any digitised text on archive.org? | NO RESULT, AND IT IS NOT A NEGATIVE — THE ENDPOINT DOES NOT EXIST This is the trap this archive logged in row 132 and it caught the archive again within the day. Three full-text queries returned empty bodies, which reads exactly like three nil returns. A control was run before any of it was believed, and the control is the only reason this row is not a published negative. ia-pub-fts-api.archive.org and ia-fts.archive.org both answer HTTP 000 — no connection at all, and the newer services/search/beta/page_production/scrape.json answers HTTP 404. Meanwhile archive.org/advancedsearch.php answers HTTP 200 with 3,383 bytes and archive.org/download answers 302, so the host is reachable and it is the full-text API that is gone. Archive.org's full text is no longer searchable by API from here; it can still be searched by downloading a known item and grepping it, which is what worked for The Mirror. A search you could not run is not a search that found nothing, and the difference is one control. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything yes | Does FindMyPast hold German parish marriages at all, or only Württemberg as a birthplace in emigration records? | IT HOLDS THEM — GERMANY MARRIAGE INDEX 1558–1929 This archive had written FindMyPast off for German registers and that was wrong. Searching parish marriages for the forename Gottlieb alone, 1785–1795, returned 5,918 results dominated by a set called “Germany Marriage Index 1558–1929” — a German marriage index, not an emigration field. It holds 338 Kolbe marriages. Its records carry both parties, the year and the parish: Agnes Kolbe × Jerg Raisch, 1685, Evangelisch, Groetzingen, Schwarzwaldkreis, Wuerttemberg, and Albrecht Jonathon Kolbe, 1741, Knittlingen, Evangelisch, Neckar, Wrtt. So the index reaches Württemberg, and it holds Kolbes there. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything no | Is there a Gottlieb Kolbe marriage in Germany between 1778 and 1798? | NO — AND THIS ONE IS CONTROLLED Eleven Kolbe marriages exist in that twenty-year window and all eleven were read. Anton (1780, Massow, Pommern); Christian Johann Anton (1797, Hausberge, Westfalen); David Friederich (1780, Halle Stadt, Westfalen); David Friedrich (1792, Bielefeld-Altstadt); Franz Wilhelm (1786, an infantry regiment at Bielefeld-Wedel); Gotfried August Christian (1785, Herford); Henrich Eberhard (1778, Bielefeld-Altstadt); Johann Friedrich (1793, Berlin); Johann Sebastian (1791, Berlin); Sibilla Wilhelmina (1785, Duesseldorf); Sussanna Elisabeth (1793, Duesseldorf). No Gottlieb, and not one of them in Württemberg — the window's coverage is entirely Prussian. The year filter demonstrably works, cutting 338 to 11. So the nil is real and it is narrow: it says this index has no Gottlieb Kolbe marrying in those years, and that its coverage in those years does not reach the region the tailor came from. It does not say he did not marry in Württemberg. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything void | Can the Germany Marriage Index be filtered by place? | NO — THE FILTER RETURNS 0 TO EVERYTHING, INCLUDING PLACES VISIBLE IN ITS OWN RESULTS This is the fault that produced a published negative, and it takes three lines to prove. place=wuerttemberg returns 0 — against two Württemberg records read from the unfiltered set minutes earlier. place=knittlingen returns 0, against a Knittlingen record read from the same page. And place=westfalen returns 0, when seven of the eleven records in the window above are Westphalian. A filter that answers 0 for a place printed in its own results is not filtering, and every place-filtered search on this dataset is worthless whatever it returns. The year filter and the dataset filter both work; only place is dead. The general rule, which this archive has now met twice in one day: before believing a filter's nil, search for something you have already seen with your own eyes. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything part | Does FindMyPast hold a German BAPTISM index as well as a marriage one? | YES — GERMANY BIRTH AND BAPTISM INDEX 1558–1898, WITH 952 KOLBE ENTRIES This is the collection that could name the tailor's parents. He was born in Württemberg in 1765 and this archive has nothing whatever between that birth and the first London baptism of 1792 — twenty-seven years. A baptism entry in this index gives the parish and the parents. 952 Kolbe entries exist in it. Seen in passing on a wider search, with the record set named beside each: a Kolbe born 1763 at Deutsch Reformirte Kirche, Prenzlau, Brandenburg; Friderich Wilhelm Kolbe, 1764, Evangelisch, Bielefeld-Altstadt, Westfalen; Joh. Wilh. Kolbe, 1764, Evangelisch, Duesseldorf Stadt, Rheinland; and two Maria Dorothea Kolbes, 1764, Brandenburg (Havel). NOT YET READ FOR WÜRTTEMBERG. The 952 were not gone through, and nothing is claimed about whether a Gottlieb or Gottlob is among them. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything void | Can a FindMyPast record set be searched by dataset AND year together? | NO — COMBINING THEM RETURNS 0, AND THAT IS WHAT PRODUCED THE ZERO ABOVE Three measurements make it certain. datasetname=germany birth and baptism index 1558-1898 + lastname=kolbe alone returns 952. Add yearofbirth=1765 with any offset and it returns 0; use the generic year=1765 instead and it also returns 0. But sourcecategory=parish baptisms + lastname=kolbe + yearofbirth=1765 — the same year filter, without the dataset name — returns 619, and German index entries dated 1763 and 1764 are plainly among them. So the year filter works and the dataset filter works, and they annihilate each other. This is the same shape as the q.filmNumber trap already recorded for FamilySearch — a term that filters alone and is discarded, or poisons the query, the moment another joins it. The way round is to filter by sourcecategory and the year, then read the record set off each row. Recorded because a 0 from this combination looks exactly like a nil return and is not one. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector, answered out of this archive's own shelves yes | Did JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE, ninth of thirteen in the 2012 Barry report, exist? | YES — AND HE IS NAMED IN BOTH HIS PARENTS' DEATH NOTICES Answered without leaving the building, after a day of trying to reach registers that were all shut. The Settler's death notice, signed M. Kolbe at Colesberg, January 1845, names ten children and JOHAN CASIMIR is the fifth. Margaret Downing's notice of 25 November 1867 names him again among the survivors — the document marks Mary Elizabeth “(dead)” and does not mark him — so he was alive at about twenty-three. Both were transcribed here on 10 September. He was missing only from people.js, which is where the search had been run. He now has a record, and the report's “Casmier” is a third spelling beside the family list's “Casiner”. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector, answered out of this archive's own shelves part | Are PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE two children, or one man split in two? | ONE MAN — AND HIS FORENAME EXPLAINS A CHILD BORN FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER This archive has carried him as “KEETOR Peter Benjamin”, born 1840 at Colesberg. KEETOR IS NOT A NAME. The Barry report gives the same person as PETER RECTOR KOLBE, and Rector is — so Keetor is Rector misread out of a hand, and on this one point the weaker source is the better witness. The report then lists PETER RECTOR and BENJAMIN as two children where the family list has one man carrying all three forenames, which is the report inflating its own count. WHY IT MATTERS: this archive holds ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY, born 3 November 1882, baptised Burgersdorp 1883, and has never been able to say where his Rector came from. A great-uncle of that name would say it — the same namesake reasoning that traced Fortunatus across three families. NOTHING IS ADOPTED. Two compiled sources agreeing about a forename are still two compiled sources, and the documents do not help him: he is absent from the 1845 notice's ten and from the 1867 notice's survivors, though a boy born in 1840 would have been four when his father died and a minor child's name is exactly what a death notice records. He died before 1845, or he does not belong to this family. A Colesberg baptism for 1840 would settle it. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Casmier and Rector, answered out of this archive's own shelves yes | Does the forename CASIMIR recur in South African Kolbe families? | YES — THREE MEN, IN CIVIL MARRIAGE REGISTERS, ALREADY ON THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN REGISTER PAGE Found in harvest/rows.tsv, which this archive pulled itself and has published at The Register since September. All three out of South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1801–1974 — a civil register, not a tree: JOHAN HENDRIK CASIMIR KOLBE, born 1863, married Gertruida Jacomina Louw; JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, married Elizabeth Geertruida Pienaar; JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, born 1934, married Maria Monica Van Der Walt. A SHARED SURNAME IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP and not one of them is joined to this house. What it does is kill the leading alternative: a compiler who invents a name out of a misread hand does not invent one that three other men are carrying in the same country's marriage registers over ninety years. RECTOR returns nothing in the same harvest — but the Kolbe harvest is 400 of 1,585 records, 25%, so that is a weak nil and is not recorded as a negative. |
| 21 Sep 2026 | Nienaber 1947 — the one page that would carry the General's pedigree, and it is not digitised no | Is P. J. Nienaber, Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek (Voortrekkerpers, 1947), on the Internet Archive? | NO — AND THIS ONE IS CONTROLLED THREE WAYS It matters because it is the source by elimination for the General's descent. The Afrikaans Wikipedia article on Generaal Willem Johannes Kolbe cites Nienaber p. 139 and a Fourie piece without saying which carries what; the Fourie piece was read here in full and has no genealogy in it at all, so the pedigree — father J. G. E. Kolbe, mother Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, grandparents George Augustus Kolbe and Margaret Downing — rests on a page nobody here has seen. Searched: title:("Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek") returns 0, and a loose Nienaber AND biografiese returns 0. THREE CONTROLS, because a zero is worth nothing without them. title:("Dictionary of South African Biography") returns 5, including dictionaryofsout0005unse — the exact identifier row 137 found by another route, so the query shape is right. title:("Afrikaanse") returns 570, so Afrikaans titles are not invisible to this index. And Voortrekkerpers itself returns 2 items, so the publisher is not absent either. The endpoint is the one that works — archive.org's full-text API is gone, but advancedsearch.php answers, which is the distinction learned earlier the same day. CONCLUSION: unlike DSAB Volume V, which is borrowable, this one is not digitised and needs a library. The realistic holders are the National Library of South Africa by legal deposit and South African university libraries. Nothing about the pedigree is changed by this — it is neither confirmed nor withdrawn, and it stays exactly where row 140 put it. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The two Kolbe–McCabe marriage images, read at last yes | The 1871 image — does the register give Anna Jacoba's condition? | YES — “WEDUWE”, AND SHE IS ENTERED “KOLBE, GEB: VAN DER MERWE” The test named four days ago, answered in one word. DGS 008145483 image 186: ANNA JACOBA KOLBE, GEB: VAN DER MERWE, 46, WEDUWE, no occupation, of LEEUWBERG (BLOEMF.); FRANCIS McCABE, 53, WEDUWNAAR, LANDDROST, of Bloemfontein. By licentie, entry 874, Gustav Radloff V.D.M. She signed her own name. The duplicate person this archive made of her is now withdrawn on a document. FamilySearch 1:1:6ZH1-PJDY, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK8-G98P-6, DGS 008145483 image 186 of 283. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The two Kolbe–McCabe marriage images, read at last no | The 1872 image — does it name Jan Hendrik's father, or Rose Maria's? | NO. THE FORM HAS NO PARENTS' COLUMNS AT ALL A controlled negative about the record set, not about the family. The Free State civil marriage form of 1869–72 runs: No., Datum, Volle naam en toenaam, Ouderdom, Staat, Ambt of beroep, Woning ten tijde des Huwelijks, Huwelijksgeboden of Licentie, Toestemming — and then signatures. Consent is recorded by relationship, not by name: this entry says “Moeder”. So the fathers are not obtainable from this register in any year, and the archive's reason for wanting the image was wrong. Logged as a correction. FamilySearch 1:1:6ZHB-XQ1R, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK8-G98V-M, DGS 008145483 image 221 of 283. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The two Kolbe–McCabe marriage images, read at last part | What the 1872 image gives instead | AN OCCUPATION, A CONDITION, A WITNESS — AND THE FARM JAN HENDRIK KOLBE, 23, VEEBOER, of LEEUWBERG (BLFN.); ROSE MARIA McCABE, 17, residence “Dito”. Both JONGELIEDEN. Married on geboden with the mother's consent. Witness G. A. KOLBE; same minister as the year before. LEEUWBERG IS THE COMMANDANT'S OWN FARM — he died on it in 1868, and the register had put his widow on it in July 1871. A 23-YEAR-OLD KOLBE FARMING THERE IN 1872, MARRYING A GIRL RESIDENT ON THE SAME FARM, IS THE BEST EVIDENCE THIS ARCHIVE HAS that he belongs to that household. IT IS NOT PROOF OF PARENTAGE — a farm is not a father — and the tree's claim stays a tree's claim. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The two Kolbe–McCabe marriage images, read at last part | Is the FamilySearch record attached to a tree person, and to whom? | YES, AND IT CORROBORATES WITHOUT BEING A WITNESS The 1871 record is attached in the Family Tree to ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, 1824–1896, L4QC-25N — the death year matching VAB MHG M777 of 1896, which this archive holds from the Free State estate index. AN ATTACHMENT IS SOMEBODY'S OPINION, NOT A DOCUMENT, and it is recorded here as agreement rather than as evidence. The 1872 record is attached to JAN HENDRIK KOLBE, 1849–1924, L4QF-ZJH, with a Free State civil death registration and several Free State Dutch Reformed church records hanging off the same profile — none read. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name part | Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe — was he born in 1857 or 1859? | BOTH, AND THE TWO TREES ARE NOT THE WITNESSES — TWO DOCUMENTS ARE The disagreement is real and it is not a tree's carelessness. The gravestone at Bloemfontein Memoriam Road Cemetery, photographed 30 September 2018, gives 22 October 1859 – 8 December 1930. The civil death registration (FamilySearch 1:1:81ZN-KW6Z; National Archives of South Africa, Dewetsdorp death records 1930, image 852 of 2,140) gives age 73 at death on 18 December 1930, which puts his birth about 1857. GENI'S “22 OCTOBER 1857” IS A SPLICE — the stone's day and month on the form's year — and matches neither document. NEITHER IS A BAPTISM: an age is what an informant said, a stone is cut afterwards. His baptism is not in the index, and the stone's photograph is behind a paywall, so even its transcription is unchecked. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name no | Does the death form name his parents? | NO — AND FOR THE SAME REASON THE MARRIAGE REGISTER DID NOT The second form this week whose column does not exist. Line 2(a) of the Form of Information of a Death asks for the name of a parent or guardian “if the deceased was under the age of ten”, and he was seventy-something. What it does give: weduwnaar, boer, born in the Orange Free State, died at Bloemspruit, to be buried at Bloemfontein; Dr J. M. de Kock attending; registered 19 December 1930 by J. S. Kruger. The informant signs W. J. PIENAAR of 77 St John's Road, Bloemfontein — and the Commandant's eldest daughter married a Johannes Petrus Pienaar at Bloemfontein in 1860. Suggestive; Pienaar is also one of the commonest names in that district; not adopted. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name yes | Searching the baptism registers on ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE instead of on her husband | SEVEN OF THE TWELVE CHILDREN, FROM FONTS, IN ONE QUERY The method is the finding. Every previous search used the father, whose name is spelled John Gerson Eliezar, Jan Gerson Eliese, Johan Gerson Eliezer, John G E, J G E and John Gerson Elinger across six documents — a name that cannot be searched. HER NAME IS STABLE. Searched on the mother: GEORG AUGUSTUS b. 30 Sep 1845, bapt. Colesberg 8 Mar 1846; WILLEM JOHANNES b. 2 Aug 1847, bapt. Fauresmith 12 Mar 1848; JAN HENDRIK b. 5 Jul 1849, bapt. Fauresmith 9 Oct 1849; PETRUS JACOBUS b. 4 May 1852, bapt. 7 Jun 1852; MARGARETHA ELIZABETH b. 16 Feb 1854, bapt. 2 Apr 1854; ANNA SUSANNA b. 15 Aug 1860, bapt. Bloemfontein 7 Oct 1860; ANNA JACOBA b. 3 Nov 1864, bapt. Bloemfontein 1 Jan 1865. Two more from civil death registrations naming both parents: ANDRIES FREDERICK, b. 1856, d. Bloemfontein 11 Apr 1918, and a PIETER, b. 1852, d. Bloemfontein 7 Nov 1919, who may be Petrus Jacobus under another form. ONLY FOUR ARE ENTERED IN PEOPLE.JS TODAY. The rest are recorded here and deliberately not made into people yet — this archive turned a widow into a daughter four days ago and the discipline is worth more than the speed. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name yes | Is there a daughter named ANNA JACOBA, as well as the widow? | YES — AND SHE IS WHY THE DUPLICATE WAS PLAUSIBLE ANNA JACOBA KOLBE, born 3 November 1864, baptised at Bloemfontein on 1 January 1865, daughter of John G E Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe — named for her mother, as this family names everybody. She married ANDRIES PETRUS SMIT. SO THE ARCHIVE'S 23 SEPTEMBER ERROR WAS NOT A SILLY ONE: there really is a daughter of that name. She was simply six years old at the 1871 marriage, and the image says weduwe and 46. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name part | Two FamilySearch search behaviours worth writing down | A PARENT FILTER THAT RANKS RATHER THAN FILTERS, AND ONE THAT SILENTLY VANISHES First: q.motherGivenName + q.motherSurname does not restrict the result set — it returns 3,499 rows and puts the eleven real ones on top. Past the first page the matches stop and unrelated Transvaal probates begin. Reading a count as a result set would be wrong in both directions. Second: adding q.givenName to that same query drops the mother parameters altogether — 263 rows of every Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe in South Africa, mother ignored. And q.fatherSurname=Kolbe with the same mother terms returns 0. Same shape as the FindMyPast finding in September: filters here annihilate each other silently, and a zero is a statement about the query before it is a statement about the family. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name blocked | The gravestone photograph at BillionGraves | BLOCKED — THE FULL IMAGE IS BEHIND A PAID ACCOUNT The record page offers a 180×135 thumbnail; the high-resolution image requires an account and a subscription. No account was created and none will be — this archive does not sign up to services on David's behalf. So the stone's dates are held here at one remove, from a volunteer's transcription, which matters because the ten-day difference between the stone's death date and the register's is exactly the kind of slip a transcriber makes with “18”. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there no | Is Johan Casimir Kolbe's baptism in the Cape Dutch Reformed registers? | NO — FIFTEEN RECORDS ANSWER CASIMIR IN THE WHOLE COLLECTION AND NONE IS HIS FONT A clean negative on the thing that was asked for. Collection 1478678, South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660–1994, searched for Casimir under Kolbe: fifteen results, of which three are his own membership and banns, two are his children, one is a nephew, and the rest are other families. NO BAPTISM. Same for Peter / Benjamin / Rector: five records in the whole collection, none of them Peter Benjamin. THE NIL IS CONTROLLED AND NOT STRONG — the same collection indexes this family's own 1838 baptism with the father entered as the bare word Kolbe, no forename, so it can lose a child as easily as a parent. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there yes | What Colesberg does have for him | A MEMBERSHIP, BANNS, A WIFE AND SIX CHILDREN — AND A DEATH THAT NAMES BOTH HIS PARENTS Membership at COLESBERG, 31 March 1866, indexed twice. Marriage banns at COLESBERG, 1 May 1867, to ELIZABETH GEERTRUIDA PIENAAR. Children Adriana (Cape register) and Elizabeth Augusta, Anna Sophia, Johanna, George Augustus and Margaret Dewning (Free State registers) — his father's name and his mother's, on two of his own children. Died 11 MARCH 1906 at SMITHFIELD, O.R.C., aged 60, born Cape Colony, son of GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE and MARGARET DOWNING (FamilySearch 1:1:D9SM-K2N2). An estate was filed at Smithfield in 1906 and is not ordered. A man who had no life here at breakfast has a parish, a wife, six children, a deathbed and an estate. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there part | Three birth years, and one of them can be killed from a document already held | 1846 IS IMPOSSIBLE — HE IS ON A DEATH NOTICE SIGNED IN JANUARY 1845 The family list says 1844, Bethulie; the death registration's age of 60 implies 1846; the probate index says 1845. He is the fifth of the ten children named on his father's death notice, signed by his mother at Colesberg in January 1845 — a document this archive transcribed on 10 September. So 1846 is out, on evidence already in the building, and an age at death was always the weakest of the three. 1844 or 1845 remains open and the font would close it. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there yes | Two men found while looking for a third | THE GENERAL'S DEATH REGISTRATION, AND JAN HENDRIK'S ESTATE WILLEM JOHANNES KOLBE, died 23 APRIL 1941 at MERIBA, BLOEMFONTEIN, born 1848 at PHILIPPOLIS — a civil register arriving independently at the death year and the birthplace the Afrikaans dictionary gives for the general. He married Christina Cath Petronella Pretorius on 8 May 1880. JOHN HENRY KOLBE — Orange Free State probate 1924, FICKSBURG, died 18 JANUARY 1924, born 1850 Bloemfontein — Jan Hendrik's estate and the date of his death, which this archive had only from a tree attachment this morning. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE — probate 1905, died 29 April 1905, born 1846 Colesburg — the Commandant's eldest. None of the three estates is ordered. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there yes | A thing this archive already held and had filed as unrelated | ITS OWN REGISTER PAGE HAS CARRIED HIS MARRIAGE SINCE SEPTEMBER On 21 September this archive wrote of three Johan Casimir Kolbes in its own harvested register that “A SHARED SURNAME IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP and not one of them is joined to this house.” The second of the three — JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, married Elizabeth Geertruida Pienaar — is the Settler's son. The evidence was on this site, correctly transcribed, correctly refused, and six days early. THE RULE WAS RIGHT AND THE VERDICT WAS PREMATURE: not joined and not joinable are different findings, and only one of them should ever be written down. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The same URL, 3,499 results and then 0, forty minutes apart blocked | Does a signed-out FamilySearch session return an honest zero? | NO. IT RETURNS “No Results Found” AND A COUNT OF 0 This archive has warned about this since 21 September on a peer's report, and today it happened here, controlled, by accident. The identical search URL — Kolbe, mother Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, South Africa — returned 3,499 results in the morning and 0 forty minutes later, on the same machine, in the same minute of the same afternoon. The only thing that changed was the browser context: the pane restarted with an empty cookie jar. The page does carry a banner — create a free account or sign in to see all available results — so it is not a pure fabrication; but the result count says 0 and the body says No Results Found, and a reader skimming for a number gets a false negative. THE DOCUMENTED REMEDY WAS TRIED FIRST AND DID NOT WORK. The estate's rule is before asking a person to fix something, open a second tab; a fresh tab in the same pane is signed out too, because the loss is the pane's and not the tab's. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The same URL, 3,499 results and then 0, forty minutes apart part | What this costs, and what it does not | NOTHING ALREADY FOUND IS IN DOUBT Every FamilySearch result recorded today was taken from the signed-in session and is unaffected. What is blocked is the rest: the arks for five of the Commandant's children were not captured before the session dropped, so those five are still not entered as people, and the three estate files found this afternoon cannot be opened. NO ZERO RECORDED TODAY CAME FROM THE SIGNED-OUT SESSION — the only zeros here are the Cape baptism searches for Johan Casimir and Peter Benjamin, both run while signed in and both controlled against fifteen and five positive results in the same collection. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | The same URL, 3,499 results and then 0, forty minutes apart yes | The round trip, completed the same evening | 3,499 → 0 → 3,499, ONE URL, ONE MACHINE, ONE AFTERNOON David signed in and the identical URL returned 3,499 again. That closes the experiment rather than merely ending the outage: the count fell and came back with nothing changed but the session, which is as clean a demonstration as this archive will get that the zero was a statement about the instrument and not about the family. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases blocked | Is the old NAAIRS database reachable? | NO — 503 SERVICE UNAVAILABLE, THE SAME OUTAGE AS 15 SEPTEMBER national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl answers 503 Service Unavailable, no server is available to handle this request. On 15 September it answered «the connection to the Search Manager Server is inactive». Twelve days, two different error messages, one dead service. The old database is the COMPLETE one, so everything below is from the partial one and is a floor rather than a count. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT, since a block with no remedy is an excuse: the service coming back, which has to be retried rather than waited on — it was up in early September and has failed twice since; the migration completing, after which the new database answers for the whole 8.3 million; or the reading room at Pretoria, where the series can be worked from the finding aids on paper and no search engine is involved. The reading room is closed today for a water-supply interruption, so that third route is shut as well and is the one to test first when it reopens. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases part | THE TRAP, and it is new since this archive last looked | THERE ARE TWO NAAIRS DATABASES AND THE WORKING ONE IS INCOMPLETE NARSSA says so itself, on its own search page: it is “in the process of migrating more than 8.3 million entries from the old NAAIRS database to the new database and therefore fulltext search (new database) will not display all the records in the system”. So a nil from the new database is not a nil. It is the same shape as every instrument failure in this register — an answer that looks complete and is not — with the one mercy that here the service says so in writing rather than leaving a reader to find out. Every negative below is qualified by it, and none of them is recorded as a no. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases yes | The control, run first | BOOYZEN RETURNS, AND ONE ROW IS THIS FAMILY'S A question this archive already knows the answer to, so a nil on the other surnames would mean something. BOOYZEN returns across Cape Town 42, Free State 10, central government 8, Pietermaritzburg 4 and the Transvaal in quantity; by series MHG 47, Master of the Supreme Court Cape Town 29, WLD 27, TPD 22. And in the first ten rows: BOOYZEN, MAGRITHA MARIA SUSANNA, BORN POOLE — TAB MHG 2830/47, “SURVIVING SPOUSE JOHN BARRY BOOYZEN” — a wife of the John Barry Booyzen already on the Pretoria list. The control produced a find, which is the cheapest kind there is. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases yes | DASCHNER, never searched before today | TWELVE RECORDS, AND ONE NEW ESTATE THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE NEW: DASCHNER, HEINRICH — TAB MHG 10287/69, archivist's note “CHILD.” A child's estate, and this archive holds no Heinrich Daschner. Already held or known: JOSEPH HEINRICH, TAB MHG 1928/42, whose death notice is in this archive's custody store; CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA born BOOYZEN, TAB MHG 3734/46, the file on the Pretoria list marked don't need; and WILLIAM HERMAN, TAB MHG 2703/63. The remaining seven are divorce and matrimonial cases in the Witwatersrand and Transvaal courts between 1972 and 1983. THEIR PARTIES ARE NOT NAMED HERE. People in a 1980 divorce may well be alive, they are not this archive's subject, and a reference is all a researcher needs: TAB WLD 960/1972, TPD 110/1980, TPD 606/1980, and three more naming Daschner women under married surnames. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases yes | MOUNTJOY, never searched before today | FIFTY-EIGHT RECORDS, AND A WHOLE SEAM OF CAPE ESTATES NEVER TOUCHED Fifty-eight returned at sixty per page, so the set is complete for this database. The ones this archive already holds or has on order are there — JAMES MOUNTJOY'S TWO WILLS, KAB MOOC 7/1/104 refs 42 and 43, which the Western Cape chase letter is about; JAMES JOHN MOUNTJOY, MOOC 6/9/5047 no. 58379 and MARIA LOUISA BERTHA née KUMM, 58380, both in custody here; MOOC 6/9/15220 no. 3786/48; and BOOYZEN, GEORGE DOWNING MOUNTJOY, TAB MHG 1095/48, the first item on the Pretoria list. WHAT IS NEW IS THE WOMEN. Seven Mountjoy daughters appear under their married surnames, which is exactly the filing that hid the Commandant's widow: BRUMMER, WILHELMINA née MOUNTJOY — MOOC 6/9/379 no. 2345; DIESEL, LOUISA ELIZABETH — MOOC 6/9/2480 no. 1656; DEMMER, ELIZABETH MARTHA — MOOC 6/9/9771 no. 83676; BURGER, WILHELMINA LOUISA — MOOC 6/9/16573 no. 5683/49; NEPGEN, ANNIE LOUISA — MOOC 6/9/16323 no. 4191/49; FOURIE, MARIA SOPHIA — TAB MHG 2332/42; KLOPPER, JACOBA GEZINA ELIZABETH — TAB MHG 5570/52. And three Mountjoy wives under Mountjoy: SUSAN ELIZABETH née DIESEL (MOOC 6/9/1967 no. 989), ALETTA JOHANNA née HATTINGH (MOOC 6/9/5599 no. 66509), CATHERINE LOUISA JOHANNA née DE KOCK (MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46). NOT ONE OF THE TEN IS JOINED TO THIS HOUSE YET — and this archive said something very like that about a Johan Casimir six days ago and was wrong. A DEATH NOTICE NAMES PARENTS, so ten of them is ten chances to attach a Mountjoy daughter to a father. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases yes | Two Mountjoy names the harvest already held, now with court files behind them | JACOBA GEZINA ELIZABETH × KLOPPER, AND GEORGE × FRIEDA MARIA This archive's own FamilySearch harvest has Jacoba Gesina Elizabeth Mountjoy, b. 1869, married Hendrik Balthazar Klopper and George Mountjoy, b. 1889, married Frieda Maria Lindemann. NAAIRS now supplies the paper: her estate at TAB MHG 5570/52, and for him two restitution-of-conjugal-rights cases, KAB GSC 2/1/1/478 no. 456 and 2/1/1/574 no. 366, against Frieda Maria Mountjoy, formerly Lindemann, born Osteloh — the index spelling her maiden name Osteloh in one and Osterloh in the other, which is the same index disagreeing with itself in two adjacent rows. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases part | A change of tariff, noticed in passing and relevant to the money | NARSSA'S FEES CHANGED ON 1 SEPTEMBER 2026 Posted on the National Archives front page, 25 August: new tariffs effective 1 September 2026, and researchers are asked to read the schedule before submitting chargeable requests. The Pretoria order is on hold on cost, so the figures it was held against are a month out of date and may be wrong in either direction. The reading room is also closed — two notices, one for a temporary water-supply interruption and one headed temporal closure of the reading room, neither dated on the index page. |
| 27 Sep 2026 | NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases yes | Which endpoint answered, and when | RECORDED BECAUSE A DATE IS NOT ENOUGH WHEN ONE SERVICE HAS TWO DOORS All of the above ran on the NEW database, nationalarchives.gov.za/search-the-collections?search_api_views_fulltext_op=AND&search_api_views_fulltext=<TERM>&items_per_page=60, on the afternoon of 27 September 2026. The OLD database, national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl, answered 503 in the same session, and naairs.htm is now 404. WHY THE ENDPOINT AND NOT ONLY THE DAY: a dated nil is not atomic. On a day when a service moves, two searches an hour apart can hit two different corpora and a day-level record cannot tell them apart — the Luwinski session found exactly that inside its own 16 September, which contains an outage, the discovery of a new address, and searches on it. Across six archives in this estate, 1,369 of 1,381 negatives name what was searched, 1,316 carry a date, and exactly one carries a time. Naming the database is enough right up until one database has two endpoints serving different corpora. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years yes | Does the well-known Barry family of Swellendam connect to this one? | NO — AND THE INSTRUMENT THAT SAYS SO IS THE LARGEST THIS ARCHIVE HAS EVER APPLIED This was a named lead, untested, and it is now answered. A researcher, WENDY, wrote to David on 11 JUNE 2008 with a complete descendant report of the ENGLISH Barrys — 1,604 numbered principals over eleven generations, 1659 to 1999, the product of twelve years' work in archives, libraries and letters to “most of the Barry names in all the South African telephone books”. It is the family of JOSEPH BARRY (1796–1865) of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, who built the Swellendam trading house. IT CONTAINS NOT ONE NAME THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS. Kolbe 0, Mountjoy 0, Booyzen 0, Booysen 0, Downing 0, Daschner 0, Fortunatus 0, Burgersdorp 0, Barkly 0, Indwe 0, Grahamstown 0. THE CONTROL IS THE POINT: the tree is not simply an English one that never reached the Cape — it says South Africa 200 times, Cape 236 and Swellendam 129. It is in the right country and the right century and this family is not in it. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years part | Then which Barrys are these? | SHE NAMES A THIRD GROUP, AND SAYS SHE HAD NOT TRACED IT Her first paragraph sorts the South African Barrys into three: the Irish, who came “out to South Africa in the early 1800” and are her own; the English, whom she traced because the two intermarry so often “that the trees overlap”; and — in her words — “the other Barry family that came to South Africa in the late 1700 from London”, which she was only then “going to have a bash at”. THIS ARCHIVE'S BARRYS ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY THE THIRD GROUP, and the fit is close: its earliest is a JOHN BARRY who died at de Bruins Poort in 1853 with no birth, no arrival and no burial found, and his son JOHN AUGUSTUS BARRY I, born 1819 “at sea”. NOT ADOPTED — three groups is a working researcher's sorting, not a census, and a family can always be a fourth thing. But it is the first time anybody has told this archive where NOT to look, and that is worth as much as a name. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years part | She had TWO finished trees. Which one did she send? | THE ENGLISH ONE ONLY — AND THE IRISH ONE IS THE ONE THIS FAMILY'S LORE POINTS AT Checked rather than assumed, and it changes the ask. The attachment is a single report, “Descendants of Thomas Barry” of Stockton, Coventry — Ireland appears 0 times in 399,920 characters, Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Waterford 0 each, and “Irish” twice, both in her covering note. So the Irish tree, which she descends from and had also completed, is not in this email. AND IT IS THE INTERESTING ONE. This archive's Barry page carries the family's own words about John Barry: “As an Irishman, John Barry was reputed to be anti English…” The one tree that would test the family's own story about its Barrys is the one she did not attach, and she finished it before 2008. That is now a specific thing to ask a specific person for, rather than a wall. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years part | What the letter is, and what it is not | A COMPILED TREE FROM A NAMED RESEARCHER — A LEAD LIST, NOT A WITNESS The same rule this archive applies to Geni and to the 2012 Barry report applies here. Wendy's report is a compilation: it cites no document per person, and its dates come from “Archives Internet and Libraries” and from hundreds of conversations. Its value is as a NEGATIVE and as a DIRECTION, and neither of those needs it to be a witness. Where it would become one is person by person, against registers — and nothing in it needs to be, because nobody in it is claimed as kin. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years yes | Why this archive did not have it | NOBODY HAD OPENED THE INBOX The letter has been in David's mail since 11 June 2008 and this archive has never cited it. It was found on 28 September 2026 because David remembered receiving it, not because any search, gate or audit here could see it. THE ARCHIVE HAS BEEN READING REGISTERS IN FOUR COUNTRIES WHILE A TWELVE-YEAR TREE OF THE SURNAME SAT UNREAD IN THE HOUSE. Recorded as a finding about method rather than about the Barrys: an inbox is a repository, and this one has never been swept. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files yes | Does anything in the 1999 correspondence touch this family? | ONE LETTER IS THIS FAMILY ENTIRELY, AND IT CORRECTS A DATE ON THIS SITE 2 November 1999, from a correspondent working the South African Barrys. He names the household outright: “The 1st Barry in this family is John who married Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe in Colesberg on feb 23, 1846. There is no suggestion as to his parentage.” His source is Prof. C. Pama's South African family genealogies. He then lists eleven children, and they are this archive's: John August 1847, Henry James 1848, George Augustus 1850, Margaretha Loisa Maria 1852, Willem Frederick 1853, Catherine Maria Sophia 1855, Hendrik Nicholaas 1857, Catharina Mary Sophia b. 4 Aug 1859, “m: Willem Hermanus Booysen” — which is the line to David — William Frederick Thomas 1861, Frederick Fortunatus, and Pieter Richard 1866. THE MARRIAGE DATE IS THE FIND, because this site was publishing 1850 for a couple whose eldest son it dated 1847. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files part | What is new, and what is only a book | TWO BIRTH YEARS, A MIGRATION, AND A NAME-ORDER — ALL OF THEM PAMA'S, NONE FROM A FONT HENDRIK NICHOLAAS b. 1857 and PIETER RICHARD b. 1866, where this archive had no dates at all for either. A MIGRATION MARKER: the children “born in Burgersdorp up to Nicolaas who, with his later siblings, was born in Dordrecht” — so the household moves between 1855 and 1857, which is testable against the baptism registers this archive already reads. A NAME-ORDER: Pama has Pieter Richard where the man himself signed R. P. Barry, and Henry James where this archive has James Henry. THE MAN'S OWN SIGNATURE WINS. All of it is marked inf: Pama is a compiled genealogy and this archive has already, in another family, refused to let his revision overrule a death notice signed by a son. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files part | A person the letter offers and this archive will not enter | A DAUGHTER WITH HER MOTHER'S NAME ENTIRE — AND WE MADE THAT EXACT MISTAKE ON TUESDAY The letter gives Hendrik Nicholaas a daughter ANNA JOHANNA MARIA BARRY, born 23 November 1884. This archive holds his WIFE: Anna Johanna Maria Barry, née Schoeman, who died 24 February 1923 at Evaton. A daughter named for her mother is entirely normal in this family — and so is a compiler reading one woman as two. On 23 September this archive turned a widow into a daughter on exactly that shape, and it took a register image to undo. She is written down here and not entered as a person. A baptism at Dordrecht or Burgersdorp in 1884 would settle it. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files yes | A second, independent elimination of the mainstream Cape Barrys | 1999 AND 2008 AGREE, FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES The 1999 letter opens by saying this household “does not have a clear link to Richard (b: 1743) or his sons John, James or Joseph” — which is Pama's main South African Barry line. Nine years later Wendy's 1,604-person English tree contained nobody from this family either. Two researchers, two sources, twenty-seven and eighteen years old, agreeing that this family is not the Barry family everyone assumes it is. The third letter in the same folder is not research at all — an automated solicitation from a genealogy site dated 17 October 1999, telling David it had 5,364 BARRYs on file. Its only value is that it records what he had registered an interest in: BARRY, 1500–2000, Ireland. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files part | And the older correspondence is still there | A THIRD LETTER, SEPTEMBER 1999, ANSWERING NAMES DAVID HAD SENT 22 September 1999, the same correspondent, working through names David had given him: a Rose Mary Barry b. 25 May 1880 who married Pieter Johannes Truter, daughter of Michael Barry and his first cousin Aletta Catherina Barry, Michael being a son of Joseph b. 1 April 1796 — which is Joseph Barry of Hitchin, the Swellendam merchant, the same man at the head of Wendy's tree. So David was asking about the Swellendam Barrys in 1999 and was told, politely, that the link was unclear. The correspondent asked “What is your link to her?” and this archive still cannot answer. |
| 7 Oct 2026 | Pama's Barry migration, tested against this archive's own fonts yes | Were the elder Barry children born at Burgersdorp, as Pama says? | NO — THE FIRST THREE WERE BAPTISED AT GRAAFF-REINET, AND ONE OF THOSE FONTS HAS BEEN READ AT THE IMAGE Pama's claim, reported to David in November 1999, was that the children were “born in Burgersdorp up to Nicolaas who, with his later siblings, was born in Dordrecht”. Tested against the baptisms this archive already holds: JOHN AUGUSTUS II, Graaff-Reinet, 12 April 1847, entry 80; JAMES HENRY, Graaff-Reinet, 13 November 1848; GEORGE AUGUSTUS, Graaff-Reinet, 9 June 1850. Burgersdorp does not appear until 1852. And the 1847 entry is not an index row — it was read at the image, film 008119684 image 876, where every witness is a Kolbe: “Gt: JOHN KOLBE, MARGARET KOLBE, AUGUSTA KOLBE”. A register read at the page beats a book compiled a century later, which is the rule this archive already applied to Pama in the Booysen line. |
| 7 Oct 2026 | Pama's Barry migration, tested against this archive's own fonts no | Is Pama's pivot child right? | NO, AND THE PIVOT RESTS ON PAMA HIMSELF Pama makes Nicolaas (1857) the first born at Dordrecht. The fonts put WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS at GRAAFF-REINET on 29 September 1861 — four years after Nicolaas — and Dordrecht does not appear until FREDERICK FORTUNATUS, baptised there 10 July 1864. So the pivot is out by at least six years. AND NICOLAAS HAS NO FONT AT ALL: the only evidence for his 1857 birth is Pama, so the claim about him is tested with evidence supplied by the claim. That is the circularity this archive watches for, and it is the reason his year stays marked inf. |
| 7 Oct 2026 | Pama's Barry migration, tested against this archive's own fonts part | So what do the fonts say, in order? | GRAAFF-REINET → BURGERSDORP → GRAAFF-REINET → DORDRECHT, AND IT IS NOT A MARCH 1847, 1848, 1850 Graaff-Reinet. 1852, 1853, 1855 Burgersdorp. 1857 and 1859 unknown. 1861 Graaff-Reinet again. 1863 Dordrecht. Three or four stages where Pama had two, and the 1861 return is the part this archive cannot yet explain — Graaff-Reinet and Burgersdorp are some two hundred and fifty kilometres apart, so it is not a short trip to a familiar font. The 1861 baptism rests on two index arks and has NOT been read at the image, which is the next thing to do and the honest place to stop. IT ALSO SITS WITH SOMETHING THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY KNEW: by this family's practice the 1861 William must mean the 1853 William had died, because a baptism is not done twice. |
| 7 Oct 2026 | Pama's Barry migration, tested against this archive's own fonts part | A reading of Pama that would make him right about the wrong generation | HIS SENTENCE FITS THE SONS, NOT THE FATHER JOHN AUGUSTUS BARRY II's children are baptised at BURGERSDORP in 1873, 1875, 1877, 1879, 1881 and 1883, and then at DORDRECHT in 1887 and 1889. “Burgersdorp up to X, then Dordrecht” describes that household almost exactly — one town, then the other, with a single move between 1883 and 1886. A compiler working from a family's recollection could very easily attach a grandson's migration to a grandfather's household, and the two generations share forenames so completely that this archive has three men called John Augustus Barry. NOT ADOPTED: it is an explanation for how Pama went wrong, not evidence about anybody, and it is written down so the next reader does not have to think of it again. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Irish end of John Augustus Barry, with seven days of subscription left no | Is there a John Barry baptised about 1819 in Ireland to a mother surnamed Nagle or Neagle? | NO — AND THE WINDOW IS COVERED, SO THE NIL MEANS SOMETHING The target is exact. His 1903 death registration, made by a son who was in the room, gives his age as 84 years 2 months on 25 August 1903 — so born about June 1819 — and enters him as “Irishman born in Ireland”; the 1915 notice gives his mother as “born Neagle”. Searched Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms for surname BARRY with mother's surname NAGLE and variants: 47 records in the whole of Ireland, and the only Johns are 1811, 1845, 1860 and 1876. THE WINDOW IS NOT EMPTY FOR WANT OF COVERAGE — the same 47 hold a Patrick baptised 1815 at St Mary's Cork City and a Joseph baptised 1822 at Annakissy, so the index reaches either side of 1819 in the right county. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Irish end of John Augustus Barry, with seven days of subscription left part | What the instrument can and cannot see, said before the nil is trusted | FINDMYPAST INDEXES NO IRISH PROTESTANT PARISH SET BY MOTHER'S SURNAME This matters more than the nil. Searched all FindMyPast Irish birth, marriage, death and parish sets on the same terms: 54 records, and every one is either Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms or Ireland Births 1864-1958 — civil registration, which begins forty-five years after he was born. So the search could only ever have found a Catholic child. This archive does not know what John Augustus Barry was christened; his wife was a Lutheran missionary's daughter and his children were baptised in Dutch Reformed churches. IF THE FAMILY WAS CHURCH OF IRELAND, NOTHING ABOVE COULD HAVE FOUND THEM, and the right next instrument is the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin, not this one. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Irish end of John Augustus Barry, with seven days of subscription left part | Where the pairing puts the family, if the pairing is right | CORK, OVERWHELMINGLY — AND ONE HOUSEHOLD WORTH A NAME Of 47 Barry children of Nagle mothers in all Ireland, all but two are County CORK — Cloyne and Cork & Ross dioceses — the other two Limerick. Nagle is a Cork surname and the index agrees. One household is coherent enough to write down and not to adopt: at PASSAGE WEST, a John Barry and a Nagle baptise Thomas 1800, Michael 1805, Ellen 1806, Joanna 1809 and John 1811. That John is eight years too early for ours and the household is recorded as a lead only. Separately, the marriages index holds one Barry × Nagle marriage before 1819 anywhere in Ireland: 1804, St Mary's, Cork City. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Irish end of John Augustus Barry, with seven days of subscription left yes | A FindMyPast behaviour that cost two wrong answers before it was caught | THE PARENT FIELDS ARE fatherfirstname AND motherlastname — ANY OTHER SPELLING IS DISCARDED IN SILENCE Guessed fathersfirstname and motherslastname from the form's labels and got 26,481 results — the whole Barry surname. The same query typed into the FORM returned 13. The parameters were not rejected, not flagged and not echoed back; they were dropped, and the answer looked like a legitimate large result set. The working names are fatherfirstname, motherlastname, with _variants=true beside each. AND TWO MORE FILTERS ANNIHILATE INSIDE A NAMED DATASET, which this archive first recorded in September: a baptismyear is ignored — the same 47 rows came back spanning 1806 to 1880 — and &page=2 returns “0 results found” rather than the second page, so results can only be paged by clicking. A COUNT IS THE ONLY WAY TO TELL: 26,481 against 13 is the difference between a filter applied and a filter thrown away, and nothing else on the page says which happened. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Colesberg marriage found at last, under a spelling nobody searched yes | Is the 23 February 1846 marriage at Colesberg in a register? | YES, AND IT IS INDEXED UNDER BERRY Searched the Cape Town Archives Dutch Reformed collection for BARRY with spouse KOLBE and a marriage window of 1843–1850. The first result is JOHN BERRY, groom, 23 February 1846, Colesberg, spouse Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe — FamilySearch 1:1:6FB4-KHS4. The date and place are exactly what Pama gave through a letter of November 1999, and what this archive adopted on 28 September as inf because a book is not a page. It is a page now. READ AT THE PAGE, 9 OCTOBER 2026 — ENTRY 735 OF THE COLESBERG MARRIAGE REGISTER. FamilySearch 1:1:6FB4-KHS4, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSV8-8SZQ-L, image 189 of 202. THE CLERK WROTE “JOHN BERRY” AND THE MAN SIGNED “JOHN BARRY”, three lines apart on the same entry — which is the whole reason this record was invisible: every search this archive ever ran was for Barry, and the index follows the clerk. She is entered Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe and signs Margaret Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe. Both jongman and jongedochter; married na huwelijks geboden, after banns; residence STORMBERG SPRUIT; by THOMAS REID, Leeraar der Nederduitsche Hervormde Kerk, in the presence of G. W. VOLBERG and a VAN DER WALT — the same two witness entries 734, 735 and 736, so they are the church's standing witnesses and not family. AND THE CONSENT COLUMN IS THE FINDING. It reads “DE WEDUWE KOLBE, MOEDER” — the widow Kolbe, mother: Margaret Downing, consenting for her daughter fourteen months after the Settler died. NOBODY IS NAMED ON THE GROOM'S SIDE. The entry above names two fathers and the entry below names two; this one names one parent and leaves the other half of the column empty. A register with a column for his father, left blank, is the same answer his death notice gives — the colony had nobody to ask. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Colesberg marriage found at last, under a spelling nobody searched yes | Why twenty-seven years of searching never turned it up | THE CLERK'S SPELLING AND THE MAN'S OWN SIGNATURE DISAGREE ON ONE ENTRY “John Berry” in the clerk's hand; “John Barry” in the groom's. The index transcribes the clerk, correctly, so the record answers to a surname this family does not use and never appeared in a Barry search. THE SEARCH THAT FOUND IT DID NOT USE HIS NAME AT ALL — it used hers, KOLBE, as the spouse. That is the second time in a fortnight that searching on the WOMAN found what searching on the man could not, after the Commandant's twelve children came out of the fonts on their mother's name. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Colesberg marriage found at last, under a spelling nobody searched yes | What the register adds that the book did not | A RESIDENCE, A MINISTER, AND A COLUMN DELIBERATELY LEFT HALF EMPTY STORMBERG SPRUIT as their residence in February 1846 — new, and the first place this archive can put the couple at their marriage. THOMAS REID as the minister, with G. W. Volberg and a van der Walt witnessing; the same two witness the entries on either side, so they are the church's and not the family's. And the consent column reads “DE WEDUWE KOLBE, MOEDER” and stops. Entry 734 names two fathers, entry 736 names two; entry 735 names the bride's widowed mother and nobody for the groom. His death notice would say NOT KNOWN of his parents fifty-seven years later; the register was already saying it while he stood in the room. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The 1861 font read, and it was never a return journey yes | Is “Graaff-Reinet” the parish, or an artefact of an index whose place field is often just ‘Cape Province’? | THE PARISH. THE VOLUME IS LITERALLY THE GRAAFF-REINET BAPTISM BOOK Film 008147497, item 4, titled Graaff-Reinet. Baptism Records 1861–1866, image 190 of 370. Not an index place-field at all — the register itself. Entry 79, “Gedoopt 29 Sept. 1861”: WILLEM FREDERIK THOMAS, Ouders JOHN BARRY and MARGARET WELHELMINA KOLBE. The parents are this couple, at the page, in the clerk's hand. FamilySearch 1:1:623R-9MM9, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK6-9S81-J. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The 1861 font read, and it was never a return journey yes | Who stood as witnesses? | HER SISTER AND HER SISTER'S HUSBAND — WHICH EXPLAINS THE JOURNEY WITHOUT ANYBODY MOVING Get: PETRUS JACOBUS JOUBERT, CATHARINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE, RALPH PETER THOMAS, MARIA MAGDALENA PRETORIUS. CATHARINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE IS THE BRIDE'S OWN SISTER — the Settler's second daughter, born 1825, whom this archive has carried as Catherine Maria Sophia (Joubert) since the family list was read. And the first witness is a JOUBERT. The two are standing together, which is what a married couple does at a font. SO THE 1861 GRAAFF-REINET BAPTISM IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT THIS HOUSEHOLD MOVED BACK. A child is christened where the godparents are, and the godparents here are the mother's sister and brother-in-law. A BAPTISM PLACE IS WHERE THE FONT WAS, NOT WHERE THE FAMILY SLEPT, and this archive built a four-stage migration out of forgetting that. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The 1861 font read, and it was never a return journey yes | And the third witness explains the child's third name | RALPH PETER THOMAS — THE BOY IS WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY The surname of a godparent, given to the child as a forename. This archive has traced Fortunatus and Rector on exactly that reasoning and has an entire /namesakes/ page built on it. It also answers something the archive noticed and could not explain: this child carries THOMAS where his dead elder brother, William Fredrik of 1853, did not. The name arrives with the godparent. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The 1861 font read, and it was never a return journey yes | One thing the page corrects | 29 SEPTEMBER 1861 IS HIS BAPTISM, NOT HIS BIRTH — AND NO BIRTH DATE IS RECORDED The register reads “Gedoopt 29 Sept. 1861” over entry 79, and unlike the entries on either side — 78 is geb. 24 April 1861, 80 is geb. 16 Aug. 1861 — entry 79 carries no birth date at all. This archive has held born 29 Sep 1861, baptised at Graaff-Reinet, which takes the baptism date and calls it a birth. Corrected. His birth date is not known. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Sources given ids, and the silent failure the component was built around yes | Why had this archive never declared what a page rests on? | BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING TO DECLARE — THE SOURCES HAD NO IDS 0 of 41 pages, against Defranceski's 39, and the cause was structural. sources.json held four tables as rows of HTML cells — lifted verbatim from the page in September so that nothing was reworded — and a cell is not a source with a name. Every row now has an id derived from its own first cell: tab-mhg-2428-40, death-notice-margaret-downing-1868. 46 ids and no collisions. THE ID IS NOT A POSITION, and that was deliberate: read-3 is correct until somebody sorts the table, and then it still resolves and means a different document. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Sources given ids, and the silent failure the component was built around yes | Did the refactor change anything a reader sees? | NO — THE RENDERED PAGE IS BYTE-IDENTICAL 50,208 characters before, 50,208 after, and the texts compare equal. That was the test worth running: the rows changed shape from a list of cells to an object with an id and cells, every row renderer and a tally function had to follow, and one of them was missed on the first pass and crashed the build — r.map is not a function, in a function counting status chips. A loud failure, which is the good kind. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Sources given ids, and the silent failure the component was built around yes | What the component does when an id is wrong | DROPS IT, RENDERS THE REST, AND TELLS NOBODY — UNLESS SOMETHING READS data-missing This is the part worth keeping. SourceBlock resolves each id against the register and silently omits the ones that fail, so a page can claim six sources, show five, and look entirely correct — a claim of provenance that cannot be followed, which is the exact fault the whole sources effort exists to fix. It does leave a count on data-missing, and nothing was reading it. A gate reads it now and refuses the build, proven by injecting a reference to a file that does not exist: /barry/ declares 1 source id that does not resolve. A component that fails quietly is only safe if something else is listening. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The other thirty-seven pages, and the twenty-five that should say nothing yes | Can a page's sources be worked out automatically? | NO — THE REGISTER AND THE PAGES BARELY SHARE A VOCABULARY Measured before assigning anything. Of the 46 sources, 34 carry an unambiguous archival reference — MOOC, TAB MHG, Sterfkennis, DOC, CO. Those references appear on almost no narrative page. The pages argue from document NAMES (‘his 1915 death notice’); the register lists reference NUMBERS. They meet only on /sources/ and /documents/. A first attempt at matching was worse than useless: the id sag-b3 matched nineteen pages, because its signature was three letters. So this was done by reading the pages. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The other thirty-seven pages, and the twenty-five that should say nothing yes | How many pages should declare? | SEVENTEEN DO. TWENTY-FIVE SHOULD NOT, AND THAT IS NOW WRITTEN DOWN 88 source items across 17 pages, every id resolving. The 25 others are exempt with a reason each in provenance.json. The reasons are not uniform and that is the point: /errands/ is a list of what this archive has NOT got; /searched/ rows are already citations and a block would restate them more weakly; /open-questions/ names the record sets that WOULD answer, so a block would list the documents that did not; /atlas/ witnesses every pin individually and a gate already refuses an unwitnessed one, which is finer than a page-level block; /sources/ is the register and cannot rest on itself. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The other thirty-seven pages, and the twenty-five that should say nothing yes | What the gate actually enforces | NOT ‘EVERY PAGE DECLARES’ — ‘EVERY PAGE HAS BEEN THOUGHT ABOUT’ A page that honestly rests on nothing and a page nobody has considered look identical from outside, and that is the state row 186 was really measuring. provenance-undecided refuses a page that neither declares nor appears in the exempt register. Proven by adding an empty page and watching the build stop. The number to watch is no longer 17 of 42 but 0 unconsidered. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The publishing debt closed, and two gates that were being told the truth and could not hear it yes | Why could this archive never say where a source was held? | BECAUSE THE KIT READS held ONLY ON A DICT ROW, AND THESE ROWS WERE LISTS checksources counts three states — a url, a held saying where the paper is, or no way to reach it — and the held branch tests isinstance(row, dict). Booyzen's source rows were LISTS of cells, and the kit's own source says so in a comment: “Booyzen: a row IS its cells”. So for as long as that was true this archive could not have declared a holding however hard it tried, and it sat at 0 of 42 looking like neglect. This morning's refactor turned the rows into objects for an unrelated reason — to give them ids — and the affordance came with it. 0 of 42 → 46 of 46 accounted for. No urls were invented: two sources were read free online with no deep link captured at the time, and the entry says that rather than guessing. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The publishing debt closed, and two gates that were being told the truth and could not hear it yes | How many hosts did this archive link to and never name? | THE ROW SAID THREE. IT WAS SIX, AND I ADDED THE OTHER THREE MYSELF On 21 September the count was 3. Today: billiongraves.com, findmypast.com.au, findmypast.co.uk, nationalarchives.gov.za, national.archsrch.gov.za and archive.org — and all of the new ones arrived in this archive's data during the last fortnight's research, while the sources page sat untouched. That is the row's own thesis demonstrated on the person who wrote it. All six are named now, with what each costs and the two warnings worth having: NAAIRS runs two databases and the complete one is dead, and BillionGraves is free for the transcription and paid for the photograph. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The publishing debt closed, and two gates that were being told the truth and could not hear it part | Is Booyzen one of the six archives drawing its lines as a list? | NO — IT HAS NO SUCH PAGE, AND THE ROW'S OTHER CLAIM IS ALSO OUT OF DATE Measured rather than assumed. Blazevic, D'Arcy and Falco use the kit's Families; Luwinski uses BranchRivers, so “BranchRivers is Defranceski's alone” has stopped being true and half the harmonisation this row proposes has already happened. Mazza is bespoke. Booyzen has neither a families page nor a lines page — it has a chooser and a chart. It already carries the confidence stamp the pattern turns on, per line in trees.json; what it lacks is the journey through places, and places.json already holds the events that would draw one. The fix is to adopt a shared component, not to draw a forty-third bespoke page, which the ratchet in row 189 would refuse on the day it was added and should. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The estates are not behind a counter. They are filmed, indexed by name, and free yes | Are the Cape estate papers on FamilySearch? | YES — NAME-INDEXED AND IMAGED. 116 MOUNTJOY RECORDS Collection 2517051, South Africa, Cape, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1822–1990. Searched on the surname alone: 116 records, and the ones this archive wanted are in them. SUSAN ELIZABETH MOUNTJOY, one of the ten — 1:1:QLKL-PMWK — is indexed with age 33, born 1887 at MACLEAR, died 13 September 1920 at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff, and carries an image. None of that was known and none of it cost anything. And JAMES MOUNTJOY THE SADDLER IS THERE TOO (1:1:QP4Z-WK68), probate Cradock, age 45, birthplace EUROPE, died September 1827 — which is question 12's man and this archive's oldest wall. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The estates are not behind a counter. They are filmed, indexed by name, and free yes | And the Transvaal ones, which are the expensive ones? | ALSO IMAGED — AND THE VOLUME IS TITLED PROBATE ESTATE CASE FILES, NOT AN INDEX Collection 2520237. This is the distinction that matters and it was checked rather than assumed: an index card gives a reference, a case file gives the death notice. The image opened is a STERFKENNIS form — image 345 of 2,754 in Transvaal. Probate Estate Case Files — and it is the death notice of ANNA JOHANNA MARIA BOOYZEN, born PRETORIUS, indexed under her husband George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen as Spouse. THE FILE ITSELF, FREE, WITH A NAME SEARCH. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The estates are not behind a counter. They are filmed, indexed by name, and free yes | TAB MHG 40293 — the file this archive calls its biggest single gap | INDEXED, IMAGED, AND IT CORRECTS THE PLACE OF DEATH FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE — 1:1:QPCX-661K — aged 27, born Wakkerstroom 1891, DIED 2 NOVEMBER 1918 AT VILLIERIA, PRETORIA, with View Original Document. This archive had him dying at Wakkerstroom; the index has the original place as Villieria Wakkerstroom and standardises it to Pretoria. THE IMAGE IS NOT YET READ and nothing is adopted from the index alone — but the document David has been holding off ordering on cost, and that row 193 is blocked on asking a researcher to complete the reference for, has an ark and a picture. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The estates are not behind a counter. They are filmed, indexed by name, and free part | What this does to a list that has been on hold since September | IT MAY REMOVE THE REASON FOR MOST OF IT — AND ONE ITEM IS ALREADY ANSWERED ELSEWHERE Not all of it, and the limits are stated. What is verified: the Cape and Transvaal probate series are name-indexed with images, and three specific files wanted here have one. What is NOT verified: that every one of the five Pretoria items is in the filmed range, or that a given file's death notice is the page the camera caught. AND ONE ITEM IS SETTLED WITHOUT ANY FILE AT ALL. MHG 1095/48 was still need because a tree said George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen died 21 February 1947 and a burial register said 11 December. The civil death registration gives 11 DECEMBER 1947 and the Johannesburg cemetery record gives burial at WEST PARK on 14 DECEMBER 1947. Two independent records agree and the tree is wrong; the estate file is no longer needed to settle it. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | Does TAB MHG 40293 exist as an image, and does it open? | YES — STERFKENNIS, AND IT COST NOTHING Collection 2520237, Transvaal, Probate Estate Case Files 1919, DGS film 007808573, item 16, image 60 of 110. Record ark 1:1:QPCX-661K, image ark 3:1:3Q9M-CS9T-FSMR-F. The registry stamp on the form reads MHG 40293, received 29 APR 1919, which is the reference this archive holds, entire. This is the file David has been holding off ordering on cost, and that row 193 is blocked on asking a researcher to complete the reference for. It did not need completing and it did not need paying for. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | Who were his parents? | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE AND MARTHA SOFIA KLOPPER Question 3 of the form, Namen en adressen van de Ouders van de overledene: Vader GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE. Moeder MARTHA SOFIA KOLBE, GEBOREN KLOPPER. This is why the file was wanted. Until today the parentage rested on two sidelong documents — his brother Daniel’s death registration reading “G A KOLBE’S SON”, and his sister Maria Johanna’s 1953 estate file naming both parents. Now it is stated in his own. The index attached to this very record says “Relationships — no additional people in this group”: the parents are on the image and were never indexed, which is the whole argument for opening images. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | Which of the two George Augustus Kolbes of Wakkerstroom is the father? | THE ONE WHO MARRIED A KLOPPER — AND THE MOTHER’S NAME IS WHAT DECIDES IT Two men of that name are buried in Wakkerstroom, born 2 October 1861 and 29 July 1863, and this archive withdrew a claim within the hour once before over exactly this. The death notice does not resolve it by the father’s name, which both men share — it resolves it by the mother’s. The 1861 man’s wife was Susanna Margaretha, on his own stone. The 1863 man married Martha Sophia Klopper. So the father is George Augustus Kolbe of Wakkerstroom, born 29 July 1863, baptised at Colesberg, dead 28 September 1954 aged 91 — who outlived this son by thirty-six years. A collision is only dangerous while you are matching on the colliding field. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | Did he leave children? | ONE, AND A MINOR Question 10: “George Augustus Kolbe. Minderjarig, geboren 2 Julie 1914.” He was four when his father died. He carries his grandfather’s name entire, which is this family’s documented habit, and he is the fourth George Augustus Kolbe in this archive. Nothing is known of him after 1919 and nothing is claimed. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died part | Is there a will, and does it name anybody else? | YES, A MUTUAL WILL OF 30 MAY 1914 — AND IT NAMES NOBODY NEW Images 61–62 of the same item. A gesamentlike testament, typed, “Aldus gedaan en getekend te HOOIPOORT, Dist. Wakkerstroom op heden de dertigste dag van Mei A.D. 1914”, witnessed by E.J. and L.J. Labuschagne, signed F.F.D. Kolbe and H.G.S. Kolbe geb. Joubert. The survivor and the children take the immovable property in equal shares, the survivor holding usufruct for life. It was signed five weeks before the only child was born, which is why it provides for dying childless: in that event the sum insured on their lives with The South African Mutual Life Assurance Society goes to “’t kind of kinderen waarvan de Testateuren PEET OOM en PEET TANTE waren” — the child or children whose GODPARENTS they were. No names. It is a kinship signal with nobody attached to it, and it is recorded here rather than adopted. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | Did he die at Villieria, Pretoria, as the index renders it? | NO. THE ARCHIVE WAS RIGHT AND THE INDEX WAS WRONG The form, question 9: Dorp of plaats VILLIERIA (GEDEELTE KLEINFONTEIN), Distrikt WAKKERSTROOM — a farm portion in the district, not the Pretoria suburb of that name. FamilySearch standardises the place to “Wakkerstroom, Zoutpansberg, Transvaal”, which is wrong on its own terms, Wakkerstroom lying in the south-eastern Transvaal and nowhere near Zoutpansberg. This archive published the Pretoria reading on 9 October and attributed it to the index, saying the image was not yet read. The hedge held, so no correction is owed — which is the only reason it is not on /corrections/. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died yes | What else did the form carry that no index did? | AN OCCUPATION, A RESIDENCE, AN EXACT AGE AND AN ESTATE Veeboer — stock farmer. Ordinary residence Villieria, dist. Wakkerstroom. Age twenty-seven years and six months, which puts the birth at about May 1891 where this archive held only the year. Married in community of property, the marriage at Volksrust. Questions 11–14 are all Ja: movables, fixed property, an estate worth more than £300, and a will. Declared and signed by the widow at Hooipoort on 13 February 1919, in her own hand, as overlijvende echtgenote. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read void | Was James Mountjoy of Cradock an unread document, as row 212 said? | NO. IT HAD BEEN READ IN FULL AND PUBLISHED, AND THE ROW WAS WRITTEN OFF AN INDEX Row 212 listed 1:1:QP4Z-WK68 among estate images to open, calling it question 12’s oldest wall. Question 12 already begins with the word READ, and /sources/ already carries KAB MOOC 6/9/21: 4393 (1840) as a document read in full. The row was built from a FamilySearch search result and never checked against the archive it belongs to. This archive has written that mistake down before — “the list was worked without being checked against the archive” — and it happened again here, on a list this session wrote yesterday. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read yes | Does the image say what this archive published? | YES, ON EVERY POINT Read independently today without looking at the archive first: 1 James Mountjoy; 2 birth-place EUROPE; 3 Names of the Parents of the Deceased — NOT KNOWN; 4 about 45 years; 5 SADDLER; 7 September 1827; 8 in the village of Cradock; 10 a house and erf at Cradock of the value of £90. And question 9 names the four children, in this order: 1 James a minor, 2 George do, 3 Johanna do, 4 Jacoba do. All five of this household’s children are already drawn at /households/, with Thomas Jacobus correctly marked as the one the notice omits. Nothing needed changing. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read part | Then was anything wrong? | THE WAY BACK TO THE PAGE. IT IS IMAGE 339, NOT 338 Published in three places — /sources/, question 12, and /documents/ — as image 338 of 2,223. /documents/ also sets out the arithmetic that produced it, and that is the part worth keeping: the pencilled reference numbers do not ascend by exactly one per image, because an estate running to two or three frames breaks the step. From image 330 at reference 4386 the method predicts 4393 at image 337, and the narrowing that followed stopped one frame short. An interpolated citation is a prediction and has to be re-read off the frame it landed on. Image 338 is CHRISTOFFEL HENDRIK OLIVIER, trader, aged 56 years 4 months 10 days, dead at his own house in the town of Graaff-Reinet on 15 June 1840. Image 340 is WILLEM JACOBUS VAN DER MERWE of Bouwbosch Fontein. Montjoy, stamped 4393, is at 339, which is where the record ark lands. A citation off by one does not look wrong, it looks precise, and it sends the next reader into a stranger’s family. On /corrections/. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read no | Is the FamilySearch index of this record sound? | NO — ITS ESTIMATED BIRTH YEAR IS BUILT ON THE WRONG DATE The index gives Birth Year (Estimated) from 1795 to 1798, which is the probate date of 1840–1843 less the age of 45. But the 45 belongs to the death, and the form gives that as September 1827 — so the birth is about 1782, which is what this archive has published all along. The index subtracted an age from the year the file was opened rather than the year the man died, and for an estate filed thirteen years late that is out by thirteen years. Anyone adopting the indexed birth range gets a different man. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read part | Could the wife's name have been read from this image alone? | NO. IT RUNS INTO THE SHADOW AT THE EDGE OF THE SHEET Question 6 reads Married to Catharina S… and the surname disappears into the fore-edge; brightening and contrast did not recover it. From the image alone this session read it as “Eli…” and the first husband as “William Piete…” — both wrong, and they would have been published as a discrepancy if the archive had not already held the marriage register. She is ANNA CATHARINA SLIER, widow of HERMANUS PIETERSEN, married at Graaff-Reinet 9 March 1817. A hand at the limit of legibility produces confident letters, not blank ones, which is the argument for not reading a name off one image when a register exists. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters part | Are all ten of the Mountjoy estates imaged on FamilySearch, as row 201 now says? | NO. AT LEAST ONE IS INDEXED AND NOT IMAGED ANNIE LOUISA MOUNTJOY NEPGEN, died East London 4 June 1949 aged 66, born 1883 at Barkly East — four separate index entries and every one of them says Image Unavailable. Row 201 concluded on 9 October that the ten “do not need ordering”. That is true of some of them and not of all, and the difference is the volume: the ones read today with images are from 1840, 1898 and 1921, and the one with no image is from 1949. So the question for each remaining estate is not “is it on FamilySearch” but “does that volume carry pictures”, and a 1949 Cape estate should be assumed to need ordering until an image is seen. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters yes | Was any of the ten already attached to this family? | TWO, AND THE ARCHIVE HAD SAID NONE WAS ANNIE LOUISA NEPGEN and LOUISA ELIZABETH DIESEL, both born Mountjoy, are on this site’s /households/ page as daughters of James Jonathan Mountjoy and Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm — put there from estate 58379, read and published on 10 September. The NAAIRS sweep of 27 September listed them among ten estates it described as unattached. Seventeen days, and the list was never held up against the archive. On /corrections/. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters part | Does Susan Elizabeth Mountjoy's death notice name a Mountjoy father? | NO — SHE IS A MOUNTJOY BY MARRIAGE, AND HER OWN PARENTS ARE TWO QUESTION MARKS Death notice 989, Cape Town, stamped 12 April 1921. Question three: Father — “Diesel ?”. Mother — “Diesel ?”. Her husband wrote her maiden surname on both lines and put a question mark against each, and did the same to her birthplace, “Maclear (?) District”. What the notice does give: she was a housewife, married in community of property to GEORGE MOUNTJOY JNR, died at thirty-three at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff on 13 September 1920, left a trading station and stock in trade and no will, and had four minor daughters — Ivy Elizabeth, Gwendoline Hazel, Edna Iris and Daphne Joyce. THE INDEX KEEPS HER HUSBAND’S WORD AND THROWS AWAY HIS DOUBT: FamilySearch publishes the birthplace as Maclear, flat, with no question mark anywhere. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters yes | Then is the 116 a count of Mountjoy estates? | NO. THE INDEX RAISES A RECORD FOR EVERY PERSON NAMED ON A DOCUMENT IVY ELIZABETH MOUNTJOY appears as a Principal record, “Probate 1920, Grahamstown”, with no death date — because she is a living minor child named on her mother’s notice. She did not die in 1920: she appears again as Ivy Elizabeth Mountjoy Du Randt, having married. This archive wrote “116 Mountjoy records” and the number is right, but it is not 116 estates — it is estates plus spouses plus children plus anyone else the form names. A search of this collection returns families, not decedents, which is useful and is not what the count implies. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters part | Did any of the ten attach a Mountjoy daughter to a father? | ONE CAME CLOSE, AND IT IS NOT ADOPTED WILHELMINA ERNESTINA BRUMMER, BORN MOUNTJOY — death notice 2345, filed Barkly East 19 August 1898. Born Dordrecht, dead at twenty at her husband’s residence, a farmer’s wife. Question three: FATHER JOHN JAMES MOUNTJOY, MOTHER MARIA LOUISA BERTHA, the surname trailing into one illegible capital. That is nearly the Barkly East house: the three forenames match Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm exactly, she was born in the town the couple married in, and she died in theirs. AND THE BETTER DOCUMENT SAYS NO. The 1938 distribution of estate 58379 pays eleven heirs — nine living children, and Gwendoline and Aubrey Diesel taking half a tenth each as the children of a daughter dead in 1923. An eleventh child’s son would have had the same claim, and there is no Brummer in that account. Her one son, Hendrik Johannes Jacobus Brummer, would have been about forty. He may simply have died before 1938 without issue. Or this is a different John James Mountjoy. A second arithmetic to watch: Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm’s birth is about October 1860, which would make her SEVENTEEN at this daughter’s birth. She is entered as a person and NOT as a daughter of that house. The Dordrecht baptism register for 1878, or her own marriage record, would settle it. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families yes | DEMMER, Elizabeth Martha — MOOC 6/9/9771 no. 83676 | READ IN FULL, AND QUESTION THREE IS REFUSED Death notice 83676 at image 636 of 1,581, with the Letters of Administration at 639 and the inventory at 641. Parents: “Do not know, both deceased.” Born DORDRECHT, dead at Kokstad on 15 December 1942 at 80 years 11 months, so born about January 1862. Widow of John Joseph Demmer, alias Joseph Ignatz Demmer (d. 1/8/06), married at Stutterheim; eight children; about £1,048 in Kokstad erven still registered in her dead husband’s name. SHE CANNOT BE A DAUGHTER OF THE BARKLY EAST HOUSE: Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm was born about October 1860, and a daughter of January 1862 would make the mother fifteen months old. A possible SISTER of James Jonathan Mountjoy, and not claimed. AND NAAIRS HAS HER NAME WRONG — it files ELIZABETH MARTHA; the notice and the Letters both read ELIZABETH MARIA, under the same file number. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families yes | BURGER, Wilhelmina Louisa — MOOC 6/9/16573 no. 5683/49 | HER FILE IS NOT ON FILM. HER FATHER’S IS Her own 1949 estate is neither imaged nor indexed. What is indexed is MINNIE MOUNTJOY BURGER as a CHILD, twice, on her father’s death notice — and MINNIE IS WILHELMINA, which is why searching “Wilhelmina Louisa” returned 724 strangers. So the thing the order would have bought came free from his file instead. Her father is GEORGE MOUNTJOY OF KOKSTAD, senior, born in the ORANGE FREE STATE about 1862, died 12 May 1943 at Nyaninga, Tongaat, Natal, aged 81; retired; married in community of property to MARY FISCHER in the King Williamstown district; nine children named. His own question three: Father — “Names unknown”. Mother — “Names unknown: deceased”. That the Minnie of 1943 and the Wilhelmina Louisa of 1949 are one woman is a strong reading, not a proved one. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families part | MOUNTJOY, Aletta Johanna born Hattingh — MOOC 6/9/5599 no. 66509 | IMAGED — BUT WHAT IS IMAGED IS THE LEDGER, NOT THE NOTICE The image is a page of the REGISTER OF ESTATES, BONDS AND WILLS, and her row reads: 66509 · registered 8.11.39 · died 10.10.39 · Mountjoy · Aletta Johanna (b. Hattingh) · surviving spouse ALFRED. It matches the NAAIRS reference exactly and it is all there is. A REGISTER ROW HAS NO QUESTION THREE, so her parents are not here. ALFRED IS A MOUNTJOY OF KOKSTAD — seventh of the nine children on George of Kokstad’s notice. She was born 1898 at Cala and died at BIZANA. This is a third thing “imaged” can mean in this collection, after a filmed estate file and an Image Unavailable: a filmed INDEX VOLUME standing in for a file that was never filmed. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families blocked | MOUNTJOY, Catherine Louisa Johanna born de Kock — MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46 | IMAGE UNAVAILABLE. STILL NEEDS ORDERING Indexed and not imaged, so everything known is a volunteer’s transcription: aged 49, born about 1896 at MIDDELBURG, TRANSVAAL, died 12 December 1945, place as originally written FLAGSTAFF. Flagstaff is where Susan Elizabeth Mountjoy born Diesel died in 1920, and it lies in the same Transkei country as Kokstad and Bizana. A third Mountjoy wife in one district. Her husband is not named by the index and there is no image to name him. Of the ten, this is the one that still has to be ordered from the Cape archives. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families no | FOURIE, Maria Sophia — TAB MHG 2332/42, and KLOPPER, Jacoba Gezina Elizabeth — TAB MHG 5570/52 | NEITHER IS IN THE FAMILYSEARCH TRANSVAAL INDEX AT ALL The Transvaal collection 2520237 holds exactly 22 records under the surname MOUNTJOY, and all 22 were listed and read. Neither a Fourie nor a Klopper is among them. The test is sound because the convention is proved in the same 22: this collection does put a maiden name in the given-name field — Carolina Margareta Aletta Mountjoy Eloff, Maria Sophia Van Niekerk Mountjoy — so a Mountjoy-born woman who was indexed would appear there. Controls run, because a zero is worth nothing without them. q.anyName returned zero and that was the QUERY FAILING, not an absence — the page said Something Went Wrong; the supported q.surname returned 22. A Fourie search returned 1,775 scored hits, narrowed by death year to 125, and all 125 were read across two pages with no Mountjoy. A Klopper search for 1951–53 returned 4, all read, none hers. Each search was confirmed to be finding its own surname before its silence about Mountjoy was believed. SO THESE TWO REMAIN NAAIRS REFERENCES AND PRETORIA ORDERS. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families part | What were the ten, in the end? | TWO DIFFERENT MOUNTJOY FAMILIES, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM IS THIS ONE The Barkly East house — James Jonathan Mountjoy and Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm — accounts for Annie Louisa Nepgen and Louisa Elizabeth Diesel, both already drawn here from estate 58379 since 10 September. A Transkei house accounts for at least three more: Minnie Burger (daughter of George of Kokstad), Aletta Johanna Hattingh (wife of his son Alfred), and Susan Elizabeth Diesel (wife of a George Mountjoy Jnr, dead at Flagstaff) — with Catherine Louisa Johanna de Kock, dead at Flagstaff, very probably a fourth. Elizabeth Maria Demmer belongs to neither on the evidence, being too old for the Barkly East house and born at Dordrecht rather than in the Free State. And the question that would join or separate them is refused on every form. George of Kokstad: “Names unknown.” Elizabeth Maria Demmer: “Do not know, both deceased.” James Montjoy the saddler, a century earlier: “Not Known.” The archive’s own tally of this failure stood at six; these two make eight. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin no | Can the two 1969 files be free, as row 202 hoped? | NO, AND IT TAKES NO SEARCHING TO KNOW IT Collection 2520237 is South Africa, Transvaal, Probate Records from the Master of the Supreme Court, 1869–1961. It stops at 1961. TAB MHG 10287/69 (Daschner, Heinrich, marked “CHILD”) and TAB MHG 10245/69 (Wear) are both 1969 references and are outside the collection by eight years. Row 202 said “LIKELY FREE TOO” and that was a guess from a neighbouring success, not a check. The date range is printed on every record page in the collection. Neither needs a search; both need the repository. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin no | MHG 1095/48 — George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen, 1948 | NOT INDEXED. IT STAYS ON THE ORDER The whole Transvaal collection holds three Booyzen records with the forename George, and only one is him — and that one is his WIFE’s 1944 file, where he is indexed Relationship to Head of Household: Spouse. His own 1948 estate is not there. What the row wanted it for is already settled anyway: the tree’s 21 February 1947 is contradicted by the civil death registration (11 December 1947) and the Johannesburg burial register (West Park, 14 December 1947), which agree with each other. What the file would still add is his children as they stood in 1948, where this archive has them as they stood in 1944. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin no | MHG 5155/51 (Gert Jacobus) and MHG 52653 (Jacobus Nichols, 1923) | NEITHER IS INDEXED EITHER Gert Jacobus: all 48 Booyzen hits read in full, none his; the first 100 of 390 Booysen hits read, none his. Jacobus Nichols: two JACOBUS NICOLAAS BOOYSEN records exist and look like the man — NAAIRS’s “Nichols” being a clerk’s Nicolaas — but both are indexed Relationship to Head of Household: Child, so both are him named on somebody else’s document and neither is his estate. And they are probably not even him: this archive’s Jacobus Nicholas Booysen was born before 1842 and died in 1923, and a man of that age appears as a CHILD only on a parent’s notice, which for him would be the Cape death notice of 1863 — a different colony and a different collection. Both stay on the order. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin yes | Does this index fold BOOYZEN and BOOYSEN together? | NO, AND IT NEARLY MADE TWO OF THESE NEGATIVES WRONG 249 records under Booyzen. 2,417 under Booysen. They are different populations, not one fuzzy set — though each does fold its own diaeresis (Booÿ zen, Booÿsen). The first pass of this sweep searched only Booyzen, and two “not indexed” findings were written before that was checked. Re-running under Booysen is what turned up the Jacobus Nicolaas records. This archive folds the two spellings in its own namefold and must not assume FamilySearch does. Every future sweep of this surname is two searches, not one. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin yes | MHG 2945/44 — was it worth re-opening? | IT WAS ALREADY READ, AND IT CONFIRMS LINE FOR LINE Checked against the archive before the image was opened, as row 212 now requires, and /sources/ already marked it Read with the image in custody. Re-read anyway, and every published detail holds: both parents named with a Germiston address — Petrus Jacobus Pretorius, deceased, and Margreth Wilhelmina Elizabeth Pretorius, of James Street, Germiston — and six children, all minors. The form adds the exactness: born Barkly Oos, Kaap Provinsie; died 26 February 1944 at Reeder Straat 88, Forest Hill, Johannesburg, aged 57; last marriage at VEREENIGING, which is what this archive already had, and not Germiston, which is only where her parents lived. The six, with the dates the form gives: Willem Hermanus 15 Oct 1920 · Margreth Wilhelmina Elizabeth 14 Oct 1926 · Catherine Mary Sophia 25 Mar 1929 · Anna Johanna Maria 12 Oct 1930 · Georgina Jeanette 22 Sep 1932 · Petrus Jacobus 10 Jan 1934. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin part | And was anything on /sources/ wrong? | YES — THREE READ DOCUMENTS WERE DESCRIBED AS UNREAD AND AWAITING PAYMENT The source entries for TAB MHG 2428/40, TAB MHG 2945/44 and TAB MHG 1928/42 each carried the blanket line “National Archives Repository, Pretoria — located; most are unread and on hold against cost”, while their own rows carry a Read chip and link to a transcription. Three of the four Read rows in that table carried it, because the status lives in the row and the held line lives in the entry, and only the row was kept current. THE HARM WAS LATENT AND THAT IS WORTH STATING EXACTLY. The held line is rendered by SourceBlock on pages that cite an id, not by this page; it reaches a reader on ten pages for other entries and on none for these three, because nothing cites them yet. No reader was misled. The next page to cite one would have been — which is the whole argument for fixing a latent contradiction rather than waiting for it to surface. Corrected: all three now say the file is at Pretoria and filmed, that the image is published here, and that it costs nothing. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The same mistake twice in one day, caught by a citation list on a page I was not reading yes | Does MHG 1095/48 still need ordering, as this morning's sweep concluded? | NO. IT WAS READ ON 9 SEPTEMBER AND ITS IMAGES ARE ON THIS SITE The death notice of George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen is transcribed at /documents/ with three images, and it is the document that settled his death date: “The day of the decease: On 11th December 1947”, at 85 Rheeden St, Forest Hill, Johannesburg. 21 February 1948 is the date the notice was signed, and a transcriber had conflated the two and lost ten months. The morning's sweep asked FamilySearch whether the file was indexed, got a clean no, and reported that it stays on the order. The second question — does this archive already hold it — was never asked. Found by accident, in a source-citation list at the foot of /direct-line/ while looking at something else entirely. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The same mistake twice in one day, caught by a citation list on a page I was not reading part | Was the register itself consistent? | NO — IT CARRIED THE SAME DOCUMENT BOTH WAYS The estates table chipped TAB MHG 1095/48 as Blocked — film access restricted online, while the read table carried the same document as read with its image published. Both statements are about one file and only one is about the document: the FILM is restricted; the DOCUMENT is in hand. Corrected. A gate was considered and refused. Only two references in the whole register are vouched for by the read section, and one of the two was this contradiction — a check measuring a population of two tells you nothing you did not already know by looking. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The same mistake twice in one day, caught by a citation list on a page I was not reading yes | So what is actually left to pay for? | FIVE FILES ACROSS BOTH ROWS, NOT SIX Pretoria (row 194): MHG 5155/51 (Gert Jacobus) and MHG 52653 (Jacobus Nichols) — both confirmed absent from the FamilySearch Transvaal index today — plus MHG 10245/69 (Wear), which is 1969 and outside that collection entirely, and which belongs to the Johannesburg branch rather than to this archive. Cape and Transvaal Mountjoys (row 201/212): MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46, TAB MHG 2332/42 and TAB MHG 5570/52. MHG 40293 and MHG 1095/48 both come off, the first because it is filmed and free and the second because it was never missing. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Cape Mounted Rifles were never his regiment, and the subscription is signed out with seven days left yes | Did John Augustus Barry I serve in the Cape Mounted Rifles? | NOTHING HERE SAYS HE DID — THEY ARE THE REGISTRAR, NOT THE REGIMENT His entry ended with the bare sentence “Cape Mounted Rifles.”, which reads as a regiment. /barry/ is clearer and is the source: the corps recorded his 1903 death certificate, being “then the authority in the district, stationed at Johnson’s Leap”. This was about to become a day’s work on the wrong record. A soldier’s discharge paper would give a birthplace and an age, which is exactly what question 5 wants — and this archive has the method ready, because it is the route already mapped for James Montjoy and the 21st Light Dragoons. But there is no evidence he was ever a soldier, and WO 97 holds discharge papers, not death registrations. The entry is corrected so the next person does not start where this one nearly did. What the corps’ own registers at Johnson’s Leap might hold is a separate and still-open item, already on question 5’s list of what would settle it. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Cape Mounted Rifles were never his regiment, and the subscription is signed out with seven days left blocked | Passenger lists 1819–1820, the untried item on question 5's own list | BLOCKED — THE FINDMYPAST SESSION IS SIGNED OUT Attempted today and not run. A travel-and-migration search for BARRY at the Cape of Good Hope, 1818–1822, redirected to auth.findmypast.com/login before any result was returned. This is a blocked search, not an empty one, and it is recorded as blocked so nobody reads a nil into it later. The subscription itself has not lapsed — it runs to 16 October — but the browser is logged out and only David can log it back in. Nothing on this archive’s side can proceed on FindMyPast until he does. Worth knowing before the week is spent: the Barry origin’s London hypothesis is NOT a good use of it. A surname-and-city sweep of London Barrys in the late 1700s has no forename anchor and no date — the comparable Mountjoy search returned 12,984 and was abandoned. The tractable items are the bounded ones on question 5’s settles list: passenger lists 1819–1820, and the two 1903 death certificates named in the tree note. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Commandant's eldest, found by asking the index for a father instead of a name yes | Is the probable sixth child, Catharina Wilhelmina, really his daughter? | YES — AND ONE DOCUMENT CARRIES THE WHOLE CHAIN Her civil death registration, Orange Free State, Births & Deaths Registration Proclamation 1902, sections 27 and 39, ark 1:1:DH4P-K53Z, image 643 of 2,709. Field 14, father’s name in full and occupation: JAN GERSEM ELIEZER KOLBE, STOCK FARMER. Field 15, mother: ANNA JACOBA. And field 7 is what makes her the same woman as the 1860 bride. It asks, of a woman married more than once, to state to whom; the answer is PIENAAR. So the Catharina Wilhelmina Kolbe who married Johannes Petrus Pienaar at Bloemfontein on 8 October 1860 and the Katrina Wilhelmina Anderson who died in 1909 are one person, and the user tree’s “Pienaar Anderson” was listing two marriages rather than inventing a surname. She was born 1844 in the Cape Colony, which makes her the ELDEST of the twelve — the Commandant married on 3 April 1843. Nine of the twelve were documented; she is the tenth, and the first in order. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Commandant's eldest, found by asking the index for a father instead of a name yes | What else the form gives | AN OCCUPATION FOR THE COMMANDANT, AND A GRANDSON WHO CARRIES HIS NAME The Commandant is a STOCK FARMER on this form — the first trade this archive has for him from a document rather than from an obituary’s account of his soldiering. The informant is her son, present at the death, signing JAN G. E. ANDERSON — his grandfather’s three names entire, four lines below where that grandfather is named. A naming pattern is not proof, but a naming pattern on the same page as the parentage is corroboration that costs nothing to notice. She was Dutch, a housewife, of Veelroem in the district of Ladybrand; died 3 February 1909 of heart disease and dropsy after one year and six months ill; buried at Veelroem; the doctor Dr Hofmeyr. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Commandant's eldest, found by asking the index for a father instead of a name yes | How she was found, which is the reusable part | BY SEARCHING THE INDEX FOR A FATHER, NOT FOR HER Searching the collection for her own name fails: the two exact Catharina Wilhelmina Pienaar hits are an infant of 0 days and a woman born 1891. She is indexed under ANDERSON, a surname this archive did not hold. What works is q.fatherSurname=Kolbe against collection 3732502, which returns 25 records and does genuinely filter on the parent — but only 15 of the 25 are this Kolbe family. THIS SENTENCE FIRST SAID “every one has a Kolbe parent” AND THAT WAS WRONG. The other ten are KOLOBE, KOLKOBET, COLBERT and CULBERT — Sesotho and other surnames caught by FamilySearch’s fuzzy name matching, which is working as designed. The filter is real; the NAME is fuzzy. The error was mine and it was the usual one: the rows were scraped with a /kolbe/i test, fifteen matched, and the count of twenty-five was reported as though all twenty-five had been read. BUT ONLY WHEN IT IS THE ONLY NAME TERM. Combined with q.surname=Pienaar the same parameter merely re-ranks: 1,091 results became 804, the count moved so the parameter was plainly read, and the top hits still had no Kolbe anywhere. A count that changes proves the field was read, not that it filtered — and that is the FindMyPast trap in a different house. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | The Commandant's eldest, found by asking the index for a father instead of a name no | Did the index place her correctly? | NO — LADYBRAND IS NOT IN THE TRANSVAAL The record standardises the event place to “Ladybrand, Soutpansberg, Transvaal”. The form says Veelroem, district Ladybrand, and Ladybrand is in the Orange Free State, on the Basutoland border, some four hundred miles from Soutpansberg — in a collection whose own title is Orange Free State. That is the third place this index has mangled today, after a Wakkerstroom death standardised into Zoutpansberg and a Kokstad estate rendered at Pretoria. The pattern is worth more than any one of them: the original place field is reliable and the standardised hierarchy is not. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Which indexes will answer a question about parents, and which cannot be asked it at all no | Can the father-surname search reach the Commandant's twelfth child? | NO, AND THE SCOPE OF THAT NIL IS NOW EXACT Orange Free State civil death registration (3732502): q.fatherSurname=Kolbe returns 25, of which 15 are this family, and four of those are the Commandant’s — Katrina Wilhelmina, Andries Frederick, Johan Hendrik Cassimir and Petrus Jacobus. All four are now held. Transvaal probate (2520237): 0. Cape probate (2517051): 0, and that one means something different — see below. So the twelfth is not reachable by this instrument, and the reason is bounded rather than mysterious: he or she died outside the Free State, or outside 1902–1954, or in a record that names no parents. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Which indexes will answer a question about parents, and which cannot be asked it at all yes | Is a nil from this search worth anything, collection by collection? | ONLY WHERE THE FIELD IS INDEXED — AND IN THE CAPE IT IS NOT Controls, run before any nil was believed. Transvaal probate, q.fatherSurname=Booysen: 86 results — so the field is indexed and searchable there, and a Kolbe nil in the same collection is a real absence. Cape probate, q.fatherSurname=Mountjoy: 0. =Kolbe: 0. Two different surnames, both heavily present in that collection under their own names, both nil as parents. The Cape probate index does not carry parents at all — which matches what its rows show: Spouses and Children, never Parents. A nil from the Cape collection is therefore not evidence about anybody’s parents. It is the question not being askable. And the earlier fetch-based attempt at these controls returned “no count” for every test including the one that should have worked — the pages are client-rendered — which is why the counts above were taken by navigating. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Which indexes will answer a question about parents, and which cannot be asked it at all yes | Then why does TAB MHG 40293 not appear under a Kolbe father? | BECAUSE INDEXING PARENTS IS PER RECORD, NOT PER COLLECTION — AND TODAY PROVED IT TWICE That file is in collection 2520237 and its Sterfkennis names GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE and MARTHA SOFIA KLOPPER in question 3. This morning the record’s own index panel was read and says “no additional people in this group”. This evening the same collection returns zero records with a Kolbe father, while returning 86 with a Booysen one. The two observations are the same fact approached from opposite ends: the parents are on the image and were never keyed. The rule that follows is worth more than either: in these collections, whether a search can see a parent is a property of the RECORD, not of the collection — so “the collection indexes parents” is never a safe premise, and a father-surname nil can only ever mean not indexed for the records I want, never not his child. |
| 9 Oct 2026 | Which indexes will answer a question about parents, and which cannot be asked it at all part | Anything left behind for next time? | EIGHTY-SIX TRANSVAAL ESTATES WITH A BOOYSEN FATHER, UNREAD q.fatherSurname=Booysen against the Transvaal probate collection returns 86, and this archive has read none of them. That is the same instrument that produced two of the Commandant’s children this afternoon, pointed at the surname the whole archive is named for. Not opened here and not counted as a finding — 86 rows scored by a fuzzy name matcher will not all be this family, as today already demonstrated with Kolobe and Colbert. It is a seam, recorded so the next session does not have to rediscover the trick. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | Two public routes into a borrowable scan, both closed, and the control that proves it blocked | Can the DSAB Vol. 5 scan be searched without borrowing it? | NO. BOTH PUBLIC ROUTES RETURN AN HTML WRAPPER _djvu.txt was tried in September and returned HTML. fulltext/inside.php — the endpoint behind the item page’s own Search inside box, which does serve snippets for many lending items — was tried today and returns a page headed “Item not available”. The item is dictionaryofsout0005unse, collections inlibrary and printdisabled, 978 pages, with a 6 MB OCR text present but not served. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | Two public routes into a borrowable scan, both closed, and the control that proves it yes | Is that a refusal, or a badly-formed request? | A REFUSAL — CONTROLLED The same endpoint, same shape of call, against an open-collection item returns valid JSON: {…"matches":[],"error":"No hOCR or Abbyy file present"}. An informative JSON refusal, not an HTML page. So the endpoint works and the call is right; the item is gated. Recorded because an HTML answer where JSON belongs is indistinguishable from a bad request until something proves otherwise, and this archive has already written down one wasted attempt on this exact book. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | Two public routes into a borrowable scan, both closed, and the control that proves it blocked | Then what is the route? | A FREE ACCOUNT, AND IT IS DAVID’S TO MAKE The scan borrows an hour at a time with a free Internet Archive account and is searchable from inside the reader. This archive does not create accounts or sign in, so the row is reassigned rather than left open against nobody. Carry one discrepancy to the title page: the item metadata says 1968 and this row’s reasoning says Volume 5 is 1987 — and the argument that Schoeman’s 1992 draft was written for a later volume rests on the 1987. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | A 1973 local history turns out to be the memorial of a drowned valley — which is why the portrait is in it yes | What is the book, actually? | THE MEMORIAL VOLUME OF THE FARMS THE GARIEP DAM DROWNED It records the life-stories of people displaced from fifteen farms and about as many other settlements near BETHULIE when the Gariep Dam — then the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam — flooded the Orange River valley. 144 pages, plates numbered with the text, self-published at Bloemfontein in 1973, printed by N.G. Sendingpers. THIS EXPLAINS THE PORTRAIT. The DSAB records the Kolbe likeness as held in 1992 by C.J. du Plessis of Ruigtevlei, district Bethulie, and reproduced in this book. Both facts were already here and had never been put side by side: the book is the memorial of precisely that community, so a Bethulie-district farming family is exactly who would be in it, lending a family portrait to a neighbour’s history. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | A 1973 local history turns out to be the memorial of a drowned valley — which is why the portrait is in it part | Is there a copy anywhere? | NO LIBRARY IN THREE ATTEMPTS — BUT A DEALER HAS HANDLED ONE Twice in September and once today, no holding library surfaces in any catalogue reachable from here. That is consistent with a privately printed local history and is now recorded rather than retried. What is new: a copy sold at Antiquarian Auctions, auction 8, lot 234, consigned by FONTEIN BOOKS of South Africa, with seven bids. The row previously concluded no copy is for sale, which remains true — but a dealer who has had one is a better question than a catalogue that has never heard of it. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | A 1973 local history turns out to be the memorial of a drowned valley — which is why the portrait is in it blocked | And the UCT lead? | BLOCKED BY A BROWSER GATE, NOT WALKED AROUND UCT’s ibali digital archive surfaces an item for this title and answers a fetch with a browser-verification page. This archive does not work around bot gates, so it is recorded as blocked. Opening it in an ordinary browser would settle whether UCT holds the book or only cites it — a minute’s work for somebody who is not a program. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | The inbox again: two death notices already bought, and a supplier this archive has never listed yes | Is there anything in David's mail this archive does not hold? | TWO DEATH NOTICES, PAID FOR AND DELIVERED IN JANUARY 2024 ancestor.co.za, 12 January 2024: “your request/s for BOOYZEN, PETRUS JACOBUS (1955) and BOOYZEN, CORNELIA GERTINA (1946) have been uploaded onto our Ancestor Website” — at 70 ZAR each, with a second notification the same day about further documents. CHECKED AGAINST THE ARCHIVE BEFORE CLAIMING IT. No Petrus Jacobus Booyzen here died in 1955: the nearest are 1937 at Middelburg, 1884, 1876 and 2003. And the only Cornelia Gertina in this archive is a du Toit, a marriage partner of a David Schalk Booyzen — not a Booyzen who died in 1946. Neither reference occurs in any file. Two documents this family already owns, unread here for nearly three years. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | The inbox again: two death notices already bought, and a supplier this archive has never listed part | Is the supplier recorded? | NO. ancestor.co.za APPEARS IN NO FILE OF THIS ARCHIVE Not on /sources/, not on /errands/, not among the Record Atlas providers. A repository David has used, paid and still has an account with — and which this archive, which keeps a register of every place it has looked, has never listed. It belongs on /sources/ and probably in the atlas, and it is a reminder that the list of places a family has used is not the same as the list of places its archive knows about. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | The inbox again: two death notices already bought, and a supplier this archive has never listed part | Anything that is a person rather than a paper? | A LIVING DASCHNER WROTE IN 2024 AND NOBODY WROTE BACK In August 2024 a MyHeritage user of the DASCHNER surname, in South Africa, messaged David directly. Nothing in this archive records the approach, a reply, or what he knew. The Daschner line is among the thinnest held here. Named by surname only, because he is living — which is this estate’s rule and the reason the row says what it says and no more. |
| 10 Oct 2026 | The inbox again: two death notices already bought, and a supplier this archive has never listed yes | What does this say about the method? | SECOND SWEEP, SECOND TIME THE INBOX BEAT EVERY INDEX The first sweep found a 1,604-person descendant report that had sat unopened for eighteen years and answered a lead marked unknown and must not be assumed. The second finds two paid-for death notices and an unlisted supplier. Neither was reachable by any catalogue, register or index this archive can search. The repositories it keeps a register of are the ones it thought to look in; the one in the house was not on the list. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it yes | archive.org · title:("griqua records") | ONE RECORD griquarecordsphi0000unse — Schoeman (ed.), Griqua Records: the Philippolis Captaincy, 1825–1861, Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1996, ISBN 0958411212, 386 pages. Its collections are inlibrary and printdisabled, so it is borrowable, not free full text, and borrowing wants an account this archive will not open. Row 120 said «no free digitisation found»; that is still true of the TEXT and it was never true of the index. The ISBN and the page count are new here, and so is the year: row 120 says the volume appeared two years after the DSAB draft of February 1992, and the record says 1996, which is four. The row's reasoning is untouched either way — the point was that Schoeman's own editor could not cite it in the draft — but the arithmetic in that sentence should be checked against the volume rather than left standing. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it yes | archive.org · search inside griquarecordsphi0000unse · Kolbe | TEN RESULTS, NO LOGIN SEARCH-INSIDE WORKS ON A BORROWABLE BOOK WITHOUT BORROWING IT, and that is the finding worth more than any one page here. The reader returns page numbers and a snippet for each hit on a book nobody may read entire. It is not a way round the lending restriction and must not be used as one — it reads an index, not a text — but where the question is «does this book discuss our man, and where», it answers it from a desk, for nothing. Row 137 reached the same wall at the Dictionary of South African Biography Vol. 5 and stopped at borrowing; this is the move that row did not have. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it yes | the book's own index, at page 321 | KOLBE, G.A. — 35, 236, 237 · KOLBE, J. — 130 THE INDEX SEPARATES TWO MEN AND THIS ARCHIVE SHOULD TOO. G.A. Kolbe is the Settler's son, the missionary. J. Kolbe is somebody else entirely: pages 130 and 268 are one document in Dutch and in English, in which «den heer J. Kolbe» is a lessee of a farm owed Rds1480 under a settlement of Sir Harry Smith's. Nothing is claimed about him, and he is written down here only so the next reader does not quietly fold the two initials into one man. AND IT BOUNDS THE PURCHASE. The index puts G.A. Kolbe on three pages, and search-inside has now shown all three. That is the index's count of where he is NAMED, not proof the volume says no more — a document that calls him «their late missionary» without the surname would not be indexed under it, and page 35 contains exactly such a phrase. So the book is not exhausted; what has changed is that row 120 can no longer be sold as the only way to learn what the 1836 charge was. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it yes | page 35, and Schoeman's own footnote to it | THE CHARGE, AND A THIRD NAME IN IT The document is the Griquas complaining of their late missionary Kolbe, whom they and Wright and Atkinson consider dangerous to peace and good order, and their right to make him quit their territory. Schoeman's footnote glosses it: G.A. Kolbe of Philippolis had incurred the enmity of Hendrik Hendrickze, had been accused of adultery, and his colleagues Wright and Atkinson were particularly zealous in pressing the charges; he had left the station but was still living north of the Orange. THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY HELD THE ACCUSATION — from Schoeman's 1992 DSAB draft, which it has always labelled a secondary work it does not take as evidence. What is new is that the same scholar published the documents behind it four years later, and that a THIRD man is named in the pressing of it: PETER WRIGHT of Griquatown. The draft named only H. Hendricks and T. Atkinson. The spelling is the book's: «Hendrickze», and its index says at xiii that the name's spelling is discussed there. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it part | pages 236 and 237, the volume's chronology of Philippolis | FOUR DATES, AND ONE OF THEM MAY SETTLE AN OPEN CONFLICT May 1828 — James Clark and G.A. Kolbe establish the Bushman School, later Bethulie. March 1831 — G.A. Kolbe arrives at Philippolis. August 1836 — Theophilus Atkinson arrives at Philippolis. March 1837 — G.A. Kolbe leaves Philippolis. The chronology also has 10 January 1827 for John Melvill's arrival, March 1832 for his departure, and 28 December 1835 for the grant of land to the Berlin Missionary Society at Bethulie. THE FIRST OF THOSE BEARS ON A DISAGREEMENT THIS ARCHIVE HAS PUBLISHED AND NOT RESOLVED. Sibree's Register has him accepted provisionally by Mr Miles on 8 February 1829; the DSAB draft says 8 February 1828. If he was founding the Bushman School in May 1828, then he was in the field before the Society formally took him on, and the two dates are not a contradiction at all but an answer and a question — Sibree is dating the acceptance, the DSAB the posting. That is a reading, not a document, and it is written here as one. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it yes | page 323, the index entry for «missionaries» | THE ELEVEN WHO SERVED PHILIPPOLIS For missionaries stationed at Philippolis the index sends the reader to Atkinson, Theophilus; Christie, George; Clark, James; Kolbe, G.A.; Melvill, John; Philip, W.B.; Schreiner, Gottlob; Solomon, Edward; Thomson, W.Y.; van der Schalk, C.J.; Wright, Peter. Two of those eleven are the men who pressed the charge against the third. The list is a published roll of the station this archive's man served, and it is worth having whole. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it no | archive.org · "quarterly chronicle" AND "missionary society" | NOTHING, AND THE ZERO IS TESTED The LMS Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions — the 1829 printing of the Melvill and Kolbe journal, and the one text of his own that is out of copyright — is not on the Internet Archive under that title. Row 121 already said so; what it did not have is a control. A bare phrase query for «london missionary society» returns 736 records on the same endpoint, and a field query for a known identifier returns exactly one, so the mechanism can see what is there and the nil is the archive's answer, not the query's. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it blocked | archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk · LMS incoming correspondence, South Africa 1829 | BLOCKED — A BOT CHECK A web search says this component lists letters from John Melvill at Philippolis and George Kolbe at the Bushman mission near the Caledon in 1829 — which would be item-level references for row 135's SOAS letter. The page cannot be read from here: it returns 403 to a fetch and a Cloudflare «performing security verification» interstitial in a browser. It was not worked around, and no part of its content is recorded here as fact — the description above is the search engine's, not the catalogue's, and stays an unconfirmed lead until somebody opens the page. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it blocked | catalog.hathitrust.org · Transactions of the Missionary Society | BLOCKED — 403 Row 121 recorded that HathiTrust's bot check had blocked this archive once already. It still does, now on the catalogue and not only the reader. Recorded as blocked and left alone. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it blocked | googleapis.com/books/v1 · the full Quarterly Chronicle title | BLOCKED — 429 Row 121 recorded that the Books API rate-limited this query. It still does. This is a reproduction of a known condition, not a new finding, and the printed 1829 Chronicle remains unlocated. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at yes | archive.org search inside dictionaryofsout0005unse · Kolbe | NINE RESULTS Row 137 located this volume on 21 September, found it borrowable and not open, and stopped there — “this no longer needs a library building”, with borrowing as the route. IT DID NOT NEED BORROWING EITHER. The same search-inside that opened Griqua Records this morning opens this, and the row's own warning about the _djvu.txt wrapper — «a null from the wrong object is not a null» — was a warning about the wrong door, not a locked one. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at yes | the entry at page 419, first of two | KOLBE, FRIEDRICH WILHELM — GÜTERSLOH, WESTPHALIA, 3.11.1821; CAPE TOWN, 1899 THE BIRTHPLACE IS NEW AND IT IS WHAT CLOSES THE SIBREE ERROR. This archive argued from arithmetic that Sibree's entry 522 was wrong to call him a son of the Rev. G.A. Kolbe — 3 November 1821 against John Gerson Eliezar's 7 July 1822, eight months apart — and leaned on the New Catholic Encyclopedia's loose phrase about a Westphalian missionary. The dictionary now says it outright and with a town: born at Gütersloh in Westphalia, died at Cape Town in 1899, a missionary and Herero scholar. A man born in Westphalia in 1821 is not the son of a settler who had been at the Cape since 1820. The inference from three works is now a named source. Of his life the snippets also give Otjikango (Gross Barmen), the Herero language learnt under C. H. Hahn, some fifty hymns, and a printing press bought at Cape Town. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at part | his parentage, which is what row 137 asked for first | NOT READ THE ROW WANTED PARENTAGE AND BIRTHPLACE. ONLY ONE OF THE TWO CAME. The dictionary gives parents in a fixed house form — the Beiderbecke entry at p.41 reads “the son of Heinrich Christoph Beiderbecke, a teacher, and his wife, Sophia Becker” — so the sentence almost certainly exists in Kolbe's entry too. It falls outside every snippet window this archive could open, and page 419 is one of the pages the preview omits. Nothing is claimed about his parents and nothing is inferred from the silence. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at yes | the entry at page 419, second of two | KOLBE, FREDERICK FORTUNATUS HOFMEYR — AND HE IS NOT A MISREADING Born Wakkerstroom, 27.9.1919; died Wakkerstroom, 18.6.1969, an agricultural extension officer, the son of FREDERICK FORTUNATUS KOLBE and his wife ANNA MARGARETHA CATHARINA MOOLMAN. ROW 173 SAID THIS NAME IN THE DSAB INDEX WAS “PROBABLY A MISREADING”. IT IS A FULL BIOGRAPHICAL ENTRY. The dates match the user tree row 173 found to the day, the place is Wakkerstroom — this archive's Kolbe place — and the dictionary names both his parents, which the tree did not. A father called Frederick Fortunatus Kolbe, with a son born at Wakkerstroom in 1919, is a generation this archive should be able to place and currently cannot. Nothing is joined to anybody here: the entry is a published source and this archive has not tied it to a person it holds. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at yes | the cumulative index at page 922 | EVERY KOLBE THE DICTIONARY HAS, AND ONE IT DOES NOT Kolbe, F. C., I, 433 · Kolbe, F. F. H., V, 419 · Kolbe, F. W., V, 419. Three Kolbes across five volumes: the Monsignor in Volume I, and the two above in Volume V. THERE IS NO GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE IN IT. That is a published index across the whole run to 1987, and it is the best evidence yet for what row 137 reasoned to in September — the Settler's entry was written for a volume that never appeared, and the typescript the National Library sent is the only form it exists in. An index is not a census of what was drafted, so this confirms the reasoning rather than proving the negative. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at void | archive.org search inside dictionaryofsout0005unse · Gütersloh | ZERO, AND THE ZERO IS AN ARTEFACT The word is on page 419 and the search cannot find it. The index is built from OCR and the umlaut does not survive; the same snippet shows “Westpha¬ lia” broken across a line. A nil from this search box is a statement about the OCR and not about the book, which is worth more than the query was — every nil taken this way in a scanned volume has to be read that way. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's yes | archive.org · which volumes of the DSAB are scanned at all | FOUR OF THE OLD RUN, AND VOLUME I IS NOT LABELLED dictionaryofsout0005unse is Volume V; dictionaryofsout0000unse is II; dictionaryofsout0000unse_x2g1 is III; and dictionaryofsout0000unse_p0x9 carries no volume number at all — its catalogue line reads «volumes 1-2, 5», which is a holdings statement and not a label. It is Volume I, and the proof is internal: the cumulative index in Volume V puts Kolbe, F. C. at I, 433, and page 433 of this scan is the Kolbe entry. A scan with no volume number is not an unidentified scan if another volume's index will say what it must contain. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's yes | the entry at Volume I, page 433 | FRIEDRICH CARL KOLBE, AND HIS FATHER IN THE SAME SENTENCE Kolbe, Friedrich Carl (Frederick Charles), born GEORGE 28 September 1854, died SEA POINT, CAPE TOWN 12 January 1936 — Roman Catholic clergyman, poet, critic, writer, philosopher, theologian and botanist. He was the son of FRIEDRICH WILHELM KOLBE OF GÜTERSLOH IN WESTPHALIA, WHO CAME TO SOUTH AFRICA IN 1844 as one of the earliest missionaries of the Rhenish mission society in Damaraland, and his wife ISABELLA ELLIOTT. THE BIRTHPLACE IS NOW SAID TWICE, IN TWO VOLUMES, BY TWO DIFFERENT ENTRIES — V, 419 for the father and I, 433 for the son — and the second adds the year he reached the country and the name of his wife. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's yes | what 1844 does to Sibree's entry 522 | IT ENDS IT Sibree's Register calls Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe a son of the Rev. G.A. Kolbe, No. 278. G.A. KOLBE DIED AT COLESBERG ON 1 DECEMBER 1844. F.W. KOLBE ARRIVED IN SOUTH AFRICA IN 1844, AGED TWENTY-THREE, FROM WESTPHALIA, SENT BY A DIFFERENT SOCIETY TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY. This archive had the arithmetic — 3 November 1821 against John Gerson Eliezar's 7 July 1822 — and a loose phrase about a Westphalian missionary. It now has a birth town, an arrival year, a mission society and a field, from two published entries, and they agree with each other and with Schoeman against Sibree. A compiler joined two Kolbes; the dictionary never did. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's yes | his wife's people, which the entry gives and this archive did not ask for | ISABELLA ELLIOTT, AND A CAPE LINE BEHIND HER The entry traces her: William Caldwell of the British army and William Elliott, a Yorkshire clergyman, in the earlier nineteenth century; and among her South African ancestors Hans Helm, who emigrated from Holland to the Cape in 1671, and H. L. Bletterman, Landdrost of Stellenbosch, her great-grandfather. NONE OF IT IS THIS FAMILY and none of it is claimed here. It is written down because the whole point of the row was to separate two Kolbe families, and this is what the other one looks like — the clearest possible statement that it is somebody else's. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's part | F. W. Kolbe's own parents | STILL NOT READ The son's entry names his father and his mother. It does not name his father's father. That sentence, if it exists, is in the Volume V entry at p.419, in the window the preview will not open. Row 137 asked for parentage and birthplace; the birthplace is answered twice and the parentage is still answered nowhere. Nothing is inferred from the silence. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary no | dictionaryofsout0005unse · Daschner | NOTHING No Daschner anywhere in the volume, and the name carries no diacritic for the OCR to lose. The control is in the same search box on the same afternoon: Mountjoy, Booysen, Barry and Kolbe all return hits from it, so the mechanism was working when it returned nothing here. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary part | dictionaryofsout0005unse · Mountjoy | ONE, AND IT IS NOT AN ENTRY Page 266, in a sources note at the foot of somebody else's life: private information supplied by “Mrs Margaret Mountjoy (daughter), Jbg.”, beside a Mr Thomas Fitzgerald and a Mr A. Crawford. She is a Mountjoy by marriage, in Johannesburg, consulted while the dictionary was being compiled. NO DATES, NO MAIDEN NAME, AND NOTHING JOINS HER TO THIS ARCHIVE'S MOUNTJOYS. It is written down because an informant named in a published source is a findable person, and because this archive has eighty-one Mountjoys and no Johannesburg thread. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary no | dictionaryofsout0005unse · Booysen | TWO, AND BOTH ARE THE OTHER SPELLING C. M. Booysen, co-author of a Praktiese grammatika van die Afrikaanse taal (p.383), and Prinsina Petronella Aletta Booysen, married 8 February 1899 (p.810). This archive spells itself BOOYZEN and has measured how far apart the two populations are — 249 against 2,417 in one index. Neither is claimed and neither is this family. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary part | dictionaryofsout0005unse · Barry | AN ENTRY, AND IT BELONGS TO A DIFFERENT BARRY FAMILY Barry, Charles Edward, born Sea Point 30 September 1877, died Pretoria 11 April 1956, a jurist, son of JAMES MICHAEL BARRY, a Cape attorney (p.34) — and the entry points to Sir Jacob Barry, former Judge President of the Eastern Districts Division of the Supreme Court, as another member of the same family. THE EASTERN DISTRICTS IS WHERE THIS ARCHIVE'S BARRYS ARE, which is exactly why this is written down as a WARNING and not as a lead: a prominent legal Barry family in the same division of the same colony is the strongest possible invitation to merge on a surname, and nothing whatever connects it to John Barry of Barkly East. The other Barrys in the volume are Dr James Barry the army surgeon, James Barry Low, and James Barry Munnik Hertzog — none of them relations, all of them noise in a name search. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary no | what the sweep establishes about the whole run | THE DICTIONARY HOLDS NOBODY OF THIS FAMILY BUT THE KOLBES Across the cumulative index to 1987 and the volume itself: three Kolbes, none of them George Augustus; no Booyzen; no Daschner; no Mountjoy entry; and a Barry family that is somebody else's. A national biographical dictionary is a record of prominence, not of existence, so this says nothing about whether these people lived well — it says the standard reference work a researcher would reach for first does not hold them, and now nobody has to look again. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times yes | archive.org · title:("Oranje-Vrijstaat") | TEN, AND EVERY ONE OF THEM IS PUBLIC DOMAIN THE WHOLE DAY HAD BEEN SPENT ON BOOKS THAT CANNOT BE READ. Griqua Records and both dictionary volumes are borrowable scans opened a snippet at a time. Nothing had asked the opposite question: what about this family is in a book old enough to be free? Ten titles, all unrestricted, among them H. J. Hofstede, Geschiedenis van den Oranje-Vrijstaat (1876) — contemporary with the Commandant, and downloadable entire. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times yes | the OCR text itself, 581 KB of it | REAL TEXT, CHECKED BEFORE IT WAS TRUSTED Row 137 was caught once by a _djvu.txt that returned an HTML wrapper, counted zero occurrences in it, and recorded that a null from the wrong object is not a null. So the file was opened and looked at before anything was counted: 581,584 bytes beginning with Google's scanning notice and then the book. Control: «Vrijstaat» appears 205 times. Only then was anything searched for. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times yes | Kolbe, in Hofstede | SEVENTEEN TIMES, AND ONE OF THEM IS AN OBITUARY “Ik bedoel den kommandant van Bloemfontein J. G. E. KOLBE” — taken by “een noodlottige koorts”, a fatal fever, “niet op 't bed van eer, maar in het midden zijner betrekkingen”, and “bemind en geacht door alle rechtgeaarde Vrijstaters als een goed en verstandig medeburger en een voorganger in den strijd tegen geweldenarij en roof”. IT NAMES HIS SEAT — BLOEMFONTEIN — WHICH THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE, and it is the first judgement of him from somebody who was neither a newspaper nor kin. It agrees with the Grahamstown Journal about the fever without having read it, and adds that he died at home and not in action, which is what a man who carries a camp disease back to his farm looks like. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times part | the date Hofstede gives | 4 APRIL 1868 — AND IT DOES NOT DISPLACE THE ARCHIVE'S The obituary gives 3 April 1868; 3 April 1868 was a Friday; and it was his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, he having married Anna Jacoba van der Merwe on 3 April 1843. Three facts that lock together beat one that a historian set down eight years later. 4 April is written down as a variant and is not adopted. A death on the night of a Friday is the commonest way a neighbouring date gets into print. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times yes | what he did on commando | THE FIRST ACCOUNT OF IT THIS ARCHIVE HAS He and Commandant Roos were sent by the President as gijzelaars — hostages for Moshesh's own safety — so the chief would come in to the meeting, and Moshesh came an hour later with his principal sons. At Klokkelani he surrounded the Basotho and reported it, bringing up the Armstrong gun. At the Thiemie he climbed a footpath with Commandant Prinsloo and two hundred men, reached the top with fifty, and held the captured position that split the mountain while the others cleared the northern point; the day's taking was 10,657 cattle, 5,468 sheep and goats, 1,007 horses, and he came in at sunset soaked and spent. The obituary called him a leader. This is the leading, written down by somebody who was there. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times no | Booyzen, Barry, Mountjoy, Daschner, Downing, McCabe · in Hofstede | NONE OF THEM Not one occurrence of any of the six, against 205 for the control. The four hits on «Booy» are given names of Korana and coloured men — Booy Coetjee, Booy Hermanus, Booy Klaassen — in a list of the murdered, and none of them is the surname. The Commandant is in this book because he commanded; nobody else of this family was. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times no | Borckenhagen, Aardrijkskunde en Geschiedenis van den Oranje Vrijstaat (1892) | NOTHING, CONTROLLED No Kolbe at all, against 92 for «Vrijstaat» and 23 for «Boshof» in the same file. A geography and a schoolbook history does not name commandants, and that is what the nil means. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Two more Kolbes in the same free book, and neither is adopted yes | the page images of geschiedenisvan00hofsgoog, read directly | PRINTED PAGES 131, 156 AND 158 A PUBLIC-DOMAIN SCAN HANDS OVER ITS PAGE IMAGES, AND THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS BOOK AND EVERY OTHER ONE READ TODAY. Griqua Records and both dictionary volumes are borrowable and give snippets; this gives the type. Three pages were fetched and read to place the action the first Kolbe appears in. Page 156 is the order to storm Thaba-Bosigo at half past three on the morning of 8 August, with the Whitworth, the Armstrong and Wepener's old six-pounder; page 158 is generaal Fick's orders and ends with the stormers reaching “de eerste loodrecht opgaande rots, die omtrent 20 voet hoog was.” The seven men who went up it on each other's shoulders — kapt. Hunton, Kolbe, Owen, J. Raaff Jun., W. Hanger, Whitehead and G. N. Hanger — are on the page after that. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Two more Kolbes in the same free book, and neither is adopted part | which Kolbe went up the rock | NOT ESTABLISHED, AND A SON IS AS LIKELY He is named bare, among a captain and five burghers. A sitting commandant is given his rank everywhere else in this book — «komdt. Kolbe», «de kommandanten Prinsloo en Kolbe» — so the bare name argues against the Commandant and for somebody younger. His obituary says two of his sons had been serving with him in the field and «proved themselves amongst the bravest of our burghers». That is a reason to look, not a reason to decide, and nothing is entered for him. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Two more Kolbes in the same free book, and neither is adopted no | «Jan Colbe», 6 April 1866 | THE TYPE SAYS COLBE, AND THE LEAD IS WITHDRAWN Three men were allowed by Sephanja to go up and bring away Louw Wepener's bones: Jan Jonathan Durand, Franz Holm and “Jan Colbe”. This archive's Commandant is “JAN GERSEM ELIEZER KOLBE” in his own daughter's wording on her 1909 death registration, so the given name is exactly right — which is why the page was fetched rather than reasoned about. IT SAYS COLBE. Printed folio 160 reads “Durand, Franz Holm en Jan Colbe door Sefoni (Sephanja) toegelaten om de beenderen van L. Wepener weg te nemen”, and the same volume sets Kolbe seventeen times elsewhere. The OCR was faithful; the spelling is the author's. Nothing is taken. The page earns its place for two other things: the bones were buried at Wepener's last home, Constantia in the district of Bethulie, and the failed storming is dated 15 August 1865, with the Timie named as the mountain taken later — the Thiemie, whose summit this Commandant held. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Two more Kolbes in the same free book, and neither is adopted yes | the leaf numbering of this scan | SOLVED — THE SCAN CARRIES ITS OWN INDEX The offsets drift and three guesses landed wrong, one of them on the New York Public Library's bookplate. The answer was in the item all along. {id}_djvu.xml holds one page object per leaf, each with that leaf's OCR, so the leaf for any hit is the index of the object containing it — no arithmetic, no offset, no guessing. Leaf 211, folio 160, fetched and read first time. _scandata.xml is the file that looks like it should answer this and does not: 314 leaves described, every one of them with a crop box and a page type, and not one printed page number among them. This is the method for every public-domain scan from here on. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him yes | archive.org · public-domain South African histories, 1848–1899 | FIVE TAKEN, FOUR READ ENTIRE Hofstede having worked, the same question was put to the rest of the shelf: what else is old enough to be free? Theal's History of South Africa: The Republics and Native Territories 1854–1872; his Fragment of Basuto History; Moodie's History of the Battles and Adventures of the British, the Boers and the Zulus; Holden's History of the Colony of Natal; and Theal's Basutoland Records, 723 pages of printed official documents. All five out of copyright, all five downloadable whole. This is the opposite of the morning, which was spent reading three books a snippet at a time because they could not be opened. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him yes | Moodie, page 93 — read as an image | A DOCUMENT HE WROTE, WITH A DATE, A PLACE AND AN ADDRESSEE “A report from Commandant J. G. E. KOLBE to Commandant Botha, dated PLATBERG, 2nd Nov., 1867” — the capture of caverns and strongholds at Mariendall: one Boer killed, two severely wounded, eleven of the enemy killed as far as known, 120 women and children taken out of the caverns and put across the Caledon, twenty wagon loads of corn taken. ROW 170 SAYS THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS NO WORD WRITTEN BY ANYBODY OF THIS FAMILY BETWEEN 1844 AND THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, AND THAT IS STILL LITERALLY TRUE — Moodie summarises and does not print it. What has changed is that the document is no longer hypothetical. It has a date, a place and a man it was sent to, which is what a thing needs before anybody can go and look for it. The next report on the page gives Botha his initials — J. C. BOTHA — and Botha is the commandant standing beside Kolbe on the Thiemie in Hofstede: two books twelve years apart, neither citing the other. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him part | what Moodie prints immediately above it | SET DOWN, BECAUSE LEAVING IT OUT WOULD BE A CHOICE TOO The paragraph before Kolbe's report is the Rev. Mr Jousse, writing from Thaba Bosigo in October 1867, on a raid in which people were “killed as dogs indistinctly men, women, and children”, the women and children outnumbering the men. Kolbe's report, as summarised, does not describe that — his women and children were taken out of the caverns and put across the river — and the juxtaposition is Moodie's, not the record's. Both are recorded. An archive that prints a man's commendations and not the war they were earned in is not describing the same war. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him yes | Basutoland Records, page 436 — read as an image | A SWORN WITNESS PUTS THE SETTLER AT BETHULIE IN JUNE 1831 Deposition of Frans Johannes Cornelis Cronje, Smithfield, 14 September 1858, before J. J. Sauer, Landdrost of the Caledon River District. Hunting up from Colesberg in June 1831 with the three Venters, his brother Stephanus and Hendrik Weber, Commandant of the District: “We then met with the missionaries KOLBE AND KLERK with some BUSHMEN AT BETHULIE.” “Klerk” is almost certainly JAMES CLARK, the man Sibree pairs him with at the Bushman station, written down by a Dutch deponent as he heard it — and that pairing is what identifies the Kolbe. The earliest independent sighting of the Settler this archive has. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him part | and it does not fit the chronology | SAID PLAINLY RATHER THAN SMOOTHED Sibree has him at Philippolis from 13 March 1831; Schoeman's chronology says March 1831 as well. A June 1831 sighting at Bethulie puts him back at his old station three months after leaving it, or puts a year's slip into a deposition sworn twenty-seven years after the fact. Nothing here decides which, and the archive does not get to pick the one that reads better. The deposition also has a purpose: these were taken to argue the land had been empty, so «no other native tribes besides a few Bushmen» is interested testimony and is read as such. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him yes | reading the page instead of the transcript | TWO WORDS CHANGED The OCR gives “Barend Teater” and “Bethulle”; the type says BAREND VENTER and BETHULIE. Neither alters the finding and both would have gone into this archive as fact. The leaf was found the way the last one was — the scan's _djvu.xml, one page object per leaf — which is now simply how this archive reads a free book. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him no | Theal, The Republics and Native Territories 1854–1872 | NO KOLBE AT ALL, AND THE CONTROLS ARE LOUD The standard history of exactly this Commandant's state and exactly his years: 516 mentions of Moshesh, 105 of Bloemfontein, 255 of «commandant» — and not one Kolbe. Nor in Theal's Fragment of Basuto History. A commandant of Bloemfontein who died in office in 1868 is not in the authoritative history of the republic he served, which is worth knowing both as a fact about the books and as a measure of how far this family sat from the people who wrote them. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him yes | Holden, History of the Colony of Natal (1855) | THE OTHER KOLBE, CONFIRMED FROM A THIRD DIRECTION A Blue Book report on Damaraland signed “F. N. Kolbe, In the service of the Rhenish Missionary Society” — the initial is an OCR slip for F. W. This is the man the whole day was spent separating from this family, and here he is in 1855 doing exactly what Dictionary of South African Biography I, 433 says he came to do in 1844: Rhenish mission, Damaraland. Three independent sources now agree about him, and none of them puts him anywhere near the Settler. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | Four more free books, and two of them had him no | Booyzen, Barry, Mountjoy, Daschner · across all five | NOTHING, EXCEPT TWO MORE BARRYS WHO ARE NOT THESE Theal names Advocate J. D. Barry, recorder of the high court in Griqualand West. That is the third Cape legal Barry this archive has met today and, like Sir Jacob and James Michael, he is written down only so nobody joins him on. No Booyzen, no Mountjoy, no Daschner in any of the five. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | archive.org · The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, by volume | 1828 TO 1837, UNRESTRICTED, ALL TEN TAKEN THE SERIAL THIS ARCHIVE WANTED WAS NEVER THE ONLY ONE. Row 121 went after the Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions and established it is not on the Internet Archive. The LMS's MONTHLY is, under evangelicalmagaz…, one volume a year, freely downloadable, and it covers every year he was in the field. Thirty megabytes of it read in one pass. The run is not complete — 1838 onward thins — but 1828 through 1837 is there. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1833, pp. 410–412 | “EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE” 8 October 1831 to 3 September 1832, at Philippolis, day by day. Attendances, admissions, the school roll climbing from ninety to 335, a chief writing to a Veld-Cornet about colonists beating his people, twenty-six people vaccinated on 18 January 1832, a thanksgiving for deliverance from small-pox, the church discipline set out in his own hand, the new church opened on 1 April 1832 — built by the district, stone walls twelve feet high, five hundred seats and a hundred left in the street. ROW 138 SAYS THE SUM OF HIS OWN WORDS HERE IS ONE SENTENCE AT SECOND HAND. IT IS NOW ELEVEN MONTHS. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | the same journal, 21 July 1832 | THE OBITUARY CORROBORATED SIXTEEN YEARS EARLY “The Veld-Cornet Joubert … and two other farmers, arrived here this afternoon, for the purpose of obtaining MEDICAL ADVICE, and also to attend the religious services of the station.” The Grahamstown Journal said in 1844 that he had been “for many years engaged in rendering them medical advice and assistance whenever called upon”, and this archive had only the obituary's word for it. Here is the thing itself, in his own journal, with the farmers named by office and riding in for it. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1831 — his letter of 30 April 1831 | HE DATES HIS OWN ARRIVAL, AND IT CLOSES THE CONFLICT “As I resided for NEARLY THREE YEARS among the Bushmen previous to my removal to this station …” and then, plainly: “WHEN I ARRIVED, IN APRIL, 1828, WITH MY COLLEAGUE, IN THE BUSHMAN COUNTRY.” THIS ARCHIVE HAS CARRIED SIBREE'S 8 FEBRUARY 1829 AGAINST THE DSAB'S 8 FEBRUARY 1828 SINCE SEPTEMBER. Both can now stand: 1828 is when he went, 1829 is when the Society formally took him on. Sibree was never dating an arrival. Nearly three years from April 1828 also lands exactly on Sibree's own «arriving at Philippolis, March 13, 1831» — the two halves of that entry were always consistent and nobody had the middle. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1830 — James Clark's letter of 31 December 1828 | THE COLLEAGUE SAYS IT FROM THE OTHER SIDE “brother Kolbe and myself removed to this station, and arrived here in the beginning of MAY last” — written at the Bushman Station, near Caledon River, in December 1828, so «May last» is May 1828. The letter also gives the station's origin: Landdrost Stockenstrom of Graaff-Reinet and the Lieutenant-Governor asked Clark to begin it, farmers in the district subscribed cattle, and the Bushmen had been driven off their fountains by Boers crossing the boundary. TWO MEN, WRITING THREE YEARS APART AND NEITHER FOR POSTERITY, PUT HIM THERE IN APRIL OR MAY 1828. And the station is the Boesmanskool that became Bethulie. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free no | the 1828 and 1829 volumes · the Caledon journey of November 1828 | NOT THERE, AND THAT IS ROW 121'S ANSWER NARROWED Neither volume names him once. The DSAB says the Melvill and Kolbe journal was printed “in the Transactions of the Missionary Society for 1829”, and this establishes that it was not in the Society's monthly — so the citation means the Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions, the separate serial row 121 has already shown is not on the Internet Archive. The journey is still unfound and the place to look is now one place smaller. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free part | the same letter, on the people he worked among | RECORDED WHOLE, NOT IN THE HALF THAT READS WELL He writes that the Bushmen's raids “proceeded from a recollection of former injuries, excited by the intrusion of the colonists into their country”, and that “Truly, the oppression of the Bushmen has been great; they have been looked upon, by many, little above the level of the brute creation; and having been subjected to a temporary slavery, they have smarted under the lash of the oppressor.” He also calls them, on arrival, “a wild and uncivilized race — a band of robbers, and haters of men”, says not one had been brought to the faith, and that “Temporal advantages are all they desire.” BOTH HALVES ARE SET DOWN. Quoting only the sentence that sounds right now would be choosing his words for him, which is the one thing an archive holding a man's own journal must not do. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free yes | the Letters Received tables, 1831 to 1836 | A SPINE OF DATES NOBODY HAS TO GUESS AT The magazine lists every letter the Society received, by missionary and station. G. A. Kolbe, Philippolis: 30 April 1831 · 4 October 1831 · September 1832 · 10 October 1833 · 20 October 1835. That is a documentary timeline of his correspondence with London, and each date is a letter that exists somewhere in the CWM archive at SOAS — which is row 135's enquiry, now able to ask for things by date. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A Kolbe in Westminster paying for the mission at Philippolis part | Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1836 · the subscription lists | “MISS A. KOLBE”, ORANGE STREET CHAPEL AUXILIARY In the Juvenile Branch of the Orange Street Chapel auxiliary, with a bare “Miss Kolbe” in a collector's list on the same page. Orange Street Chapel is off Leicester Square in Westminster — this family's parish — and a few minutes from Conduit Street, where Amelia Ann Kolbe was living at the 1841 census. The society is the one her brother served, and 1836 is a year he was at Philippolis. A surname, an initial, a parish and a society is the whole of it. No address, no age, no relationship is printed, and this archive has already spent today keeping four Kolbes of one name apart. Recorded as a lead against her record and nothing is altered. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A Kolbe in Westminster paying for the mission at Philippolis no | the other nine volumes, for the same thing | ONE YEAR ONLY The subscription lists of 1828–1835 and 1837 carry no Kolbe at all. A single sighting in a single year is weaker than a run would be, and is written down as a single sighting. It also means the lists were read and not merely the one that answered. |
| 11 Oct 2026 | A Kolbe in Westminster paying for the mission at Philippolis part | what would settle it | THE AUXILIARY'S OWN PAPERS, AT THE ADDRESS ALREADY BEING WRITTEN TO The magazine prints a total, not an address. The Orange Street Chapel records, or the LMS auxiliary returns in the Council for World Mission archive, would carry the subscriber's own hand — and CWM at SOAS is exactly where row 135's letter is going. This costs nothing to add to an enquiry already written. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | findmypast.co.uk · the record-set catalogue, searched by place name | TWELVE SETS FOR SOUTH AFRICA AND EVERY ONE IS MILITARY THE BOUNDARY, AND IT RETIRES AN ERRAND RATHER THAN ANSWERING IT. Row 78 named the two things worth the remaining days: 1819–20 passenger lists, and the 1903 certificates. The certificates were answered in September. The passenger lists cannot be answered on this tool at all, and now there is a tested reason rather than a failed search. Searching the catalogue of all 2,977 record sets by place: “South Africa” returns 12, every one of them Anglo-Boer War — nominal rolls, rolls of honour, soldiers' wills, war memorials, and the Australian, New Zealand and Glasgow contingents. “Natal” returns NOTHING AT ALL. “Cape” returns two, and both are Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. “Transvaal” returns the same nine Boer War sets again. There is no South African civil registration here, no parish register, no passenger or arrival list, and nothing whatever before 1899. The four searches are a control on each other: the mechanism plainly works, because it returns twelve relevant sets for one name and zero for another. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | findmypast.co.uk · travel & migration, BARRY, keyword «cape of good hope» | 178 HITS, AND THE CAPE ONES ARE A NAVAL YARD IN THE 1790s The one item row 78 had left. 178 results, and the genuinely Cape-located ones are EDWARD BARRY in the British Royal Navy Ships' Musters at the Naval Yard at the Cape of Good Hope, 1797–1800 — a British set that happens to record Cape postings, not a Cape set. The rest drift to Tasmania and Great Britain on a loose keyword. Bounded to 1819 ±2, travel & migration returns 16 Barrys and every one is Australian — New South Wales settlers and convicts. Nothing at the Cape in the year John Augustus Barry I was born «at sea». |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | WO 127 · South Africa, Local Armed Forces Nominal Rolls, 1899–1902 — 53,416 records | A SOURCE THIS ARCHIVE HAD NEVER OPENED, AND THE REGISTER PROVES IT The one South African thing FindMyPast does hold, and it is a good one. A transcription of TNA WO 127 by Kevin Asplin: name, rank, regimental number, unit, and often dates of enrolment and discharge. This archive's register holds ZERO rows from any Boer War source, so despite row 86 re-running the four surnames in September, this set had never reached it. Searched all four surnames with variants on 12 October. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war no | WO 127 · KOLBE, with variants | NIL, AND THE CONTROL IS IN THE RESULT Three hits and not one is a Kolbe — J M Kilby, Thomas Kilby, A F Kyser. The variant matcher plainly fired, which is what makes this a negative worth recording rather than an empty page: no Kolbe served in any unit on this roll. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | WO 127 · MOUNTJOY, with variants | GEORGE MOUNTJOY, PRIVATE 664, DISTRICT MOUNTED RIFLES One exact Mountjoy in 53,416 records, and the surname is rare enough for that to mean something. Pte. 664, District Mounted Rifles — a locally raised Cape Colony unit, organised by district, and this family's Mountjoys were at Cradock, Dordrecht and Barkly East, which is that recruiting ground. IT CANNOT YET BE GIVEN TO A MAN. The transcript carries no age and no district, and this archive holds three Georges who could be of age in 1900: George Mountjoy of Barkly East, who has no dates at all; George Herkules Johannes Mountjoy, born 16 January 1862; and George Mountjoy of Kokstad, born about 1862. The 1889 George was a boy of eleven and the 1823 George was seventy-seven. Three candidates, no discriminator, nothing claimed. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | WO 127 · BOOYZEN / BOOYSEN, with variants | NICHOLAS GEORGE PETER BOOYSEN, TROOPER, NESBITT'S HORSE Eight hits, four of them real and probably one man: Booysen, N. Booysen, Nicholas Booysen and NICHOLAS GEORGE PETER BOOYSEN — Trooper, Nesbitt's Horse, 26 January to 18 September 1900, remarked “Discharged, services no longer required”. Nesbitt's Horse was raised in the eastern Cape. NO MAN OF THIS NAME IS IN THIS ARCHIVE — its Nicholas-bearing Booysens are a Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas of 1882, a Hendrik Stefanus Nicolaas of 1862 and a Jacobus Nicholas before 1842. Not claimed. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war no | WO 127 · BARRY | 34 HITS AND THE INDEX CANNOT CHOOSE AMONG THEM Too common a surname for an index with no age and no district. 34 results, including a J H Barry who could be James Henry and a George Barry who could be several people. Nothing attributable, and that is the finding: this set identifies a rare surname and defeats a common one. |
| 12 Oct 2026 | FindMyPast has no South African records except a war yes | the side of the war these rolls describe | THE SAME DISTRICTS, THE OTHER SIDE Worth setting down before anybody is adopted off these rolls. WO 127 lists men who served the BRITISH in locally raised colonial units. The men this archive already holds from that war went the other way: Fred J. Barry, plaasboer of Ivanhoe, tried as a CAPE REBEL in June 1901, and the two Kolbes taken prisoner and shipped to Cape Town on WO 108/368. So this source describes neighbours, and possibly relatives, who chose the opposite side in the same districts in the same months. That is a reason to be slower about identification, not faster. |
Nothing matches that.
FamilySearch signed back in — and the two missing Barry children fell in under an hour
Not to a name search, which was correctly closed, but to the relationship search · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Father John Barry, mother a Kolbe, child's own name left blank | NINE BAPTISMS, AND TWO OF THEM WERE NOT IN THIS ARCHIVE Found | 1847 John August · 1848 Henry Jaonas/Hennery James · 1850 George Augustus · 1852 MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA · 1853 William Fredrik · 1855 Catherine Mary Sophia · 1859 Catharina Mary Sophia · 1861 WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS · 1863 Frederik Fortunatus. OPEN QUESTION 13 HAS BEEN ASKING WHICH TWO SINCE THIS SITE WAS WRITTEN, and its own note said the index route was closed. IT WAS CLOSED TO A NAME SEARCH AND WAS NEVER CLOSED TO A RELATIONSHIP SEARCH. |
| MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA, baptised Burgersdorp 5 April 1852 | THE INDEX GIVES HER NO SURNAME — EITHER TIME Found | Two separate index passes of the same page read “Margrith Louisa Maria” and “Margreth Louisa Mary”, and the Name column stops there. IT IS THE BLANK NAME COLUMN AGAIN, the failure that hid her sister Catherine Mary Sophia of 1855 for weeks. Parents entered as “Margrith Willemina Kolbe + John Barry”. ark:/61903/1:1:6VYG-SS94 and 1:1:6F4L-76PK; the image 3:1:3Q9M-CSFQ-QLQN is ON FILM 008039088, the register this archive has been sweeping by hand. |
| WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY, born 29 September 1861, baptised Graaff-Reinet | INVISIBLE FOR THE OPPOSITE REASON — HE HAS HIS BROTHER'S NAME Found | William Fredrik Barry was born 23 August 1853 and baptised at Burgersdorp. THIS IS A SECOND WILLIAM FREDERICK, EIGHT YEARS LATER, TO THE SAME PARENTS. A search for William Barry returns the 1853 child and stops, and nothing in the result says there is another. BY THIS FAMILY'S OWN PRACTICE THE FIRST MUST HAVE DIED — a baptism is not done twice, which is what this archive concluded about the two Catherine Mary Sophias. |
| Does the count come right | ELEVEN, WHICH IS WHAT THE 1903 REGISTRATION SAYS Partly | Nine baptisms plus HENDRIK NICHOLAAS and RICHARD PETER — both named on their parents' death notices and in no register this archive can find — makes eleven. MARGARET MARY of the death notices is almost certainly MARGRITH LOUISA MARIA: it is her mother's name and there is no other candidate in the sibling group. Inferred from the count and the name, and marked as inferred. |
| q.filmNumber on the search API | 22,059 RECORDS FOR FILM 008039088 — THE WHOLE INDEXED FILM Partly | Which would have made weeks of hand-sweeping unnecessary, if it could be paged. IT CANNOT. |
| Can the film be paged out | NO — IT PAGES TO OFFSET 1000 AND THEN SILENTLY RETURNS PAGE ONE Found | At offset 1001 the API gives back the first page again. NO ERROR, NO WARNING, NO CHANGE IN THE REPORTED TOTAL: the response still says “results: 22059” and still says “index: 0”. AN UNCHECKED SWEEP WOULD HAVE RE-READ THE FIRST THOUSAND RECORDS TWENTY-TWO TIMES AND REPORTED THE FILM AS HOLDING 1,400 ENTRIES. Caught by comparing the first name at offset 0 against offset 1400 — identical — and bisecting to the edge. THE FOURTH UNDOCUMENTED BOUNDARY IN A WEEK, and the first that answers WRONGLY rather than emptily. |
| So is the hand sweep abandoned | NO. 214 IMAGES STILL HAVE TO BE STEPPED. Partly | The API will show 1,001 of 22,059 records and no more. What it is good for is exactly what it did here: A TARGETED RELATIONSHIP QUERY, WHERE THE ANSWER IS SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT INSIDE THE FIRST THOUSAND. The film sweep resumes at image 605 of 818. |
The Vaalbank school file finished, and the Johannesburg directories priced out
Closing the last two items that could be worked from here · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The remaining twenty-four Vaalbank documents | THE SCHOOL OUTLIVES THE REPUBLIC, AND DS BOOYSEN IS ON EXACTLY THREE OF THE FIFTY-FOUR Found | The 1899 and 1900 files are J.P. Louw alone — inspection reports, railway certificates for abroad, a declaration about the illness of the pupil JM ESTERHUIZEN, three free-boarding pupils leaving on 30 June, and then his own monthly salary certificates running to May 1900. NO FURTHER BOOYSEN APPEARS. And then the school simply continues: TED E600, “VAALBANK 116 SKOOL, LICHTENBURG SKOOLRAAD, STIGTING, 1905–1942”; TED E1954, establishments 1908–1937; a CLEANING ALLOWANCE for Vaalbank No. 116 in 1929 and 1937. THE FARM SCHOOL ON THIS FAMILY'S OWN GROUND RAN FOR AT LEAST FORTY-FOUR YEARS AND HAD A NUMBER. |
| A detail worth a second look | A SCHOOL TRANSPORT ROUTE, VAALBANK TO KAFFERSKRAAL Partly | TOD E13/26/71, “TRANSPORT SCHEMES. LICHTENBURG BOARD. VAALBANK – KAFFERSKRAAL”, 1939–1954. KAFFERSKRAAL IS THE POST OFFICE OF THE KWAGGAFONTEIN SCHOOL IN MARICO — the other farm school this archive found, forty years earlier. It may well be a different Kafferskraal; the name is common and Lichtenburg is not Marico. RECORDED AS A COINCIDENCE OF NAMES UNTIL SOMETHING SAYS OTHERWISE. |
| Johannesburg street directories, 1905–1935 | NOT FREELY DIGITISED — IT IS A PURCHASE OR A LIBRARY Blocked | Longland's Johannesburg and Districts Directory exists for the 1890s and is sold commercially as a reproduction; the 1905–1935 run is not online free anywhere this archive can reach. The route is the Johannesburg City Library or a bookseller. NOT A SCREEN QUESTION, and open question 10 — whether the boys went to the mines — stays where it is. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: buying a reproduction, or a reader at the Johannesburg City Library. Neither is a search and both are David's to decide. |
| A replacement address for the SANDF Documentation Centre, looked for again | THERE IS STILL ONLY THE ONE, AND IT STILL BOUNCES Nothing | sandfdoc@mweb.co.za is the address on the Centre's own directory entries and on every guide that lists it, and it returns 550 relay access denied. WHAT IS LEFT IS THE TELEPHONE, (012) 339-4600, the Schweikert Building at 20 Visagie Street, and archive@dod.mil.za, which did not bounce and has not answered in six days. This is as far as this archive can take it from here. |
The gravestone collection swept, with the controls run first
Two of the five surnames are simply not in it, and this time the zero can be trusted · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER in the Genealogical Society's gravestone data | NOUGHT AND NOUGHT — AND THE CONTROLS SAY IT IS REAL Nothing | BARRY returns 54, KOLBE 4, BOOYZEN 3. The database answers and answers a lot. A MONTH AGO THIS ARCHIVE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN “NO MOUNTJOY GRAVESTONES” AND MOVED ON; the number that makes that sentence mean anything is not nought, it is fifty-four. |
| KOLBE — four stones, three of them new | VOLKSRUST, UTRECHT AND NEW GELDERLAND Found | “Kolbe, GE — Concentration Camp cemetery, VOLKSRUST” — this archive knew a Kolbe died in that camp and NOW HAS THE INITIALS, which are two of the Commandant's three. “Van der Spuy, MH — Old Utrecht Cemetery, d. 13 August 1946” is MARGARET HARRIET born Kolbe, whose Natal estate NAB MSCE 1639/1946 was found the same afternoon — SHE NOW HAS A GRAVE AS WELL AS A FILE. And “Fourie, MD — New Gelderland, 29 September 1899 to 8 December 1979”, M.D. on a Kolbe-connected stone eighty years after Margaret Downing died. |
| BOOYZEN — three stones, and they are one household | A WHOLE FAMILY IN ONE PRIVATE CEMETERY Found | Viljoen JCE (2 Jul 1807 – 11 Dec 1861), Viljoen BC (8 Jan 1807 – 25 Nov 1859) and Bezuidenhout JCE (30 Oct 1831 – 11 Jan 1904), all in the BEZUIDENHOUT FAMILY CEMETERY at Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg. That is JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA BOOIJSEN — b3c4d5e6, baptised 16 August 1807 — WITH HER HUSBAND AND HER DAUGHTER. This archive had her stone and did not have the other two or know they were in the same ground. |
| A position on what a memoir is worth, since two of them cost walls | A WITNESS, NOT A RECORD — AND THE TWO CLAIMS ARE NOT EQUAL Partly | John Montgomery was recalling forty-five and forty-seven years back. The test being used: DOES THE MEMOIR CLAIM SOMETHING IT HAD NO REASON TO INVENT, AND DOES ANYTHING INDEPENDENT TOUCH IT? On KOOLSKOP something does — a library catalogue written from the papers calls Kolbe an LMS missionary, and the Kolbe page had already deduced a mission circuit from the children's birthplaces. Three lines, none aware of the others. ON THE 21ST DRAGOONS NOTHING DOES YET: he is in no name-catalogued discharge series at Kew, and that may be structural or may be a misremembered regiment. THE TWO ARE WRITTEN UP DIFFERENTLY ON THIS SITE FOR THAT REASON AND NOT BECAUSE ONE IS A BETTER STORY. |
The camps database at source, the voters' rolls, and where the paywall falls on an address
Four roadmap items, and one of them corrects an open question on this site · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The three Booyzens in the camps, read on the University of Cape Town's own pages | AND ONE OF THE THREE DID NOT DIE IN A CAMP Found | GERT JACOBUS BOOYZEN — “Master”, place of death JOHANNESBURG RC, aged 2, DIED IN CAMP: YES, cause “ziekte”, white, single, nationality TRANSVAAL, registration as child: yes. Farm RIETVALLEI, district MARICO. GERTRUIDA MAGDALENA BOOYZEN — “Ms”, place of death VEREENIGING RC, aged 19, DIED IN CAMP: YES, cause “ziekte”, with the note “OR IRENE RC”, so the camp itself is uncertain. Farm RIETVLEI, district HEIDELBERG. JAN GERHARDUS LODEWICUS BOOYZEN — aged 2, cause “ziekte”, and DIED IN CAMP: NO, with NO CAMP AND NO FARM RECORDED AT ALL. OPEN QUESTION 3 ON THIS SITE LISTS ALL THREE AS THOUGH THEY WERE THE SAME KIND OF RECORD. They are not. |
| Where those records come from | RS 25 TRANSVAAL DEATH LISTS, NATIONAL ARCHIVES, PRETORIA Partly | The database names its own source on every page. IT CONFIRMS THE CAVEAT THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY PUBLISHED ABOUT IT — these are DEATH LISTS, so the database records who died far better than who was interned and walked out, and an absence from it is much weaker than a presence. And the cause of death on all three is the same word: ZIEKTE. Illness. The lists recorded no diagnosis. |
| The 1925 voters' roll entries for Jacobus Nicolas and John Barry Booyzen | THE YEAR IS FREE AND THE ADDRESS IS NOT Partly | Both are on the roll for VOTING YEAR 1925. Employment, address, race, town, division, voting district, province and voting number are all behind “Sign up to view”. THE ADDRESS WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE ITEM: both men are on the list of six bound estate files now with a private researcher in Pretoria, and a street and a district would tell her where to look. A SUBSCRIPTION WOULD BUY EXACTLY THE FIELD THAT MATTERS, which is worth knowing precisely rather than in general. |
| The Civil Death and Unconfirmed Death databases | TWO MEN THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HOLD Partly | HENRY JOHN BOOYZEN, born 14 FEBRUARY 1929, died 29 MARCH 1966 — and this archive holds a HENRY JAMES Booyzen born 12 August 1887. A different man and a later one, and the difference is one forename. MARUIS BOOYZEN, born 28 January 1963, died 2 May 2011. Neither is placed. Recorded as names with dates and nothing else, which is what they are. |
| The Old Voter Rolls and estate finders as tools | THEY ARE BROWSE TOOLS, NOT INDEXES Partly | Old Voter Rolls takes a TOWN and lists which rolls exist; the Cape and Transvaal estate finders take a REFERENCE and resolve it to a film. NONE OF THEM SEARCHES A NAME — the name search is the single AIO box, which this archive has already run. Useful for turning a reference into an image, useless for finding a person, and worth writing down so the distinction is not rediscovered. |
The Cape estate index for Mountjoy, a surname sweep abandoned, and the 1931 six given parents
Three roadmap items worked in one pass at NAAIRS · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY in the Cape depot (KAB) | FORTY-TWO, AND THE 1834 MEMORIAL IS REAL Found | KAB CO 3972 ref 17, “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. THE WIDOW OF J MOUNTJOY. REQUESTING REMISSION OF A FINE”, 1834 — already on the errands list and now confirmed present in the index rather than taken from a note. Also MOOC 6/9/15220 (JAMES JOHN MOUNTJOY, 1948), MOOC 6/9/16573 (BURGER, WILHELMINA LOUISA, née MOUNTJOY — the bride of a 1901 marriage found last week in the newspaper transcriptions) and MOOC 6/9/16323 (NEPGEN, ANNIE LOUISA, née MOUNTJOY). AND A WHOLE OTHER MOUNTJOY FAMILY: labour agents and traders in the Transkei — Lusikisiki, Bizana, Mnyameni, Lupatana — from the 1920s to the 1960s, with a Mountjoy Estates (Pty) Ltd registered in 1934. NOT THIS FAMILY SO FAR AS ANYTHING SHOWS. |
| DOWNING as a bare surname across all depots | 552 DOCUMENTS — NOT A SEARCH Void | Downing is an ordinary English surname and the first thirty returns contain no Kolbe, Booyzen, Barry or Mountjoy at all. THE PAIRING IS WHAT WORKS AND THE PAIRING WAS ALREADY RUN: KOLBE AND DOWNING returns sixteen, and those sixteen are where the four generations came from. Recorded so that nobody runs the bare sweep again expecting something. |
| The parents of the six Kolbes who applied to a Free State court together in 1931 | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, d. 1905, AND HESTER JACOBA JACOMINA LOUW Partly | VAB MHG K1431: “KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS. EGGENOTE HESTER JACOBA JACOMINA (GEBORE LOUW)”, 1905. VAB MHG 27114: her own estate, 1935. AND VAB MHG 1/2/1/1 KS3: “BOEDEL ONDER KURATORSKAP” — HER ESTATE PUT UNDER CURATORSHIP IN 1905, which is what happens when there are minor children. THE MECHANISM THAT NAMES THEM IS A FORENAME: one of the six is JACOBUS WYNAND LOUW KOLBE, and LOUW is his mother's maiden name; another is GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, which is his father's. The 1931 application is twenty-six years after the father's death and four before the mother's. INFERRED, NOT PROVED — the index does not list heirs, and the file will. |
| Whether that George Augustus Kolbe connects to the 1820 Settler | NOT SHOWN, AND NOT ASSUMED Nothing | The Settler's name was carried by at least one son and repeats through the Free State Kolbes for a century. A George Augustus Kolbe dying at Bloemfontein in 1905 is the right family of names in the right province, AND THAT IS ALL IT IS. This archive has spent a week refusing to adopt thirty-one plausible children from a tree and is not going to adopt a grandfather from a forename. |
The memoir did not need reading, and the ship did
An item closed by argument rather than by work, and a voyage found by searching for the vessel · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| John Montgomery's serialised memoir, read entire | UNNECESSARY, AND THE REASONING IS THE POINT Void | It runs through The Friend across 1868, 1869 and 1870 under two titles — “Forty-five years ago” and “Fifty years ago: A Few Episodes in the Lives of the British Settlers of 1820” — and it has already produced the Koolskop mission school and the 21st Dragoons. BOTH CAME OUT OF SWEEPING A SURNAME ACROSS THE WHOLE COLLECTION, AND THOSE SWEEPS ARE DONE: Kolbe returns 43 documents and Mountjoy six, across every paper in the archive, and KOOLSKOP APPEARS EXACTLY ONCE IN THE WHOLE COLLECTION — in the passage already read. Reading a long memoir to find what a name search has already found is work that looks like diligence. |
| What the 1870 instalments actually are | THE SALEM PARTY, NOT OWEN'S Nothing | The 1870 series carries a complete list of the SALEM party of 1820 settlers, sent to Montgomery by W.E. Prynn on 31 December 1869 with asterisks against those still living. VALUABLE AND NOT THIS FAMILY'S: George Augustus Kolbe came out in OWEN'S party. Recorded so nobody reads the list hopefully. |
| The Nautilus, searched as a ship rather than as a person | A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF THIS FAMILY'S OWN CROSSING Found | JOHN PENNY MANDY led another party on the same vessel and wrote home to his mother in Kent. In a letter of January 1820 he describes THE NAUTILUS DISASTER IN THE DOWNS — a day out of Gravesend, at anchor in the Queen's Channel: “it came on to blow tremendously hard, the sea running mountains high… men, women and children all mixed together, tumbling over one another”; the sea broke into the cabin windows; THE SHIP STRUCK ON THE SANDS and “even the sailors seemed panic struck”. Then a second storm of three days with three tons of water in the forepart. NOT ABOUT THIS FAMILY AND ON THE SAME DECK: a boy four days short of seventeen and a girl of sixteen, both of whom had sworn they were older, were somewhere in that cabin. |
| And it confirms the dates from a second direction | ALGOA BAY, APRIL 1820, AND A BIRTH AT SEA Partly | Mandy writes from Algoa Bay on 20 APRIL 1820; this archive has the Nautilus there on 14 April. WILLIAM NAUTILUS MANDY was born aboard on 1 MARCH 1820, “in latitude 18 degrees, longitude six degrees”, a fortnight short of Table Bay and named for the ship; he died at Lushington Valley in 1887. THE ORIGINAL LETTERS WENT TO THE ALBANY MUSEUM AT GRAHAMSTOWN AND WERE DESTROYED IN A FIRE IN THE 1920s — what survives is a descendant's copy, printed in a newspaper in 1970. |
Natal opened, the Transvaal swept for the other surnames, and a link this archive nearly invented
NAB had never been searched — it had only ever been asked for six references somebody else found · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| CK BARRY, WAKKERSTROOM — “MR. GS KOLBE ASKS TO BE SUPPLIED WITH A COPY OF THE ROAD BOARD LAW”, 1908 | HE IS CYRIL KERSHAW BARRY, AND HE IS AN ATTORNEY Nothing | A Barry and a Kolbe in one sentence, in the district whose Kolbes this archive has spent weeks trying to attach to the Settler — and this archive holds three Barrys carrying KOLBE AS A FORENAME. It read for about ten minutes like a fourth. FOUR FURTHER DOCUMENTS SETTLE IT: he asks about a Commissioner of Oaths at Wakkerstroom, enquires about a certificate of domicile for MAHOMED MAMOOJEE MOTALA OF LADYSMITH, forwards quitrent on behalf of MR MOLL, and writes on the division of ground in Natal. THAT IS A COUNTRY SOLICITOR'S WEEK AND G.S. KOLBE IS A CLIENT. Set down at length because it was a good mistake to almost make. |
| KOLBE in NAB | THIRTY-NINE — AND TWO OF THEM CONFIRM A MARRIAGE THIS ARCHIVE HAD ONLY FROM BAPTISMS Found | MSCE 8509/1923, “KOLBE, ELIZABETH JOHANNA (BORN DU TOIT), S/S FREDERICK FORTUNATUS”, and MSCE 15161/1929, his own, cross-referenced to hers. The Settler's tenth child and his wife, BOTH THEIR ESTATES IN NATAL. And MSCE 21335/1934 gives HENDRIK JOHANNES HOFMEYR KOLBE — one of the two men on the unsent Pietermaritzburg letter — A WIFE: Johanna Maria, born Potgieter. |
| MOUNTJOY in NAB | NINE, AND A SECOND BARKLY EAST WOMAN NOBODY HAD Found | MSCE 581/1973, “SHOOTER, MATHILDA ELIZABETH, BORN MOUNTJOY, BORN IN BARKLY EAST” — alongside Christian Mountjoy already on the Pietermaritzburg list. TWO PEOPLE LEAVING BARKLY EAST FOR NATAL IS A PATTERN. Also BOTHMA, WRAY, born MOUNTJOY, born in KOKSTAD — the bride of a 1957 marriage found last week in the newspaper transcriptions, now with a birthplace. |
| BOOYZEN in NAB | FOUR, AND THE OLDEST IS 1846 Partly | NAB RSC 1/5/3 46/1846: “ILLIQUID CASE. PETRUS GERHARDUS BOOYZEN VERSUS DAVID SCHALK VAN DER MERWE.” THE OLDEST BOOYZEN DOCUMENT THIS ARCHIVE HAS FOUND OUTSIDE THE CAPE — and the defendant's name is the one this site spent yesterday proving is a van der Merwe name that entered the Booyzen line by marriage. NO CONNECTION IS CLAIMED: Petrus Gerhardus is not a name in this archive, and a Booyzen in Natal in 1846 is likelier a trekker family. Also MSCE 4064/1974, BOOYZEN, NICOLAAS THEODORUS, BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM — a Booyzen born in the Kolbe district. |
| DASCHNER, the whole surname | TWELVE IN THE TRANSVAAL, NONE IN NATAL Found | WILLIAM HERMAN DASCHNER, d. 1963, NOW HAS A WIFE — MILDRED. A HEINRICH DASCHNER died in 1969 and the index marks him CHILD. And a HENRY JAMES DASCHNER appears twice, which is the Barry and Booyzen forename string arriving on a fourth surname by way of Catherine Mary Sophia. SMALL ENOUGH TO WORK ENTIRE, AND NOW WORKED ENTIRE. |
| MOUNTJOY in TAB | THIRTY-NINE, INCLUDING A FARM OF THAT NAME Found | TAB SS 2932 R8960/91: the Registrar of Deeds sending title for the farms “MOUNTJOY”, Smaldeel, Bloemhof, Krausberg and Gossard, 1891. TAB PM 29 66/6/1907: “LANDS — MOUNTJOY AND PHILLAMORE'S OCCUPATION — RUSTENBURG DISTRICT”, which is this archive's own district. And W MOUNTJOY'S APPLICATION TO CAPTURE OSTRICH CHICKS, 1906. |
| KOLBE in the education series | ONE, AND IT IS AT WAKKERSTROOM Found | TAB OD OR3052/99: declarations from the school at MARTINUS WESSELSTROOM — the old name for Wakkerstroom — “ONDERTEEKEND DOOR DE HEEREN GA KOLBE EN FRANCOIS L…”. A George Augustus Kolbe signing for a school commission in 1899. BARRY in the same series returns nothing. |
| The farms put through the education series | ABANDONED AS VOID, WITH ONE KEPT Void | BRAKFONTEIN RETURNS 77, KOEDOESFONTEIN 188, GOEDEHOOP 41 — among the commonest farm names in the country, and the results are other people's schools in other districts. A FARM-NAME SWEEP WITHOUT A SURNAME IS NOT A SEARCH. One is worth keeping: OD OR150/95, “CAB MEYER, KOEDOESFONTEIN, WYK ZWARTRUGGENS, RUSTENBURG”, is unmistakably this archive's Koedoesfontein, where Hendrik Stefanus Booijsen died in 1908. IT HAD A SCHOOL IN 1895 AND NO BOOYZEN IS ANYWHERE ON ITS PAPERS. |
The Kew catalogue searched before the Kew letter was written — and it changed the letter
The first British catalogue this archive has ever put any of its people to · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY, MONTJOY, MOUNTJOYE and MUNTJOY across the WO series at The National Archives | TWO MONTJOYS IN THE DISCHARGE SERIES, AND NEITHER IS HIM Nothing | WO 97/1147/67, JOHN MONTJOY, born BARNSTAPLE, Devonshire, 56th Foot. WO 121/44/280, WILLIAM MONTJOY alias WILLIAM MOUNTJOY, born DUBLIN, 16th and 60th Foot. Nothing else in WO 97, WO 119, WO 120, WO 121 or WO 25 under any of the four spellings. |
| Is that a negative or an indexing gap | A NEGATIVE, AND THE CONTROL SAYS SO Found | THE CATALOGUE INDEXES THE REGIMENT AS “21ST DRAGOONS (LIGHT)” AND NOT AS “21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS” — which is the form the newspaper used and the form this archive had been writing. Searched the right way it returns 790 documents, NINETY-FIVE OF THEM WO 97 IN A SINGLE PAGE, plus entries in WO 119, WO 121 and WO 25. So the series is name-catalogued, the regiment is in it, and he is not. ONE WORD ORDER WAS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REAL RECORD AND A NIL RETURN, which is the fourth time in a week this archive has met that shape. |
| Why he is absent, most likely | WO 97 AND WO 121 ARE PENSIONERS' PAPERS Partly | A man discharged locally at the Cape who never claimed a Chelsea or Kilmainham pension leaves no discharge document in either. THE REGIMENT WAS IN THE CAPE COLONY FROM 1806 AND LEFT IN SEPTEMBER 1817 (this row said 1816 until 17 September, when five London papers dated the embarkation for India); HE MARRIED AT GRAAFF-REINET IN MARCH 1817. So he was discharged at the Cape and stayed behind when it sailed — which is exactly the kind of man these series do not hold. |
| What to read instead | WO 12/1450 — THE MUSTERS AND PAY LISTS FOR THE 21ST, 1816–17 (this row said WO 12/1430 until 17 Sep) Partly | CORRECTED 17 SEPTEMBER. WO 12/1430 is the 20TH AND 21ST DRAGOONS FOR 1867–1868 — fifty years late and the re-raised regiment, not this one. The 21st Light Dragoons has its own continuous run: WO 12/1446 (1805–06), 1447 (1807–09), 1448 (1810–12), 1449 (1813–15), WO 12/1450 (1816–17), 1451 (1818), 1452 (1819–20). Not name-indexed; they have to be read. A man's disappearance from a muster DATES HIS DISCHARGE, and WO 12/1450 alone covers the window. |
| And what that did to the letter | REWROTE IT BEFORE IT WAS SENT Found | The errand as this archive raised it this morning was “WO 97 for the 21st Light Dragoons”. THE LETTER NOW ASKS NOBODY TO LOOK IN WO 97. It sets out what was searched and what the control showed, asks whether the pensioner reading is right, and names the piece it believes it needs. A LETTER THAT ASKS AN ARCHIVIST TO REPEAT A SEARCH ANYONE CAN RUN FROM AUSTRALIA IS A WASTE OF SOMEBODY'S MORNING. |
The Free State depot swept properly — and a library catalogue makes the Settler a missionary
VAB had been opened twice in this project's life, both times for one reference · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MSB751, SA Library, Cape Town — found while searching KOLBE AND DOWNING | “GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE … 1820 SETTLER, MISSIONARY … LMS MISSIONARY” Found | A library manuscript collection, not an archive file: “GA KOLBE COLLECTION. Donated by Dr Jean Griffiths, Somerset West, 1985. Photocopy, 4 pages.” IT CORROBORATES A MEMORY THIS ARCHIVE PUBLISHED THE SAME MORNING AS AN INFERENCE — John Montgomery's recollection of a Bushman mission school at Koolskop about 1824. An old man's memoir in a Bloemfontein newspaper and a manuscript donated to a Cape Town library in 1985 have nothing to do with each other AND THEY AGREE. It also settles the trade: the settler roll said CHEMIST, the catalogue says PHARMACIST, the obituary describes a medical practice. One man, one trade, and the missionary work is the part nobody had. |
| And the other half of the same catalogue line | A LETTER FROM HIS FATHER IN LONDON, 23 AUGUST 1830 Found | “LETTER, 1830 AUG. 23, FROM JOHAN KOLBE, LONDON, TO HIS SON, GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE ON HIS ORDINATION.” THE TWO MEN WROTE TO EACH OTHER AND THE LETTER SURVIVES. This archive has spent a fortnight trying to connect the tailor of Conduit Street to the settler of Colesberg through directories, censuses and an obituary, and has been beaten by a quota, a bot check and an empty shelf. A letter from London in 1830 is very likely to carry an address at its head — which is the exact question the Brunswick Square muddle turns on. IT IS A PHOTOCOPY, and the catalogue does not say where the original is. |
| MCCABE in VAB | THIRTEEN, AND THREE OF THEM MATTER Found | VAB MHG C129: “MCCABE, FRANCIS. EGGENOTES 1) MARIA PETRONELLA ELISABETHA ANTOINETTA RAATH EN 2) ANNA (GEBORE VAN DER MERWE)”, 1872 — HE HAD A FIRST WIFE AND SHE HAS A NAME. VAB 1/3/1/12 BC11: “MCCABE, FRANCIS. INSOLVENTE BOEDEL”, remark “BEVAT GEEN STERFKENNIS NIE” — THE LANDDROST OF BLOEMFONTEIN DIED INSOLVENT, and the index says outright the file holds no death notice, which saves somebody a wasted morning. And M777 now reads in full: “EGGENOTE JOHN GHERSON ELEASAR KOLBE EN FRANCIS MCCABE” — the remarriage is in the archives, not only in a newspaper. |
| The Kolbe–McCabe marriage this archive had flagged as possibly coincidence | IT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE Partly | A Rosa Magdalena Kolbe was baptised at Bloemfontein in 1890 to Frederik Fortuna Kolbe and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA MCCABE, and this archive wrote that it “does not yet know whether that is a coincidence”. FRANCIS McCABE'S FIRST WIFE WAS MARIA PETRONELLA ELISABETHA ANTOINETTA RAATH. A woman carrying that whole four-name string with McCABE as her surname, marrying a Kolbe in the same town, is his daughter, named for her mother. THE TWO FAMILIES JOINED TWICE: he married the Commandant's widow, and his daughter married a Kolbe. |
| KOLBE in VAB | 146 DOCUMENTS — A WHOLE FREE STATE KOLBE POPULATION Found | Including KOLBE MOTORS (PTY) LTD suing and being sued through the 1950s and 60s; a JOHN GERSON ELIEZER KOLBE in a civil case of 1939, seventy-one years after the Commandant died; and repeated GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBEs in 1935, 1942 and 1960. THE DEPOT THIS ARCHIVE HAD OPENED TWICE FOR ONE REFERENCE EACH TIME. |
| DOWNING as a Kolbe forename | FOUR GENERATIONS, THREE PROVINCES, SIX DOCUMENTS Found | TAB MHG 40293 FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE, d. 1918 · NAB MSCE 1229/1960, his widow, born at VOLKSRUST · VAB MHG 23877 and 801/49, MARGARET DOWNING born KOLBE, twice widowed · VAB MHG 33459, a SECOND Margaret Downing born Kolbe · TAB MHG 5450/68, MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING ROUSSEAU · and PIETER DOWING KOLBE LUBBE in 1959, by which point the surname is Lubbe and both Kolbe and Downing are forenames, with a letter worn off on the way. SHE SIGNED HER MARRIAGE ALLEGATION WITH A MARK IN 1819. HER NAME IS BETTER RECORDED THAN SHE IS. |
| Six Kolbes applying to a court together | VAB HG 702/1931 — THE FIRST FREE STATE SIBLING GROUP THIS ARCHIVE CAN NAME Found | “LEONORA STEENKAMP, BORN KOLBE · MARGARET DOWNING FICK, BORN KOLBE · GEORGINA AUGUSTA DE WET, BORN KOLBE · JACOBUS WYNAND LOUW KOLBE · GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE · CATHARINA ELIZABETH MALAN, BORN KOLBE.” Four married daughters and two sons. A GENERATION TOO LATE TO BE THE COMMANDANT'S TWELVE — these are more likely his grandchildren — but applications like this are usually about a parent's estate, so the file should name the parent. |
A check for sources that have gone dark — and it called three live ones dead
Written because TANAP went off the air mid-session and this site went on citing it · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Every external host this archive points at, linked or named in prose | 34 HOSTS. FOUR GENUINELY DARK. Found | databases.tanap.net, which holds the full transcriptions of the inventory naming eleven enslaved people · the bare national.archsrch.gov.za, though the www form resolves · kzntl.gov.za, the retired KwaZulu-Natal domain · and nationalarchives.gov.za AS THIS ARCHIVE HAD WRITTEN IT, with a dot in the middle. CHECKING ONLY HYPERLINKS WOULD HAVE MISSED ALL OF THEM: this archive cites sources in sentences, not in anchors, and the first version of the tool found five hosts instead of thirty-four. |
| The tool's own first answer | IT CALLED THREE LIVE DOMAINS DEAD, AND THIS ARCHIVE NEARLY PUBLISHED IT Found | getaddrinfo asks for an address record, and A GOVERNMENT DOMAIN CAN BE PERFECTLY ALIVE WITH NOTHING BUT MX. dsac.gov.za — the department every Pretoria letter has gone to, cited twenty-five times here — has no website and takes mail. So do dact.kzntl.gov.za and kzndac.gov.za. The tool reported all three as “does not resolve”, and the next edit would have said in public that the Pietermaritzburg addresses were dead. THEY ACCEPT MAIL. The check now asks for the MX before it says dark, and reports “mail only”, which is the true answer and a more useful one. |
| What that does to the Pietermaritzburg advice | WEAKENS IT, AND THE NOTE HAS BEEN CHANGED Partly | The draft letter has been sitting unsent since 14 September on the argument that kzntl.gov.za is a retired domain and the address on the National Archives' 2015 record is “almost certainly dead”. THE DOMAIN TAKES MAIL, AND SO DOES THE NEWER ONE. That does not prove a mailbox is read behind either — a domain accepting mail and a person reading it are different facts — but the reason given for not sending was stronger than the evidence for it. Telephoning first is still the better plan; it is no longer the only defensible one. |
| nationalarchives.gov.za, written with a dot | CORRECTED — AND IT WAS IN THE ROW COMPLAINING ABOUT A WRONG ADDRESS Found | The NAAIRS note of 13 September records that the catalogue is a frameset, and ends “written down because the wrong address cost this archive a day”. The host in it was national.archives.gov.za. THE LIVE DOMAIN HAS NO DOT. Corrected wherever it appeared. |
| Why this check is not in the build | BECAUSE A CHECK THAT FAILS FOR THE WRONG REASON IS ONE PEOPLE LEARN TO IGNORE Partly | A network probe inside a build fails when a government website is having an afternoon, which has nothing to do with the change being built. It is run on demand and writes what it finds to a data file the site reads, SO THAT A DARK SOURCE SAYS SO ON THE PAGE THAT DEPENDS ON IT rather than quietly linking into nothing. |
Volume 3 answers Anna Catharina Slier, and shows this archive had two men under one name
The six Slier entries the index reported, looked up at last · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| SLIER in de Villiers, volume 3 | ENTRY 876 — A WHOLE FAMILY, AND IT IS HERS Found | “WILLEM SLIER, VAN HAMBURG, gehuwd 19 November 1780 met ANNA CATHARINA FORTMAN — (b) 1 ANNA CATHARINA, GEDOOPT 14 OCTOBER 1787, GEHUWD MET HERMANUS PIETERSE; 2 Wilhelmina Christina, 1789, married an Amsterdammer; 3 Geertruida Johanna, 1791; 4 Wilhelmus Josephus, 1797.” She has been on this site as a birth year and five spellings. SHE NOW HAS A BAPTISM DATE, TWO PARENTS AND THREE SIBLINGS. |
| Why her surname has five spellings | BECAUSE IT IS A HAMBURG NAME Found | Slier · Schleher · Sher · Hier, across five sources — and the book says the father came FROM HAMBURG. Schlier or Schleer, written down by Cape clerks who had never seen it. THE SAME ARGUMENT THIS ARCHIVE MAKES ABOUT ITS OWN SURNAME, on a different name, from a different country. |
| The Pietersens, two pages on | THE HUSBAND AND THE SON WERE ONE PERSON HERE, AND THEY ARE TWO Found | “HERMANUS PIETERSEN, NAMEN VAN OUDERS ONBEKEND, gehuwd 5 APRIL 1807 met ANNA CATHARINA SLIER — (b) 1 WILLEM HERMANUS, gedoopt 12 Maart 1809; 2 JOHAN CHRISTIAAN, gedoopt 28 April 1810.” This archive built ONE man out of two documents that spell him differently — the 1817 register's HARMANUS PIETERZE and the 1840 notice's WILLIAM PIETERSEN — and a long name looked like the way to reconcile them. IT HALF KNEW: its own page already called the 1851 godfather “his son”. Withdrawn to /corrections/. |
| What the split gives back | A PERSON NOBODY HAD, AND A NAME FULLY EXPLAINED Found | JOHAN CHRISTIAAN PIETERSEN, baptised 28 April 1810 — a SECOND half-brother to the Montjoy children, invisible for exactly as long as the two men were one. And the derivation of WILLEM HERMANUS is now complete: the boy of 1809 is WILLEM for his mother's father, WILLEM SLIER OF HAMBURG, and HERMANUS for his own father. The claim that the name enters through a step-relation with no Booyzen blood survives and goes one generation deeper. HALF OF IT IS GERMAN. |
| Her dates, filled in | MARRIED AT NINETEEN, WIDOWED TWICE, FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS A WIDOW Found | Married Hermanus Pietersen 5 APRIL 1807; a widow by 9 March 1817 when she married James Montjoy; a widow again by September 1827; died 1885, aged ninety-eight. |
| DORMEHL in volume 2 | ENTRY 393, AND IT IS NINETY YEARS TOO EARLY Nothing | “SIEBERT DORMEHL, VAN MARBURG, gehuwd 29 Januari 1792 met Johanna Israel, weduwe van Johan Godlieb Carstedt”, twice remarried; sixth child CHARLOTTA ELISABETH, GEDOOPT 18 JUNI 1802. This archive holds a CHARLOTTA ELIZABETHA DORMEHL who married Hendrik Stefanus Booijzen at Zeerust in 1892. A WOMAN BAPTISED IN 1802 CANNOT BE MARRYING IN 1892. Two women ninety years apart; all the book gives is that the name was already in the founding household. Recorded so that it does not become a link later. |
| The London directories, by every free route left | GOOGLE BOOKS QUOTA ZERO · HATHITRUST BEHIND BOT PROTECTION · ARCHIVE.ORG HAS NONE Nothing | Whether John Godloff Kolbe was at BRUNSWICK SQUARE or at 34 CONDUIT STREET needs a London trade directory of the 1810s to 1840s. The books API returns 429 with a daily quota of zero for anonymous callers. HathiTrust answers with a Cloudflare bot check, AND THIS ARCHIVE WILL NOT GO AROUND ONE. archive.org's earliest Post Office London Directory is 1920. The volumes are on the paid genealogy services and at the Guildhall Library and the London Metropolitan Archives, and nowhere free. IT IS A DOOR QUESTION NOW, AND THE DOOR IS IN LONDON — which is where WO 97 is, so the two travel together. |
A memoirist in Burgersdorp answers Question 12, and the atlas gets the gate it never had
Working the list: newspapers swept for the other four surnames, and the archive's own machinery · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY in the newspaper transcriptions — the surname had never been swept | “A SADDLER, WHO WAS DISCHARGED FROM THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS” Found | The Friend of the Free State, 25 November 1869. John Montgomery, founder of Burgersdorp, recalling his arrival at Cradock in January 1822, when the village held about six people, and naming them: “Messrs. SOLOMON and S.M. DE BEER, the Rev. Mr. EVANS, Mr. P. GIE, JAMES MOUNTJOY (A SADDLER, WHO WAS DISCHARGED FROM THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS), the two Messrs. ZIERVOGEL, Mr. HEILBERG, Fieldcornet B.J. VORSTER, and Gert VAN DEVENTER. AFTER SOME TROUBLE I OBTAINED LODGINGS FOR THE NIGHT FROM MR. MOUNTJOY.” THERE IS NO ROOM IN A VILLAGE OF SIX FOR TWO SADDLERS OF ONE NAME. |
| What that does to Question 12, marked Blocking since it was written | IT STOPS BEING UNANSWERABLE AND BECOMES AN ERRAND AT KEW Found | His death notice answers “names of the parents of the deceased” with NOT KNOWN. His 1817 marriage register rules a line through the column that should say where he came from — and that blank was there while he stood in the room. NOW BOTH ARE EXPLAINED: he did not arrive as a settler and no passenger list holds him, because HE ARRIVED IN UNIFORM. The 21st Light Dragoons were the cavalry of the Cape garrison from the 1806 expedition. The colony had no way to know where he was from; THE ARMY DID. WO 97 at The National Archives, Kew — Chelsea discharge papers, arranged by regiment before 1855 — gives a soldier's PARISH AND COUNTY OF BIRTH, his age at enlistment and his trade. With WO 12, the musters. The question's own note said “the way in is a Cape arrival record, not an English birth record”. IT WAS RIGHT, AND THE RECORD HAS A NAME. |
| The same memoirist, twice in one week | TWO WALLS, NEITHER FOUND BY SEARCHING FOR THE PERSON Found | John Montgomery's “Forty-five years ago” put George Augustus Kolbe at a BUSHMAN MISSION SCHOOL AT KOOLSKOP, on the ground where Colesberg was later laid out. This one puts James Mountjoy in the 21st Light Dragoons. BOTH CAME OUT OF READING A SURNAME SWEEP TO THE BOTTOM RATHER THAN SKIMMING IT, and both were sitting in the reminiscences of one old man who wrote down who he met. |
| BOOYZEN, BOOIJSEN, BOOYSEN and DASCHNER in the same index | 5, 1, 180 AND NOUGHT — AND ALMOST ALL OF IT SOMEBODY ELSE Partly | DASCHNER returns nothing at all in the whole collection. Of the Booyzens: the 1830 Gazette notice of Christina Booyzen already held here; an 1859 intestate estate at MIDDELVELD, DISTRICT BLOEMFONTEIN for JAN LODEWYK BOOIJSEN, who married about 1819 Christina Magdalena de Buijs, widow of Cornelius Faber, and whose estate had become mixed with Faber's; and an 1862 report of a Booyzen TREK-FARMER near the Orange River who seized a party of Bushmen accused of a shooting — “six men, seven women and seven children”. NONE OF IT CONNECTS. The 1862 numbers are set down because the paper recorded them. |
| BARRY paired with Burgersdorp, Barkly, Indwe and Kolbe | THE ENGINE WILL NOT PAIR — IT RETURNS EVERY BARRY IT HAS Void | Unlike NAAIRS, this index has no AND that can be sent; a two-word query is scored, not filtered, and the results are twentieth-century death notices from Durban. THE NEGATIVE IS VOID rather than informative, and is recorded as void so that nobody — including this archive in a fortnight — reads it as “Barry was searched”. |
| NAAIRS, for the education-series sweep and Francis McCabe's estate | DOWN. “THE CONNECTION TO THE SEARCH MANAGER SERVER IS INACTIVE.” Blocked | Three items on the work list run through NAAIRS and all three are parked: the OD sweep for the remaining surnames and farms, the rest of the two school files, and the Landdrost's own estate at Bloemfontein. Not a negative about anything — an outage, recorded as an outage. |
| A gate for the atlas, which was the one register without one | WRITTEN, AND IT FAILED THE BUILD EIGHTEEN TIMES ON ITS FIRST RUN Found | The Marico entry carried “in the field-cornet's papers” for weeks because NOTHING ON THE SITE POINTED AT IT — no page cited the line, so no page could contradict it. tools/checkatlas.py now refuses a build where a place pinned APPROXIMATE carries no “why”, and warns where a place with events is discussed nowhere on the site. FIRST RUN: 18 FAILURES, every one a farm pinned near its district with no note saying so. All eighteen now say what the pin rests on, and several of them say the pin is weak. THE CHECK WAS WRITTEN TO CATCH ONE OLD MISTAKE AND CAUGHT EIGHTEEN LIVE ONES. |
| A replacement address for the SANDF Documentation Centre | THERE ISN'T ONE — THE PUBLISHED ADDRESS IS THE DEAD ONE Nothing | sandfdoc@mweb.co.za bounced with 550 relay access denied on 9 September. It is the ONLY address the Documentation Centre publishes, on its own directory entries and on every guide that lists it. What is left is the telephone (012) 339-4600, the Schweikert Building at 20 Visagie Street, and archive@dod.mil.za, which did not bounce and has not answered. A PUBLISHED ADDRESS THAT BOUNCES IS WORSE THAN NO ADDRESS: everyone is writing into it and nobody knows. |
The Baptism Finder, the Land & Deeds finder and the marriage transcriptions
One hard negative that closes a route, four exact dates for nothing, and a finder that is not an index · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The Baptism Finder — which registers exist for Paarl (Drakenstein), Graaff-Reinet and Stellenbosch | EVERY REGISTER IN THE COLLECTION BEGINS IN 1843 Nothing | 54 registers for Paarl (Drakenstein), 48 for Graaff-Reinet, 55 for Stellenbosch — and sorted earliest first, the first row in every town is 1843–1844. This is the POST-1842 NG KERK ARCHIVE SERIES and it does not reach the eighteenth century at all. THE 21 SEPTEMBER 1788 BAPTISM CANNOT BE GOT FROM THIS COLLECTION, and neither can anything else this archive wants from before 1843. It explains, retrospectively, why weeks of FamilySearch work on this family has produced nothing older than the 1840s. A fact about the filming project, not about the registers — the originals exist, at Cape Town. |
| The Baptism Database — MOUNTJOY | SIX, AND FOUR OF THEM ARE A SIBLING GROUP WITH EXACT BIRTH DATES Found | MARIA ELIZABETH, born 12 JUNE 1858 · JOHANNA CATHARINA, born 28 JANUARY 1860 · GEORG HERKULES JOHANNES, born 16 JANUARY 1862, baptised 27 April 1862 · ELSJE PETRONELLA FREDERIKA, born 10 JUNE 1864, baptised 17 July 1864. Roughly two years apart. THE NAMES ARE THE INTERESTING PART — Georg Herkules Johannes and Elsje Petronella Frederika are thoroughly Cape Dutch name-strings on an English surname, baptised in the Dutch Reformed Church. This archive already holds a HERCULES JOHANNES MOUNTJOY born 16 JULY 1866 — same forenames, same day of the month, four years later. |
| Is the 1860 Johanna Catharina the woman who died at Indwe | A CANDIDATE, AND THE FIELD THAT WOULD DECIDE IT IS THE PAID ONE Partly | This archive holds “Johanna Catharina Mountjoy of Indwe” with NO BIRTH DATE AT ALL — she joined the Indwe congregation on 23 July 1907 from Barkly Oost and the register records her dead there in June 1911. A woman born 28 January 1860 would be FIFTY-ONE. NOT ENTERED: this family already contains one Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, born 1819 and dead 1863, so the name repeats within it. WHAT WOULD DECIDE IT IS THE CONGREGATION THE 1860 BAPTISM WAS REGISTERED IN, and the congregation is behind the paywall. |
| Where exactly the paywall falls | FREE GIVES DATES; PAID GIVES PARENTAGE Partly | FREE on a baptism record: names, surname, DATE OF BIRTH, baptism date. “SIGN IN TO VIEW”: baptism place, source, image, entry number, FATHER'S NAMES AND SURNAME, MOTHER'S NAMES AND SURNAME, parents. FOR A PROJECT THAT ALREADY HAS MOST OF ITS DATES AND IS SHORT OF PARENTS, THAT IS THE WRONG HALF — which is exactly why it is worth knowing before paying rather than after. Nothing bought, no account made. |
| Land & Deeds, opened to look for Vaalbank and Kwaggafontein | IT IS A FILM FINDER, NOT A NAME INDEX Partly | It takes A YEAR AND AN AREA, not a farm or a surname, and the areas are NATAL AND THE TRANSVAAL ONLY — no Cape and no Free State, so Leeuwberg and Kaalspruit are out of reach by this road regardless. For 1898, Transvaal it returns FIFTY-SEVEN REGISTERS of Farm Records — volumes RAK 89, 243, 274, 275, 279, 281, 387 and more — each with a link to the film. To find Vaalbank in them somebody has to open a volume and read. A REAL ERRAND, AND NOW A SPECIFIED ONE. |
| MOUNTJOY marriages | TWENTY-TWO, 1895 TO 1969 — AND TWO WORTH NAMING Found | “1937 · WILLEM HERMANUS MOUNTJOY × ELSIE SUSANNA DU PLESSIS” — Willem Hermanus is this archive's own name-string, carried by two Booyzens in the direct line, here on a Mountjoy. And “1919 · FRANK MOUNTJOY-BENTLEY × KATHLEEN RITA MILEY FITZPATRICK” — A SECOND HYPHENATED COMPOUND IN THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN SURNAMES, after Kolbe-Booysen. |
| DASCHNER — the whole surname | FORTY-FIVE RECORDS, THREE OF THEM MARRIAGES Found | “1900 · CARL AXEL MARTENSON × MINNIE DASCHNER” · “1935 · JOSEPH CHARLES DASCHNER × ELIZABETH HENDRINA MURRAY” · “1935 · GERT ANDRIES VAN JAARSVELD × MARGARET WILHELMINA ELIZABETH JEANETTE DASCHNER”. The smallest of this archive's five families by a long way, and small enough to work entire. |
| The standing rule, restated because a better search box does not change it | A TRANSCRIPTION IS A LEAD AND THE REGISTER IS THE RECORD Partly | Nothing above is entered as fact. Every line is an index entry from a commercial aggregator. |
The MOOC8 inventories — opened to look for Mountjoys, and the Booijsens were in them
The first documents this archive has read that name the people this family owned · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOOC8 Inventories, the finder on gendatabase.com — MOUNTJOY | ZERO, AND THE ZERO IS NOT A NEGATIVE Void | MOUNTJOY 0 · MONTJOY 0 · SLIER 0 · KOLBE 0. All four families reached the Cape in the NINETEENTH century and MOOC8 as indexed here runs from the 1780s to the 1830s. A ZERO FROM AN INDEX THAT STOPS BEFORE YOUR PEOPLE ARRIVE IS NOT A FINDING. This archive published exactly that mistake this morning about LUUS and is not repeating it four hours later. Recorded as untested, not as searched. |
| BOOIJSEN in the same index | THIRTEEN INVENTORIES, 1781 TO 1832 Found | MOOC 8/18.11 (1781, Gerrit Booijsen, Drakenstein) · 8/56.16b (1805) and 8/56.16a (1806), both ZACHARIAS BOOIJSEN of Graaff Reinet · 8/42.46 (1820, ALETTA BOOYZEN, Graaff Reinet) · 8/46.59 (1831, JAN LOWIES BOOIJSEN, Vondelings Fontein, Onder Roggeveld, Clanwilliam) · 8/48.32 (1832, PIET BOOIJSENS), plus seven connected estates. FOUND WHILE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING ELSE. |
| MOOC 8/18.11 — the 1781 inventory of Gerrit Booijsen | IT NAMES ELEVEN ENSLAVED PEOPLE Found | SILVIA, LENA, SARA, JANNA, DORINDA, FORTUIJN, MEIJ and FEBRUARIJ VAN DE CAAB; DIJK and FARLA VAN MADAGASCAR; ACHILLES VAN MALLABAAR. Eight born at the Cape, two taken from Madagascar, one from the Malabar coast. The names are the ones given to them — Fortuijn is Fortune, Februarij and Meij are the months they were landed or bought in, Achilles is the classical joke a slave-owner made. THIS PROJECT HAS RUN FOR WEEKS, REACHES BACK TO A MARRIAGE OF 1733, AND UNTIL TODAY THE WORD SLAVERY APPEARED NOWHERE ON IT — because estate inventories had never been opened. |
| Is it the right Gerrit | ALMOST CERTAINLY, AND PUBLISHED AS ALMOST CERTAINLY Partly | De Villiers has b3 GERRIT BOOIJSEN married JOHANNA DU RAND in 1733, father of c4 JAN, a burgher AT DRAKENSTEIN — and the inventory is at Drakenstein. A man who married in 1733 and died in 1781 is seventy-odd. The only other Gerrit in the printed genealogy, b3c4d1, was not baptised until 1771. WHAT SETTLES IT IS THE INVENTORY, WHICH NAMES THE HEIRS. THE IDENTIFICATION IS THE UNCERTAIN PART; THE ELEVEN NAMES ARE NOT. |
| The 1831 inventory of Jan Lowies Booijsen | TEN MORE NAMES, AND A WARNING ABOUT THE INDEX Partly | CASTOOR, JAN, PIET, EVA, MALATIE, EVA, MARIE, CATRYN, CLARA, ROSET. The index line runs PERSONAL NAMES AND FARM NAMES TOGETHER IN ONE STRING, so “Knue” and “Onder Roggeveld” sit in the same list as Eva and Castoor. THE TEN ABOVE ARE THE ONES THAT ARE UNAMBIGUOUSLY PEOPLE, and the document has to be read before anybody is counted. 1831 is three years before emancipation at the Cape. |
| The full transcriptions | TANAP IS OFF THE AIR Blocked | The MOOC8 inventories were transcribed entire by the TANAP project. databases.tanap.net NO LONGER RESOLVES — NXDOMAIN — and the Internet Archive was itself down when this was written, so there is no Wayback copy to fall back on either. EVERYTHING ABOVE IS READ OFF INDEX LINES AND THE LINE IS NOT THE RECORD. MOOC 8/18.11 entire is now the first item on the Cape Town errands list. |
gendatabase.com, which this project had never once opened
The user asked whether it had been tried. The word appears nowhere in this repository. · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| LUUS with BOOYZEN, in a marriage index rather than an estate index | “1928 · CORNELIUS ABRAHAM LUUS × SUSANNA FREDERIK ALETTHA BOOYZEN” Found | THIS ARCHIVE PUBLISHED “LUUS WITH BOOYZEN RETURNS NOTHING” ON 14 SEPTEMBER. It returns nothing FROM NAAIRS, which was the only index asked, and the sentence did not say so. Withdrawn to /corrections/ with cause “scope”. It is the same failure as the row filter and the blank Name column, in a new coat: THE ANSWER WAS ABOUT THE TOOL AND WAS WRITTEN DOWN AS THOUGH IT WERE ABOUT THE WORLD. |
| What the site holds for BOOYZEN | 569 RECORDS ACROSS TEN DATASETS, FACET COUNTS FREE Found | Verified Death 190 · National Archives 152 · Estate File 122 · MARRIAGE TRANSCRIPTION 54 · BAPTISM 22 · FamilySearch 22 · CONCENTRATION CAMPS 3 · 1925–1931 VOTER ROLL 2 · Civil Death 1 · Unconfirmed Death 1. FOUR OF THOSE ARE DATASETS THIS ARCHIVE HAD NEVER SEARCHED AT ALL — the marriages, the baptisms, the voters' roll and the camps. The marriages are the gap that mattered: this project has never had a marriage index. |
| 1921 · DAVID KOLBE BOOYZEN × MARIA JACOBA SMIT | THE MARRIAGE BEHIND THIS MORNING'S FIND, NOW IN A TRANSCRIPTION Found | The Kolbe-Booysen household of Port Elizabeth was published today off two Eastern Province Herald notices, with the 1921 marriage flagged as coming from a family tree and no document. Same names, same year, in an independent index. |
| 1933 · MICHAEL JOHANNES VERMEULEN × BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA BOOYZEN | BETIE OF THE SILVERTON PILLAR GETS A MARRIAGE YEAR Found | She was found last week only through TAB MHG 4300/51, which named her as Michael Johannes Vermeulen's SURVIVING spouse in 1951 and as his second wife. HERE IS THE YEAR SHE MARRIED HIM, from the other end. |
| 1850 · HENDRIK STEPHANUS BOOIJZEN × ANNA JOHANNA OLIVIER | CORROBORATED — AND WITH ONE NAME SHORTER Partly | The marriage that puts this family north of the Vaal in 1850, already on this site. The transcription gives her ANNA JOHANNA where this archive has ANNA CATHARINA JOHANNA. A variant, recorded, not resolved. |
| The camps and the voters' roll | THREE AND TWO Found | GERT JACOBUS, GERTRUIDA MAGDALENA and JAN GERHARDUS LODEWICUS BOOYZEN in the University of Cape Town's Born in the Camps database, where this archive had reached one of them once and by accident. And on the 1925–1931 voters' roll, JACOBUS NICOLAS BOOYZEN and JOHN BARRY BOOYZEN — both of them on the list of six estate files now with a researcher in Pretoria. A VOTERS' ROLL GIVES AN ADDRESS AND A DISTRICT. |
| KOLBE — 2,308 records, of which thirty-one born 1843–1869 | AND ALL THIRTY-ONE ARE TREE DATA Nothing | 1843 to 1869 is exactly the window of the Commandant's twelve children — married 3 April 1843, dead 3 April 1868. For a moment it looks like the answer. EVERY ONE OF THE THIRTY-ONE COMES FROM THE FAMILYSEARCH SLICE, which is other people's trees indexed. NOT A REGISTER, NOT AN ESTATE, NOT A DEATH NOTICE. THIRTY-ONE PLAUSIBLE CHILDREN DO NOT BECOME EVIDENCE BY BEING PLAUSIBLE TOGETHER. Kept as a list to test against documents; none entered. |
| The one tree name worth writing down anyway | GERSOM ELIEZÄR KOLBE, BORN 1868, DIED 1902 Partly | He carries the Commandant's own forenames and was born in the year the Commandant died, and the obituary says the youngest child was an infant. STILL TREE DATA AND STILL NOT ENTERED. What is not tree data is the National Archives run beside it: a JOHN GERSON ELIEZER KOLBE sued by E. Wille and Sons, by John William Pearce and by the Nelspruit Roller Mills, divorced by Hester Johanna Catherina born Hammon, and tried with one Adam Barnard. FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE SAME THREE NAMES, with documents for the first and the last and none in between. |
| The finders not yet used | SEVEN OF THEM, AND TWO GO STRAIGHT AT OPEN QUESTIONS Partly | Cape Estates · Transvaal Estates · MOOC8 INVENTORIES · LAND & DEEDS · Old Voter Rolls · Boer War Soldiers · Legal Gazettes, plus a BAPTISM FINDER listing which Dutch Reformed registers survive for each of 181 towns. MOOC8 is where the Mountjoy inventories are. LAND & DEEDS is where Leeuwberg and Kaalspruit are. The Baptism Finder is how to locate the register holding 21 September 1788. |
| Terms | COMMERCIAL. LISTS FREE, DOCUMENTS NOT. Partly | Nothing was bought, no account was made, and everything above came off the public result pages. WHAT IT IS WORTH TO THIS PROJECT IS NOT THE DOCUMENTS — it is that four of its ten datasets are sources this archive did not know it had not searched. |
Two answers in one morning — Pretoria on binding, and the forum on Question 0
Neither came from a search. Both came from having asked somebody. · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The letter to the National Archives in Pretoria, 12 September — six Transvaal estate files | ANSWERED. “ALL THE ESTATE FILES YOU ARE REQUESTING ARE BOUND FILES.” Partly | Ms Mavis Xaba, Archivist Assistant, Reading Room, NARSSA: “Unfortunately, we are therefore unable to scan these files and provide complete digital copies by email.” THAT IS NOT A REFUSAL, IT IS A PHYSICAL FACT ABOUT THE RECORD — the paper is sewn into volumes and will not lie on a scanner. It explains a great deal about what has and has not been filmed, and it retires an assumption this archive has been making for weeks: that the obstacle was willingness or staff time. She put a private researcher who specialises in estate files on copy. ENGAGING HER IS THE USER'S DECISION AND THE USER'S MONEY, and this archive does not spend either. |
| And whether any of the six references was wrong | SHE CORRECTED NONE — BUT SHE HAD ALREADY ANSWERED 52653, AND THIS ARCHIVE READ PAST IT Partly | The letter singled out TAB MHG 52653 (BOOYZEN, JACOBUS NICHOLS, 1923) as the one file of the six that could not be found on microfilm at all, and asked to be told if the reference needed correcting. THE REPLY SAYS “ALL THE ESTATE FILES YOU ARE REQUESTING ARE BOUND FILES” AND NAMES NO EXCEPTION. Weak evidence — a general sentence is not a file-by-file check — but it is the first thing this archive has had suggesting that reference is real. CORRECTED 22 SEPTEMBER 2026. The researcher, not the institution, had already settled it: on 15 September Anne Brest sent a NAAIRS link to MHG 52653 with “THE DATE IS 1923. DON’T WORRY that it is not appearing after the 52653 number. . some references are like this.” The absent year suffix is normal, and it was the very thing this archive had read as a broken reference. See Corrections. |
| G2G — does de Villiers & Pama (1981) still place Petrus Jacobus under JAN? | “YES. b3c4d7 b. 21 SEPT 1788 UNDER JAN b3c4.” Found | Riël Smit, who owns the 1981 edition this archive has never seen. THAT WAS THE LAST ESCAPE ROUTE. The standing objection was that a revision can move a man, and if Pama had relocated Petrus Jacobus the 1876 death notice would stand unopposed. IT DID NOT. |
| Is there any marriage of a Gerhardus Lodewicus to a Magdalena de Beer? | A CAPE GENEALOGIST WENT LOOKING AND FOUND NONE Nothing | Pieter van Zyl: “I searched for a marriage between a Gerhardus Lodewicus and Magdalena de Beer but could not find one.” The pairing on line 3 of the 1876 Sterfkennis exists in no marriage record anybody has been able to produce. THE MOTHER ON THAT LINE AGREES WITH THE BOOK EXACTLY; the father does not. |
| Van Zyl's guess from memory — that a CHILD of Petrus Jacobus carried the name | HE IS RIGHT, AND THE CHILD IS NINE LINES LOWER ON THE SAME SHEET Found | Line 3 of Notice 678: parents, “GERTHARDUS LÖDEWIKUS BOOIJSEN” and “Magdalena de Beer”. Line 12 of Notice 678: eight children, all of age, the fifth being “JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN”. THE NAME IN THE PARENTS' BOX IS THE BACK HALF OF A SON'S NAME, IN ONE CLERK'S HAND, ON ONE PAGE — and the half that was dropped is JAN, which is the name the book gives the father. A grandson named for his grandfather is the ordinary thing in this family, and this archive has a page proving it. |
| Who was doing the remembering | HENDRIK STEFANUS, THE SEVENTH CHILD, WHO SIGNED IT Found | H. S. Booijsen countersigned the form beside the veldkornet, four lines below his own name in the children's list. Born about 1828. His grandfather Jan married in 1770 and remarried in 1793, and van Zyl puts his death more than forty years before 1876. HE WAS WRITING THE NAME OF A MAN HE HAD ALMOST CERTAINLY NEVER MET, about a father who was eighty-eight. |
| Is the pedigree spine being moved to Jan | NO, AND THIS IS DELIBERATE Partly | Everything against Gerthardus Lodewikus is SECONDARY. De Villiers is a printed genealogy of 1893; Pama's revision agreeing with it is one book agreeing with its own earlier edition, not two sources agreeing. Against it stands a PRIMARY document signed by a son. THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT LET A BOOK OVERRULE A PAGE BECAUSE THE BOOK IS TIDIER. Jan Booijsen is entered as INFERRED, not documented, and the chart still shows Gerthardus Lodewikus at the top, marked open. |
| What would actually end it | THE BAPTISM REGISTER ENTRY OF 21 SEPTEMBER 1788 Partly | DE VILLIERS IS NOT A SOURCE, HE IS AN INDEX TO ONE. His entry for Petrus Jacobus was compiled from the Dutch Reformed doopregister, and that entry names the father in a contemporary hand, written within days of the birth, by somebody with no reason to be confused. Graaff-Reinet, Drakenstein and Stellenbosch for September 1788, in that order — b3c4 Jan was a burgher at Drakenstein and the family is at Graaff-Reinet by 1812. FIRST ITEM ON THE ERRANDS PAGE. |
Parts 2 and 3 of the Cape genealogies, downloaded at last — and the name David Schalk has a source
Riël Smit posted the links on 14 September. This archive read Part 1 and forgot the other two. · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org — geslachtregister02devi and geslachtregister03devi | BOTH VOLUMES, FULL TEXT, IN UNDER A MINUTE Found | They had been sitting behind a link in a forum answer for a day. The whole of this run took one download and some counting. THE COST OF NOT GOING BACK FOR THE SECOND HALF OF SOMETHING SOMEBODY HANDED YOU. |
| KOLBE in de Villiers | A483 — AND IT IS SOMEBODY ELSE ENTIRELY Nothing | “Carel Frederik Kolbe, VAN ANHALT DESSAU, burger te Kaapstad, gehuwd 6 Juni 1762 met Maria Magdalena de Wens”, with seven children baptised 1763–1773; volume 3 confirms the son Jacobus's 1799 marriage from the Paulsen side. A GERMAN KOLBE FAMILY WAS AT THE CAPE FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS BEFORE THE 1820 SETTLER LANDED, and it is not his — his father was a London tailor and he came out on the settler ships. Set down deliberately, as the trap it is. |
| ANNA MARIA VAN DER MERWE — who she was | BAPTISED 5 OCTOBER 1788, AND SIX SIBLINGS Found | Volume 2, van der Merwe: “(e) 3 WILLEM, gedoopt 30 September 1764, burger te Stellenbosch, gehuwd 7 November 1784 met HESTER MARIA VAN DER MERWE — (f) 1 Johanna Catharina 1787; 2 ANNA MARIA, GEDOOPT 5 OCTOBER 1788, GEHUWD MET PETRUS JACOBUS BOOIJSEN; 3 DAVID SCHALK, gedoopt 10 October 1790; 4 Hendrina Magdalena 1792; 5 Hester Maria 1793; 6 Hendrik Petrus Jacobus 1796.” SHE HAS BEEN A NAME ON ONE BAPTISM FOR THE WHOLE OF THIS PROJECT. |
| Two babies, fourteen days apart | HE 21 SEPTEMBER 1788, SHE 5 OCTOBER 1788 Found | Volume 1 page 78 for him, volume 2 for her. The same author writing consistently with himself, which is worth exactly that and no more — but it is the first date of any kind this archive has had for her. |
| Her parents — against WikiTree | THEY DISAGREE, AND THE CONCLUSION SURVIVES BOTH Partly | WikiTree makes her a daughter of DAVID SCHALK VAN DER MERWE and ANNA ELIZABETH LOUW, born 1785. De Villiers makes her a daughter of WILLEM VAN DER MERWE and HESTER MARIA VAN DER MERWE, baptised 1788. BOTH CANNOT BE RIGHT AND NEITHER IS BEING ADOPTED. On the tree's version David Schalk is her FATHER; on the book's he is her BROTHER. A CONCLUSION THAT HOLDS UNDER EITHER READING IS THE ONLY KIND THIS ARCHIVE GETS TO KEEP. |
| Count the name across all three volumes | ONCE IN PART 1, FIFTEEN TIMES IN PART 2 Found | Part 1 holds the entire BOOIJSEN genealogy, and the string “David Schalk” occurs in it EXACTLY ONCE — “David Schalk, gedoopt 4 Januari 1807”, which is our man, the child born the year after a van der Merwe married into the line. Of the fifteen in Part 2, THIRTEEN ARE INSIDE THE VAN DER MERWE SECTION, generation after generation: 1738, 1739, 1761, 1787, 1790, 1791, 1797, 1800, 1804. DAVID SCHALK IS A VAN DER MERWE NAME and this archive can now say so with a count behind it. |
| Adriana Christina Viljoen — who she was | PROBABLY HIS FIRST COUSIN Partly | Volume 3, VILLION thans VILJOEN: “(e) 12 HERCULES ALBERTUS, gedoopt 30 Maart 1777, burger te Graaff-Reinet, GEHUWD 26 FEBRUARI 1797 MET MAGDALENA BOOIJSEN”, whose seventh child is “ADRIANA CHRISTINA, GEDOOPT 19 AUGUSTUS 1810”. Magdalena Booijsen is b3c4d6 — the SISTER of Petrus Jacobus. Eighteen in 1828, right district, right name. NOT PROVED: de Villiers gives her NO HUSBAND, and the 3 November 1828 Cradock date is itself only on WikiTree. The Cradock marriage register would close it. |
| The Booijsen–Viljoen marriages of 1797 | A BROTHER AND A SISTER MARRIED A SISTER AND A BROTHER, THREE MONTHS APART Found | Magdalena Booijsen (b3c4d6) married Hercules Albertus Viljoen on 26 FEBRUARY 1797. Her brother Jan Jonathan Booijsen (b3c4d5) married his sister Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen on 28 MAY 1797. Two households became one twice over in a single year, and thirty-one years later a son of the third sibling married a daughter of the first. |
| b3c4d5e6, resolved last week from a gravestone, explained this week | SHE HAS HER MOTHER'S THREE NAMES ENTIRE Found | Jan Jonathan Booijsen and Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen's sixth child is “JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, gedoopt 16 Augustus 1807”. The same mechanism as David Schalk, in the same generation, in the house next door: A DISTINCTIVE NAME ENTERS THIS SURNAME BY MARRIAGE AND IS HANDED STRAIGHT DOWN. |
| MOUNTJOY, DOWNING, WERDMULLER, SLEER in de Villiers | NOT THERE AT ALL Nothing | Zero occurrences of Mountjoy, Montjoy, Downing, Werdmuller or Sleer across all three volumes. De Villiers recorded the OLD CAPE families — the Dutch, German and French of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. THE BRITISH AND THE 1820 SETTLERS ARE SIMPLY OUT OF SCOPE, which is a fact about the book and not about the families, and is the reason half this archive will never be found in it. |
| Google Books, to chase the London tailor into a directory | BLOCKED — QUOTA ZERO WITHOUT A KEY Blocked | books.googleapis.com returns HTTP 429, “quota_limit_value: 0”, for anonymous callers. Item 9 — whether John Godloff Kolbe of the 1844 obituary was at Brunswick Square or at Conduit Street — is not closed and needs a different route. ONE THING DID COME OUT OF IT: a list of 234 London master tailors who met at the Freemasons' Tavern on 22 December 1799 over the Combination Act, printed in The Times of 27 January 1800, includes “KOLBE, JOHN, 18, BROAD-STREET, SOHO”. Right trade, right city, right age, and Soho was the German quarter. NOT CLAIMED, because a John Kolbe in London is not yet this John Kolbe. |
The Free State papers, worked properly — McCabe named, the farm placed, and a son of the twelve
Forty-three Kolbe hits in the newspaper transcriptions, read one by one instead of skimmed · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Who was McCabe — the surname the Free State estate index files the Commandant's widow under | FRANCIS McCABE, LANDDROST OF BLOEMFONTEIN Found | The Friend, 29 February 1872, with an obituary under it: son of DR McCABE, a Staff-Assistant Surgeon attached to the British Army on the Cape Frontier, born at one of the military posts in what is now British Kaffraria on 29 SEPTEMBER 1817; “married his second wife about ten months since — THE WIDOW OF THE LATE COMMANDANT J.G.E. KOLBE, OF KAFIRBERG, NEAR THIS TOWN”; died suddenly of heart disease on 23 February 1872, aged 54. THIS ARCHIVE HAS BEEN SAYING FOR DAYS THAT IT DID NOT KNOW WHO McCABE WAS. He was the town's own magistrate. |
| How long the second marriage lasted | ABOUT FIFTEEN MONTHS Found | Married about April 1871, widowed 23 February 1872. She had been widowed on 3 April 1868 with twelve children, and she outlived the second husband by twenty-four years. HIS OBITUARY COUNTS BOTH FAMILIES: “four sons and two daughters, BESIDES A LARGE FAMILY OF STEP-CHILDREN”. For about eleven months there were eighteen children attached to one household. |
| How he died | A CART INTO A SLUIT, ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE STATE'S INDEPENDENCE Found | He had spent 23 February superintending the burghers' annual target shooting for the government prize. At 5:15 he set off by spring-cart with four horses, Adjutant van Rensburg of the Free State Artillery and a servant, for the Diamond Fields, meaning to sleep at his own farm UITVLUGT on the Modder River. At half past seven, in deceptive moonlight, ONE HOUR'S RIDE SHORT OF THE FARM OF MR G.F. ENSLIN, the cart went into a sluit washed out by the rains. G.F. ENSLIN IS ALREADY IN THIS ARCHIVE — he placed the 1863 notice saying Maria Elizabeth Kolbe had died intestate. Here he is a landmark on a road at night. |
| Any of the twelve children, by name | ONE — “JOHN KOLBE, JUN.” Found | Free State criminal court, reported in The Friend in the second half of 1869: a horse thief pleaded guilty to driving off, in October 1868, from the farm SPRINGFIELD, WARD UPPER MODDER-RIVER, DISTRICT BLOEMFONTEIN, a black mare and foal belonging to “ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, WIDOW OF LATE J.G.E. KOLBE”, a blue schimmel mare and foal belonging to “JOHN KOLBE, JUN.”, and a chestnut riding horse belonging to “JEPHTS, A MAN OF COLOR, NOW RESIDING AT LEEUWBERG”. Six months after the death, a son is holding stock in his own right beside his mother. AND A MAN WHO WOULD OTHERWISE BE IN NO DOCUMENT AT ALL IS NAMED IN THE SAME SENTENCE, WITH PROPERTY OF HIS OWN. |
| Where the farm actually was | ABOUT TWO HOURS' RIDE FROM BLOEMFONTEIN Found | The Friend, 13 January 1870, an auction advertisement dated Bloemfontein 30 November 1869: “The farm, WILDEBEESTKOOI, ADJOINING THE FARM LEEUBERG, THE PROPERTY OF THE LATE J.G.E. KOLBE, ABOUT TWO HOURS RIDE FROM THE TOWN OF BLOEMFONTEIN.” THIS ARCHIVE PINNED LEEUWBERG AT FAURESMITH TWO DAYS AGO, 130 KM AWAY, AND PUBLISHED THE PIN WITH ITS OWN OBJECTION ATTACHED. The objection was right. Withdrawn to /corrections/ and the pin moved. Kafferberg, Kaalspruit, Leeuberg, Wildebeestkooi and Springfield are one neighbourhood. |
| What the Settler did before Colesberg existed | HE KEPT A MISSION SCHOOL FOR BUSHMEN ON THE GROUND THE TOWN WAS LAID OUT ON Partly | The Friend, first half of 1869, “FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, by John MONTGOMERY, Founder of Burghersdorp”, describing a journey from Cradock about 1824: “I continued my journey towards the Orange River, BY KOOLSKOP, WHERE THE FATHER OF THE LATE LAMENTED COMMANDANT KOLBE CONDUCTED A BUSHMEN MISSION SCHOOL, AND WHICH IS NOW COLESBERG.” Colesberg was laid out in 1830. RECORDED AS AN INFERENCE: Montgomery is recalling forty-five years back and names the man only as somebody's father. It is also specific, and from a man who founded a town in the same district. |
| A fourth public office for the Commandant | FOREMAN OF THE JURY, BLOEMFONTEIN, 1866 Found | A forgery trial before Mr van Soelen — the same official who spoke at Kolbe's graveside two years later. “The jury, through their foreman, MR. J.G.B. KOLBE, OF KAFFERBERG, brought in a verdict of Not Guilty.” The initials are printed J.G.B. for J.G.E., in his own town's paper, in his own lifetime. |
| A grandson | “LITTLE JANNIE”, TEN YEARS OLD, KILLED BY LIGHTNING IN 1884 — FATHER UNCERTAIN Partly | “The eldest son of Mr. John KOLBE, ‘little Jannie’, a promising youth ten years old, was struck dead by the electric fluid on his father's farm FIVE HOURS TO THE NORTHWARD OF BLOEMFONTEIN.” The Natal Witness index carries the same death and names the father GEORGE. TWO PAPERS, TWO FATHERS. If the John of 1884 is the John Kolbe junior of 1868, this is the Commandant's grandson, and this archive is not going to decide that on a preference. |
| KOLBE-BOOYSEN — the compound the Name page called a tree oddity | IT IS A HOUSEHOLD IN PORT ELIZABETH, AND IT IS IN PRINT TWICE Found | Eastern Province Herald, 16 October 1944: “SAWTELLE – KOLBY-BOOYSEN. The engagement has been announced between LEVINA (FINNIE), only daughter of Mr and Mrs D. KOLBE-BOOYSEN, of Port Elizabeth, to Raymond Patrick, only son of Mrs D. Sawtelle, of Cambridge, England.” And 19 April 1945: “KOLBE-BOOYSEN – KRUGER… Hilda, only daughter of Lieut. and Mrs F. Kruger of Heidelburg, Transvaal, to WILLIAM (S.A.A.F.), son of Mr and Mrs D. KOLBE-BOOYSEN, of Port Elizabeth.” D IS DAVID — David Kolbe Booyzen, married Maria Jacoba Smit 1921. A TOWN AND TWO CHILDREN. And the headline spells it KOLBY and the body KOLBE, four words apart. |
| The rest of the forty-three | MOSTLY SOMEBODY ELSE, AND SET DOWN AS SUCH Nothing | A Kolbe girl of eleven drowned in a dam in the HANTAM district in 1874, saving a Hottentot girl who also drowned; Rev. F.W. KOLBE of the Paarl on a subscription list; Dr Kolbe the editor of the S.A. Catholic Magazine, ill in the Transkei in 1899; a watch-repair suit at Grahamstown in 1872; a Kolbe who swam three miles up a river after failing to save a drowning Australian in 1900; and two Cape Town society marriages of 1890. NONE OF THEM CONNECTS TO ANYTHING HERE and none is being adopted because the surname is rare enough to tempt. |
The seven Marico claims read to the bottom — and a farm school nobody had asked for
The index line was the whole record; the same query returned forty-eight files about a school · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| TAB CJC 906/76, 906/77, 907/104, 907/109, 907/123, 907/125, 907/126 — all seven detail records pulled | NOTHING BEYOND THE INITIALS Nothing | Every one of the seven reads, in full: “CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION BURGHERS. MARICO. XX BOOYZEN.” No remarks field, no farm, no forename, no amount. THE INDEX LINE IS THE WHOLE RECORD. This archive has spent two days treating these seven as a lead that could be worked at a screen. They cannot. Moved to the errands page, which is where a thing belongs when the only remaining step is a door. |
| BOOYZEN AND MARICO, Transvaal depot | TEN DOCUMENTS — SEVEN CLAIMS AND THREE NOBODY HAD ASKED FOR Found | The other three are TAB source OD, the education files of the South African Republic, and all three are about a school: a subsidy application, a book order and a set of quarterly returns, each headed “H DE VRIES, JGL BOOYZEN, KWAGGAFONTEIN, DISTRIK MARICO, PK KAFFERSKRAAL”. The first carries a remarks field pointing at an earlier file, OR13059/97. THE REMARKS FIELD IS THE THREAD. |
| Pull the thread — KWAGGAFONTEIN in the Transvaal depot | 72 DOCUMENTS; 48 OF THEM THIS SCHOOL Found | From 4 October 1897, when G.E. ter Haar of Kafferskraal asked the government for a teacher, to April 1900, when the teacher asked for his cheque to be sent to the landdrost and the war ended the file. In between: the school commission finds a teacher (N. de Vries); a telegram — “wagon leaves Thursday to fetch teacher De Vries, is everything in order?”; inspection reports by inspector T.C. Stoffberg; a dispute over when the teacher moved into his house; a subsidy chased; school furniture bought; holidays; and two pupils leaving. |
| Which of the forty-eight carry the surname | EIGHT, AND ALWAYS IN THE SAME PLACE Found | JGL Booyzen is named on the subsidy application, two book orders, all four quarterly returns, the explanation of an adverse balance of £61-6-0, and a letter of May 1899 telling the department that IN HIS OPINION £8 TOO LITTLE SUBSIDY HAD BEEN PAID, with reasons. He is on none of the holiday notices, form requests or railway certificates, which the teacher sent alone. THAT IS THE SHAPE OF A SCHOOL COMMISSION'S TREASURER, not a teacher and not a parent. |
| Which JGL Booyzen | NOT ANSWERED, AND NOT GUESSED Partly | The elder Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus, born about 1818, DIED AT VAALBANK ON 25 MAY 1885 and cannot be this man. His namesake born 4 December 1855 would be forty-two in 1898 and is a man of whom this archive has said for months that nothing is known of what became of him. Marico adjoins Lichtenburg; this family is documented in Marico from 1892. IT IS ALSO ONE OF THE COMMONEST NAME-STRINGS IN THE SURNAME. Recorded open. |
| The spelling, in one office, over ten months | BOOYZEN, BOOYSEN, BOOIJZEN — THE SAME MAN Found | January 1898 BOOYZEN; 12 February BOOYSEN; 9 May BOOYSEN; 1 July BOOYZEN; 20 October BOOIJZEN; 15 December BOOYSEN. One man, one farm, one government department, one register series, one year. NOTHING IN THIS ARCHIVE HAS SHOWN THE POINT SO CLEANLY: the z is not a branch and the ij is not a generation, it is whichever clerk had the pen. |
| BOOYSEN AND ONDERWYZER, Transvaal depot | SIXTEEN — AND ONE OF THEM IS ON THIS FAMILY'S OWN FARM Found | Most are other Booysens running other farm schools across the republic: Wonderboom, Hartsenbergfontein, Kareeboomputten, Zeekoefontein. But OR19199/98 and OR19484/98 read “DS. BOOYSEN (ONDERWYZER JP LOUW) VAALBANK DISTRICT LICHTENBURG POSTMERK RIETKUIL” — VAALBANK IS THE FARM WHERE JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN DIED IN 1885 AND HIS DAUGHTER IN 1920. He sends the school's power of attorney and eighteen pence in stamps to the government bookkeeper, and co-signs the fourth-quarter returns. |
| And the best of the three Vaalbank files | OR2037/99, 6 FEBRUARY 1899 — SCHOOL MATERIALS FOR ORPHANS Found | “DS. BOOIJSEN, LOUW (ONDERWIJZER), VAALBANK, DISTRIK LICHTENBURG, PK RIETKUIL. VRAAGT INLICHTINGEN OVER HET VERSCHAFFEN VAN LEERMIDDELEN AAN WEEZEN, NAAR AANLEIDING VAN EEN GEVAL TEN HUNNEN.” Asks how school materials may be provided to orphans, arising from a case among them. It is the only document in this archive in which a Booysen writes to a government about a child who is not his own. |
| Is DS. a pair of initials or the Dutch Ds. for dominee | CANNOT BE READ FROM AN INDEX LINE Partly | David Schalk is this family's most used name-string, and DS. on this farm in 1898 would put a named relative on it. BUT SIX WEEKS EARLIER THE SAME SCHOOL WROTE “JP LOUW DS VAN ROOJEN” IN EXACTLY THE SAME SLOT, and Ds. van Rooijen is far more likely a minister. One abbreviation, two readings, and this archive will not choose between them to make the better story true. The file settles it in a sentence; it has gone on the errands page. |
| The atlas line that said “in the field-cornet's papers” | WRONG, AND CORRECTED IN PLACE Found | The papers are the education department's. A field-cornet appears in the bundle exactly once, valuing the teacher's dwelling in May 1898, in a document sent by somebody else. The line had been written from a memory of the record rather than from the record, and it survived because nothing on the site cited it. AN EVENT WITH NO CITATION IS AN EVENT NOBODY CAN CHECK. |
Nine places put on the atlas — items 4 and 6
54 places become 63, and two farms are pinned on inferences that are labelled · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The seven towns, which needed no argument | PHILIPPOLIS · BETHULIE · UITENHAGE · PIET RETIEF · HOOPSTAD · STEYNSBURG · QUEENSTOWN Found | All seven came out of two days' work and none was on the map. PHILIPPOLIS is where the 1868 obituary says the Settler's children grew up — a fourth independent source for what this archive had inferred from baptism places. BETHULIE is where FREDERIK FORTUNATUS was born in 1839 and where he brought his own youngest daughter to be baptised FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER. UITENHAGE is where the eldest son was born in 1822, two years after the landing. |
| LEEUWBERG, where the Commandant died | PINNED AT FAURESMITH, ON ONE LAND FILE Partly | A Free State land file of 1903 reads “LEEUWBERG NO 465 DIST. FAURISMITH EXTENT ABOUT 1 200 MORGEN”. That is a farm of the right name in the right province THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER HE DIED THERE, and nothing more. Farm names repeat. THE PIN CARRIES THE CAVEAT ON THE MAP. |
| KAALSPRUIT, where he lived and lies | PINNED AT BLOEMFONTEIN, ON A PAIR OF NAMES Partly | His own advertisement of 9 March 1864 is signed from “Kafferberg, Kaalspruit”. A Free State soil-conservation district is registered as “KAALSPRUIT – KAFFERRIVIER (BLOEMFONTEIN)” — THE SAME TWO NAMES PAIRED, in the district whose bank he directed and whose paper he advertised in. A NAME PAIR IS NOT A SURVEY BEACON and the pin says so. |
| The part that does not fit, said out loud | FAURESMITH AND BLOEMFONTEIN ARE 130 KILOMETRES APART Partly | The obituary says he died at LEEUWBERG and that he “settled on the farm where he died and now lies buried on KAALSPRUIT”. Those cannot both be true of two farms that far apart. EITHER ONE OF THIS ARCHIVE'S TWO IDENTIFICATIONS IS WRONG, OR THE OBITUARY IS LOOSE. Both pins are marked approximate and the contradiction is printed with them rather than smoothed over by choosing one. |
The Friend of the Free State — the paper that printed the obituary first
Eight sons and four daughters, a farm settled, and a sister's death dated · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The Friend, 10 April 1868 — five days before the Grahamstown Journal | THE GRAHAMSTOWN VERSION IS A REPRINT, AND IT DROPS A LINE Found | The Friend is the Free State paper and printed it first. Its wording: “OF THE EIGHT SONS AND FOUR DAUGHTERS HE HAS LEFT BEHIND HIM, one daughter alone is married, the youngest being but an infant.” THE GRAHAMSTOWN REPRINT SAYS ONLY “OF FOUR DAUGHTERS”. So the twelve children are EIGHT SONS AND FOUR DAUGHTERS, which this archive did not know an hour ago. The transcriber also notes that the obituary “continues for a further half column, but is very difficult to read” — SO THERE IS MORE, AND IT IS NOT TRANSCRIBED. |
| Two transcriptions of one sentence, disagreeing on the farm | KAALSPRUIT AGAINST “[RANDSPRUIT]” Partly | Grahamstown: “settled on the farm where he died and now lies on KAALSPRUIT”. The Friend: “now lies buried on [RANDSPRUIT]”, the brackets the transcriber's own admission of doubt. ONE OF THE TWO IS WRONG AND THIS ARCHIVE COULD NOT SAY WHICH. |
| And the man settles it himself, four years earlier | “J.G.E. KOLBE, Kafferberg, KAALSPRUIT, 9 March 1864” Found | A lost-property advertisement in the Friend, signed with his own address as the paper printed it. KAALSPRUIT IS RIGHT AND THE BRACKETED READING IS WRONG. The advertisement does a second job: it concerns “a promissory note, date 9th March 1864, DRAWN BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE IN FAVOR OF J.G.E. KOLBE, payable 4 months after date for £154 Stg”, lost on the Market Square at Bloemfontein. THE SETTLER'S ELDEST SON AND HIS TWIN-BORN BROTHER, IN ONE DOCUMENT, OVER A DEBT. |
| The Friend, 23 October 1863 — an estate notice, printed twice | A SISTER'S DEATH, DATED AT LAST Found | “Derwyl MARIA ELIZABETH KOLBE zonder testament na te laten is overleden en de nagebleven echtgenoot G.F. ENSLIN … als executeur is aangesteld.” MARY ELIZABETH KOLBE DIED INTESTATE and her husband George Frederick Enslin was appointed executor of her estate. This archive had “bef. 1867”, inferred from a baptism. IT IS NOW BEFORE 23 OCTOBER 1863, from a notice her own husband placed in the paper. |
| A note on how the address is printed here | AS THE PAPER PRINTED IT, AND NOT USED AS A LABEL Partly | The 1864 advertisement gives his address with a place-name that is a racial slur in South African English. This archive quotes the advertisement as it stands, because that is what quoting a document means, and does not carry the word anywhere else — the farm is indexed as KAALSPRUIT. |
Margaret Downing — item 11, answered by a photograph already in this archive
The Burgersdorp monument, read to the end · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| NAAIRS · KOLBE AND DOWNING | SIXTEEN DOCUMENTS, AND NO DEATH NOTICE FOR HER Partly | A WILL OF HER OWN, MOOC 7/1/295 no. 70, made in 1854 — ten years after she was widowed. Her husband's 1844 WILL, 1845 INVENTORY and 1845 APPRAISEMENT, MOOC 7/1/180 nos. 52–54. And MOOC 13/1/253 no. 2, “DOWNING, MARGARET. WIDOW OF KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS. LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT”, 1869. The account of 1869 fits a death in late 1867 and does not decide between 1867 and January 1868. |
| Then the stone, which this archive has had all along | “BORN IN LONDON 23 FEBRUARY 1803 AND DIED AT BURGHERSDORP 2_ NOVEMBER 1867” Found | The Burgersdorp monument is ON THE KOLBE PAGE, photographed, and its caption quoted the inscription as far as “ALSO HIS RELICT MARGARET DOWNING…” AND STOPPED THERE. The next two lines carry an EXACT BIRTH, where this archive had “c. 1804”, and SETTLE THE DEATH AT 1867. A TRANSCRIPTION THAT STOPS BEFORE THE END OF AN INSCRIPTION IS NOT A TRANSCRIPTION. The day of death is a 2 and a digit that will not resolve at any magnification, and is not guessed. |
| And the newspaper, put in its place | “ABOUT THREE MONTHS SINCE” WAS NEARLY FIVE Found | Yesterday this archive set the obituary of 15 April 1868 against its own 1867 and published the discrepancy rather than resolving it — which was right, because it could not then resolve it. THE STONE RESOLVES IT. What the obituary got right was the PLACE: Burgersdorp, which this archive did not have. |
| A name that keeps travelling | MARGARET DOWNING, AS A FORENAME PAIR, INTO 1949 Found | MHG 23877 — FICK, LAMBERTUS HENDRIK, “eggenote MARGARET DOWNING (gebore KOLBE)”, 1932. MHG 33459 — DU PLESSIS, MARGARET DOWNING, nooiensvan KOLBE, 1941. MHG 801/49 — KRUGER, MARGARET DOWNING, nooiensvan KOLBE, VOORHEEN FICK, 1949 — the same woman as the 1932 file, remarried. A LONDON BRIDE OF 1819 IS STILL BEING NAMED IN FULL, AS A FORENAME, IN THE TRANSVAAL IN 1949. |
| Also picked up in passing | MHG 40293 — KOLBE, FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING, 1918 Partly | The Wakkerstroom man's Transvaal estate reference, which this archive did not have. NOT READ. |
The Werdmuller question, closed on dates — items 12 and 13
Augusta Louisa Kolbe died in 1873, and her husband remarried in 1874 · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| NAAIRS · WERDMULLER · 266 documents, never searched before | THE SETTLER'S FOURTH DAUGHTER HAS THREE FILES Found | KAB MOOC 7/1/332 no. 205 — “KOLBE, AUGUSTA LOUISA. WIFE OF COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER VAN ELGG. WILL”, made 1868, FILED 1873. KAB MOOC 6/9/145 no. 9981 — her DEATH NOTICE, 1873. KAB MOOC 13/1/299 no. 93 — her LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT, 1874, which means there was something to distribute. THE WILL IS THE FIRST DOCUMENT READ HERE THAT TIES HER TO THAT MAN BY ANYTHING BUT A NEWSPAPER. |
| The date that settles yesterday's open question | SHE DIED 1873. HE REMARRIED 7 JULY 1874. Found | A year and a month — which is what a widower does. Yesterday this archive published the Werdmuller descent as “a chain with a gap in it”, the gap being whether CHARLES ANDREW belonged to the first marriage or the second. |
| And a document that puts father and son in one line | GSC 2/1/1/41 no. 60, 1882 — “C.A. WERDMULLER AND COMPANY” Found | “ILLIQUID CASE. CHARLES ANDREW WERDMULLER AND COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER TRADING AS CA WERDMULLER AND COMPANY VERSUS … ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF DEBT.” FATHER AND SON IN BUSINESS TOGETHER IN THE YEAR THE FATHER DIED. A son of the 1874 marriage would have been SEVEN in 1882 and NINE when Charles Andrew married in 1884. HE CAN ONLY BE A CHILD OF THE FIRST MARRIAGE, and the first wife is the Settler's daughter. |
| The loophole that is left, named rather than ignored | AN EARLIER WIFE, BEFORE AUGUSTA LOUISA Partly | C.J.O. Werdmuller is in the Cape Supreme Court from 1854, so he was an adult two decades before she died. If there was a wife before her, Charles Andrew could be hers. HIS 1882 DEATH NOTICE — KAB MOOC 6/9/187 no. 4160 — LISTS HIS CHILDREN AND WOULD CLOSE IT. It is now the most wanted page on the Cape errand, because it decides whether a Victoria Cross married a great-granddaughter of the 1820 Settler. |
| A namesake, found without looking | FREDERICK FORTUNATUS WERDMULLER OF MALMESBURY Partly | Cape Supreme Court, 1907, twice in one year; an estate of his own in 1953, MOOC 6/9/20496. This archive has followed FREDERIK FORTUNATUS from Kolbe in 1839 to Barry in 1863 to Booÿsen in 1899. HERE IT IS ON A WERDMULLER — and Augusta Louisa Kolbe married a Werdmuller. Not shown to be her descendant. It is not a name that travels by accident. |
The Free State archives, opened for the first time
Commandant Kolbe's estate — and his widow, filed under another man's name · searched 15 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| NAAIRS · VAB · KOLBE — a depot this archive had never searched | 146 DOCUMENTS Found | The Free State repository has been sitting there through the whole project. It was opened the morning after the newspapers revealed that the Settler's eldest son lived and died in the Orange Free State. |
| His estate | VAB MHG K71 — KOLBE, JOHN GERSON ELEAZAR Partly | “EGGENOTE ANNA JACOBA (GEBORE VAN DER MERWE)”, 1868. The obituary gave him twelve children and named none of them. A DEATH NOTICE LISTS THE CHILDREN. This is the document that would answer the largest gap in this archive, and it is not filmed. |
| And the one that is better | VAB MHG M777 — “MCCABE, ANNA JACOBA. NOOIENSVAN VAN DER MERWE. EGGENOTE JOHN GHERSON”, 1896 Found | SHE REMARRIED. Widowed in 1868 with twelve children, she died twenty-eight years later as MRS MCCABE, which is why no search for a Kolbe widow would ever have found her. HER NOTICE WOULD NAME THE SAME TWELVE AS ADULTS — with their married surnames, which the 1868 one cannot. Found by searching the surname KOLBE and reading a row that is filed under M. |
| A coincidence recorded rather than followed | THERE IS A SECOND KOLBE–McCABE MARRIAGE Partly | ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE, baptised at Bloemfontein on 6 July 1890, daughter of FREDERIK FORTUNA KOLBE and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA MCCABE. Two Kolbe–McCabe marriages in one small Free State world, twenty years apart. THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT KNOW WHETHER THAT IS ANYTHING and writes it down so that it is not discovered twice. |
The London end — item 5, and a tool that will not be driven
FreeBMD, for the seven Kolbe brothers · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Why FreeBMD was the right place to start | SEVEN BROTHERS DIED BEFORE DECEMBER 1844 Partly | The 1844 obituary makes George Augustus “the last remaining of EIGHT SONS of John Godloff Kolbe Esq. of Brunswick-square”. Civil registration in England begins in SEPTEMBER 1837, so any brother who died between 1837 and 1844 should be in the GRO death index — and FreeBMD has transcribed that period. THE OTHERS DIED TOO EARLY AND WILL NEED PARISH REGISTERS. |
| The search itself | THE FORM WILL NOT BE DRIVEN FROM A SCRIPT, AND THIS IS RECORDED AS A TOOL FAILURE Void | The visible submit buttons are “Find Additional” and “View Saved”, both of which want a saved-search FILE — clicking one returns “You must supply the name of a file containing a saved search”. The real Find button is written into the page by JavaScript and is not in the form's element list. Posting the fields directly with find=Find returns a 105 KB page containing the query echoed back and NO RESULT ROWS. NO SEARCH WAS ACTUALLY RUN. NOTHING IS RECORDED AS A NEGATIVE, because nothing was asked. |
| Items 6 and 7, which were queued behind it | NOT STARTED Nothing | BRUNSWICK SQUARE AGAINST CONDUIT STREET needs London directories; the CAPE MEDICAL PRACTICE needs colonial medical registers. Both were to follow the FreeBMD run and neither was begun. |
The Pietermaritzburg address, checked before anything is posted
Item 20 — and the email is in doubt · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The National Archives' own entry for the repository | POSTAL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE CONFIRMED Found | Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, identifier NAB. Street 231 PIETERMARITZ STREET; postal PRIVATE BAG X9012, PIETERMARITZBURG 3200; telephone 033 342 4712; fax 033 394 4353; contact person THE PROVINCIAL ARCHIVIST. These agree across every source found and are safe. |
| The email address | TWO OF THEM, AND ONE IS ALMOST CERTAINLY DEAD Partly | The official page gives pmbarchives@dact.kzntl.gov.za on a record last edited on 2 JULY 2015, and kzntl.gov.za is a RETIRED KwaZulu-Natal government domain. Current listings give pmbarchives@kzndac.gov.za, which matches the department's live domain. THE ARCHIVE THAT PUBLISHES THE ADDRESS HAS NOT UPDATED IT IN ELEVEN YEARS. |
| What to do about it | POST IT, OR TELEPHONE FIRST Partly | This archive sent the Pretoria enquiry on 13 September into a mailbox it could not confirm and has had no answer. The recommendation here is the postal address, which is certain, or a call to 033 342 4712 to ask for the current email. THE LETTER IS DRAFTED AND DELIBERATELY NOT SENT; sending it is the user's. |
FamilySearch has signed out, and it fails in the worst possible way
The South African collections vanish and the search still answers 200 · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The image viewer, for the Burgersdorp register sweep | REDIRECTS TO THE SIGN-IN PAGE Blocked | Items 1 to 4 of the standing queue — finishing the register sweep, re-checking the thirty blank-index images, sweeping the whole film for nameless rows, and reading images 427 and 513 as images — ALL STOP HERE. The sweep stopped at image 604 of 818 and can be resumed from there. |
| The search API, which looked fine | IT ANSWERS 200 AND RETURNS THE WRONG WORLD Void | A query this archive ran successfully six hours ago — q.surname=Kolbe with f.recordCountry=South Africa — NOW RETURNS ZERO ENTRIES WITH HTTP 200. Drop the country filter and it returns 26,126 candidates, EVERY ONE OF THEM FROM THE UNITED STATES CENSUS OF 1950. The South African Dutch Reformed registers, the Transvaal and Cape estate indexes and the civil death series are simply not in the corpus any more. |
| Why this is the dangerous kind of failure | A LOGGED-OUT SEARCH LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE AN EMPTY ARCHIVE Void | No error, no warning, no redirect — a valid JSON body with results:0. Every negative this archive might have written in the last hour — “Gabriel Stephanus not followed out of the font”, “Angeline unidentified”, “Susanna Margaretha Downing Kolbe unattached” — WOULD HAVE BEEN A LIE, and would have read exactly like the true negatives beside it. IT IS THE THIRD TIME TODAY THE SAME SHAPE HAS APPEARED: NAAIRS ORing two keywords, this archive's own row filter dropping thirty-six documents, and now a signed-out API returning an empty world. A FILTER THAT DROPS WHAT IT CANNOT SEE IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A SOURCE THAT HOLDS NOTHING. |
| Items 8, 9, 12 and 19, which needed it | NOT RUN, AND NOT WRITTEN UP AS NEGATIVES Blocked | The three unfollowed children of Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe; Angeline Kolbe of Wakkerstroom; Susanna Margaretha Downing Kolbe; and the phthisis-against-sclerosis question for Henry James Booyzen. ALL FOUR ARE WAITING ON A SIGN-IN AND NONE OF THEM IS RECORDED AS A MISS. |
The 184 enumerated properly — and seven Booyzens claiming war compensation in Marico
The thirty-six that were missing were missing because of this archive's own filter · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Re-run the BOOYZEN sweep without the row filter | 194 ROWS, 184 UNIQUE — THE EXACT COUNT Found | This morning this archive published “148 of 184 — thirty-six documents were not reached”. ALL TEN PAGES HAD BEEN WALKED. The thirty-six were dropped by a condition in this archive's own harvesting code that required a description longer than three characters, which silently discards every row the index leaves short or blank. A CAVEAT THAT BLAMED THE SOURCE FOR A HOLE THIS ARCHIVE DUG. Withdrawn to /corrections/. It is the same failure as the blank Name column in the Burgersdorp register, one layer up: A FILTER THAT DROPS WHAT IT DOES NOT RECOGNISE LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE AN ARCHIVE THAT DOES NOT HOLD IT. |
| What was hiding in the thirty-six | SEVEN COMPENSATION CLAIMS BY BURGHERS, MARICO, 1903–1904 Found | CJC 906/76 JPJ BOOYZEN · CJC 906/77 PJ BOOYZEN · CJC 907/104 GL BOOYZEN · CJC 907/109 JPJ BOOYZEN · CJC 907/123 L BOOYZEN · CJC 907/125 JC BOOYZEN · CJC 907/126 HE BOOYZEN. MARICO IS ONE OF THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN DISTRICTS — Brakfontein, Vaalbank, Koedoesfontein, Zeerust, Driefontein and Zwartruggens are all in or beside it. Seven men of this surname claiming from the state for what the war cost them, in one district, in two years. AND ONE OF THEM IS INITIALLED G.L. NONE IS READ. |
| And the oldest Booyzen paper in the country | CJ 2633 · 29 — BOOYZEN, CHRISTINA. TESTAMENT. 1779 Partly | Also CO 3879 · 521, “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, WIDOW OF WW TEUTER”, 1810 — and the Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette of 1 January 1830 carries “CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, Widow of WILLEM WOUTER VENTER, aged 79 years”. TEUTER AND VENTER MAY WELL BE ONE CLERK'S HAND READ TWO WAYS. Not this family so far as anything shows, and set down because a 1779 will is older than anything this archive has. |
| Item 13 — the six missing Silverton children, asked of the estate index | ONE OF THE SIX, AND HER HUSBAND'S NAME Found | TAB MHG 4300/51: “VERMEULEN, MICHAEL JOHANNES, 1951. PREDECEASED SPOUSE ELSIE KATRINA VERMEULEN. SURVIVING SPOUSE BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA VERMEULEN (BORN BOOYZEN).” THAT IS BETIE. She was his second wife and she outlived him. Found by putting VERMEULEN and BOOYZEN to the index TOGETHER — the relationship trick again, not a name search. |
| The other five — Ousie, Evert, Pietie, Johan, Hennie | NOT IDENTIFIABLE, AND NOT GUESSED Nothing | LUUS with BOOYZEN returns NOTHING. The 184 hold four Petrus Jacobus Booyzen estates and a Johann Frederik of 1974, and this archive already has SIX men called Petrus Jacobus in this family — so a match on a forename is worth nothing here. FIVE OF THE TWELVE SILVERTON CHILDREN REMAIN UNPLACED and this archive would rather say so than fill them in. |
The Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom stones, read
A possible date for the Settler's twin, and six more great-grandchildren · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| PIET RETIEF · KOLBE G.A. 1836–1913 & A.M. 1843–1907 | GEB. 23 FEB. 1836 — WHICH IS THE TWIN'S YEAR EXACTLY Partly | “VADER EN MOEDER — G.A. KOLBE — GEB. 23 FEB. 1836 — OVERL. 7 JAN. 1913 — A.M. KOLBE — GEB. 4 MEI 1843 — OVERL. 21 SEP. 1907 — VAN HUN KINDERS.” The Settler's ninth and tenth children were TWINS BORN AT BURGERSDORP IN 1836 and this archive has never had a day for either; this would date both. IT IS INITIALS AND A YEAR, NOT A NAME AND A PARENT, and it is entered as inferred. It would also give the other George Augustus Kolbe — born Burgersdorp 2 October 1861 — a father aged twenty-five. |
| PIET RETIEF · KOLBE P.J. 1865–1919 | INITIALS AGAIN, AND ONE ILLEGIBLE DIGIT Partly | “P.J. KOLBE — GEB. 1_ AUG. 1865 — OORL. 28 NOV. 1919 — RUS SAG.” The day will not resolve at any magnification and is left as a gap. Thirty years younger than the stone beside it and very likely a son of it; NOTHING ON THE STONE SAYS SO. |
| WAKKERSTROOM · MERWE Maria Johanna, van der, nee KOLBE 1886–1953 | A DATE, AND SIX CHILDREN BY THEIR HOUSEHOLD NAMES Found | “IN LIEFDEVOLLE HERINNERING AAN ONS MAMMIE — MARIA JOHANNA VAN DER MERWE (GEB. KOLBE) — 26 OKT. 1886 – 1 OKT. 1953 — Wat hy doen is wel gedaan” — and beneath it MARTZI · P.S. · JUDIE · PIETMAN · CHARL EN SUZAN. Her birth moves from a year to a date. SIX GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN OF THE 1820 SETTLER, NONE OF THEM PREVIOUSLY IN THIS ARCHIVE. |
| The pattern, now at three | THIS FAMILY BURIES ITS DEAD IN ONE GRAMMAR Found | The Booyzens at SILVERTON list twelve children on a centre pillar. The Kolbes at WAKKERSTROOM use the same double-stone-and-pillar form. This one sets six household names under a mother's dates. TWO FAMILIES FOUR HUNDRED MILES APART, DOING THE SAME THING — and it keeps producing children who are on no register this archive can reach, because A REGISTER RECORDS A BIRTH AND A STONE RECORDS WHO WAS LEFT. |
The other forty Kolbe newspaper hits — and the Settler's eldest son gets a life
“DEATH OF COMMANDANT KOLBE”, Grahamstown Journal, 15 April 1868 · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Grahamstown Journal 1868, second quarter — a hit this archive had already seen and not opened | A FULL OBITUARY FOR JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE Found | He was two lines in a table: “John Gerson Eliezar ‘Jan’, 1822, Uitenhage”. The obituary gives BORN 7 JULY 1822, MARRIED 3 APRIL 1843 to ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, DIED 3 APRIL 1868 ON HIS WEDDING ANNIVERSARY at the farm LEEUWBERG, of TYPHUS OR TYPHOID CAUGHT ON COMMANDO. Settled on KAALSPRUIT about 1850. COMMANDANT OF THE DISTRICT, JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, DIRECTOR OF THE BLOEMFONTEIN BANK, DEACON, and a speaker in the VOLKSRAAD in May 1867. THE ROW ABOVE IT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS WAS READ THIS MORNING AND THIS ONE WAS NOT. |
| The household in that obituary | A WIDOW AND TWELVE CHILDREN, NOT ONE OF THEM NAMED Partly | Four daughters, only one married, the youngest an infant. TWO SONS HAD SERVED WITH HIM IN THE FIELD and “proved themselves amongst the bravest of our burghers”. Twelve grandchildren of the 1820 Settler in one household and this archive has none of them. IT IS THE LARGEST SINGLE GAP THE NEWSPAPERS HAVE OPENED. |
| The deathbed passage | “THIS STATE HAD TAKEN TOO MUCH LAND FROM THE BASUTOS” Found | He said it to the doctor and the others at his bedside; said he had always thought so and had said so in the Raad at the “corn peace” of May 1867; and asked them to RESCIND THEIR RESOLUTION, ANNUL THEIR PROTEST AND TREAT WITH THE GOVERNOR for an equitable boundary. A man dying of a fever he caught fighting that war, asking his own government to give the land back. |
| And the obituary describes his parents | A CONTEMPORARY CORROBORATION OF THE WHOLE LONDON STORY Found | “His parents came out with the settlers of 1820; HIS FATHER WAS OF GERMAN EXTRACTION, IF NOT BIRTH, BUT RESIDED AND MARRIED IN LONDON.” This archive built that from a Soho baptism, a London Gazette partnership notice and the 1841 census — none of which the writer of 1868 had in front of him. It also confirms from a fourth direction that the father “became a Missionary to the Griquas at PHILIPPOLIS, and most of his family grew up there”. |
| The date that does not fit, left not fitting | MARGARET DOWNING “DIED IN BURGHERSDORP ABOUT THREE MONTHS SINCE” Partly | Printed 15 April 1868, which puts her death in JANUARY 1868. This archive has 1867, off her own death notice. A form with a date beats a journalist rounding — but this archive has been caught once already by an estate filed thirteen years after the death it recorded, so the discrepancy is published rather than resolved. HER PLACE OF DEATH IS NEW EITHER WAY: BURGERSDORP, where her husband lies. |
| Grahamstown Journal, 9 February 1872, quoting the Colesberg Advertiser | “TERRIBLE WARNING” — A KOLBE SUES A WATCHMAKER Partly | An action before the Resident Magistrate between MR. GEO. KOLBE, plaintiff, and MR. T. NELSON, WATCHMAKER, defendant, over a watch entrusted for repair “which, despite repeated promises, the latter neglected to repair or to deliver”. Not a genealogical fact, and kept anyway: it is the only glimpse this archive has of a Kolbe of Colesberg on an ordinary Monday. |
The newspapers, worked properly — and the Settler's fourth daughter comes back
WERDMULLER, ten hits, five of them this family · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| newspapers.eggsa.org · WERDMULLER | TEN HITS, AND FIVE OF THEM BUILD A FAMILY Found | AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE, the Settler's fourth daughter, born Graaff-Reinet 1829, has been in this archive as a name with a surname in brackets and nothing else. Her husband is now a man with three dates and a town; her son is named; her son's wife has a death and an obituary; and her granddaughter has a wedding. |
| Eastern Province Herald, 21 July 1874 | THE VON ELGG, PRINTED BY SOMEBODY WHO WAS NOT A GENEALOGIST Found | “MARRIED at Burghersdorp BY SPECIAL LICENCE, on Tuesday the 7th July 1874, by the Rev. William Cromar, COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER D'ELGG to Miss ELIZABETH JOHANNA CATHARINE VORSTER, both of Burghersdorp.” And it raises a question this archive cannot answer: WAS AUGUSTA LOUISA DEAD BY 1874, or is this a son of the same name? |
| Queenstown Free Press, 19 February 1884 | C.J.O. WERDMULLER IS DEAD, AND HE HAD AT LEAST TWO SONS Found | “CHARLES ANDREW WERDMULLER, OF STEYNSBURG. SECOND SON OF THE LATE C.J.O. WERDMULLER, OF BURGHERSDORP”, married at Wesley Church, Queenstown, to CHARLOTTE ANNE CALLAGHAN, eldest daughter of Hugh Callaghan Esq. of Ashby Manor. A MAN BORN 14 FEBRUARY 1857 — the nameless Burgersdorp baptism found this same morning — WAS TWENTY-SEVEN THAT WEEK. The two finds met in the middle and neither was looking for the other. |
| Queenstown Free Press, 1891 | DEAD AT THIRTY-TWO, LEAVING TWO LITTLE GIRLS Found | “DIED — At HOOPSTAD, Orange Free State, on Tuesday, the 17th February, 1891, at the age of 32 years, after a long illness, CHARLOTTE ANNE WERDMULLER … leaving a husband and TWO LITTLE GIRLS to mourn their loss.” A correspondent's obituary adds that she had reached Hoopstad only months before, in indifferent health, with a disorder of the heart that proved organic. |
| South Africa, a weekly journal, 1909 | A VICTORIA CROSS MARRIES INTO THE LINE Found | “MARTINEAU — WERDMULLER — On July 31, at East London, HORACE ROBERT MARTINEAU, V.C., of Durban, to AMY WERDMULLER, SECOND DAUGHTER OF CHARLES WERDMULLER, J.P. OF HOOPSTAD, O.R.C.” She is one of the two little girls of 1891. THIS ARCHIVE PRINTS THE TWO LETTERS AS THE JOURNAL PRINTED THEM and has NOT gone looking for which action he won it for — that is somebody else's page, and borrowing it is exactly the temptation this archive exists to resist. |
| The link that is not proved, stated rather than smoothed over | NOTHING NAMES CHARLES ANDREW'S MOTHER Partly | If he is the child of 14 February 1857 then Augusta Louisa Kolbe is his mother and Amy is a great-granddaughter of the 1820 Settler. If he belongs to his father's 1874 marriage he is no relation — and a man marrying in 1884 as a SECOND son cannot be. THE DATES FAVOUR KOLBE STRONGLY AND THE DOCUMENTS DO NOT SAY IT. Recorded as a chain with a gap in it. |
| newspapers.eggsa.org · ELGG | NOTHING Nothing | The search engine will not match a fragment inside D'ELGG. The full surname has to be asked for. |
G2G answers again — and takes away the only document that names the top of the line
Pieter van Zyl and Riël Smit on the 1876 Sterfkennis · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The comment, thirteen minutes old when it was read here | HE PREDICTED WHAT IS ON THE PAGE WITHOUT HAVING SEEN THE PAGE Found | “His real dad, Jan, was already dead for more than 40 years when Petrus Jacobus died… Quite possibly, the informant ‘thought’ the dad's name was G L. I searched for a marriage between a Gerhardus Lodewicus and Magdalena de Beer BUT COULD NOT FIND ONE. If I remember correctly, THERE WAS A CHILD OF PETRUS CALLED GERHARDUS LODEWICUS ON HIS STERFKENNIS.” |
| Check it against the document this archive has read and photographed | THERE IS. HE IS THE FIFTH CHILD IN LINE 12. Found | JAN GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN. The name this archive takes from LINE 3 for the dead man's FATHER is the back half of his SON'S name, EIGHT LINES BELOW, ON THE SAME SHEET, IN ONE CLERK'S HAND. And the half that gets dropped — JAN — is the name de Villiers gives as the real father, b3c4d7. THE ARCHIVE HAS BEEN LOOKING AT BOTH HALVES FOR WEEKS AND DID NOT PUT THEM TOGETHER. |
| What it does to the dispute | IT TAKES EVIDENCE AWAY AND ADDS NONE Partly | This is not a proof that the father was Jan, and this archive is NOT swapping one unproved father for another on the strength of a good reading. What it does is REMOVE THE 1876 STERFKENNIS AS DECISIVE EVIDENCE FOR GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS — and line 3 is the only place that name has ever been found. THE OLDEST QUESTION ON THIS SITE JUST GOT HARDER, which is the correct direction for it to move. |
| Pieter van Zyl's own negative, recorded because it is one | NO MARRIAGE OF A GERHARDUS LODEWICUS TO A MAGDALENA DE BEER Nothing | He looked and could not find one. This archive has not repeated the search and records his, attributed. A man who cannot be found marrying the woman his son's death notice gives him is not thereby disproved — but the absence is now on the page. |
| Riël Smit, two hours earlier | THE ONLY GERHARDUS IN DE VILLIERS & PAMA (1981) IS b3c1d1 GERHARDUS LORET Partly | “Maybe the Loret changed to Lodevicus over time.” Baptised September 1770, son of Booij — which makes him Petrus Jacobus's FIRST COUSIN and EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD in 1788. He cannot be the father. The suggestion is still worth keeping: it is the only Gerhardus in the printed genealogy at all, and a remembered cousin is exactly the kind of name an informant reaches for. |
| And the books this archive did not have | PARTS 2 AND 3 ARE ON ARCHIVE.ORG TOO Partly | Riël Smit posted links to all three parts of Oude Kaapsche Familien. This archive downloaded Part 1 on 13 September and never looked for the others. NOT YET READ. |
The Burgersdorp register, swept image by image — the standing errand of this project
267 images, one of the two missing Barry children, and the reason they were invisible · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| First, exhaust the index, so the grind is not done for nothing | NINE SEARCHES, ALL RETURNING THE SAME SEVEN CHILDREN Nothing | Child surname as BARRY, BERRY, BARRIE, BARY, BARREY, BARRI and BARI — the engine fuzzy-matches, so all seven return one set. Mother as KOLBE, KOLBER and COLBE. And a search on the PARENTS alone — father John, mother Margaretha/Margret/Margaretwina, place Burgersdorp — which returned NOTHING for 1854–1858. THE INDEX ROUTE WAS GENUINELY EXHAUSTED BEFORE A SINGLE IMAGE WAS OPENED. |
| The film viewer carries an index panel under every image | THIS IS THE TOOL, AND IT WAS THERE ALL ALONG Found | Film 008039088 — 818 images, not the 534 this archive had written down. Under each image is a table: NAME, BIRTH DATE, PARENT NAME, SECOND PARENT'S NAME, EVENT TYPE, EVENT DATE, EVENT PLACE, for every entry on that page. THE HANDWRITING NEVER HAD TO BE READ. Stepping the viewer and harvesting that table gives about ten entries an image at two and a half seconds each. |
| Images 338 to 604 — 1853 to 1859, about 2,400 indexed entries | ONE BARRY BAPTISM: CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA, BORN 10 JULY 1855 Found | Image 427. Baptised 22 July 1855 at Burgersdorp, father JOHN BARRY, mother MARGARET LOUISA KOLBE. THE TENTH CHILD. And her sister has the same name: on 25 December 1859 at Dordrecht the same parents baptised another CATHARINA MARY SOPHIA, born 4 August 1859 — the woman who married into the Booyzens. A BAPTISM IS NOT DONE TWICE, so the first child died and the name was given again, which is the ordinary Cape practice. This archive has no burial for her and dates the death only as before August 1859. |
| WHY NO SEARCH COULD EVER HAVE FOUND HER | THE NAME COLUMN IS EMPTY Found | The index row for image 427 reads: “ | 10 Jul 1855 | John Barry | Margaret Louisa Kolbe | Baptism | 22 Jul 1855 | Burgersdorp”. THE CHILD IS INDEXED WITH NO NAME AT ALL. Her forenames are written plainly on the page and simply were not keyed. NO SEARCH BY SURNAME, FORENAME OR SPELLING VARIANT CAN RETURN A RECORD THAT HAS NEITHER. The parents are indexed; the child is not. That is a class of invisible record this archive did not know existed, and it is worth more than the one child it produced. |
| A second nameless row, in the same sweep | THE SETTLER'S FOURTH DAUGHTER HAS A CHILD Found | Image 513: born 14 FEBRUARY 1857, baptised 10 April 1857 at Burgersdorp, mother AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE, father COENRAAD JOHANNES OTTO WERDMULLER. She is the Settler's daughter born at Graaff-Reinet in 1829, and THIS IS THE FIRST OF HER CHILDREN THIS ARCHIVE HAS EVER SEEN. Name column empty again. TWO NAMELESS ENTRIES IN 267 IMAGES AND BOTH BELONG TO THIS FAMILY. |
| The eleventh child | STILL MISSING Nothing | Not at Burgersdorp between 1853 and 1859, and the sweep was complete across that ground. What is left: 1851–1852 before this register opens, the Dordrecht register after 1863, and the real possibility that a child was born and died between two known baptisms and was never entered anywhere. |
| What the sweep cannot vouch for | ABOUT THIRTY IMAGES RETURNED NO INDEX ROWS Partly | Some of those are genuinely blank pages. This archive cannot say all of them are — the panel may simply not have loaded inside the wait. THE NUMBER IS WRITTEN DOWN RATHER THAN ROUNDED AWAY, and anyone repeating this should re-visit the zeros. |
The G2G question was answered — twice, in eighteen hours, by a stranger
Pieter van Zyl on estate MHG 10/57 · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Did anyone answer the post of 13 September? | TWO ANSWERS, BOTH WITHIN EIGHTEEN HOURS, BOTH USEFUL Found | This archive asked whether the “Form of information of death” cited on WikiTree profile Booyzen-12 was the sterfkennis it has been trying to read since the FamilySearch films started refusing images. THE FORUM WORKED. Two answers, five upvotes each, from PIETER VAN ZYL. |
| Is the “Form of information of death” the document this archive wants? | NO — AND THAT IS THE ANSWER, NOT A DISAPPOINTMENT Found | “The Form of Information of a Death or AANGIFTE VAN 'N STERFGEVAL is usually the form that concentrates on the registration of the death by Government. IT DOES NOT USUALLY CONTAIN the information about the spouse's name, parents' names and children. On the other hand the STERFKENNIS or Death Notice gives more information to enable the probate to be processed. It is connected to the will and sent to the Master's office.” SO NOBODY HAS ALREADY READ THE PAGE THIS ARCHIVE WANTS. The letter to Pretoria remains the only route to MHG 10/57, and a week of hoping otherwise is closed in one paragraph by somebody who knows the record series. |
| What came back that was not asked for | A BAPTISM REGISTER, UPLOADED TO THE PROFILE Found | Ark 1:1:6KPT-T3Z4, Dutch Reformed Church Registers: HENRY JAMES BOOŸSEN, BORN 12 AUGUST 1887, BAPTISED 27 NOVEMBER 1887, parents WILLEM HERMANUS BOOŸSEN and CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA BARRY. VERIFIED HERE against the index rather than taken on trust. THE 12 AUGUST 1887 HAS NOW COME FROM A TREE, THEN A GRAVESTONE, THEN A CHURCH REGISTER, IN THAT ORDER — which is exactly backwards, and is how it usually goes. |
| And a claim this archive has NOT verified | CARPENTER, RETIRED MINER OF LANGLAAGTE ESTATES, DIED OF PHTHISIS Partly | “He was a carpenter when married and a retired miner of Langlaagte Estates when he died of Phthisis.” THIS ARCHIVE HAS CORONARY PULMONARY SCLEROSIS, off the Johannesburg burial register it read itself. Phthisis is the Rand miner's disease, and a retired Langlaagte man dying of it in 1956 fits everything else known about him — but the two causes are not the same word, and this archive has read one of the two documents and not the other. RECORDED AS REPORTED AND NOT AS ESTABLISHED. A knowledgeable stranger on a forum is not a document either. |
| A method note fell out of verifying the ark | THE INDEX MANGLES BARKLY EAST THREE DIFFERENT WAYS IN ONE RESULT SET Partly | One search for the children of Willem Hermanus Booysen returns the same town as “BEAUFORT, Cape Province” (Henry James, 1887), “BARKLY WEST, Cape Province” (a membership entry for the same man, same date), and “BARKLY, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA” (Richard Peter, 1894). THE REGISTER SAYS BARKLY OOST EVERY TIME. Anyone filtering FamilySearch by normalised place for this family will lose most of it, and that is worth knowing before the next sweep. |
Tolosberg on Jeppe's map of 1899 — the hill three Booyzens were taken on
Sheet 6, read at full resolution over twenty-five kilometres · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Find a digitised Jeppe 1899 at a resolution that can be read | STANFORD HAS SHEET 6 AS A 75 MB JP2, SERVED OVER IIIF Found | purl.stanford.edu/jd589rh6196 — “Jeppe's map of the Transvaal or S.A. Republic and surrounding territories”, 16,423 × 24,548 pixels, with a IIIF endpoint that will cut any rectangle at native resolution. Sheet 6 is the SOUTH-EAST sheet, roughly 30.3°–33°E and 25°–28°S, which is exactly the ground. THE MAP IS FREE AND HAS BEEN FREE THE WHOLE TIME. |
| The Elands River valley, four tiles at native resolution | EVERY FARM IS NAMED AND NUMBERED — AND THERE IS NO TOLOSBERG Found | Waterval 161, Kindergoed, Elandshoek, Eerste Geluk, Groot Geluk, Nooitgedacht 345, Vlakplaats, Kaalbosch, Schoonspruit, Kietspruit, Weltevreden, Treurfontein, Uitkomst, Doornhoek — and WATERVAL BOVEN and WATERVAL ONDER stations on the Delagoa Bay railway, with GODWAAN STATION to the east. About twenty-five kilometres by twenty, at the scale the surveyor drew it. |
| Does Jeppe name hills at all? — because a negative is worthless if he does not | HE DOES, AND IN A FORM THAT WOULD HAVE CAUGHT IT Nothing | MAUCH BG. is printed in italic across a range north of the valley; SPITSKOP, TAFEL KOP, PEERDS KOP, ZWART KOP, ZUIKERBOSCHKOP, SILVERKOP, VAALKOP and BOSCHKOP all appear as named summits. A hill called TOLOSBERG would have been written TOLOS BG. and would have been found. THE TEST IS SOUND AND THE ANSWER IS NO. |
| What the negative is worth | IT DOES NOT MOVE THE PIN AND IT DOES NOT BREAK THE SOURCE Partly | The single source for the capture says “Tolosberg in the Waterval Valley, Eastern Transvaal”, and this archive placed the pin at Waterval Boven by inference. Jeppe's silence means the name was LOCAL, or SPELT OTHERWISE, or NEVER A SURVEYED FEATURE — commandos named ground by what they called it, not by what the Surveyor-General called it. The pin stays where it is, still marked as an inference, AND IT IS NOW A TESTED ONE. |
eGGSA's newspaper extracts — and the Settler's obituary, found in a search that took four minutes
Thirty-eight Cape and Natal papers, searched at last · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| newspapers.eggsa.org · KOLBE | 43 HITS — AND ONE OF THEM IS THE 1820 SETTLER'S DEATH NOTICE IN PRINT Found | GRAHAMSTOWN JOURNAL, THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 1844. Eighteen days after he died, four hundred miles from the farm. It gives EIGHT SONS where this archive knew of one, BRUNSWICK SQUARE where the census gives Conduit Street, a man who RENDERED MEDICAL ADVICE TO THE DISTRICT OF COLESBERG FOR MANY YEARS where his own death notice says “Agriculturist”, and a cause of death — an affection on the lungs, after nearly a year ill. IT IS THE RICHEST SINGLE DOCUMENT FOUND IN THIS ARCHIVE IN WEEKS AND IT COST FOUR MINUTES. The collection had been named here as unused for days. |
| The same notice, tested rather than swallowed | TWO OF ITS FACTS ARE WRONG Partly | It says AGED 44; he was born 7 December 1802 and died 1 December 1844, five days short of forty-two. It says TEN CHILDREN; this archive counts twelve born and one dead in infancy, which leaves eleven. Both are printed on the page beside the find. A newspaper death notice is written by the grieving and set by a compositor four hundred miles away. |
| newspapers.eggsa.org · BOOYZEN | FIVE, AND TWO ARE WORTH KEEPING Partly | Eastern Province Herald 1862: “BOOYZEN is a trek-farmer, and was with his brother and brother-in-law digging for water at a place called DEEP FOUNTAIN, within two hours of the ORANGE RIVER” — a Booyzen at work, in a sentence, in 1862. Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette, 1 January 1830: “CHRISTINA BOOYZEN, Widow of WILLEM WOUTER VENTER, aged 79 years, 2 months and 16 days” — born about October 1750, which is older than anything else in this archive. NEITHER IS SHOWN TO BE THIS FAMILY. |
| newspapers.eggsa.org · MOUNTJOY | SIX, AND ONE IS A MOUNTJOY AT CRADOCK IN 1869 Partly | The Friend of the Free State, 1869: “On reaching CRADOCK I found that the Captain was there before me, and had told MOUNTJOY to try and induce me to stay.” Cradock is one of this archive's own places. NOT READ IN FULL, and not connected. |
| newspapers.eggsa.org · DASCHNER | NOTHING Nothing | Zero across thirty-eight papers. The surname reached Indwe from Germany and went to the Rand, and it never got into a Cape newspaper column that anyone has transcribed. |
| newspapers.eggsa.org · BOOIJSEN | ONE, AND IT IS NOT THIS FAMILY Nothing | A single hit in The Friend of the Free State, 1859. The ij spelling that dominates this archive's own registers is almost absent from the newspapers. |
| A METHOD NOTE | THE SEARCH BOX IS NOT A FORM Void | newspapers.eggsa.org runs Geek ElasticSearch: posting the form returns the page and nothing else. The results are drawn by script as you type. It has to be driven as a page — set the value, fire an input event, wait — and not fetched. AN HOUR WAS SPENT POSTING TO AN ENDPOINT THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO ANSWER. |
The 184 RSA Booyzen documents, enumerated for the first time
Seventy-two of them are estates or death notices · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| NAAIRS · RSA · BOOYZEN, all 184, walked page by page | 148 ROWS READ OF 184 — AND THE SHORTFALL IS SAID OUT LOUD Partly | The summary screen pages twenty at a time and this sweep took ten pages. THIRTY-SIX DOCUMENTS WERE NOT REACHED, and this archive is not going to call 148 a complete enumeration. What follows is what 148 rows contain. THE COUNT HAS BEEN QUOTED HERE FOR WEEKS — “184 RSA Booyzen documents” — WITHOUT ANYONE EVER OPENING IT. |
| Eight gravestones found this morning, looked up in the estate index this afternoon | EIGHT JOINS, FROM TWO COLLECTIONS THAT DO NOT SPEAK TO EACH OTHER Found | DAVID SCHALK — stone “David S. 1907–1966”, Zandfontein · estate MHG 7653/66. CHARLIE JOHN — stone 1909–1962, Brenthurst · MHG 9371/62. CASPER JOHANNES — stone 1920–1972, Braamfontein · MHG 6160/72. FREDRICK — stone 1899–1970, West Park · MHG 11193/70. ANDRIES ARNOLDUS — stone 1918–1975, West Park · MHG 3100/1975. MARIA CHRISTINA NEE OOSTHUIZEN — stone 1920–1955 · MHG 86/56. WILLEM HERMAN — stone 1946–1965, a boy of nineteen · MHG 1403/1965. JACOBUS FREDRIK JANSE — stone 1939–1957 · MHG 1909/57. EVERY ONE OF THE EIGHT AGREES ON THE YEAR. The stone gives the household name, the index gives the registered name. |
| The fourth Middelburg stone, the one this archive could not place | SHE HAS A CAPE ESTATE: MOOC 6/9/4898, 54123 Partly | “BOOYZEN, CATHARINA JOHANNA HELENA, NEE BEYLEVELD. ESTATE PAPERS. 1937.” Read this morning as an unplaceable stone in the same cemetery as three of this family; by the afternoon she has a file that would name her parents, her husband and her children and settle the question in one page. NOT READ, and it is now near the top of the list. |
| Magdalena Johanna Booyzen, born Bezuidenhout | MHG 2510/55 — HER OWN ESTATE Partly | The woman whose birth date, 8 May 1870, is written beside her name in the Wonderboom deeds register, and whose Rebecca Street stone corrected this archive's reading of that register. Her estate file is MHG 2510/55. NOT READ. |
| The two oldest Booyzen death notices in the Cape series | 1843 AND 1856 Partly | MOOC 6/9/30 · 6167 DU PLESSIS, JOHANNA (NEE BOOYZEN), 1843 — already read here, and already established as NOT this family. MOOC 6/9/76 · 4223 BOOYZEN, CORNELIA MARGARIETHA (NEE FOUCHE), 1856 — NOT READ, and older than all but one document in this archive. |
| A Booyzen born at Wakkerstroom | MSCE 4064/1974 — BOOYZEN, NICOLAAS THEODORUS. BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM. Partly | The town this archive spent the morning proving its KOLBES moved to. A Booyzen born there is almost certainly a coincidence — Booyzens are everywhere in the Transvaal — and it is recorded as one, because the alternative is to notice it in six months and mistake it for a pattern. |
| Names this archive has spent the project chasing, on other people's estates | ADRIANA CHRISTINA, CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA Partly | MOOC 6/9/321 · 2120 PRETORIUS, ADRIANA CHRISTINA, NEE BOOYZEN, DEATH NOTICE, 1893 — and Adriana Christina Viljoen is one of the most-linked names in this archive. MHG 5581/64 GROBLER, CATHARINA MARIA SOPHIA, BORN BOOYZEN — the Kolbe name, carried into a fourth surname. NEITHER IS SHOWN TO BE CONNECTED, and both are set down. |
BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on NAAIRS — the first time these three surnames have been asked
The national archives index, all repositories · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| DASCHNER · all repositories | TWELVE DOCUMENTS — THE WHOLE SURNAME IN SOUTH AFRICA Found | Two are this archive's own: MHG 1928/42 Joseph Heinrich, and MHG 3734/46 Catherine Mary Sophia born Booyzen. NEW: MHG 2703/63 DASCHNER, WILLIAM HERMAN, and MHG 10287/69 DASCHNER, HEINRICH. The remaining eight are divorce and hire-purchase cases in the Witwatersrand and Transvaal courts, 1949–1980, and belong to a later generation. A SURNAME SMALL ENOUGH TO READ ENTIRE IS A GIFT, and this one was never asked before today. |
| MOUNTJOY · all repositories | 136 DOCUMENTS, THIRTY-FOUR OF THEM ESTATES Found | Including MOOC 6/9/5047 numbers 58379 and 58380 — MOUNTJOY, JAMES JOHN and MOUNTJOY, MARIA LOUISA BERTHA NEE KUMM, CONSECUTIVE NUMBERS, both 1938 — which are the two people on the Barkly East gravestone found this same morning, “MOUNTJOY John James -1937 & Marie Louis -1934”. THE STONE AND THE ESTATE INDEX FOUND EACH OTHER WITHIN THE HOUR, from two collections that do not talk to one another. Also MSCE 600/1974 MOUNTJOY, CHRISTIAN, BORN IN BARKLY EAST, and MSCE 581/1973 SHOOTER, MATHILDA ELIZABETH (BORN MOUNTJOY), BORN IN BARKLY EAST — two Natal estates for people born in this archive's town. |
| BARRY · all repositories | 5,022 DOCUMENTS — NOT A WORKABLE SEARCH Partly | Barry is a forename, a company name, a place and a surname belonging to a large and unrelated Cape family. The index has no date filter and no place filter on the summary screen. IT HAS TO BE PAIRED, and this is recorded as a limit of the method rather than as a negative. |
| BARRY AND BURGERSDORP · BARRY AND INDWE | ONE AND NONE Nothing | The one is a municipality file. Burgersdorp and Indwe hold nothing for this surname in the national index — which is the opposite of what this archive expected, Burgersdorp being where the Barry children were christened. |
| BARRY AND BARKLY | TWO DOCUMENTS AND BOTH OF THEM MATTER Found | SAB, VWR 2, B645/8/38, 1937: “AANSOEK DEUR PLAASEIENAAR BARKLY-OOS. RPK BARRY. BYWONER RPK BARRY (SEUN).” A FARM OWNER AND A BYWONER, BOTH R.P.K. BARRY, FATHER AND SON, on one place, with the Department of Social Welfare between them. And NAB, MSCE 2183/1958: “BARRY, HENRY JAMES KOLBE. BORN IN BARKLY EAST, CAPE PROVINCE. UNMARRIED. DECEASED ESTATE.” THE BARRY FORENAME AND THE KOLBE SURNAME IN ONE MAN, born in this archive's town, dying unmarried in Natal. NEITHER FILE IS READ. |
| A METHOD NOTE — NAAIRS ORs two keywords unless you say otherwise | BARRY WITH BURGERSDORP RETURNED 6,245, WHICH IS MORE THAN BARRY ALONE Void | The form has a select between each keyword box, defaulting to AND on screen; posted without it, the index ORs them. For an hour this looked like a rich seam. With the operator sent, the same query returns ONE document. A SEARCH THAT RETURNS MORE THAN ITS OWN FIRST TERM IS NOT A SEARCH, and the number should have been the tell. |
The rest of the Gauteng Booyzen stones, enumerated at last
39 index lines, and five of the twelve Silverton children found · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| gravesgauteng.eggsa.org · surname BOOYZEN, anywhere | 39 LINES ACROSS TWELVE CEMETERIES Found | West Park, Braamfontein, Bezuidenhout Park, Brenthurst in Brakpan, Rynsoord in Benoni, Edenvale, Sterkfontein, Panorama in Roodepoort, and in Pretoria: SILVERTON, ZANDFONTEIN, REBECCA STREET, BRONKHORSTSPRUIT and Wonderboom-suid. Five of the thirty-nine were already read here. This is the first time the rest have been listed. |
| The 1940 estate's eleven children, looked for by their married surnames | FIVE OF THE TWELVE SILVERTON CHILDREN NOW HAVE DATES Partly | BESSIE — “BEKKER Ignatius Michael 1908–1981 & ELIZABETHA MARGARETHA BOOYZEN 1909–1982”, SILVERTON, her parents' own cemetery, and the estate says she married a Bekker. HENNA — “DU PLESSIS Gerhardus Ebenhaezer 1911–1988 & JOHANNA CATHARINA BOOYZEN 1913–1982”, Rebecca Street, and the estate says she married a Du Plessis. FANIE — “BOOYZEN STEPHANUS FRANCOIS 1918–1991 & Elena Jacoba HORN 1921–1989”, Silverton. OUBOET — “BOOYZEN DAVID S. 1907–1966 & Rachel M. 1909–1973”, Zandfontein, born two years after the 1905 marriage. WILLIE — “BOOYZEN Willie 1920–2000 & Enid MOUTON 1926–2000”, Silverton. ALL FIVE ARE MATCHES ON A NAME, A SURNAME-BY-MARRIAGE AND A CEMETERY. NONE IS A DOCUMENT, and all five are entered as inferred. |
| WILLIE, tested rather than accepted | THE WEAKEST OF THE FIVE, AND SAID SO Partly | The stone gives only the household name — the one thing that cannot tell a son from a nephew. A WILLIE BOSHOFF BOOYZEN 1962–1993 lies in the SAME CEMETERY carrying his grandmother's maiden name, so there is more than one Willie at Silverton. The cemetery fits and the date fits and nothing else does. |
| The four still missing from the pillar | OUSIE, BETIE, EVERT, PIETIE, JOHAN, HENNIE — six, not four Nothing | Susanna Fredrika Aletta, who married a Luus; Beatrix Magdalena Catharina, who married a Vermeulen; Ewert Philippus; Petrus Jacobus; Johan Abraham Frederik; Hendrik Rudolph Philippus. NONE FOUND under a Booyzen stone or under the husband's surname in the Gauteng collection. LUUS and VERMEULEN have not yet been searched, and that is the next errand. |
| A Booyzen born in 1807, in a family graveyard in Johannesburg | ALREADY IDENTIFIED — AND THIS ARCHIVE FORGOT IT FOR AN HOUR Found | “VILJOEN J.C.E. nee BOOYZEN 1807-1861”, Bezuidenhout family cemetery. Seeing it in the eGGSA list this archive wrote that it claimed no connection and set it down as a coincidence of three surnames. THAT WAS A REGRESSION. The same stone was worked out days ago from the GEN database: she is JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, baptised 16 August 1807, Heese code b3c4d5e6, and she is DAVID SCHALK BOOIJSEN'S FIRST COUSIN — he is b3c4d7e1. Her husband B.C. Viljoen and her daughter Judith Cornelia Etresia Bezuidenhout, born at Graaff-Reinet in 1831, are on the same page of this archive. THE COINCIDENCE OF VILJOEN, BEZUIDENHOUT AND BOOYZEN IN ONE PRIVATE GRAVEYARD IS NOT A COINCIDENCE and this archive had already said so. Left here as written rather than deleted, because an archive that finds the same thing twice and calls it new the second time has a problem worth showing. |
| Gauteng · LUUS and VERMEULEN — the errand named in the row above, run the same hour | NEITHER WOMAN IS THERE Nothing | The 1940 estate says Susanna Fredrika Aletta married a LUUS and Beatrix Magdalena Catharina married a VERMEULEN. The Gauteng collection holds about 40 Luus stones and about 40 Vermeulen stones and NOT ONE carries either woman — no Susanna Fredrika Aletta Luus, no Beatrix Magdalena Catharina Vermeulen, under a maiden name or a married one. They did not stay on the Rand, or they are not photographed. OUSIE AND BETIE ARE STILL MISSING, and so are Evert, Pietie, Johan and Hennie. |
BARRY, MOUNTJOY and DASCHNER on eGGSA — never run before today
Three surnames across four provincial collections · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| A METHOD NOTE FIRST, because it produced four false negatives | THE PROVINCIAL SEARCH SCRIPTS ARE NAMED BY A TWO-LETTER CODE, NOT BY THE PROVINCE Void | The Eastern Cape posts to /cgi-bin/ecdosearchGraves.pl, and this archive guessed the others by expanding the subdomain — gautengdosearchGraves.pl and so on. EVERY ONE OF THOSE RETURNED NOTHING, and nothing looks exactly like a negative. The real names are ggdosearchGraves.pl, ncdosearchGraves.pl, mpdosearchGraves.pl, read off each province's own form. THE FOUR ZEROES WERE THROWN AWAY RATHER THAN RECORDED. A search you got wrong is not a source that holds nothing. |
| Eastern Cape · BARRY | HUNDREDS, AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM SOMEBODY ELSE'S Partly | The Cape Barrys are a large and well-known family with no shown connection here. The list is not workable by eye and this archive is not going to pretend it worked it. NOT DONE — it needs a date filter or a place filter, and the form has neither. |
| Eastern Cape · MOUNTJOY | TWELVE STONES, AND TWO OF THEM AT BARKLY EAST Partly | MOUNTJOY John James -1937 & Marie Louis -1934, and MOUNTJOY Fritz J. 1893–1973 & Aletta J. BRITS 1895–1976, both in BARKLY EAST MAIN CEMETERY — which is this archive's own town. Two more at MIDDELBURG MAIN, the same cemetery as the four Booyzen stones. Also Maclear, East London, King William's Town, Aliwal North. PHOTOGRAPHS LOCATED, NOT YET READ. |
| Gauteng · MOUNTJOY | TWELVE MORE, AND A KEYS AMONG THEM Partly | “KEYS William H. -1915 & Johanna C. MOUNTJOY -1942” at Krugersdorp Burgershoop. KEYS is a surname this archive has already had to answer a question about. Also KLEYNHANS Petronella C.A. nee MOUNTJOY 1870–1964, MOUNTJOY George 1889–1963 at Brenthurst, and three at WEST PARK, where this family's Johannesburg dead lie. NOT YET READ. |
| Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga · DASCHNER | NONE IN EITHER Nothing | A German surname that arrived at Indwe and went to the Rand; it is not in the Cape collection at all. |
| Gauteng · DASCHNER | SIX, INCLUDING THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN COUPLE Partly | “DASCHNER Joseph Heinrich 1883–1942 & Catherine Mary Sophia BOOYZEN 1891–1946” at West Park, already read. FIVE MORE NOT IN THIS ARCHIVE: Albert Alfred 1962–1964; David and Catherine 1909–1989 at Rynsoord, Benoni; Joseph C. 1911–1992 and Elizabeth H.; Willie 1915–1963 and Millie HARDING; and MARGARET WILHEMINA ELIZABETH JEANETTE DASCHNER 1913–2009, who married a van Jaarsveld — a woman carrying the Barry forenames entire, two generations on. |
| Mpumalanga · KOLBE — the one this archive did not expect | THIRTEEN, TEN OF THEM AT WAKKERSTROOM Found | Including BOTH George Augustus Kolbes, their wives, Daan, Freddie, Martha Angeline, Maria Johanna van der Merwe, and three more — Augie, Esther and Cora — on one stone. Plus two at PIET RETIEF: “KOLBE G.A. 1836–1913 & A.M. 1843–1907”, and 1836 is the birth year of the Settler's twin son, born at Burgersdorp. NOT READ; it is the next errand. |
| Gauteng · KOLBE | ELEVEN, AND TWO MORE DOWNINGS Found | “ROUSSEAU ... & MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING KOLBE 1901–1996” at Zandfontein, Pretoria, and “KOLBE Elizabeth Cathrina 1902–1952 :: KOLBE PETER DOWNING 1972–1976” at Sterkfontein, Krugersdorp — a child of four. THE LONDON SURNAME IS STILL TRAVELLING IN 1972. Also a FREDERIK FORTUNATUS KOLBE 1903–1969 at Brenthurst and a GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE 1928–1989 at Primrose: both of this family's Kolbe names still in use on the Rand in the twentieth century. |
The four Middelburg stones, located a day ago and read today
Middelburg main cemetery, eastern Cape · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| graveseastcape.eggsa.org · surname BOOYZEN · exact match | EIGHT STONES, AND NOT ALL OF THEM AT MIDDELBURG Partly | Four at MIDDELBURG main cemetery, which is what this archive came for. But also TWO AT CRADOCK, Deary Avenue — Jan Hendrik 1922–1987 and Yvonne 1926– — and TWO AT HUMANSDORP. Cradock is one of this archive's own places. Those four are not entered as people: one of them has no death date, and this archive does not put a possibly living person on a page. |
| BOOYZEN Gert Jacobus 1870–1951 — the photograph, read | THE BIRTH CONFIRMED FROM A SECOND SOURCE, THE DEATH NARROWED, AND THE DAY REFUSED Found | “IN DANKBARE HULDE AAN ONS GELIEFDE VADER EN OUPA — GERT JACOBUS BOOYZEN — GEB. 19 JAN. 1870 — OORL. 2_ AUG. 1951 — SY GENADE WAS VIR MY GENOEG.” 19 JANUARY 1870 is exactly what this archive had, and this is the first source for it that is not the death notice it came from. The death goes from a bare year to AUGUST 1951. THE DAY IS A 2 AND THEN A DIGIT THAT WILL NOT RESOLVE at any magnification, so it is left as a gap rather than guessed at. “VADER EN OUPA” makes him a grandfather, which no document here had said. |
| BOOYZEN Isabella Fredericka nee COETSEE 1874–1930 — the photograph, read | HER BIRTH IS NOW A DATE: 15 APRIL 1874 Found | “TER GEDAGTENIS AAN — ISABELLA FREDERICKA BOOYZEN (GEB. COETSEE) — GEB. 15 APRIL 1874 — OORL. 31 MAART 1930 — HEMELSE RUS.” This archive had “c. May 1874”, worked back from an age on a notice. An exact date cut on a stone beats a month inferred from an age, so the entry moves to 15 April. THE DEATH MATCHES TO THE DAY and is now the THIRD independent source saying 1930 against the 1943 once published here. |
| BOOYZEN Pieter J. 1904–1937 — the photograph, read | ONE WORD CARRIES THE WHOLE STONE Found | “HIER RUS — MY GELIEFDE SEUN — PIETER J. BOOYZEN — GEB. 29 DES. 1904 — OORL. 7 JUNIE 1937 — NA DIE KRUIS DIE KROON.” Both dates confirm this archive exactly. THE READING IS IN THE SECOND LINE: “MY geliefde seun”, not “ONS” — ONE surviving parent, not two. His mother had been dead SEVEN YEARS. So his father cut the stone, and then lay down beside them both fourteen years later. THE GRAMMAR OF THE INSCRIPTIONS GIVES THE ORDER THE HOUSEHOLD WENT IN. |
| BOOYZEN Catharina Johanna Helena nee BEYLEVELDT 1855–1937 — the photograph, read | A FOURTH BOOYZEN IN THE SAME GROUND, AND NO CONNECTION THIS ARCHIVE CAN FIND Nothing | “HIER RUS — CATHARINA JOHANNA HELENA BOOYZEN (GEB. BEYLEVELDT) — GEB. 7 JANUARIE 1855 — OORL. 16 MAART 1937.” The Cape Province civil register carries her as BOOYZEN BYLEVELD LANGENBOG BOOYZEN — a chain of surnames that is its own biography — and dates her birth 1857 where the stone says 1855. Her Cape probate names her husband JOHANNES HENDRIK. SHE DIED TWELVE WEEKS BEFORE PIETER J. WENT INTO THE SAME CEMETERY. Same surname, same town, same year: exactly the shape that gets two families welded into one. Written down as a negative rather than left out. |
The Silverton pillar, matched name by name against the 1940 estate
Twelve household names, eleven legal ones — and a twelfth child · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Re-read the photograph at four times scale, to be sure of the twelve | OUBOET · OUSIE · BESSIE · BETIE · HENNA · EVERT · ✝BABA · FANIE · WILLIE · PIETIE · JOHAN · HENNIE Found | Confirmed at magnification. The seventh line carries a BIRTH STAR AND A CROSS and the word BABA, where every other line carries a name. |
| Set the twelve against the eleven children named on his 1940 estate | EVERY ONE OF THE ELEVEN IS CLAIMED EXACTLY ONCE, AND BABA IS LEFT OVER Found | Nine go by ordinary Afrikaans diminutive — Bessie←Elizabeth, Betie←Beatrix, Henna←Johanna, Evert←Ewert, Fanie←Stefanus, Willie←Willem, Pietie←Petrus, Johan, Hennie←Hendrik. Two are not names at all: OUBOET is eldest brother and OUSIE eldest sister, and they fall to David Schalk, who heads the estate list, and to Susanna Fredrika Aletta, the one daughter the diminutives leave. NOTHING IS UNASSIGNED EXCEPT BABA. THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE TWELFTH CHILD REAL: not the count, but the fact that the count has nowhere else to go. |
| The weak link, named rather than hidden | HENNA Partly | Henna can stand for Hendrina as readily as for Johanna. There is no Hendrina on the estate, which is why the match is made — but it is the one of the nine that rests on an absence. |
| Does the archive have this shape already? | YES, ONCE — AND IT IS THE SAME LESSON Found | Joseph Heinrich Daschner's 1942 death notice named ELEVEN children; the Brixton burial register produced a TWELFTH, George Downing Daschner, three months and five days old, buried 1925. A DEATH NOTICE LISTS THE LIVING. A GRAVESTONE, CUT BY THE FAMILY, LISTS THE CHILDREN. Two documents of different kinds, and the difference between them is worth more than either alone. |
| Baba's birth date, sex, name or order | NOTHING Nothing | The stone gives a star, a cross and a word that means baby. This archive enters the child under that word and claims nothing else. A Pretoria burial register or the Silverton cemetery register would be the next place to look, and neither has been searched. |
Wakkerstroom proved a second time — not by a name but by a household
Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe's eight children · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| q.surname=Kolbe · q.givenName=Angeline · South Africa — the errand as set | ANGELINE KOLBE, AGED 28, DIED WAKKERSTROOM 15 NOVEMBER 1900 Partly | The record is thin and honest about it: female, surname Kolbe, aged 28 years, died 15 Nov 1900 at Wakkerstroom, registered in the Transvaal civil deaths. NO PARENTS, NO HUSBAND, NO CAUSE. SHE IS NOT THE VOLKSRUST CAMP GRAVE the errand asked her to be reconciled with — that is a G.E. Kolbe aged 35, and Angeline is 28, a year earlier, in a different town, when the Volksrust camp was barely open. THE RECONCILIATION FAILS, and the right answer is that they are two women. |
| The same search, read across | AND A SIXTY-DAY-OLD CHILD AT VOLKSRUST Found | MARTHA ANGELINE KOLBE, born 9 October 1901, died 8 December 1901, buried at “VOLKSRUST”. — “BURIED AT VOLKSRUST” was withdrawn on 14 September 2026: her stone is in WAKKERSTROOM MAIN CEMETERY, and the index gave the district rather than the grave. Age on the civil death register: 0. She lived sixty days and every one of them was inside the war. Volksrust held a concentration camp. This archive has read no camp register naming her and so records the burial place and not the cause — but it will not pretend the date is a coincidence either. |
| q.surname=Kolbe · q.fatherGivenName=Frederik Fortunatus — ask the index for a FATHER, not a person | EIGHT CHILDREN, AND A WIFE THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT KNOW EXISTED Found | FREDERIK FORTUNATUS KOLBE, the Settler's tenth child, born at Bethulie in 1839, married ELIZABETH JOHANNA DU TOIT. Their children are baptised at COLESBERG in 1863, 1865, 1868, 1873, 1876 and 1877; at HOPETOWN in 1870; and at BETHULIE in 1881, which is his own birthplace forty-two years on. The eldest is a GEORGE AUGUSTUS, named for a grandfather nineteen years dead. This archive had held Frederik Fortunatus as a name and a date of birth and nothing else. The relationship search is what opened him. |
| The eldest son, followed to the far end | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE — COLESBERG 1863 TO WAKKERSTROOM 1954, AGED 91 Found | Baptised Colesberg 11 Oct 1863, born 29 July. Died Wakkerstroom 28 September 1954, aged 91 — AND 29 JULY 1863 TO 28 SEPTEMBER 1954 IS EXACTLY 91. Married MARTHA SOPHIA KLOPPER, aged seventeen, about 1885; she died 14 Oct 1950 aged 83. A PRISONER OF WAR IN 1902, aged 40, residence Wakkerstroom — the fourth man in this archive taken in that war and the only one who is not a Booyzen. His daughter Maria Johanna's 1953 estate file names the household outright: father George Augustus Kolbe, mother Martha Sophia Klopper. |
| q.surname=Kolbe · q.anyPlace=Wakkerstroom, read against the Colesberg fonts | THREE OF THE EIGHT ARE IN THE EASTERN TRANSVAAL Found | MARGARET HARRIET, baptised Hopetown 1870, marries Dirk Jacobus Aspheling van der Spuy at Wakkerstroom aged 24. ELIZABETH JOHANNA, baptised Colesberg 1876, marries John Charles Pattison at Wakkerstroom aged 21. Both ages agree with the font to the year. WITH THEIR BROTHER THAT IS THREE OF EIGHT, FOUR HUNDRED MILES FROM WHERE THEY WERE CHRISTENED. Yesterday the convergence was proved by a name — Frederik Fortunatus DOWNING Kolbe, a London surname in the Transvaal. THIS IS THE BETTER PROOF: a name can be coincidence, a family moving cannot. |
| Daniel Jakobus Kolbe, civil death 1918 | THE INDEX MANGLED THE LINE THAT PROVES THE DESCENT Found | His death registration carries a relationship where a name should be: “G A Kolbe's son”, which the index has read as a surname and printed as “G A KOLBELSSON”. That misprint is what ties the two 1918 graves — Daan, 19 June, aged 25, and Freddie, 2 November, aged 27 — to the old man who outlived them by thirty-six years. FOUR MONTHS APART IN 1918 IS THE INFLUENZA. |
| q.surname=Kolbe · q.givenName=George Augustus, all of them | AT LEAST TWO MEN OF THAT NAME IN THE TRANSVAAL AT ONCE — AND THIS IS A WARNING, NOT A FIND Partly | One born COLESBERG 1863, dead Wakkerstroom 1954 aged 91. One born BURGERSDORP 1861, dead Standerton 8 November 1934 aged 73 — Burgersdorp being where the Settler is buried and where his twin son George Augustus was born in 1836. A third George Augustus, aged 27, marries SUSANNA MARGARETHA SWART in the Free State register with residence given as Wakkerstroom, and THIS ARCHIVE CANNOT SAY WHICH MAN THAT IS. A “Susanna Margaretha DOWNING Kolbe” also stands in the Transvaal probate index — a second carrier of the London surname, unattached. Set down so that nobody later merges two men into one. |
| q.surname=Klopper · q.givenName=Martha Sophia | THE MARRIAGE, AND HER OWN DEATH Found | “George Augustus Kolbe and Martha Sophia Klopper”, Transvaal civil marriages 1870–1931, the bride aged 17 and born 1868. And “Martha Sophia Klopper Kolbe”, born 1867, died 14 October 1950 aged 83. SHE IS THE FOURTH BRIDE IN THIS ARCHIVE MARRIED BEFORE EIGHTEEN, and the third in the Kolbe line — after Margaret Downing at fifteen and the Settler himself at sixteen. |
| Volksrust camp register, for Martha Angeline Kolbe | NOT READ Nothing | The burial is indexed from BillionGraves, not from a camp register. Until a camp register is read this archive records that a two-month-old was “buried at Volksrust” in December 1901 — “BURIED AT VOLKSRUST” was withdrawn on 14 September 2026: her stone is in WAKKERSTROOM MAIN CEMETERY, and the index gave the district rather than the grave. and does not write the word camp into her entry. The register is the next errand. |
| Angeline Kolbe, against the eight Colesberg fonts | SHE FITS NONE OF THEM Nothing | Aged 28 in November 1900 puts her birth near 1872. Martha Angelina was born January 1868 and Catharina Maria Louisa July 1873; neither is 28 in 1900. She is most likely a daughter-in-law, married into the surname. THIS ARCHIVE WILL NOT GUESS WHICH SON. |
| The POW record itself, read rather than indexed — ark 1:2:4126-8XTJ | WO 108/368 — AND IT TAKES BACK WHAT IT GAVE Partly | The full entry: GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, AGE 40, NATIONALITY TRANSVAALER, RESIDENCE WAKKERSTROOM, PRISON NATAL, event 1902, from “List of Boer prisoners of war, numbers 1-32561, 1899-1902”, WO 108/368 at The National Archives. HELD IN NATAL, not shipped — unlike the three Booyzens taken at Tolosberg, who sailed on the City of Cambridge. The residence is what made this archive claim him for the Colesberg-born man. THE AGE UNMAKES IT: he was 39 in 1902, and the Burgersdorp-born George Augustus of 1861 was 40. Withdrawn to /corrections/ the same hour it was published. |
The entity audit — sweeping for other things that travel through data
An arrow entity printed at the reader on the home page · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Sweep the 642 built pages for a double-escaped entity | NOTHING LEFT Found | The bug the reader caught: three way-in cards on the home page passed their arrow as a DATA STRING — the arrow written as an HTML entity, ampersand r-a-r-r semicolon — and a string prop is escaped on output, so the page printed those five characters where an arrow belonged. Arrows written straight into markup were never affected. Having fixed the three, this sweep asks the built site whether the same fault is anywhere else. IT IS NOT. |
| Ask the same of the source rather than the output — every entity sitting inside a quoted prop or data value in site/src | NO ENTITY ANYWHERE ELSE IN PROP OR DATA POSITION Found | The source is asked as well as the output, because a page can exist without having been rebuilt. 429 em dashes, 306 arrows, 244 middots, 85 right single quotes, 74 en dashes and 69 right double quotes are in use across the site as entities, and every one of them is in markup, where escaping never touches it. |
| Every file in site/src/data, for an entity written into data | NONE Found | people.js, places.json, searched.json, corrections.json and the rest are clean, which is the root of it — the home page's three cards were the only place an entity had been written into something that would later be escaped. |
| Then: a check in tools/drift.py, so it cannot come back | THE BUILD NOW FAILS ON A DOUBLE-ESCAPED ENTITY Found | The check reads the built pages, not the source, so it catches the SYMPTOM whatever the cause — an escaped entity reaching a reader is a bug no matter which prop or which component put it there. It is absolute, with no exception for a page that means to quote one; this page wanted to and spells the arrow out in words instead, because a check with an exception is a check that will be excepted. Tested by planting one in the built home page: the build failed and named both the entity and the page. THE READER FOUND THIS ONE BEFORE THE BUILD DID, WHICH IS THE WRONG WAY ROUND, and that is what the check is for. |
Wakkerstroom PROVED — a man who carries both family names
Frederik Fortunatus DOWNING Kolbe · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| q.surname=Kolbe · q.anyPlace=Wakkerstroom · South Africa | FREDERIK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE Found | Born 1891 at WAKKERSTROOM, died there 2 NOVEMBER 1918, Transvaal probate 1918. HE CARRIES BOTH OF THIS FAMILY'S KOLBE NAMES AT ONCE. FREDERIK FORTUNATUS is the Settler's son, whom this archive already calls “the source of the Fortunatus name across three families”. DOWNING is MARGARET DOWNING, whom George Augustus Kolbe married at St Leonard's Shoreditch in 1819 — a London surname with no business in the eastern Transvaal except through that marriage. One man, born seventy-two years after the wedding, carrying both. THE CONVERGENCE IS NO LONGER A CONVERGENCE; the Wakkerstroom Kolbes are this family's Kolbes. |
| The same search, read across | The gravestones all resolve Found | Every stone found this morning now has a record behind it. DANIEL JAKOBUS KOLBE, born 1893, died 19 JUNE 1918 at Wakkerstroom — the stone's “Daan 1893-1918”. FREDERIK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE, died 2 NOVEMBER 1918 — the stone's “Freddie -1918”. TWO YOUNG MEN OF ONE FAMILY DEAD FOUR MONTHS APART IN 1918, which is the influenza. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, born 1863, died 28 SEPTEMBER 1954 — the stone's 1863-1954, and his wife MARTHA SOPHIA KLOPPER is named as the mother of MARIA JOHANNA KOLBE, born 1886 at Wakkerstroom, died 1 October 1953, who is the “van der Merwe née Kolbe” stone. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE born 1861 married SUSANNA MARGARETHA SWART — the 1861-1934 stone. And MARGARET HARRIET KOLBE, born 1871, married DIRK JACOBUS ASPELING VAN DER SPUY — the Utrecht stone found through NAAIRS yesterday. |
| Two more worth following | A war death and a war record Partly | ANGELINE KOLBE, born 1872, DIED AT WAKKERSTROOM ON 15 NOVEMBER 1900 — in the middle of the war, in a district that had a concentration camp at Volksrust twenty miles away, and NAAIRS's gravestone data holds a “GE KOLBE, died between 1899 and 1901, aged 35” in that camp cemetery. Not the same person on the figures, and the first time a woman of this surname has been found dying in that district in those years. And GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, born 1862, resident WAKKERSTROOM, with a MILITARY record of 1902 — neither read. |
| What this does to the Colesberg question | It says where the children went Partly | George Augustus Kolbe, the 1820 Settler, died at Wurtemburg, Colesberg, in 1844 leaving nine children, and this archive loses sight of most of them. THIS IS WHERE A BRANCH WENT: north-east to the Transvaal–Natal border, to Wakkerstroom and Piet Retief, taking FORTUNATUS, GEORGE AUGUSTUS and DOWNING with them, and still using all three seventy years later. NO INDIVIDUAL IS YET ADOPTED into the family: no document read names the Settler as their ancestor, and the estates that would — NAB MSCE 2032/1969 and 965/1956 — are Pietermaritzburg files past the 1950 close of the filmed Natal probate series. |
The Cape genealogical codes, resolved — and G2G answers back twice more
a cousin identified, a father-candidate offered, and a reply this archive cannot post · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| b3c4d5e6, resolved from the volume already downloaded | A FIRST COUSIN OF DAVID SCHALK Found | The gravestone at Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg, reads “JCE VILJOEN, NEE BOOYZEN, born 02-07-1807, died 11-12-1861”, citing Heese as b3c4d5e6. Walked in de Villiers 1893, which this archive downloaded this morning: b3 = GERRIT, married Johanna Durand 1733; c4 = JAN, baptised 29 January 1741; d5 = JAN JONATHAN, baptised 11 July 1779, married 28 May 1797 to JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA VILJOEN; and e6 = “JUDITH CORNELIA THERESIA, GEDOOPT 16 AUGUSTUS 1807”. Born 2 July, baptised 16 August — six weeks, exactly right. SHE IS THE ARCHIVE'S DAVID SCHALK BOOIJSEN'S FIRST COUSIN: he is b3c4d7e1, she is b3c4d5e6, both grandchildren of Jan. She married a Viljoen, as her mother was one, and lies in Johannesburg. |
| G2G answer 2 · Pieter van Zyl | The code confirmed independently Found | “On the Booijsen side (page 78 of Kaapsche Familien part 1): B3 Gerrit B x Johanna du Rand. B3C4 Jan B x Magdalena de Beer. B3C4D7 PETRUS JACOBUS B BAPTISED 21 SEPT 1788 x ANNA MARIA V D MERWE.” That is this archive's own reading of the page, arrived at separately and stated in the same notation. Riël Smit added the archive.org links for all three parts. |
| G2G answer 3 · Riël Smit — and it goes straight at Question 0 | Gerhardus LORET, not Lodewikus? Partly | “The only Gerhardus Booysen in DE VILLIERS & PAMA (1981) is B3C1D1 GERHARDUS LORET (BOOIJSEN) BOOYSEN, baptised Sep 1770 in Drakenstein. Maybe the LORET changed to LODEVICUS over time.” This archive found that man in the 1893 text without knowing what to do with him — “Gerhardus Loret, gedoopt 16 September 1770”, a son of BOOIJ Booijsen and Magdalena du Plessis. TWO THINGS FOLLOW AND THEY PULL OPPOSITE WAYS. It is a genuine candidate for the name on the 1876 Sterfkennis, offered by a senior member from the revised 1981 edition this archive has never seen. BUT HE IS b3c1d1 — a son of BOOIJ, not of JAN — so he is Petrus Jacobus's FIRST COUSIN, not his father, and at eighteen in 1788 he is a poor fit for it besides. The likeliest reading is that the 1876 informant reached for a remembered family name and attached it to the wrong man. |
| The reply this archive owes them | Blocked — the session lapsed Blocked | A reply is drafted in substance and cannot be posted: the WikiTree session has expired and the page offers only Log In. What it should say — that the book was downloaded and read, that b3c4d7 matches independently, that b3c4d5e6 resolves to Judith Cornelia Theresia and settles a Johannesburg gravestone, and ONE QUESTION WORTH ASKING THEM: does de Villiers & Pama (1981) still put Petrus Jacobus under JAN, or did the revision move him? That is the whole of Question 0 in a sentence, and a member with the 1981 edition open could answer it in a minute. |
The Wakkerstroom convergence, tested
Frederik Fortunatus is the thread, and it holds · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| eGGSA Mpumalanga · BOOY | Eight stones at Wakkerstroom Partly | Booysens and Booyzens are at Wakkerstroom as well as Kolbes: Nicolaas Gerhardis Franscoas 1866–1943, Pieter Jacobus 1890–1960, J.S. 1900–1983, Magritha Cornelia née v.d. Merwe 1898–1938, Jacobus G. 1929–1968, Nicolaas Gerhardis Francois 1919–1938, Daniel Johannes Andries Booyens 1917–1995, and one with the z — JOHANNES STEPHANUS BOOYZEN 1922–1995. Forename-resonance only; BOOYSEN and PIETER JACOBUS are far too common to argue from, and nothing here is claimed. |
| NAAIRS · KOLBE AND WAKKERSTROOM | SIXTEEN DOCUMENTS, AND THE RARE NAME IS IN THEM Found | The Booysen side proves nothing; the KOLBE side does much better. (1) NAB CSO 1908/4469: “C K BARRY, WAKKERSTROOM. MR. G S KOLBE ASKS TO BE SUPPLIED WITH A COPY OF THE ROAD BOARD LAW” — A BARRY AND A KOLBE IN ONE DOCUMENT AT WAKKERSTROOM, which are precisely the two surnames joined by the 1846 marriage at the head of this archive's Kolbe line. (2) NAB PVS 2644/1912: “FF KOLBE — permission to move one bull from Wakkerstroom to Saxony, Utrecht”. (3) NAB MSCE 2032/1969: “KOLBE, FREDERIK FORTUNATUS HOFMEYR. BORN IN NAAUWPOORT, WAKKERSTROOM”, deceased estate, wife born Badenhorst. (4) NAB MSCE 965/1956: “KOLBE, HENDRIK JOHANNES HOFMEYR. BORN IN WAKKERSTROOM”. (5) SAB CEN E1573, 1911–1913: “GA KOLBE, WAKKERSTROOM” — which sits exactly on the Piet Retief gravestone of G.A. KOLBE 1836–1913. |
| What the convergence actually rests on | FREDERIK FORTUNATUS Partly | Not the place and not the Booysens — the NAME. This archive already calls Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe “the source of the Fortunatus name across three families”, and it is a son of GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, the 1820 Settler. FORTUNATUS IS NOT A NAME THAT TURNS UP TWICE BY ACCIDENT. It is at Wakkerstroom in 1912 and again on an estate for a man born at Naauwpoort in that district. Beside it sits GEORGE AUGUSTUS, on three separate stones there and at Piet Retief, and a Barry in the same 1908 file. TAKEN TOGETHER THE WAKKERSTROOM KOLBES ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY THIS FAMILY'S KOLBES, a generation or two on from Colesberg. NOT PROVED: no document yet read names the Settler as their ancestor, and none has been adopted. The test that would settle it is estate MSCE 2032/1969 or 965/1956, either of which should name parents. |
The last two provinces — Northern Cape and Mpumalanga
Colesberg is bare; the Kolbe name is not · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Cape · KOLBE | One stone, modern Nothing | “KOLBE George 1930-2000 & Bettie 1923-2003”, De Aar new cemetery. That is the entire Kolbe presence in the photographed Northern Cape collection. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE DIED AT THE FARM WURTEMBURG, COLESBERG, ON 1 DECEMBER 1844, and the memorial of 1839 puts him on KNAP DAAR in the same district. Neither farm, and no stone of his, is in the collection. |
| Northern Cape · BOOY | 193 stones, two at Colesberg, neither ours Nothing | The province holds 193 Booy-family stones, overwhelmingly at Upington, Postmasburg, Hartswater and De Aar. COLESBERG ITSELF HAS TWO: Lewiesa Booyse, 1957–2011, and Helena Booysens, born 1931, on a Marais stone — both modern, both in the cemetery beside the N1. THE COLESBERG COVERAGE IS THIN, and the district where this family's Kolbes farmed in the 1830s and 1840s is effectively unphotographed. A clean negative with its reason attached. |
| Mpumalanga · KOLBE | Thirteen stones, and the name three more times Partly | Twelve of the thirteen are at WAKKERSTROOM and PIET RETIEF, on the Transvaal–Natal border — a Kolbe community this archive did not know existed. And THE NAME IS THERE THREE TIMES OVER: “KOLBE G.A. 1836-1913 & A.M. 1843-1907” at Piet Retief; “KOLBE GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1861-1934 & Susanna Margaretha 1861-1940” at Wakkerstroom; and “KOLBE GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1863-1954 & Martha Sophia KLOPPER 1867-1950”, also Wakkerstroom. This archive's George Augustus Kolbe was the 1820 Settler, born 1802 and dead at Colesberg in 1844; these three are born 1836, 1861 and 1863. Also there: P. J. Kolbe 1865–1919, Martha Angeline 1901–1901, and DAAN 1893–1918 with FREDDIE, also 1918 — two young men dead in the influenza year. NONE IS CLAIMED. What is claimed is that the forename travelled, as Margaret Downing's did. |
| Volksrust camp cemetery, looked for and not found here | In the index, not in the photographs Partly | NAAIRS's GEN database gives “GE KOLBE, died between 1899 and 1901, aged 35, Concentration Camp cemetery, Volksrust”. That stone does NOT appear among the thirteen Kolbe records in eGGSA's photographed Mpumalanga collection. The two bodies of data are the same society's work from different doors, and they do not hold the same things — worth knowing before either is treated as complete. |
| One convergence worth following | Wakkerstroom, twice Partly | FamilySearch's full-text search returned, among its South African collections, “VOTERS' LIST (MALE) 1931 — WAKKERSTROOM” for the surname BOOYZEN. The gravestones now put a KOLBE community in the same small border town. Booyzens and Kolbes at Wakkerstroom is either coincidence or the family, and nobody has tested which. |
Gauteng gravestones — the Johannesburg and Pretoria family, photographed
640 stones, 38 spelt with a z, and five of this archive's people among them · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Gauteng · surname BOOY | 640 stones, 38 with the z Found | The archive has read ten Johannesburg burial REGISTERS and had a photograph of none of those graves. The Gauteng collection holds thirty-eight Booyzen-spelt stones across West Park, Braamfontein, Bezuidenhout Park, Brenthurst in Brakpan, Rynsoord in Benoni, Edenvale, Sterkfontein, Panorama, and four Pretoria cemeteries — Silverton, Zandfontein, Rebecca Street and Bronkhorstspruit. |
| Four stones that are certainly this family | Every date matches Found | “BOOYZEN STEFANUS FRANCOIS 1874-1940” and “BEATRIX MAGDALENA CATHARINA NEE BOSHOFF 1889-1977”, a joint stone at SILVERTON, PRETORIA — he died at East Lynne in 1940 and she is given a death year for the first time. “BOOYZEN HENRY JAMES 1887-1956” at WEST PARK. “BOOYZEN JOHN BARRY 1884-1952” at BRENTHURST, BRAKPAN — this archive had him as “c. 1884” with NO DEATH AT ALL and an estate number, MHG 769/52, on a film that will not open; the stone supplies both the year and the town. And “DASCHNER JOSEPH HEINRICH 1883-1942 & CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA” at WEST PARK — the Indwe marriage, on one stone, in Johannesburg. |
| A fifth stone that closes a loop | Petrus Jacobus Booyzen 1873–1947 Partly | “BOOYZEN PETRUS JACOBUS 1873-1947 & MAGDALENA JOHANNA BEZUIDENHOUT”, REBECCA STREET CEMETERY, PRETORIA. Two threads from earlier today meet on it. The Wonderboom South transfer register names “Boedel wyle P. J. Booyzen” passing to “MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN”, and “M. J. BOOYZEN, BORN BEZUIDENHOUT, widow” — a couple this archive could not identify. And the prisoner register gives PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYZEN, aged 27, of Pretoria, taken at Tolosberg on 25 April 1901, which puts his birth about 1874. A Petrus Jacobus Booyzen born 1873 and buried at Pretoria with a wife born Bezuidenhout fits both. STRONG AND NOT PROVED — the stone names no parents. |
| And two confirmations of other people's work | WikiTree and NAAIRS both hold up Partly | “BOOYZEN WILLEM HERMANUS 1925-1996 & CYNTHIA ROSALIND 1927-” at RYNSOORD, BENONI is WikiTree's Booysen-831, which gives him born 25 October 1925 and married to Cynthia Rosalind Hoeftman at Johannesburg in 1955. And “VILJOEN J.C.E. NEE BOOYZEN 1807-1861” at BEZUIDENHOUT PARK is the stone NAAIRS's GEN database produced this morning from the other direction. Neither is claimed for this family; both show the sources agreeing. |
| The six photographs, downloaded and read | Every one gave more than its index line Found | The gallery serves an HTML wrapper at the .JPG address; the image itself is at a /cache/ path inside it, and fetching that with a referer works. SIX STONES READ. Stefanus Francois Booyzen — born 29 SEPTEMBER 1874, not “about October”, on a double stone at Silverton whose centre pillar lists TWELVE CHILDREN by household name, one marked dead. John Barry Booyzen — 26 APRIL 1884 to 23 JANUARY 1952, where this archive had “c. 1884” and no death at all. Henry James Booyzen — GEB. 12.8.1887, putting on a gravestone the date this archive had marked as coming from WikiTree and not from a document. Catherine Mary Sophia Daschner, BORN BOOYZEN with the z, born 22 APRIL 1891 exactly as her Barkly Oost baptism says, died 14 July 1946; her husband Joseph Heinrich Daschner, 27 December 1883 to 19 April 1942. And Petrus Jacobus Booyzen, 29 May 1873 to 25 March 1947, with MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN GEB. BEZUIDENHOUT, GEB. 8 MEI 1870 — which is the number written beside her name in the Wonderboom deeds register, and identifies her beyond doubt. IT ALSO FORCED A CORRECTION: she was widowed in 1947, so the 1907 date read off that ledger row was a column mis-alignment, and is withdrawn. |
eGGSA's gravestone photographs — and two of this family are in them
a couple known only from estate files, now with stones · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| How the graves site is organised | Nine provincial subdomains Found | graves.eggsa.org is only a front door. The collection is split by province, each with its OWN SUBDOMAIN AND ITS OWN SEARCH, and there is no way to search all of them at once — the site says so itself. For this family: graveseastcape (Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Middelburg, Barkly East, Dordrecht, Indwe), gravesnortherncape (Colesberg), gravesgauteng (Johannesburg, Pretoria), gravesmpumalanga (Volksrust). The Eastern Cape search is a CGI form at /Search/ecsearchGraves.htm posting to /cgi-bin/ecdosearchGraves.pl, and it works. |
| Eastern Cape · surname BOOY | 203 stones, eight spelt with a z Found | Most are Booyens and Booysen families with no connection here. Filtering to the Z SPELLINGS leaves eight, and FOUR OF THEM ARE IN ONE CEMETERY — MIDDELBURG MAIN CEMETERY: Catharina Johanna Helena née Beyleveldt 1855–1937, GERT JACOBUS 1870–1951, ISABELLA FREDERICKA NÉE COETSEE 1874–1930, and Pieter J. 1904–1937. |
| BOOYZEN Gert Jacobus 1870–1951 · BOOYZEN Isabella Fredericka nee Coetsee 1874–1930 | BOTH ARE THIS ARCHIVE'S PEOPLE Found | Gerrit Jacobus Booÿsen was born 19 JANUARY 1870, the only child on his father's 1884 death notice, and he married ISABELLA FREDERIKA COETSEE AT MIDDELBURG on 23 March 1896. His estate is TAB MHG 5155/51 — a 1951 file this archive has never been able to read because the film returns 403. THE STONE GIVES HIM 1870–1951. Hers gives 1874–1930, which matches her own death notice and independently confirms this archive's correction that she died in 1930 and was simply not reported until 1943. They married at Middelburg and they are buried at Middelburg, a few stones apart. PHOTOGRAPHS LOCATED AND NOT YET READ: the inscriptions may carry more than the index line does. |
eGGSA's newspaper extracts — the right country's papers, opened
a usable method, four quarters swept, and a site that has just moved · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The addresses, which have all just changed | Every indexed link is dead Found | eggsa.org/newspapers/ now returns 404 and so does every deep link Google still holds for it. The collections have moved to SUBDOMAINS: NEWSPAPERS.EGGSA.ORG for the newspaper extracts and GRAVES.EGGSA.ORG for the gravestone photographs. Recorded first because anyone following an older citation will conclude the resource is gone, and it is not. |
| The search, which does not work | Browse instead Partly | The site runs a Geek ElasticSearch widget that does not respond to a form POST or to scripted input, and Joomla's own com_search is not installed — /index.php?option=com_search returns “Component not found”. THE CONTENT IS STILL REACHABLE: each newspaper has a page, each page lists its quarters, and each quarter is a single full-text transcription of ten to eighteen thousand characters that can be fetched and read straight through. That is the method, and it works. |
| What is actually there | The family's own town paper Found | Titles include the CAPE FRONTIER TIMES, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, CAPE TIMES, DAILY REPRESENTATIVE, EASTERN PROVINCE HERALD, FORT BEAUFORT ADVOCATE, GRAHAMSTOWN JOURNAL, QUEENSTOWN FREE PRESS — and the GRAAFF-REINET HERALD, transcribed by Sue Mackay from CO53/43 at the National Archives, Kew, covering 1852 to 1856 in ten quarters. Graaff-Reinet is where this family is oldest and where its baptisms run from 1788 to 1857. |
| Graaff-Reinet Herald · 1852 Oct–Dec, 1853 Jan–Mar, Apr–Jun, Jul–Sep | Four quarters, no family Nothing | Fetched and read in full for BOOY, BOOIJ, KOLBE, MOUNTJOY, MONTJOY and VILJOEN. NOT ONE OCCURRENCE across roughly 55,000 characters of advertisements, notices and reports. A scoped negative and a small one: four quarters of ten, in one paper of twenty, in a five-year window. What it establishes is that the method works and the reading can be trusted — the transcriptions are genuine running text, not indexes. |
Gravestones — NAAIRS's GEN database, and eGGSA
a camp death, a name carried eighty years, and the right newspapers at last · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| GEN · BOOYZEN | Three stones, all Bezuidenhout Park Partly | The Genealogical Society's gravestone data, reached through NAAIRS rather than eGGSA. Three stones at the BEZUIDENHOUT FAMILY CEMETERY, Bezuidenhout Park, Johannesburg, recorded by P Holden in 1989 — and the Booyzen is in the inscriptions, not the surnames. “JCE VILJOEN, NEE BOOYZEN. Born 02-07-1807. Died 11-12-1861. Wife of BC Viljoen” — cited to JA HEESE, SOUTH AFRICAN GENEALOGIES, CODE b3c4d5e6. Her husband BC Viljoen, 1807–1859, is cited to de Villiers and Pama as b3c4d2e11f4. And their daughter JUDITH CORNELIA ETRESIA BEZUIDENHOUT, née Viljoen, was BORN 30 OCTOBER 1831 AT GRAAFF-REINET and died at Doornfontein in 1904. NOT ADOPTED: a Booyzen woman born July 1807 cannot be a sister of David Schalk, baptised January 1807, so she is a cousin at best. But she is of his generation, at his parish, and she has a HEESE CODE — the second time in two days a source has pointed at Heese with a number attached. |
| GEN · KOLBE | A camp death, and a name that lasted eighty years Found | Four stones. Two matter. FIRST: “GE KOLBE. Died between 1899 and 1901. Aged 35 years.” — CONCENTRATION CAMP CEMETERY, VOLKSRUST. Question 3 asks whether this family's women and children were in a camp and answers “searched, and not found” — but that search was run on BOOYZEN against a database built largely from camp death lists. Here is a KOLBE of thirty-five dead in a camp. Not this archive's person on any evidence yet, and the first camp death to touch any of its surnames. SECOND: “MARGARET or MARGARIT DOWNING FOURIE, NEE KOLBE. Born 29-09-1899. Died 08-12-1979” — New Gelderland Cemetery, Lower Tugela, Natal, recorded twice by different compilers. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE MARRIED MARGARET DOWNING AT SHOREDITCH IN 1819. Eighty years later a Kolbe girl is christened MARGARET DOWNING KOLBE, and she is buried in Natal in 1979. Also: Margaret Harriet van der Spuy, née Kolbe, died Utrecht 1946. |
| eGGSA — and the newspapers this family is actually in | The Cape papers, not the British ones Found | The photo library did not surface a Booyzen stone for Graaff-Reinet, Cradock or Colesberg on the searches run. What it did surface is a resource this archive has never touched and badly needs: eGGSA'S NEWSPAPER EXTRACTS — the EASTERN PROVINCE HERALD, FORT BEAUFORT ADVOCATE, QUEENSTOWN FREE PRESS, SOUTH AFRICAN COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER and others, transcribed and indexed, with BOOYSEN entries across the 1860s to the 1890s including a Pieter Booysen described as a trek-farmer in 1862. THIS CORRECTS A CONCLUSION DRAWN HOURS EARLIER. Searching 108 million pages of BRITISH papers for this family returned almost nothing, and that was recorded as a limit of the medium. It is not: it is a limit of the COUNTRY. The family's notices are in Cape colonial papers, and those are here, free, and unread. |
NAAIRS, working again — and KOLBE had never been searched in it
a farm, a title, and four records nobody here had · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The NAAIRS address, resolved | national.archsrch.gov.za Found | This archive recorded on 13 September that “the bare hostname no longer resolves”. It does — the catalogue is a FRAMESET at nationalarchives.gov.za/naairs.htm and the SEARCH lives on a DIFFERENT HOST: http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl. Sixteen databases including RSA (all repositories), KAB, TAB, VAB, NAB and GEN, the Genealogical Society's gravestone data. Session-bound URLs, five search boxes with And/Or/Not/Adjacent/Near, and an optional date range. Written down because the wrong address cost this archive a day. |
| RSA · KOLBE | 708 documents Partly | The Kolbes have never been put to NAAIRS. Fourteen rows of searching in September covered Booyzen, Booijzen, Mountjoy, Montjoy, de Beer and Barry — and not once the surname that carries the 1820 Settler, the Conduit Street tailor and the name that runs through this family for four generations. 708 is too many to read; it is recorded as the size of the gap. |
| RSA · KOLBE AND COLESBERG | Six, and the first is a farm Found | KAB, source LG, volume 552, system 02, REFERENCE 664, part 1, 1839: “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. LAND. REVEREND G KOLBE. REQUESTING THAT CERTAIN GOVERNMENT GROUND ADJOINING HIS FARM KNAP DAAR IN DISTRICT OF COLESBERG BE SURVEYED AND PUT UP FOR PUBLIC AUCTION.” This archive has George Augustus Kolbe dying at the farm “WURTEMBURG”, Colesberg, on 1 December 1844, and describes him as having preached across the Orange River. Here he is FIVE YEARS EARLIER, formally styled REVEREND, holding a farm called KNAP DAAR and petitioning the government about the ground next door. STRONG BUT NOT PROVED: the memorial gives an initial, not a full name. |
| The other five of the six | Two estates, two war permits Partly | NAB MSCE 414/1960 — Oosthuizen, Pierre Francois, born Colesberg, spouse ADRIANA HENRIETTA JOHANNA, BORN KOLBE, deceased estate. NAB MSCE 131/1959 — BEUKES, PETRONELLA JACOBA ADRIANA, BORN KOLBE, BORN IN COLESBERG, deceased estate. Two Kolbe-born women of Colesberg with estate files, neither in this archive. And two Anglo-Boer War movement permits: VAB SRC volume 7, RC2170, 28 MAY 1901 — “PERMISSION GRANTED FOR MRS. G KOLBE AND CHILD TO PROCEED TO COLESBERG”; and TAB SOPOW volume 39, 1902 — “APPLICATIONS BY JC KOLBE TO PROCEED TO COLESBERG”. SOPOW is the Staff Officer for Prisoners of War, the same series that holds this family's three Booyzen prisoners. The sixth match is a London Missionary Society guide entry and is not a Kolbe document. |
The Savoy registers, located — and RootsChat, which could not be used
an account wall, and a better answer from the National Archives · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| RootsChat, for the German Lutheran congregations and the Savoy registers | Account wall Blocked | “You are not allowed to search for posts in this forum. Please login below or register an account.” RootsChat's search is closed to visitors, and registering an account is not something this archive does on the user's behalf. NOT SEARCHED. The question it was going to be asked — where the Savoy chapel registers are — turned out to have a better answer somewhere free and citable, so nothing was lost. |
| The National Archives Discovery catalogue, instead | RG 4/4625–4631 Found | The registers of the GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH, SAVOY, STRAND are at The National Archives in series RG 4, the non-parochial registers surrendered to the Registrar General. DEATHS AND BURIALS: RG 4/4625, RG 4/4626, RG 4/4628, RG 4/4631. BIRTHS AND BAPTISMS: RG 4/4627, RG 4/4629. Two of the eight pieces the catalogue returns are marked available for download. THIS MATTERS DIRECTLY: this archive already cites Johan Gottlieb Kolbe's burial there on 26 November 1845, ENTRY 55, GRAVE 7 — and that entry sits in one of the four Deaths and Burials pieces above. The register it came from now has a reference, and can be checked rather than trusted. |
The London Gazette — free, and it had a document nobody here had looked for
one notice, and it names his trade, his street and his partner · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| text=Kolbe · 1834–1838 · thegazette.co.uk | ONE notice, 29 September 1836 Found | The London Gazette, ISSUE 19424, PAGE 1702, published 29 SEPTEMBER 1836. The OCR is rough and the reading is given cleaned, with the original's damage noted: “TAKE notice, that the Copartnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTTLOB KOLBE and DAVID FLETCHER, of CONDUIT-STREET, BOND-STREET, in the County of MIDDLESEX, TAILORS, has b[een dissolved]…” (the scan gives “Coaftnership”, “Gbttlob” and “t'onduit-Sireet”). FOUR THINGS AT ONCE, from a free and citable printed source: the name in the form JOHN GOTTLOB, matching both the 1803 baptism and the 1845 death registration; the trade TAILOR, which this archive had from the death record alone; CONDUIT STREET in 1836 — five years before the census and nine before he died there; and a BUSINESS PARTNER, DAVID FLETCHER, whom this archive had never heard of. |
| What the notice does not say | Why the partnership ended Partly | The visible OCR stops at “has b…”. A dissolution notice normally goes on to say from what date, which partner continues the business, and who settles the debts, and both partners sign. None of that has been read: the Gazette's page view is a scanned image rather than text, and the full wording needs the PDF. Recorded as located and part-read, not as read. |
FreeBMD — never used before, and it had exactly one thing to give
the GRO reference for a death this archive already knew the date of · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths · surname Kolbe · 1845–1846 · England and Wales | ONE entry, and it is him Found | “Deaths Dec 1845 — KOLBE, JOHN GOTTLOB — ST GEO HAN SQ — VOL 1, PAGE 35.” The only Kolbe death registered in England and Wales across two years. Three things come off it. The DISTRICT is St George Hanover Square, which is the same registration district the 1841 census gives for Conduit Street, so the census and the death index agree without either knowing about the other. The NAME is entered “JOHN GOTTLOB” — not Johan Gottlieb — which is precisely the form used at his son George Augustus's baptism at St Anne's Soho in 1803, “son of John Gottlob and Mary”. And VOL 1 PAGE 35 is a certificate reference: the certificate itself would give cause of death, occupation, and the NAME AND ADDRESS OF THE INFORMANT, who in a household of three unmarried women is likely to be one of them. NOT ORDERED. |
| What FreeBMD cannot do for this family, stated so nobody tries | Civil registration starts in 1837 Partly | The other London events are all EARLIER and will never be in this index: John Gottlob and Mary at Soho in 1802, George Augustus's baptism at St Anne's in February 1803, and the Shoreditch marriage of 1819. Those are parish records and stay parish records. FreeBMD's entire purchase on this family is the one 1845 death — which is why it took one search, and why it was worth doing. |
The London end, opened — Kolbe and Downing, not Montjoy
four places with prose and no records behind them · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| What the London places actually are | Kolbe and Downing Partly | Worth stating before anyone searches: the four London places on the atlas — ST ANNE'S SOHO, ST LEONARD'S SHOREDITCH, 34 CONDUIT STREET and the GERMAN SAVOY CHURCH — belong to the KOLBE and DOWNING lines, not to the Montjoys. The Montjoy line has no London place at all: James Montjoy is “born Europe about 1782” and his 1840 death notice answers his parents NOT KNOWN. Anyone hoping the London records will reach the Montjoys is looking at the wrong family's city. |
| LastName=Kolbe · EventYear=1819 ±1 · KeywordsPlace=Shoreditch | The marriage is indexed, three times Partly | Three entries for GEORGE KOLBE, Shoreditch 1819, in ENGLAND MARRIAGES 1538–1973 — two filed under Middlesex and one under London, which is the same event indexed three ways. This archive has read the marriage itself and knows what it says: he was sixteen and she fifteen, both swore they were twenty-one, and she signed with a mark. THE INDEX ADDS NOTHING TO THAT, and is recorded because a place on the atlas with no attached record looks unsearched when it is not. |
| LastName=Kolbe · KeywordsPlace=London | 433, and none of them ours Nothing | 94 parish records, 255 census, 45 directories, 36 travel — and the ones that surface are Woolwich and Plumstead Kolbes of the 1900s, a Streatham Kolbe of 1881, and passenger lists to the Cape in 1902 and 1957. The Georgian German-tailor Kolbes of Soho and Conduit Street are not what a bare surname search in London returns. They need to be approached by event and parish, not by name. |
| FindMyPast, as a tool — recorded for whoever comes next | Three frictions worth knowing Found | ONE: the results URL takes KeywordsPlace, and a place passed as “placename” is silently ignored — 20,309 results against 12 for the same search. TWO: the NEWSPAPER results URL cannot be reached by parameters at all; /search-newspapers/results?keywords= only works once the form has been clicked, and a direct navigation bounces to the landing page. THREE: result rows resist programmatic clicking, so opening a transcript is a manual step. None of this is a reason not to use it; all of it is a reason to budget more time than the searching itself takes. |
| Newspapers: keywords=Tolosberg, all 108 million pages | 0 results Nothing | “We can't find any matching articles for tolosberg.” The name appears NOWHERE in the British and Irish press. That is a scoped negative with real weight: it explains why the place is in no battle list and no gazetteer, and it means the capture of forty-two Boers with two guns on 25 April 1901 was never reported in Britain under that name. The place is real — a prisoner register and a medal roll both carry it — and the British papers never heard of it. |
| Newspapers: keywords=Booysen · keywords=Daschner | 3,262 and 42, none usable Nothing | The Booysen spelling returns 3,262 against Booyzen's 7, and Daschner 42 — all of them modern, British or unrelated. Recorded as a limit of the medium rather than of the search: BRITISH PAPERS DID NOT PRINT THE NAMES OF INDIVIDUAL BOER PRISONERS. The Scheepers charge sheet is the exception because it was a trial. Anyone expecting this family to appear in the British press should expect war reporting and nothing else. |
| LastName=Kolbe · EventYear=1841 · KeywordsPlace=Conduit Street, London | THE HOUSEHOLD, FOUR YEARS BEFORE HE DIED Found | 1841 England census, HO107, piece 734, book 1, folio 11, page 15, SCHEDULE 38 — St George Hanover Square, sub-district MAY FAIR, street CONDUIT STREET. “JOHN G KOLBE, male, age 76, birth year 1765, birth county as transcribed: FOREIGN.” Two things follow. The archive corrected the family tree's “Lamb's Conduit Street” to 34 Conduit Street from his death record; the census puts him in Conduit Street four years earlier, INDEPENDENTLY. And “FOREIGN” is the first document here to say in its own words that he was not English — the German origin had been an inference off a German church burial. THREE WOMEN share the schedule: MARIANNE, 35, CHARLOTTE, 30, and AMELIA A., 25, none of whom this archive had. No Mary: George Augustus's mother, named at his 1803 baptism, is not in the house. |
| 1851 census · LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · b.1796 ±2 · Yorkshire | ONE man in the whole county Found | HO107 piece 2374, folio 563, page 12, SCHEDULE 46: “JOHN BARRY, Head, MARRIED, male, age 55, birth year 1796, birth town WHITBY, occupation SHIP OWNER, full address SHIP YARDS, RUSWARP, WHITBY.” He is the ONLY John Barry born about 1796 in the 1851 Yorkshire census. The 1838 licence gives a man of the same birth year whose RESIDENCE parish was Bilsdale Midcable — residence, not birth — so a man born at Whitby, living at Bilsdale when he married Margaret Jackson in 1838, and back at Ruswarp by 1851 is one life, not two. |
| 1841 and 1851 censuses · LastName=Barry · KeywordsPlace=Bilsdale | 0 and 0 Nothing | No Barry of any forename is indexed at Bilsdale in either census. The Bilsdale connection rests entirely on the residence parish given on the 1838 marriage licence, which is consistent with a man who lived there briefly and is not evidence of a family seated there. Recorded because “a Yorkshire farmer of Bilsdale” is how the family tree describes him, and the censuses do not support the farm or the seat. |
| England & Wales Deaths · John Barry · Whitby district | 1858 and 1860 — and that closes Question 6 Found | Two John Barry deaths are registered in the WHITBY district, in 1858 and in 1860. Set against the 1851 census, where the county's only John Barry of that age is a Whitby ship owner alive at Ruswarp, the conclusion is plain: THE YORKSHIRE JOHN BARRY BORN 1796 DIED IN YORKSHIRE, AT LEAST FIVE YEARS AFTER THE CAPE MAN DIED AT DE BRUINS POORT IN 1853. Question 6 asked this archive to break one profile holding two men. It is broken — not by finding the Cape man, but by following the Yorkshire man past the date the Cape man died. CAVEAT, and it is a real one: the death index gives no age, so neither Whitby death is tied to him by anything but district and period. |
| 1851 census · Kolbe · Conduit Street, then all London | Gone, and only a governess left Nothing | ZERO Kolbes at Conduit Street in 1851 — he had died in 1845 and the household had broken up. In the whole of London in 1851 there is ONE Kolbe: “J Kolbe”, female, unmarried, 25, born London 1826, occupation GOVERNESS, a VISITOR at 4 Camberwell New Road Alfred Place, Lambeth. Too young by a decade to be Marianne, Charlotte or Amelia. The three women of schedule 38 are not in the 1851 London census under their own surname. |
| Kolbe · London · 1836–1856 | Amelia married, and four other Kolbes surface Partly | AMELIA ANN KOLBE married at ST PANCRAS in 1854 — indexed twice, in England & Wales Marriages 1837–2005 and England Marriages 1538–1973. That is the Amelia A. of the 1841 Conduit Street schedule, aged 25 there and marrying thirteen years later. Four others, none tied to this family and all recorded so the next person does not have to find them again: EMANUEL CHRISTOPHER KOLBE, BORN 1766, buried at Bermondsey St Mary Magdalen 1836 — one year younger than Johan Gottlieb and worth testing as a brother; GEORGE KOLBE, died 1848, Westminster St Margaret; ELIZABETH KOLBE, died 1852, Strand; and JANE DAY KOLBE, in the London Gazette in 1852 and married in 1853. |
| A lead that does NOT need a subscription | J. G. Kolbe in the London Gazette, 1836 Partly | The search returns “KOLBE, J. G., 1836, LONDON GAZETTE 1665–2018”. The Gazette prints bankruptcies, dissolutions of partnership, and naturalisations — any of which would say what a German tailor in Mayfair was doing in 1836, nine years before he died. THE LONDON GAZETTE IS FREE AT thegazette.co.uk AND FULLY SEARCHABLE, so this one should not be spent on a trial. Written down here because it was found on one and is worth following on none. |
FindMyPast, opened properly for the first time
one search in the whole project until today · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The state of it before today | ONE query, 9 Sep Partly | FindMyPast has been used exactly once in this project: a search for MOUNTJOY born about 1782, which returned 12,984 results and was abandoned as untractable. That is the whole of it. Every British and Irish wall in this archive — John Barry of Bilsdale, John Augustus Barry born at sea to a mother “born Neagle”, James Montjoy the saddler, the Kolbes in London, the Downings in Shoreditch — had never been put to it. |
| Search syntax, established | KeywordsPlace, not placename Found | Recorded because it cost time. The results URL takes FirstName, LastName, YearOfBirth, YearOfDeath, EventYear, Keywords and KEYWORDSPLACE. A place passed as “placename” is SILENTLY IGNORED — the same search returned 20,309 results with it and 12 with KeywordsPlace. Anyone repeating this work should check the result count changes when they add a place. |
| LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · KeywordsPlace=Bilsdale, Yorkshire | THE YORKSHIRE MAN, DOCUMENTED Found | Yorkshire, Archbishop of York Marriage Licences Index 1613–1839, record GBPRS/OR/YORK/M/00137233/1, page 21, sequence 3: “JOHN BARRY, age 42, birth year 1796, residence parish BILSDALE MIDCABLE, Yorkshire”, licence dated 2 OCTOBER 1838, intended marriage at HELMSLEY, to MARGARET JACKSON, 35, of the parish of BEADLAM, Yorkshire. Question 6 says one profile holds two men — a Yorkshire farmer of Bilsdale and a man who died at de Bruins Poort in the Cape — and until now the Yorkshire half was an assertion off a tree. IT IS NOW A RECORD, with a parish, an age, a date and a wife. It does not by itself prove the two are different men, since a man of 42 marrying in 1838 could have had an earlier family; what it does is give the archive a second John Barry it can actually hold. |
| FirstName=John Augustus · LastName=Barry · Keywords=Neagle | Two hits, both American Nothing | Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, 1861. Not this family. Broadening to LastName=Barry with Keywords=Neagle gave 193, overwhelmingly directories and North America. The mother's surname from the 1915 death notice is not, on this evidence, a way into the Irish records by keyword alone. |
| LastName=Barry · FirstName=John · YearOfBirth=1796 ±3 · KeywordsPlace=Yorkshire | Two Yorkshire men, not one Partly | 358 hits resolve into at least two John Barrys born 1795–96 in the North Riding, and NEITHER is obviously ours. A BILSDALE man: the 1838 marriage licence to Margaret Jackson. A WHITBY man: baptised at Whitby St Mary the Virgin 1795, a marriage licence in 1839, the 1841 census at Whitby, the 1851 census at RUSWARP, WHITBY — and an entry in BRITAIN, MERCHANT SEAMEN 1835–1857. The seaman is tempting, because John Augustus Barry's death notice says he was born AT SEA in 1819; but a man in the Whitby census in 1851 is a poor fit for a death at de Bruins Poort in 1853, and nothing here names a son. A third John Barry born 1796 married at STOKESLEY in 1852. Recorded so the next person knows the North Riding holds several and that the name alone will not separate them. |
| Newspapers: keywords=Booyzen, 107,989,139 pages | 7 articles, 3 of one story Partly | The results URL is /search-newspapers/results?keywords= — reached only by clicking the form; URL parameters alone bounce back to the landing page. Of seven articles, three are the same charge sheet from THE TRIAL OF SCHEEPERS (Sunderland Daily Echo 25 Jan 1902 p3; Edinburgh Evening Dispatch 23 Jan 1902 p4; and a third under “Operations in the Northern Transvaal”). The charge, reconstructed across three OCR readings: “Barbarous act, contrary to customs of war — PIETER BOOYZEN, JOHN VAN DER BERG, PORTLOCK RUBIDGE and ALBERT VAN DER BURGH, PRISONERS OF WAR, PLACED IN FIRING [line]”, at ABERDEEN, 21 May 1901. That is Commandant Gideon Scheepers, tried and shot in January 1902, and this Pieter Booyzen is a man held BY a commando, not riding with one — a Cape context, three weeks after our three were taken at Tolosberg. NOT ADOPTED, and noted only because Aberdeen is a district this family appears in. The remaining four articles are noise: a Johannesburg suburb spelt Booyzens, a mining share, and a Bradford Northern rugby player. |
| Keywords=Booyzen across all record sets | A war grave in Plymouth Partly | 33 hits, of which 22 census and 7 military. One is worth writing down: JAN BOOYZEN, born 1898, died 1918, in LIVES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR and the COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION DEBT OF HONOUR, buried at PLYMOUTH (EFFORD) CEMETERY, United Kingdom. A twenty-year-old South African of this surname who died in Britain in 1918 and lies there still. No connection to this family is claimed or tested. |
FamilySearch Full-Text — four South African collections this archive had never opened
a name-indexed land register, and Booyzen in it · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Full-text search, q.text=Barry Kolbe, South Africa | 0 results Nothing | The first hope was that full-text search — which reads unindexed images rather than volunteer indexes — could reach the two missing Barry children. It cannot. South African full-text coverage does NOT include the Dutch Reformed church registers. That is a clean negative and it closes the last screen route to those two children. |
| Full-text search, q.text=Booyzen | ~140 hits, 7 pages, 4 collections Found | What the coverage DOES include, and what this archive has never once searched: VOTER RECORDS, SOUTH AFRICA, VOTING RECORDS 1925–1931 · DE LIST, CAPE PROVINCE, MILITARY RECORDS 1901–1903 · LAND RECORDS, SOUTH AFRICA, FARM RECORDS 1895 and 1895–1955. The military one lands on the Anglo-Boer War years and the rebel question; the land ones land on Question 11, the farm. All four are full-text searchable, which is a different kind of access from anything this archive has used. |
| RAK 2508, “Ewaton Book 2” — the land-register index, images 14 and 15 | Four Booyzen entries, with folios Partly | An alphabetical index in three columns, SURNAME · CHRISTIAN NAME · FOLIO, read from the image and not from the AI transcript, which is unreliable. The Booyzen block reads: “Booyzen · Catharine Mary [S…] · 2492” and “Jacobus Nicolaas · 201”; “Booijzen · Matthys Joh… · 1866”; “Booijzen · Jacobus Nicholas · 2267”; “Booyzen · Jacobus Nicolaas · 1931, 1939”. TWO OF THOSE NAMES ARE IN THIS ARCHIVE. Jacobus Nicolaas Booyzen is the eldest of the eight on the 1863 death notice, who “ended in the Transvaal” with estate TAB MHG 52653 and nothing else attached to him — and Evaton is in the Transvaal. The Catharine Mary reading is the family's signature female name and the hardest of the four to be sure of. NOTHING IS ADOPTED: a surname in a land index is not an identification, the folios have not been followed, and the ledgers those folios point into are a different volume from this index. |
| RAK 2384, Wonderboom South — the folios followed into a transfer register | Three Booyzen transfers, one dated 1907 Partly | Image 219 of 261, image group 121082126. A deeds transfer register for WONDERBOOM SOUTH, which is Pretoria — the district where David Schalk Booysen was living at GOEDEHOOP when he remarried in November 1905. Three rows carry the name. (1) “E. S. D. Gey van Pittius (gel. Schulte)” to PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYZEN, 1939, £25. (2) “Boedel wyle P. J. BOOYZEN” — the estate of the late P.J. Booyzen — to MAGDALENA JOHANNA BOOYZEN. (3) “M. J. BOOYZEN (born BEZUIDENHOUT), Wed.” to DAVID SCHALK BOOYZEN, 9 APRIL 1907. The household reads Petrus Jacobus, David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna — which is this archive's direct line name for name, and is exactly why it is being written down as a lead and not as a finding. NOT PROVED AND NOT ADOPTED. If the David Schalk of April 1907 were this archive's David Schalk Booysen, born Cradock 1848, it would carry him seventeen months past the last date held for him and give him land; but the transferor is a widow born Bezuidenhout and this archive's man married a widow born Stols, so the household may be a different branch entirely. The next step is the deed itself, not this ledger line. |
| “De List”, Military Records 1901–1903, image 51 of 69 — read from the image | THREE BOOYZENS, PRISONERS OF WAR Found | A printed Anglo-Boer War prisoner-of-war transport list, South Africa Government Archives (Pretoria), image group 008019246, volume no. 10469–32561. Three consecutive entries: “18463 BOOYZEN, STEPHANUS FRANCOIS, 28” · “18464 BOOYZEN, PETRUS JACOBUS, 29” · “18465 BOOYZEN, DAVID SCHALK, 54”. All three on the SAME SHIP, the CITY OF CAMBRIDGE, sailing 3 JUNE 1901, all three entered from PRETORIA, PRETORIA. Consecutive prisoner numbers on one transport means taken together. This archive has asked for years whether the family fought and has only ever been able to answer for the CAPE, where the roll holds no Booysen. This is the TRANSVAAL side, and it is a different question with a different answer. |
| SO/POW film 008019246 — what the nine items actually are | A much fuller register exists Found | The De List that produced the three Booyzens is ITEM 3 of NINE on the film “Archives of the Staff Officer, Prisoners of War, Cape Town, 1900–1903 (SO/POW)”, 1,058 images. ITEM 1, 292 images, is a far better record: “PRISONERS OF WAR IN CAPE PENINSULA” and “PRISONERS OF WAR AT CAPE TOWN AND NATAL”, ruled into Pris. No. · Surname · Christian Name · Age · HOME ADDRESS · TOWN OR DISTRICT · FIELD CORNETCY OR COMMANDO · WHERE CAPTURED · DATE OF CAPTURE · Date of Receipt · Remarks. Home address, commando and place of capture are exactly what the De List does not give and exactly what this archive needs. It is organised in BATCHES BY ARRIVAL — each batch headed “Prisoners of War received at Cape Town from [dates], Nos. N to M” — and alphabetical by surname within each batch. |
| Bisecting Item 1 to Nos. 18463–18465 | A different number series Nothing | Bisected from image 7 (nos. 10646+) through 63 (15084–15644) and 106 (~17014) to images 139 and 140, which cover 18403–18894. THE THREE NUMBERS DO NOT BELONG TO OUR MEN THERE: 18463, 18464 and 18465 in this register are ERASMUS HERMANUS, PIETER and JOHANNES CHRISTOFFEL DE BEER. So the De List's numbers are a SEPARATE SERIES and cannot be used to locate anyone in the fuller register, despite both volumes being catalogued “no. 10469-32561”. Worth recording because the opposite assumption is the obvious one to make. |
| The B surnames in the May–June 1901 batch, checked | Five Booysens, none ours Partly | Our three sailed on 3 June 1901, so the batch whose captures run late April to early June is where they should be. Its Booysens are 18511 JAN JOHANNES ANTHONY of Sweet Klip, Standerton, Wolmaransstad commando, taken at Weltpoort 26 May 1901; 18512 ALBERTUS BENJAMIN of Lydenburg, taken at Boschveld 26 April 1901; 18513 PIET VAN ZYL, 23, STAATS ARTILLERY, taken at Schraalhaans 1 June 1901; 18514 WILLEM ADRIAN; and 18515 GERHARDT JACOBUS of Jackalskraal, Winburg, Vet River commando. NOT ONE of them is Stephanus Francois, Petrus Jacobus or David Schalk. The three remain to be found by checking the B pages of the other batches — a bounded browse, and not done. |
| The B pages of the 5 April–27 May 1901 batch, walked | ALL THREE FOUND, with their commando Found | Image 126 of item 1: “18463 Booysen, Stefanus Francois, 26 · 18464 Booysen, Petrus Jacobus, 27 · 18465 Booysen, David Schalk, 53”, each with home address PRETORIA, town or district PRETORIA, FIELD CORNETCY OR COMMANDO PRETORIA, WHERE CAPTURED TOLOSBERG, DATE OF CAPTURE 25 APRIL 1901. Two other Booysens bracket them and belong elsewhere — 18462 Adrian Jacobus of Fauresmith, Edenburg commando, taken at Springhaan Nek in December 1900, and 18466 Gert of Bloemfontein, taken at Kaffirskraal in October 1900. The register separates those two as cleanly as it groups ours. |
| Tolosberg, looked up | A war record for the man Found | Not in any gazetteer reachable by search, not in the standard battle lists, not in a day-by-day 1901 war diary. It is in the medal-roll database at angloboerwar.com, kept by Dr David Biggins — and the entry is about THIS man by THIS NUMBER: “Booysen was one of 42 Boers captured on 25 April 1901 at TOLOSBERG IN THE WATERVAL VALLEY, EASTERN TRANSVAAL, together with 2 guns and much stock. He was sent to INDIA as PoW No 18463.” Quoting a City Coins auction catalogue of November 2020 describing his ABO medal, the same entry makes him a ZARP — the ZAR's police, based at Pretoria — under Commandant J. P. de la C. Schroeder, in action at TALANA, MODDER SPRUIT, COLENSO, PLATRAND (WAGON HILL) where he was WOUNDED IN THE RIGHT LEG, SPION KOP and DALMANUTHA. Strong secondary evidence: the medal and the application have not been seen here, and it is the prisoner number rather than the name that ties it to the register. |
FamilySearch, back after two days — the queued queries, and one that paid
the 1788 baptism is not in the index; a nine-child household is · searched 14 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| q.givenName=Petrus Jacobus · q.surname=Booi* · 1786–1790 · South Africa | Date filter ignored Blocked | The decisive record — the baptism of 21 September 1788, which names the father and would settle de Villiers against the 1876 Sterfkennis — does NOT surface. The endpoint returns 19th and 20th century entries regardless of the birthLikeDate range, and the same happened with anyDate on Graaff-Reinet. This is consistent with what Question 0 already says: the 18th-century Cape registers are not name-indexed and have to be read page by page. NOT a negative about the register, a negative about the index. |
| q.surname=Booij* · q.fatherGivenName=Jan · q.motherSurname=de Beer | de Villiers corroborated twice Partly | The mother filter did not bite and the wildcard dragged in Dutch Booijink and Booijman families. But two entries land squarely on de Villiers' page 78: Petrus Jacobus Booijzen, born 1814, of GERRIT BOOIJZEN and ANNA ELISABETH THERON; and Anna Susanna Booijze, baptised 12 May 1805 at Graaff-Reinet, of JAN JONATHAN BOOIJZE and JUDITH CORNELIA ETRESIA VILJOEN. The book gives Jan's sons Gerrit married to Anna Elisabeth Theron in 1791 and Jan Jonathan married to Judith Cornelia Theresia Viljoen in 1797. TWO OF JAN'S SONS CONFIRMED FROM RECORDS, independently of the book — which raises what the book says about the third son, Petrus Jacobus. |
| q.surname=Barry · q.fatherGivenName=John Augustus · South Africa | Nine children, a whole household Found | The query Question 13 named as untried. It does not answer which two of the eleven are missing — these are grandchildren, not children — but it hands this archive a family it did not have at all. John Augustus Barry II, who was a name on two death notices with no wife and no issue, married ALIDA JACOBA VAN ELLINCKHUIZEN and had NINE children baptised at Burgersdorp and then Dordrecht, 1871 to 1889. The eldest is a THIRD Catherine Mary Sophia. The seventh is ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY — the Kolbe name in a fourth generation, sixty-two years after the Settler landed. A fourth John Augustus appears at ELLIOT by 1908, the same village where Henry James Booyzen married in 1912. |
| The two 1848 Barry index entries, opened and compared | One man, not two Found | Henry Jaonas Barry (baptism indexed 13 Nov 1868) and Hennery James Berry (baptism indexed 13 Nov 1848) share a birth date of 13 July 1848, share parents John Barry and Margret Willemina Kolbe, sit in the same collection, and are BOTH attached in the FamilySearch tree to one person: James Henry Barry, 1848–1939, L6J6-JHX. The film's own title closes the question — “Graaff-Reinet. Baptism Records 1846–1851” cannot contain an 1868 baptism. Gained: an exact birth and baptism for James Henry Barry, and the correct place, Graaff-Reinet, against the Cape Town and Tulbagh the index gives. Lost: the tenth-child candidate. Image located, apid:TH-909-70517-31299-17, and NOT yet read. |
| Film 008119684, image 930 — the entry itself, read | Entry 603, and a name's origin Found | “603 · Het Kind is N. HENRY JAMES · Get. 13 July 1848 · Gedoopt 13 Novr 1848 · V. John Barry · M. Margret Willemina Kolber · Gt: Petrus Jacobus Joubert, CATHARINE SOPHIA MARIA KOLBER.” The year is 1848 in the clerk's hand, the forename order is HENRY JAMES rather than James Henry, and the godmother — whom this archive held as plain “Catharine Kolbe” — carries CATHERINE MARIA SOPHIA eleven years before her sister gave it to the daughter this archive had been treating as the head of that chain. The namesakes page called it a Barry name. It is a Kolbe name. |
| q.motherSurname=Olivier · q.fatherGivenName=Hendrik Stef* — the three untraced daughters, again | Thirty hits, none ours Nothing | The relationship search that worked on the Kolbes fails here, and the reason is worth writing down: OLIVIER is common enough, and “Hendrik Stefanus” frequent enough as a forename pair, that the engine returns Strydoms, Le Rouxs and Rossouws from Jamestown to Oudtshoorn and not one member of this household. A method is not a key; it works where the names are rare. Anna Johanna Maria, Elesabettha Maria Cornelya and Magdalena Johanna Booijsen remain exactly where they were. |
| Film 008119684, image 876 — John Augustus Barry II's font, 1847 | Three Kolbes at the font Found | Entry 80: “Het Kind N. JOHN AUGUST · Get. 13 Maart 1847 · Gedoopt 12 April 1847 · V. JOHN BERRY · M. MARGARETWINA KOLBE · Gt: JOHN KOLBE, MARGARET KOLBE, AUGUSTA KOLBE” — the third witness the least certain of the three. Read with entry 603 of the year after, where the godmother is Catharine Sophia Maria Kolbe, the pattern is plain: at both fonts every witness is a Kolbe, and the forenames this archive has been calling Barry names are the names of the people standing at them. |
| q.surname=B*rry · q.motherSurname=Kolb* and Col* — every spelling the index uses | Seven children, and four known ones missing Nothing | The mother is indexed as Kolbe, Kolber, Kolbee, Colbe, Colby and Colbee, and her forenames run Margret Willemina, Margret Lowisa, Margaretha Louisa Willemina, Margarita Elizabeth Willemina and Margerite Elizabeth Wellemina. Sweeping all of them returns SEVEN baptisms — 1847, 1848, 1850, 1853, 1859, 1861, 1863 — and not one name this archive did not already hold. THE IMPORTANT PART IS WHAT IS ABSENT: Hendrik Nicholaas, Richard Peter, Margaret Mary and Kathleen Mary are all NAMED ON THEIR PARENTS' DEATH NOTICES and none of the four is in the index. So the index cannot find four children this archive knows existed, which settles that it will not find the two it does not. This route is CLOSED, and closed for a demonstrable reason rather than a discouraging one. What is left is the registers themselves — Graaff-Reinet, Burgersdorp and Dordrecht — read across the gaps at 1851-1852, 1854-1858 and after 1864. |
| The register that would settle it, located and measured | One book, 534 images Blocked | The two missing Barry children, if they were born in the gap, are in a single volume: BURGERSDORP. BAPTISM RECORDS 1852–1866, image group 008039088, 534 images — it covers 1854 to 1858 entire, and the years on either side. Landmarks for bisecting it: 1853 is at IMAGE 54 (entry for William Fredrik Barry, 23 October), and 1866 is at IMAGE 528. That is roughly 36 images a year, which puts the 1854–1858 gap at about IMAGES 70 TO 250. There is NO NAME INDEX at the back — 528 onward are ordinary 1866 entries. NOT YET READ: this is a sequential browse of some 150 images and it was not attempted in the session that located it, deliberately, because the viewer's image-number box does not reliably move the single-image view (the grid view does jump, and is the way in). Written down so the job resumes rather than restarts. |
Queensland's historical index — did any branch reach Australia before the living generation?
eleven surnames, and not one of this family · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au · subjectfamilyname=BOOYZEN · births, marriages and deaths | Nothing at all Nothing | The spelling this archive uses does not occur once in Queensland's register between 1829 and 1996. Neither does BOOYSENS, nor SLIER, nor SCHOEMAN. |
| · subjectfamilyname=BOOYSEN | Two, and neither is ours Nothing | Betty Beatrice Booysen, who died in 1977, was born an Appleby of English parents. Jasper van Graan Booysen, who died in 1994, is the son of Hendrik Hermanes Booysen and Dorothea Catharina van Graan — an Afrikaans household, and a real one, but no Hendrik Hermanes and no van Graan appears anywhere in this archive. A shared surname and a shared country of origin are not a join. |
| · MOUNTJOY, KOLBE, DASCHNER, PRETORIUS, OLIVIER, ENGELBRECHT, ENSLIN | Fifty-nine rows, all other families Nothing | The Queensland Kolbes are a German Catholic family who married Wiemers and Thurners at Toowoomba. The Queensland Daschners descend from Josef Daschner and Fany Wagner, Bavarians — not from Joseph Heinrich Daschner of Stutterheim. Most OLIVIER hits are the word used as a given name, in the Barkus family. The Pretorius rows are Afrikaans and unconnected: Ben Johannes Pretorius married Edith Watts Treasure at Brisbane in 1918, and neither name is in this archive. |
| What the null actually closes | One standing question, answered Found | Queensland's index covers births to 1926, marriages to 1951 and deaths to 1996. Across that whole span no member of this family registered a birth, a marriage or a death in Queensland. The family's arrival in Brisbane is as recent as this archive says it is, and there was no earlier Australian branch to find. |
| Boijens-9 and De_Beer-638 — following the contradiction one generation up | Contradiction explained Found | Jan Booysen married Magdalena de Beer on 21 January 1770 and married again on 15 DECEMBER 1793, so his wife was dead by then; this archive's Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer died in 1843. Fifty years apart, which is the objection Question 0 raised against the 1793 will when it declined to adopt it — the reasoning was right, and the will is now positively HIS. The tree's own de Beer profile explains the rest: codes b6c2 AND b6c6, baptisms in 1745 and 1754, and a sibling list holding both a Magdalena and a Magdalena Elizabeth. Two women merged into one profile. Gained: a candidate for our woman's parents, Zaccharias de Beer and Anna Pretorius, and a second printed reference, de Villiers and Pama Vol 1 p. 78. |
| The Booysen surname index on WikiTree, and the parent-field search | 952 profiles, 5 ours Partly | The Booyzen index holds 13 profiles; the BOOYSEN index holds 952, and this family lives in both — Booysen-267 and Booysen-293 were reached by following parent links, not by searching. Swept for Gerthardus, Gerhardus, Lodewikus, Willem Hermanus, Jacobus Nicolaas, Ockert, and for all Booysens born at Graaff-Reinet. NO Gerthardus Booysen exists on WikiTree at all. One near-name worth keeping: Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booysen (1871–1920, a different family) — proof that JAN and GERHARDUS LODEWIKUS travel together as forenames in this surname. |
| Heese, Suid-Afrikaanse Geslagsregisters — a route that does not wait on the forum | Not found from here Nothing | WorldCat gates its results behind an acceptance of OCLC's terms, which this archive will not click through. Trove returned nothing for the title in Books & Libraries, so no Australian holding was identified. The realistic routes left are the Genealogical Society of South Africa and eGGSA, or the G2G question already posted. Recorded as tried and unresolved rather than untried. |
| de Villiers 1893, read in full instead of asked about | Four agree, the father does not Found | Pieter van Zyl answered the G2G question within a day and named the book as downloadable. It was downloaded from archive.org and read rather than trusted. Page 34 confirms his answer exactly: Zacharias is the FIFTH child of Matthijs Andries (b5, not WikiTree's b6), and it is the 1754 Magdalena, not the 1745 one, that carries “zie Booijsen”. Page 78 then gives Petrus Jacobus of 21 September 1788 as the seventh child of JAN Booijsen and that Magdalena, with David Schalk of 4 January 1807 as his son. One Petrus Jacobus of that date in the book, one David Schalk of that date, and no Lodewikus anywhere in the volume. |
WikiTree, never once opened in this project until somebody asked
thirteen profiles read — one page number, four facts, one head-on contradiction · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| wikitree.com/genealogy/Booyzen — the whole surname index | 13 profiles Found | The archive had eleven MyHeritage trees, Geni and the FamilySearch tree listed under “Other trees holding this family”, and the word WikiTree appeared nowhere in the project. Of the thirteen Booyzen profiles, FIVE are this family: Petrus Jacobus (1788), David Schalk, Hendrik Stefanus, Henry James and Jacobus Nicolaas. |
| Booysen-267 — Petrus Jacobus, b. bef 21 Sep 1788, d. 1 Sep 1876 | A different father Partly | Identical birth and death dates to this archive's man, and the parents given as JAN (Boijens) BOOYSEN and MAGDALENA DE BEER against this archive's GERTHARDUS LODEWIKUS BOOIJSEN and Magdalena de Beer, which come off line 3 of the 1876 Sterfkennis No. 678. Same mother, same son, two husbands. The profile cites HEESE, SUID-AFRIKAANSE GESLAGSREGISTERS, DEEL 1, P. 331 — the book Question 0 has named from the start and never had a page number for. Nothing changed: a read document outranks a tree. |
| Booysen-293 — Hendrik Stefanus, d. 11 May 1908 Rustenburg | Our man, and behind us Found | Age at death “79 & 11 months”, the 1850 Potchefstroom marriage to Anna Johanna Olivier, then Charlotta Dormehl at Zeerust — all matching. Its parentage line reads “Elizabetha ? (Anna Maria ?) van der Merwe”: another researcher reached this archive's oldest contradiction and left it as a question mark. The 1908 death notice, TAB 14380, settles it as Elizabetha. |
| Booyzen-12 and Booyzen-11 — Henry James and Jacobus Nicolaas | Four dates this archive lacked Partly | Henry James born 12 August 1887 (this archive had “c. 1887” off a burial age) and married Dorothea Regina Barry on 17 June 1912 AT ELLIOT. Jacobus Nicolaas married Jacomina Jacoba Jansen van Rensburg on 12 February 1866 at Middelburg — a wife this archive did not have at all, though the profile's own source line dates that marriage 1899. All FROM A TREE, none adopted into the family data. |
| Booyzen-2 — Hendrik Stiphanis, 1830–1905, Graaff-Reinet | Not this family Nothing | Son of Jan Hendrik Booysen and Cornelia Margaretha Voetzé, and married three times — the first of them, on the profile's own figures, at TWELVE YEARS OLD. Ruled out, and worth recording as the reason a name match is not an identification. |
| Henry James Booyzen's profile sources — “Form of information of death” | Somebody has the sterfkennis Partly | Estate MHG 10/57 is one of the six files on the FamilySearch films that refuse images, and it is in the letter to the National Archives in Pretoria. The WikiTree profile manager cites a death notice for the same man. That is a person who has seen a document this archive cannot reach. |
| G2G — a public question, posted | Live, 0 answers yet Partly | Question 2082757, “Has anyone seen the sterfkennis in Transvaal estate MHG 10/57 (Booyzen, 1956)?”, in Genealogy Help under south_africa, south_african_roots, booysen and death_notice — the four tags that actually carry traffic, checked against live G2G rather than guessed. It asks for the parents, birthplace, occupation and children off the one document that would settle Henry James Booyzen, and offers the Johannesburg cemetery entry in exchange. Nothing has come back yet and this row will say so until something does. |
Three questions put to the index directly — and one that answered back
three negatives and one name the notices never gave · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| q.givenName=Elesabettha Maria Cornelya · q.surname=Booy* | One hit, already held Nothing | Her mother's 1891 estate 6332 returns her persona and nothing else — no baptism, no marriage, no death, no estate. Elesabettha Maria Cornelya Booijsen exists in this archive because a clerk listed her among seven children in 1891, and after this search she still exists on that single line. The other two untraced Olivier daughters return the same nothing. |
| q.surname=Booij* · q.motherGivenName=Elizabetha · q.motherSurname=Van der Merwe · births 1824–1840 | No child of that couple Nothing | The search asks the index for anyone born to Petrus Jacobus Booijzen and Elizabetha van der Merwe across the whole plausible span of their marriage. It returns other Booijens and Booijzen households and not one child of theirs. If she bore children who were baptised, the register carrying them is not indexed. |
| q.givenName=Hendrik Stef* · q.surname=Booij* · births 1824–1834 | Only the 1850 marriage Nothing | This was the direct test. His own baptism would have named both his parents in one line and settled her in a second document. It is not there — the only return is Q29M-ZJGY, the 1850 Potchefstroom marriage this archive already has. So ELIZABETHA VAN DER MERWE still rests on exactly one piece of paper: the 1908 death notice of her son. Three routes tried, three closed. |
| q.surname=Barry · q.motherSurname=Kolbe · recordCountry=South Africa | One new name, one already held Partly | John Barry's 1903 registration says ELEVEN children; his notice names eight and his wife's names nine. This query — asking the index for every Barry child of a Kolbe mother rather than for a person — returns the known ones and two that are on neither notice. Only ONE of the two is new. WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY, baptised 29 September 1861, was already on William Barry's page, entered the day the Burgersdorp register was read; this archive wrote him up as a find for an hour before checking its own data, and the correction is logged. The new name is HENRY JAONAS BARRY, born 13 July 1848 and baptised at twenty years old on 13 November 1868 — a date that fits the sixteen-month gap after John Augustus II better than the “about 1847” this archive carries for James Henry. INDEX ONLY, double-indexed to two villages, and nothing has been added to the family on it. The register has to be read. |
| The same query, re-run for the record identifiers | HTTP 403, and it stayed Blocked | FamilySearch closed the window after two calls, and unlike every other refusal this week it did not reopen. Waits of four, twenty-five, thirty and forty seconds all returned 403, and the block then spread off the search service and onto the site itself — an ordinary results page loaded in a browser with a body of ZERO characters. Nearly an hour of rests did not clear it. So the record identifiers needed to reach the two baptism images were never retrieved, and the relationship search run on the FATHER instead of the mother — the obvious next query, and the one with a real chance at the second missing child — was never run at all. Marked BLOCKED and not NOTHING: the index was not asked. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: a signed-in FamilySearch session, which returns the record identifier the API refuses to an anonymous caller. It is the same sign-in the Burgersdorp sweep is parked behind, so one login clears both. |
David Schalk Booysen after November 1905 — and the rest of the 1876 eight
both negative · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| DAVID SCHALK BOOYSEN, born 9 June 1848 — his death | not found Nothing | Alive and fifty-six at GOEDEHOOP, PRETORIA on 27 November 1905, and this archive loses him there. No estate file in the indexed Transvaal probate records — the only David Schalk Booyzen there is a CHILD on the 1940 Stephanus Francois estate. No civil death that can be him: the candidates are a Cradock man born 1870, a Rustenburg man born 1859 (eleven years out), a Pretoria man born 1907 and a Clayville man born 1889. The 1859 Rustenburg death of 7 March 1930 is the nearest and is NOT adopted. |
| The other seven children of Petrus Jacobus Booysen and Anna Maria van der Merwe | 1 of 8 indexed Nothing | Searched by MOTHER (Anna Maria van der Merwe) and by FATHER (Petrus/Pieter Jacobus Booijzen) across 1806–1830 in all South African collections. Exactly ONE comes back — DAVID SCHALK, born 12 December 1806. The other seven of the eight on the 1876 Sterfkennis are not in the indexed baptism registers under either parent. The 1876 notice remains the only document that names them at all. |
| Richard Peter Booyzen's widow | still not found Nothing | Rechecked. His 1918 registration says MARRIED; the civil marriage index carries no Richard Peter Booyzen who can be him. |
| JOHANNA ELENA STOLS, his second wife — her death | not found Nothing | The last route to his death date: a widow's notice names her pre-deceased husband. Searched under BOOYZEN, BOOYSEN and LOWIES for any death 1906–1945. Nothing that can be her. So the route is CLOSED, not merely untried — neither David Schalk Booysen nor his second wife has a findable death, and the trail ends at Goedehoop in November 1905. Added to the Pretoria errand as an index search rather than a file request. |
Following the estate numbers out of a marriage register's last column
2 for 2 · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Estate 4795, cited for the groom | found and read Found | Elizabetha Margaretha Booijzen, born Marais — the death notice that opened David Schalk Booysen's whole household. Read entire. |
| Estate 7081, cited for the bride | found, index only Partly | Charles Petrus Barend Lowies, born district Cradock about 1849, died Pretoria 5 June 1905, twelve children, parents Jan Lowies and Elisabetha Maria Lubbe. The IMAGE was not opened: FamilySearch began refusing record-page requests part-way through the session — “Access Denied, Error 15, this request was blocked by our security service”. |
| Richard Peter Booyzen's wife | not found Nothing | His 1918 death registration says MARRIED, so there is a widow. The South African civil marriage index carries no Richard Peter Booyzen who can be him — the Richards it does carry belong to other families. She has no name. |
The Johannesburg Booyzens who are NOT claimed
4 tested, 0 adopted · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Petrus Jacobus Booyzen, b. May 1882, d. May 1961, buried Johannesburg | not claimed Nothing | The best of the four. A birth in May 1882 would make him Kathleen Barry's eldest, ahead of John Barry in 1884, and Petrus Jacobus is the most-repeated forename this family has. That is a name and a gap, and there is no document. |
| Petrus Jacobus VAN BLERK Booyzen, b. 1872, d. 17 Mar 1949, West Park | not claimed Nothing | VAN BLERK is a mother's surname carried as a forename and there is no Van Blerk anywhere in this family. A different Booyzen household on the Rand. |
| Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booysen, buried Johannesburg 17 Dec 1943 | not claimed Nothing | The name is exactly right — it runs from Gerthardus Lodewikus at the top of this line to the man who died at Vaalbank in 1885. But the 1855 child of that name would be 88 in 1943, the register gives NO AGE, and the name is common in the wider family. |
| John Zacharia Booysen, d. 25 Nov 1918, buried Brixton 26 Nov, aged 29 | REJECTED Nothing | ZACHARIA reaches nothing in this family, and his death is a civil registration which names no parents, so nothing could tie him either way. Recorded only because three Booysens went into Brixton in eight weeks in the influenza and the shape of that is worth keeping. |
| Richard Peter Booyzen, d. 25 Oct 1918, Turffontein | CLAIMED, inferred Partly | The one that IS adopted, and on three grounds and no document: his mother's brother's forename; a birth about 1894 in the exact gap in her children; and a birthplace of C. OF G. HOPE on the registration, which is the migration all her children made. |
The Grahamstown depot, swept for Barry, Mountjoy and Booyzen
two estates, both already read · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BARRY, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 18 personas, 1 estate Found | All of them are ONE document — John Barry's own 1915 notice, estate 925, which this archive has read entire. The index even carries NEAGLE BARRY as a person, which is the surname the informant gave for his grandmother and could not follow with a Christian name. The rest of the Grahamstown Barrys — Van Reenen, Dirk Gysbert, Durban, Phyllis, Thomas — are a different Barry family on the same film. |
| MOUNTJOY, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 8 personas, 2 estates Nothing | John James Mountjoy 1923 and a George Mountjoy family group of 1919–20 (Susan Elizabeth, d. 13 Sep 1920 at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff, b. 1887 Maclear; with Ivy Elizabeth, Gwendoline Hazel, Edna Iris and Daphne Joyce). Flagstaff and Maclear are Transkei, a different Mountjoy household, and NOT ADOPTED. |
| BOOYZEN, exact surname, probate at Grahamstown / Albany | 8 personas Nothing | January, Jonas, Sarah, Martha, Meetje, Aletta, Johanna, G — Middelburg and Basutoland, 1850 to 1920. A different Booyzen family entirely and this archive does not claim them. |
| And the lesson from estate 1291 | a finding aid, not an absence Partly | Margaretha Kolbe's probate was GRANTED AT GRAHAMSTOWN and is INDEXED UNDER KIMBERLEY. Three earlier searches for it failed because they trusted the collection label. A depot sweep that searches by place will not find a record filed under the wrong one. |
The Marico question, re-run on the grandsons — and the reason for dismissing it withdrawn
initials still fail, district objection dead · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The seven TAB CJC claims — JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE — against the GRANDSONS, who are now named | one fit of seven Nothing | This archive could not run this test in September because it could not name a single grandson. It can now: PJ (Petrus Jacobus, b. 20 Apr 1851), OJS (Ockert Johannes Stephanus, b. 15 Sep 1852), AJM, EMC, ACJ, MJ and HSN (Hendrik Stefanus Nicolaas, b. 31 Jan 1862, DEAD IN 1891) from the first marriage; and in the next generation PJ (1889), OJS (1894), HSN (1882) and DA (Diederik Arnoldus, 1887). Against JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE only PJ fits, and Petrus Jacobus is the commonest name this family has. The initials test still fails. |
| BUT: the ground the dismissal stood on | withdrawn Found | The reason given for setting the seven Marico claims aside was “that is NOT this family, who were Cape”. That sentence is now false twice over. HENDRIK STEFANUS BOOIJZEN MARRIED AT ZEERUST, THE PRINCIPAL TOWN OF MARICO, ON 14 APRIL 1892; and his wife CHARLOTTA ELIZABETH DORMEHL lived at DRIEFONTEIN, GROOT MARICO and DIED THERE ON 6 FEBRUARY 1902 — during the war, in the district the claims come from. He signed her death notice at Zeerust in August 1902. This family was in Marico, documented, on both sides of the war. |
| Where that leaves it | unresolved, and honestly so Partly | The claims are still not tied to a named man. What has gone is the excuse for not looking. The CJC series is not name-indexed and the seven claims are numbers — CJC 76, 77, 104, 109, 123, 125, 126 — that only the Reading Room can open. |
| And a compensation claim that DOES exist | 1 Found | Not in Marico. DAVID SCHALK BOOIJZEN, at Pretoria, answering question ten of his wife's 1900 death notice: “none. Compensation claim filed.” See /documents/#marais-1900. |
Johannesburg cemetery registers — the whole family, swept
298 read · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Booyzen · Booysen · Booijzen · Daschner · Mountjoy · Lerena, exact surname, collection 4453927 | 298 entries Found | Ten of them are this family and each turns a year into a day: Kathleen Barry (grave 9760), Willem Hermanus of Indwe and Susanna Adriana (grave 6889, together), Henry James, Joseph Heinrich Daschner, Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas, George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen, George Downing Daschner, and two infants at Brixton the archive did not have. |
| Grave numbers | 2 of 10 Partly | The index rows carry name, age, date and cemetery; the grave number is on the register image, and only two have been read page by page so far. The rest are a morning's work. |
| The 1918 influenza | 3 burials, 1 claimed Partly | Richard Peter Booyzen, 24, buried 27 October 1918 at Brixton — claimed as kin on the naming and the gap in the children, marked INFERRED. John Zacharia Booysen, 29, buried 26 November, and Johanna A. Booysen, nought days, on 19 December: NOT claimed. No forename in this family reaches them and Booysen is common on the Rand. |
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen (1852–1921) — an estate of his own
no file · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Transvaal probate index — Ockert / Okkert / Ocker / Ocken against Booysen / Booyzen / Booijsen | 6 hits, 0 of them his Found | Every hit is him as somebody else's relative: four duplicate copies of his son Diederik Arnoldus's 1935 Sterfkennis 87882, where he is the father; and two copies of his own father's 1908 notice 14380, where he is entered Child. |
| Transvaal Civil Death, 1869–1954 | 1 hit Found | OKKER JOHANNIS STEPHANUS BOOYSEN, 69, died 16 January 1921 at Klerksdorp. A civil registration NAMES NO PARENTS — which is the whole difficulty with this series and why the archive keeps going back to Sterfkennisse. |
| Browsing the films for 1921 by estate number | not possible Nothing | The Transvaal probate films are not ordered by estate number, so there is nothing to browse along. If an estate was raised for him it is not name-indexed. |
National Archives · ALL repositories (RSA) — the search this archive should have been running all along
the gap · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYZEN — Cape depot only (KAB) | 39 documents Partly | What this archive searched, every time, for the whole project. |
| BOOYZEN — all repositories (RSA) | 184 documents Found | What it should have searched. 145 documents unseen. This family left the Cape about 1907 and the entire last generation died in Johannesburg, so their estates are in the TRANSVAAL depot — and NAAIRS offers an “All Archives Repositories” database on the same selection page used every time. |
| TAB MHG — the direct line | 5 estate files Found | BOOYZEN, JOHANNA MARIA born PRETORIUS (2945/44); BOOYZEN, GEORGE DOWNING MOUNTJOY (1095/48); BOOYZEN, JOHN BARRY (769/52) — the son who signed the 1905 form; BOOYZEN, HENRY JAMES (10/57); and DASCHNER, CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA born BOOYZEN (3734/46). |
| TAB MHG — two of the 1863 children | 2 estate files Found | BOOYZEN, JAN GERHARDUS LODEWIKUS (O/2899, 1885), the seventh child; and BOOYZEN, JACOBUS NICHOLS (52653, 1923), the eldest and the only “Major” on that list. |
| TAB MHG — both sons of the second marriage | 2 estate files Found | BOOYZEN, STEPHANUS FRANCOIS (2428/40) and BOOYZEN, GERT JACOBUS (5155/51). Both filed with a z. |
| BOOYZEN + KATHLEEN · BOOYZEN + CATHERINE | nothing for her Nothing | Still no estate for Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen née Barry, who died at Mayfair in 1940. Her “Military Pensioner” entry remains unexplained. |
| TAB CJC — Claims for Compensation, Burghers | 7 Booyzen claims Partly | The post-war compensation series Open Question 11 has been asking for. It exists. But all seven claims are MARICO, Transvaal — the same district as the Booyzen children who died in the camps — and that is NOT this family, who were Cape. The series is now named correctly; the Cape equivalent is still untouched. |
National Archives · all repositories — three questions answered by absence
RSA database · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYSEN + WILLEM + HERMANUS | 0, everywhere Nothing | There is NO estate file for Willem Hermanus Booyzen — the man at the centre of the family story — in any archives repository in South Africa. He died at Indwe in 1905 leaving nothing to administer. Set that beside his father's estate of 1884, which recorded "moveables only, such as wearing apparel": two generations, and between them not one estate worth opening. |
| BOOYZEN + MINE / MINER / MYN | 0 each Nothing | The testimony ends "the boys initially all got jobs on the mines". No Booyzen mining record appears anywhere in the national archives index. That index covers GOVERNMENT files, not private mining company employment registers, so the negative is a weak one — but every occupation this archive has actually read for these men points elsewhere: boer then mason, tree nurseryman, clerk on the South African Railways. Not one miner among them. |
| BOOYZEN + FOREST HILL / MAYFAIR | 0 each Nothing | The Johannesburg addresses appear on certificates but nowhere in the archival index. |
| BARRY + BARKLY (all repositories) | 2 documents Partly | SAB VWR B645/8/38 (1937): an application by a FARM OWNER AT BARKLY-OOS, R.P.K. BARRY, with his son of the same initials as bywoner. Given this family's Barry–Kolbe naming — Henry James Kolbe Barry, Anthon Rector Kolbe Barry — R.P.K. is very likely Richard Peter Kolbe Barry. That ties the Cape Rebel of Jerpoint, the R. P. Barry who signed the 1915 notice at Manorowen, and five mortgage bonds of 1895–1903 into one landholding man at Barkly East. Tighter, still not proof. |
| BOOYSEN + CATHERINE / KATHLEEN (all repositories) | 33 documents, none hers Nothing | Still no estate anywhere for Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen née Barry, who died at Mayfair in 1940. Her “Military Pensioner” entry is now the longest-standing unexplained thing in the archive. |
Anglo-Boer War Museum · Cape Rebel register
12,792 names · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYSEN | 26 found Nothing | Every one from the Northern Cape or Griqualand West — Kenhardt, Campbell, Koopmansfontein, Daniel's Kuil, Aberdeen. None from Barkly East, Dordrecht, Wodehouse, Indwe, Lady Grey or Elliot. |
| BOOYZEN | 0 Nothing | Nothing, in any of the fifteen registers. |
| BARRY | 4 found Found | And two of them are in this family's district: FRED J. BARRY of Ivanhoe, Barkly East / Wodehouse, tried June 1901; and RICHARD PETER BARRY of Jerpoint. Identity unproven. |
| SCHOEMAN, D. W. | 1 found Found | DANIEL WILLEM SCHOEMAN, plaasboer of CAERLAVEROCK, tried June 1901 — the month before the family married in his house. |
Anglo-Boer War Museum · Joiners register
952 names · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYSEN | 1 found Partly | J. J. BOOYSEN of HEILBRON, Orange Free State — four hundred miles away, in a different country at the time. |
| BOOYZEN | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
University of Cape Town · British Concentration Camps of the South African War
the camp database · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYZEN | 5 found Nothing | All Transvaal: Gert Jacobus, aged 2, died Johannesburg camp, farm Rietvallei, Marico; Gertruida Magdalena, aged 19, died Vereeniging camp, farm Rietvlei, Heidelberg; Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus, aged 2. None from the Cape. |
| BARRY | 0 Nothing | Nothing in the entire database. |
| BOOYSEN + Catherine / Kathleen / John Barry / Willem Hermanus | 0 each Nothing | None of this family's given names appears. |
| BOOYZEN + Catharina | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository — the searches this archive got wrong first time
a correction · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY (re-run, no date filter) | 18 documents ≤1930 Found | The archive previously reported MOUNTJOY as 42 documents of which “all 22 dated 1930 or later were read”. Twenty earlier documents were never opened. They include JAMES MOUNTJOY'S OWN WILLS of 1818 and 1827 and an 1834 Colonial Office memorial from his widow. A filter applied for convenience was written up as if it were the whole search. |
| MOUNTJOY, wills | 2 references Found | KAB MOOC 7/1/104: 42 — MOUNTJOY, JAMES. WILL (1818), joint with SLIER, ANNA CATHARINA, WIFE OF JAMES MOUNTJOY; and MOOC 7/1/104: 43 — the same pair again in 1827, the year he died. Made a year after their 1817 marriage and again at his death. |
| MOUNTJOY, Colonial Office | 1 reference Found | KAB CO 3972: 17 — “MEMORIALS RECEIVED. THE WIDOW OF J MOUNTJOY. REQUESTING REMISSION OF A FINE”, 1834. A petition in her own voice, seven years after his death. |
| BARRY + RICHARD + PETER | 7 documents Partly | Five of them mortgage bonds in the name RICHARD PETER BARRY — 1895, 1897 twice, and 1903 twice. A property-holding farmer of that name in the Cape across the war years. Corroboration for the Cape Rebel of Jerpoint, not proof. |
| JERPOINT | 0 Nothing | The farm name does not appear anywhere in the Cape Town Archives index. |
| BARRY + JERPOINT / BARRY + IVANHOE | 0 each Nothing | Nothing. |
| BOOYSEN + CONSTABLE · BOOYSEN + MIDDELBURG | 9 documents Found | One police constable at Middelburg, 1904–07, filed four times as BOOYSEN and three times as BOOYZEN — twice both ways inside 1905. The best evidence on this site for what the two spellings meant to the people writing them, and it narrows the archive's own reading of the 1905 death form. |
National Archives · Cape Town Archives Repository (NAAIRS)
the KAB database · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY | 42 documents Partly | All 22 dated 1930 or later were retrieved and read. |
| MONTJOY | 4 documents Found | The spelling nobody had tried — and two of the four are the Mountjoy–Booysen junction itself, including the 1840 and 1863 death notices. |
| MOUNTJOY + HERKLAAS / HERCULES / WODEHOUSE / BARKLY | 0 each Nothing | There is no estate file for Hercules Johannes Mountjoy under any spelling. The estates around him run 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1948 unbroken, so this is an absence, not a gap in the index. |
| BOOYZEN | 39 documents Found | Earliest 1779 — KAB CJ 2633: 29, the testament of Christina Booyzen. The z is a hundred and twenty years older than the war. |
| BOOIJZEN | 3 documents Found | Earliest 1792. |
| DE BEER + MAGDELENA | 0 Nothing | No estate for Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer, d. 1843. |
| BEER + MAGDELENA + ELISABETH | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
| BOOYSEN + MAGDELENA | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
| BOOIJSEN + MAGDELENA | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
| BOOYSEN + GERTHARDUS | 0 Nothing | No estate for the man at the top of the male line. |
| BOOYSEN + GERHARDUS | 15 documents Nothing | None of them his. |
| BOOYZEN + GERHARDUS | 0 Nothing | Nothing. |
| BOOYSEN + LODEWIKUS / LODEWICUS | 7 documents Nothing | All one later man, Willem Johannes Lodewicus. |
| BOOYSEN + BEER | 3 documents Nothing | One near-miss deliberately NOT adopted: KAB NCD 2/1: 49, a notarial will of 1793 for “Jan Booysen, married to the late Magdalena de Beer”. Wrong husband's name, and a wife dead fifty years before ours. |
FamilySearch
records and full text · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Full-text search: “Johannes Mountjoy” | 0 Nothing | The full-text collection does not cover Cape probate. |
| Probate collection, MONTJOY / MOUNTJOY | 2 indexed Partly | Only the 1863 pair. The 1840 death notice is NOT name-indexed and had to be found by interpolating reference numbers across 2,223 images. |
| Marriage, MONTJOY 1817 | 3 indexings Found | Two carried no image. The third, under the spelling MONTYOY, did. |
Anglo-Boer War Museum · Farm List
10,282 records · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Caerlaverock / Manorowen / Wolwekloof | 0 Void | VOID, not informative. This register turns out to be an ORANGE FREE STATE land roll — farm number, morgen, square roods, owners — covering only Winburg, Fauresmith, Vrede, Rouxville, Bethlehem, Bloemfontein, Hoopstad, Kroonstad and Philippolis. A control search on “Dordrecht” returns 670 Cape Rebels and 0 farms. |
First World War service records
for Kathleen Barry's sons · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Sons of Kathleen Barry, killed in service | 0 Nothing | The archive's own hypothesis — that a son died in the war and that is why she is recorded a “Military Pensioner” — was searched and DISPROVED. The claim was reframed on the page rather than quietly dropped. |
| Commonwealth War Graves Commission | not searched Blocked | Behind a bot check. This archive did not attempt to circumvent it, and records that as the reason. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: nothing here — the Commission's register is complete and public, and a nil return from it is a real negative rather than a wall. This row is marked blocked wrongly; it should be a negative, and it is left as it is until somebody re-reads the original search rather than rewriting the label from memory. |
| SANDF Documentation Centre, written to | half delivered Blocked | The enquiry was sent 9 September 2026 to both published addresses. archive@dod.mil.za delivered and has not replied; sandfdoc@mweb.co.za bounced — 550 relay access denied — and that is the address published almost everywhere for the Centre. Recorded because an unanswered letter and an undelivered one are different things. |
Master of the Supreme Court · the office's own index of death notices, 1834–1912
film 007844477, 612 images · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| “Beer, de” — the whole run | read on film Nothing | Particles are indexed separately in this book, so de Beer files under B. The Magdalena entries are Magda Catha du Plessis (1872), Magda de Beer (1865), Magda Vermeulen (1883), Magda Eliz Troskie (1863), Magda Jacomina Nel (1850) and Magda Greef (1839/40). There is NO Magdelena Elisabeth, and nothing dated 1843. |
| BOOYSEN — the whole run | read on film Partly | Page 436 onward, alphabetical by christian name with a death-notice number and year against each. A working index of every Booysen death notice reported to the Master between 1834 and 1912. |
FindMyPast · world records
for James Montjoy's origin · searched 9 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY, born about 1782 ±5 | 12,984 results Nothing | Not tractable. The archive has no discriminator beyond a trade and a date — “a saddler, in the Cape by March 1817” — and thirteen thousand results cannot be narrowed by that. Recorded so the next person does not repeat it: the way in is a Cape arrival record, not an English birth record. |
FamilySearch · Transvaal estate films
reading the nine located estates, one film at a time · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| TAB MHG 2945/44 — Anna Johanna Maria Booyzen, born Pretorius | Read in full Found | Indexed under her husband George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen as “Spouse”, which is why it was first mistaken for his estate. Sterfkennis, both parents named with a street address, six children with birth dates, all minors. One correction to the archive. |
| TAB MHG 1095/48, 5155/51, 769/52, 10/57, 3734/46, 52653, O/2899 | Located, not yet read Partly | Seven of the nine still to open. References banked on the Sources page so this resumes rather than restarts. |
FamilySearch · Transvaal probate index, by collection
searching the index instead of guessing the film · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Surname BOOYZEN, exact, collection 2520237 (Transvaal probate, 1869–1961) | 150 personas Partly | The whole indexed surname in one Transvaal collection, read in two pages of a hundred and fifty. Confirms the Stephanus Francois file (1940) and the Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus file, and shows that the 1946–1957 estates this archive is chasing are NOT name-indexed — they will have to be found by browsing film. |
| Surname DASCHNER, exact, same collection | 16 personas, 12 on one page Found | TAB MHG 1928/42 in full: Joseph Heinrich Daschner, his parents, his wife “born Booyzen”, and eleven children. Read from the image, not the index — the index gives one child's birth year as 1923 where the document says 1922. |
| Given name MOUNTJOY, same collection | 15,558 results, first 40 read Nothing | Useless as run: the engine treats Mountjoy as fuzzy and returns every Montgomery, Montjoy and Montmorency in the Transvaal. Recorded because the failure is instructive — an exact-match toggle exists for surnames in this API and not for given names. |
| Surname DASCHNER — Minnie Bertha Sophia | One notice, unrelated Nothing | Charles Bruce Rennie, miner, of Booysens, Johannesburg, died 1936; his pre-deceased wife was a Minnie Bertha Sophia Daschner. No Booyzen connection. Kept as the archive's cleanest example of the Booysens-suburb trap. |
FamilySearch · Transvaal probate, reading the whole surname
what happens when you stop searching for a person and search for a name · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYSEN + PETRUS JACOBUS, exact surname, collection 2520237 | Two personas, one document Found | Sterfkennis No. 678 of 1876 — Petrus Jacobus Booijsen, b. Graaffreinet, d. 1 Sep 1876 district Rustenburg, aged 88, parents NAMED. The oldest document this archive has read, and it was sitting in a name index the whole time. Found only because the search stopped asking for the nine references NAAIRS had given and started reading the surname. |
| BOOYZEN, exact surname, same collection, second page of results | Two more notices read in full Partly | Magdalena Susanna Maria van den Berg, born Booyzen (d. 1920, Vaalbank, district Lichtenburg), whose father is entered as Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booyzen; and Anna Johanna Booijzen, born Cradock about 1823, died 1891 on a farm in the district of Rustenburg, with children called Petrus Jacobus, Magdalena Johanna and Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas. Right names, right districts, right decades. NEITHER WAS PROVED TO BE KIN when this was written — and the second of them SINCE HAS BEEN. The farm is BRAKFONTEIN, not Boekfontein, and the maiden name is OLIEFIER, not Alberts: she is Anna Catharina Johanna Olivier, the first wife of Hendrik Stefanus Booijsen, and she died on the family's own farm. |
| TAB MHG O/2899 — Jan Gerhardus Lodewikus Booyzen, 1885 | Not this document Nothing | The persona indexed under that name in the Transvaal probate collection turned out to be a FATHER named on somebody else’s 1920 death notice, not the 1885 estate. The NAAIRS reference stands and is still unread. Recorded because the two were briefly conflated here. |
FamilySearch · Cape probate, the whole surname at once
the same method, turned on the Cape · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| MOUNTJOY, exact, collection 2517051 (Cape probate, 1822–1990) | 61 personas — the complete indexed surname Found | Everything this archive was still chasing in the Cape, on one screen. Estate 58379 and 58380 read in full; the 1840 James Montjoy notice re-identified in the same list; and Hercules Johannes’s single hit opened and found to be his mother-in-law’s. |
| MOUNTJOY + Hercules Johannes | One hit, and it is not his Nothing | His name is on his mother-in-law’s 1902 notice, in her list of children. The index keys every name on the page. Confirms rather than overturns this archive’s finding that he has no estate file. |
| Film 007735716, images 766–771, read directly | Four documents Found | Not a name search at all. Once the film and image number were known, the pages either side of a death notice could be read in sequence — which is how the liquidation and distribution accounts were found. This is the route to the six Transvaal estates that are not name-indexed. |
The register, used as a search tool for the first time
one word typed into the filter · searched 10 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Filter the register for INDWE | 68 entries, four of them new Found | A Willem Hermanus Booijzen taking church membership at Indwe in 1907, and two Booyzen children baptised there in 1908 and 1910 — two and five years after the Willem Hermanus this archive had dying at Indwe in 1905. All four read from the register images. The register was built to hold leads; this is the first one it handed over. |
| FamilySearch, South Africa, Civil Marriage Records — BOOYZEN + ROODT | One certificate Found | Indwe, 21 September 1908, certificate 13. The document that carries the word MIJNWERKER. |
| Booyzen + Roodt, any later marriage or death | Nothing further Nothing | No death record and no second marriage found for Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe, and nothing yet for either Roodt woman after 1910. The Indwe registers past 1910 have not been read forward. |
The Transvaal probate index, read against itself
no new document — an index line and two already read · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| TAB MHG O/2899 — who is actually the deceased? | Jan Gerardus Lodewicus Booijzen, 67, b. district Graaff-Reinet, d. 25 May 1885 Vaalbank Found | Two index passes over the same estate (arks 1:1:QPTJ-R6KB and 1:1:Q2DG-52P9) agree, and one of them states the relationship: Deceased. Born about 1818, so not the nephew born in 1855 this archive had attached it to for months. |
| An image for estate O/2899 | None offered Nothing | The FamilySearch record page says “Check Image Availability” where every other estate in this archive says “View original document”. The file is at the Transvaal Archives in Pretoria and has not been seen. The correction above rests on the index, checked against the 1876 and 1920 Sterfkennisse, both read from the image. |
| Any death record for Jan Gerhardus Lodewicus Booysen, b. 4 Dec 1855 | Nothing Nothing | With the estate taken off him there is no date and no place. Recorded as an open name rather than a closed life. |
FamilySearch · can the last six Transvaal estates be read at all?
a negative with its scope written down · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Film access across the whole collection, 762 films, 007805260 to 007831001 | Open to 007830062. Closed from 007830063. Nothing | Twenty-eight films from 007830063 onward were requested and twenty-eight returned HTTP 403. Those are the films whose indexed records reach 1946 and later. Film 007830062, the one immediately before the line, serves its images normally. This is an access boundary, not a gap in the index. |
| TAB MHG 3734/46, 1095/48, 5155/51, 769/52, 10/57 | All five behind the line Nothing | Nothing to be done from here. The originals are at the Transvaal Archives Depot in Pretoria. |
| TAB MHG 52653 (1923) — in the open half | Cannot be located Nothing | Not name-indexed under any spelling of Booyzen, Booysen or Booijzen. And the films are NOT ordered by estate number: image 100 of three films in the same numeric neighbourhood produced a 1920 Sterfkennis, a 1938 death notice, and a Chinese clan genealogy. The interpolation trick that found the 1840 Montjoy notice has nothing to interpolate along here. |
| q.filmNumber as a search term | Works alone; silently ignored with a surname Nothing | Recorded because it nearly produced a false negative. q.filmNumber=007830063 alone returns 211 personas. Add q.surname=Booyzen and the result is 150 — which is the count for the surname across the WHOLE collection. The film filter is dropped without a word. Any search combining the two is a search of the whole collection wearing a disguise. |
FamilySearch · the whole BOOYZEN surname in the CAPE probate collection
twenty-nine people, and the z spelling is the Master's own · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BOOYZEN, exact, collection 2517051 (Cape probate, 1822–1990) | 29 personas — small enough to read entire Found | The Transvaal collection holds 150 under this spelling; the Cape holds 29. Two of them are estate 84992 of 1943 — Isabella Fredrika Booyzen born Coetzee, and her husband and son — and the file is spelled with a z by the Master's office throughout. |
| Estate 84992, read from the image | A death in 1930, filed in 1943 Found | Corrected a date this archive had taken off the reference number. Also gave her parents, her three children, and the death of a son it had been carrying as living. |
| The oldest Booyzen in the Cape probate series | 1843, and not this family Partly | Johanna Booyzen, born about 20 March 1754, died 16 June 1843 at Cape Town. Read because her dates match the only two this archive has for Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer. They match to the year and she is somebody else entirely. |
| MOOC 7/1/268: 87 (the 1845 will) and MOOC 13/1/221: 6 (the 1866 account) | Still not located Nothing | Neither is name-indexed. The Cape films carry readable target boards — DEATH NOTICES, or DECEASED ESTATES with a year and a starting estate number — and every 19th-century board read so far says DEATH NOTICES. The separate wills and liquidation-account volumes are not evidently in this collection at all. The catalogue, which would settle it, is blocked to this archive: every catalog API path returns 403 from FamilySearch's security service. |
The Marico question, tested on names
no new search — the data this archive already holds, put against itself · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The seven TAB CJC compensation claims, by initials, against the eight children on the 1876 Sterfkennis | Three fit, four do not Nothing | JPJ, PJ, GL, JPJ, L, JC, HE against David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna, Petrus Jacobus, Anna Eliezabet, Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus, Eliezabet Cornelia, Hendrik Stefanus, Anna Maria. PJ, GL and L fit; JPJ, JC and HE do not. With a family this repetitive about forenames that is roughly what chance gives you, and by 1903 the 1876 children were dead or in their eighties — a real claimant would be a grandson, a generation beyond what this archive can name. |
| Where the Marico JPJ was born | Pietermaritzburg, Natal, 1841 Nothing | The index gives the man behind two of the seven claims as born at Pietermaritzburg and dead at Rhenosterfontein, district Marico, in November 1900. This family is Graaff-Reinet. It is the one hard fact in the comparison and it points away. |
NAAIRS · the Cape compensation series, found and then tested
the burned-farm question, taken as far as a keyboard can take it · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| What IS the Cape equivalent of the Transvaal CJC? | THE WAR LOSSES COMPENSATION COMMISSION, 1902 Found | Named at last. KAB, source NA, volume 564, reference A1068: “War Losses Compensation Commission, Sub-Commissioners Captain E. J. Whindus and Mr H. H. Bunn”, 1902. This archive has been asking for “Cape Colony compensation claims” for weeks without knowing what they were called. |
| KAB · BOOYZEN and BOOYSEN against COMPENSATION and LOSSES | Nothing, except one 1947 workmen's claim Nothing | BOOYZEN returns 39 documents in the Cape depot and none of them mention compensation or losses. BOOYSEN returns 2,370 and exactly one in combination: a Workmen's Compensation Act 1941 claim at King William's Town, 1947–49, naming D. B. Booysen. Nothing to do with the war. |
| The control — is the Commission indexed by claimant at all? | NO, AND THE ZERO ABOVE IS THEREFORE WEAK Nothing | SMIT, SCHOEMAN and BARRY also return nothing under LOSSES in the Cape depot. The two BOTHA hits are a 1935 locust and arsenical-poisoning stock claim from a magistrate's series. The Commission's records are catalogued by sub-commissioner and volume, not by the people who claimed. A name search cannot reach them, so a name search finding nothing means very little. |
| NAAIRS wildcards | THE ASTERISK RETURNS ZERO Nothing | Recorded because it silently manufactures false negatives. BOOY* in the Cape depot returns 0 documents. BOOYZEN, spelled out, returns 39. Four searches run here with an asterisk were discarded and re-run. Anyone using NAAIRS should assume the wildcard does not expand. |
| The NAAIRS address | The bare hostname no longer resolves Found | national.archsrch.gov.za does not resolve at all. www.national.archsrch.gov.za does, and is the address the National Archives' own help page links to. Noted because the database on which much of this archive rests appears dead if you type it from memory. |
The Cape Master's Index of Estates, 1834–1912 — read at Barry
film 007844477, pages 232 to 234, located by bisection · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| BARRY, every entry, 1834–1912 | Three pages, and this family on none of them Nothing | The index is alphabetical with the death-notice number beside each name. Barry runs 232–234. Not Richard Peter, not Frederick Fortunatus, not Dorothea Regina, not Hendrik Nicholaas, not Kathleen Mary, not Catherine Maria Sophia — and not John Augustus, who died in 1903, or Margaretha, who died in 1912. |
| Why the absence is not an absence | Both notices are dated 29 March 1915 Partly | This archive has already read them. The index closes in 1912 and they were filed in 1915 — twelve years after John Augustus died. The estate route to identifying the Cape Rebel Richard Peter Barry is therefore closed for this period, not merely empty. |
| Locating the pages | Eleven probes Found | Film 007844477 runs to 612 images and carries no name index of its own. Its length was found by bisection, then page numbers were read off the top of a sample — about 1.9 pages per image — and Barry was reached in four rounds: images 20, 35, 50, 65, then 85, 95, 105, then 112, 117, 122, then 125. Recorded because it is the technique that will be needed again. |
FamilySearch · the Indwe congregation, and Barkly East by place
items 5, 10 and 11 of the standing list · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, membership Indwe 23 July 1907 | Read from the register Found | Lidmaten register page 336: arrived FROM BARKLY OOST on 23 July 1907, and the remarks column records her dead at Indwe in June 1911. |
| Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe, after September 1910 | Nothing Nothing | No third baptism, no later marriage, no death in the Dutch Reformed index. He is twenty-four at his daughter's baptism and then gone from anything this archive can reach. |
| BARRY ranked by place — Barkly East | Six people worth keeping Found | q.anyPlace does not filter but it does rank, and the right Barrys come to the top. Richard Pieter Kolbe Barry (b. 1899), James Henry (c.1847–1939), Harriet Louisa of Manorowen (d. 1912), Cornelia Herculena Petronella of Cherryville (d. 1909), John Gerson Eliazer (1893–1941), Theunis Christoffel (1895–1963). All index entries, none read from an image, and every person page says so. |
| Where John Barry's 1915 estate was administered | GRAHAMSTOWN, not Cape Town Found | A second and independent reason why no member of this family appears in the Cape Master's Index of Estates 1834–1912. |
FamilySearch · the Cape civil death registers, Barkly East
the Barry thread, opened by the Grahamstown discovery · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| JOHN BARRY, died 1903, Barkly East | Entry 74 — read in full Found | “Irishman born in Ireland.” Carpenter. Manor Owen Ward IV. 25 August 1903. Eleven children. Signed by Richard Barry, son present at death. Answers open question 5 and corrects two things this archive had published. |
| HARRIET LOUISA BARRY, died 1912 | Read in full Found | Of Manorowen, dead of typhoid at Cherryville aged eighteen, buried at Manorowen, her father H. N. Barry signing. Entered as DUTCH. Confirms Cherryville as a third Barry farm and dates the family's assimilation to one generation. |
| RICHARD PIETER KOLBE BARRY — whose son? | Richard Pieter Barry and Jeannie Maria Catharina Botha Partly | Baptised at Barkly West, 26 April 1898. It does not prove the father is the Richard Peter Barry on the Cape Rebel roll, but it puts a married Richard Peter Barry with children in that district in 1898. |
| The children of Hendrik Nicholaas Barry and Anna Johanna Maria Schoeman | Four baptisms, 1888–1900 Found | Ruben Jacobus Hosea (Dordrecht, 1888), Dorothea Regina (Slang River, 1892), Henriette Louisa (Barkly West, 1894) and Ellen Hendrika (1900). Two are named for their aunt and uncle, which is why this archive now carries two Dorothea Reginas and two Rubens and keeps them apart. |
An audit of this archive's own negatives
checking whether the wildcard fault had contaminated anything already published · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Every search recorded on this site, checked for an asterisk | CLEAN — none Found | The NAAIRS wildcard returns zero rather than expanding, which would silently turn any wildcard search into a false negative. Every row on this page and every query in the working notes was re-read. The only asterisk in the notes is markdown emphasis. No negative published by this archive was built with one. |
| The estates of the 1876 children | Hendrik Stephanus found; the others not yet Partly | David Schalk, Magdalena Johanna, Anna Eliezabet, Eliezabet Cornelia and Anna Maria remain unsearched or unfound. Their brother's estate turned out to carry their mother's name, so the rest are worth the same effort. |
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, died Indwe June 1911 | Not in the Cape civil death index Nothing | The church register records her death; the civil index does not return her under Mountjoy or Montjoy at Indwe or Wodehouse. Recorded as a scoped negative. |
| The Roodts of Indwe | A large family, and the two mothers not separable yet Partly | The Indwe registers carry Roodt baptisms through 1906–1926 under Jan Gabriel, Hermanus Johannes, Andries Johannes Taylor and Pieter Johannes. A Susanna Adrana Elizabeth Roodt was baptised at Indwe on 19 September 1908 and a Cornelis de Klerk Roodt on 31 May 1907. Which household the two mothers of 1908 and 1909 belong to is not yet established. |
Grahamstown, the depot nobody had searched
items 1 to 3 of the standing list · searched 13 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| John Barry's 1915 estate, 925 — the whole page | Read entire Found | Film 007810152, image 228. Eight children named, against eleven on the 1903 registration. Two of this archive's people withdrawn as children and re-placed as grandchildren. Margaretha Kolbe's death dated to 2 August 1912. The marriage placed at “Burghersdorp (probably)”. |
| The estates either side of it on the same film | Not this family Nothing | Images 229, 230 and 231 are Louw, van der Vyver and van Zyl — the estate numbers 926, 927 and 928 run consecutively and the Barry file is a single page. There is no liquidation account bound with it. |
| Margaretha Kolbe's own 1915 estate | Not yet located Nothing | Her notice is said to have been filed the same day by another son. It is not on the images either side of 925 and has not been found. |
FindMyPast, day one — the Kolbes of Soho
items 80, 81 and 85 of the FindMyPast campaign · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Westminster Rate Books 1634–1900, surname Kolbe | 121 entries, 1800–1831 Found | Under twenty-four spellings of one forename. Broad Street North in 1800; CHURCH STREET SOUTH, ST ANNE'S SOHO from 1811 to 1831. Brunswick Square in none of them. A search for “Gottlieb” alone would have found one entry in twenty-four. |
| Westminster land tax, 1829 | One entry Found | John Gottlieb Kolbe, Church Street, Westminster St Anne Soho — the same address the rate books give, from a different series. |
| England Births & Baptisms, surname Kolbe, London 1790–1850 | Ten children of one couple Found | Juliet Rosinia 1792, Mary Ann 1794, Elizabeth 1795, CHARLES 1798, JOHN HENRY 1800, GEORGE AUGUSTUS 1803, FREDERICK CHARLES 1805, CHARLES SAMUEL 1807, Frederica Carolina 1813, Jane Day 1819. Mother Mary in every one. FIVE OF THE EIGHT SONS NAMED. |
| George Augustus Kolbe's own baptism, as a control | 2 Feb 1803, matches Found | Father John Gottlow Kolbe, mother Mary, Westminster. This archive already held that date from another route, so the register can be trusted for the other nine. |
| Frederick Kolbe, baptised Westminster 16 Dec 1816 | Rejected Nothing | Right surname, right parish, and a gap in the family's run exactly there. Father GEORGE, mother ELIZABETH, batch C72301-7. Not a brother. Rejected by reading the transcript rather than the result row. |
| Henry Kolbe, baptised Southwark 2 Feb 1800 | Rejected Nothing | Father Henry, mother Susannah. Not a brother. |
| England & Wales Non-Conformist Burials, surname Kolbe | Seven burials, all German Lutheran Found | TNA RG 4/4631, one duplicated in RG 4/4630. Charles Samuel d. 1807 aged 1y 10d; Frederick Charles d. 1809 aged 4y 6w; Frederica Carolina d. 1814 aged 11 months; MARY d. 2 Aug 1814 aged 46; MRS MARY d. 15 Aug 1824 aged 36; JOHN HENRY d. 13 Apr 1832 aged 32. TWO WIVES, BOTH CALLED MARY. |
| England & Wales Non-Conformist BAPTISMS, surname Kolbe | Nothing, and the set may not exist here Nothing | RG 4/4627 and RG 4/4629, the German Lutheran baptism registers, were not found on FindMyPast under any dataset name tried — a search for ANY surname with the keyword “German Lutheran” in that set returns nothing, so the set is absent rather than the name. THE THREE MISSING SONS ARE PROBABLY IN THEM. |
| Westminster Burials, surname Kolbe | The 1845 burial, with a church name Found | JOHN GOTTLOB KOLBE — died 18 Nov 1845, buried 26 Nov 1845 at ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET, page 7, year of birth 1764. The tree said the German church of the Savoy, entry 55, grave 7. The date and the seven match; the church does not. |
| Old Bailey Court Records, surname Kolbe | One trial, and a brother speaking Found | Two rows in a 154-row surname sweep, nearly scrolled past. Trial t18190113-149, 13 January 1819: Richard Kerr indicted for stealing a coat worth six pounds from JOHN HENRY KOLBE, who deposes “MY FATHER IS A TAILOR, AND LIVES IN CHURCH-STREET, SOHO”. The full text is free at oldbaileyonline.org and always was. |
| Westminster Baptisms — the county set, not the FamilySearch index | 13 entries, and an ELEVENTH CHILD Found | The national index gives the place as “Westminster” and nothing finer. Westminster Archives' own registers NAME THE PARISH — St Anne Soho for Elizabeth, Charles, George Augustus, Frederick Charles, Charles Samuel and Jane Day; St James Piccadilly for Juliet Rosinia, Mary Ann and John Henry. AND THEY HOLD LOUISA MARIA KOLBE, BORN 13 MAY 1810, BAPTISED 4 JULY 1810 AT ST ANNE'S SOHO, father John Gottlob, mother Mary — who is not in the FamilySearch index at all. |
| Westminster Marriages, surname Kolbe | Two marriages nobody had Found | ELIZABETH KOLBE AND JOHN MILNE, 1817, ST CLEMENT DANES, both of that parish. JOHN HENRY KOLBE AND MATILDA FORD, 26 APRIL 1819, ST MARGARET WESTMINSTER, both of that parish — THREE MONTHS AFTER HE STOOD IN THE OLD BAILEY, and he was eighteen. |
| The GRO marriage index, surname Kolbe, London 1825–1875 | Four, two of them new Found | JANE DAY KOLBE, 1853 Q3, City of London, vol AM 1170 p.33 — the youngest of the eleven, married at thirty-four. MARY ANN MARIA FORD KOLBE, 1847 Q1, Whitechapel, vol AZ 840 p.16 — and FORD IS MATILDA'S MAIDEN NAME, carried as a forename. Very probably John Henry's daughter, and written down as the inference it is. Also Maria Kolbe 1838 Stepney and Amelia Ann Kolbe 1854 St Pancras, the latter already held. |
FindMyPast — the 21st Light Dragoons, and a regiment indexed four ways
item 79 of the FindMyPast campaign · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| British Army Service Records, surname Mountjoy, no year | Read wrongly at first Nothing | Every visible result is 1914–20, which reads as “this is the First World War set”. It is a composite. A year filter proves it, and without one the answer would have been a false negative dressed as a wrong period. |
| Regiment = “21st Dragoons” | 342 records, WO 22, WO 23, WO 121 Nothing | All pension series. NO WO 97 AT ALL. A negative against this string alone would have been worthless. |
| Regiment = “21st Regt Of Light Dragoons” | 128 records, WO 97 only, 1793–1813 Found | THE STRING THAT MATTERS, and it was found by testing seven guesses at the regiment name rather than accepting the first that returned rows. |
| Regiment = “21st Light Dragoons” and “21st Hussars” | 66 and 574 Nothing | WO 22, 23, 76, 97, 121, 131. Swept for completeness. |
| All four strings swept in full — 1,110 records | No Mountjoy in any spelling Nothing | Not Mountjoy, Montjoy, Monjoy, Mountjoye or Montjoie. The alphabetical run through the Ms goes Martin to Morrison in one sweep and Moses straight to Napier in the other. |
| Controls: WO 23/136 (1806–07) and WO 23/147 (1817–26) | 18 and 12 men of the regiment Found | Mark Allen to Jno Warnsnop; Jno Allen to Adam Ross. James Mountjoy's own window at the Cape is indexed and populated. |
| Pre-1860 Mountjoys in the whole set | Eighteen, none of them his regiment Nothing | 36th Foot (WO 97/533, WO 23/39, WO 22/61, WO 22/106), 44th Foot (WO 23/140, WO 121/72, WO 23/40, WO 22/10), 60th Foot and KRRC (WO 23/138, WO 121/171), and one WILLIAM MONTJOY, 1801, 60th Rifles, WO 121/44. |
| Why the negative is not a surprise | The series are pension series Nothing | WO 22, WO 23 and WO 121 are all Royal Hospital Chelsea pension records, and FindMyPast's WO 97 for this regiment stops at 1813. A man discharged at the Cape after that who stayed and set up as a saddler would never enter any of them. |
| What the WO 97 string actually resolves to | “Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1760–1913” Nothing | THE EXACT SERIES THIS ARCHIVE NAMED AS THE ANSWER TO QUESTION 12, fully indexed with BIRTH PARISH, BIRTH TOWN, BIRTH COUNTY, BIRTH COUNTRY, AGE AT ATTESTATION and DATE OF ATTESTATION. Its 128 men of the regiment attested between 1793 and 1813, and the distribution peaks where his enlistment would fall — 35 in 1800, 25 in 1799, 10 in 1801, 9 in 1805. Born England 95, Ireland 26, Scotland 2, Wales 2, and one each Switzerland, Germany, unspecified. THE SENTENCE THIS ARCHIVE WANTS IS AVAILABLE FOR 128 OTHER MEN AND NOT FOR HIM. |
FindMyPast — four more negatives, and a citation of this archive's own that does not open
items 82, 83, 84 and 86 of the FindMyPast campaign · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Margaret Downing, born London 23 Feb 1803 | Not in any London register Nothing | Control: 28 Downing baptisms in London 1801–1807, 14 in Westminster's own registers 1798–1810, 239 Downings in Westminster Baptisms overall. NO MARGARET IN 1803. The nearest name is Margaret Mary Elisabeth, Chelsea, 1807. |
| Margaret Downing in the Roman Catholic banns of St Patrick's, Soho Square | Rejected Nothing | Two streets from the Kolbes' own door, which is why it was checked. Banns dated 22 September 1861, groom Henry Shea. Not her. |
| John Barry buried at St Hilda's, Bilsdale, 3 January 1853 | Does not exist Nothing | Control: FindMyPast's Yorkshire Burials holds 5,934 BILSDALE burials from the Ryedale FHS transcripts, with entries at 1849, 1851, 1857, 1859 and through the 1860s. BARRYS AMONG THEM: ZERO. Barry baptisms at Bilsdale: zero. Barry burials elsewhere in Yorkshire: 771. Barry burials anywhere in Yorkshire in 1853: one, at Sheffield, no forename. John Barry burials in Yorkshire, all years: 66, running 1837 then 1856. |
| John Augustus Barry, a Cork baptism to a mother “born Neagle” | Nothing in the Catholic registers Nothing | Control: 12,273 Cork Roman Catholic baptisms for 1818 alone; 71 John Barry baptisms in Cork 1816–1820. John Barry baptisms in ALL Ireland with a mother surnamed Nagle: four — 1811, 1845, 1860, 1876. None between 1816 and 1820. Under Neagle or Nagel: none. LIMIT: this tests the Catholic registers only, and Cork's Church of Ireland registers largely burnt in 1922. |
| The four South African surnames | FindMyPast is thin here, as expected Nothing | Barry 814, Booysen 126, Kolbe 37, Booyens 27, Mountjoy 9, BOOYZEN 0, DASCHNER 0. Almost all of it is British records about South Africa: passenger lists leaving the UK, Boer War prisoner lists, British newspaper notices. |
| R_177176049779, cited here for Petrus Jacobus Booysen's 1812 birth | THE REFERENCE DOES NOT OPEN Nothing | Recorded once from a search run without a subscription and never seen. Opened twice on a live full subscription: FindMyPast's own transcript page returns a 500 error both times. A reference cited and unread is exactly what this archive corrects other people for. |
| Three David Schalk Booysens, prisoners of war, 1901 | A lead and not yet a finding Nothing | TNA WO 108/368, list of Boer prisoners 1–32561. Aged 53 of Pretoria and Boksburg; aged 41 of VAALBANK, LICHTENBURG; aged 33 of KAPSTEINKOP, CRADOCK. All sent to Cape Town and Natal. Two of the three sit on this family's own ground — but this archive has already shown David Schalk is a van der Merwe name before it is a Booysen one. |
The London Gazette, searched again with the dates widened
the loose end from the FindMyPast sweep · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| thegazette.co.uk, text=Kolbe, 1815–1850 | Five notices, four of them new Found | The free Atom feed at /all-notices/notice/data.feed returns the OCR text with the search term highlighted. THIS ARCHIVE FOUND THE 1836 NOTICE MONTHS AGO AND NEVER RAN THE SAME SEARCH AGAIN WITH THE DATES WIDENED. The other four had been sitting there the whole time. |
| 12 May 1824, issue 18027 p.796 | Father and son, Church Street Soho Found | “the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTLOB KOLBE AND JOHN HENRY KOLBE, OF CHURCH-STREET, SOHO, in the County of Middlesex, TAILORS, was this day dissolved.” A third independent source for the Soho address, after the rate books and the son's own deposition. |
| 9 October and 16 November 1824, issues 18069 p.1668 and 18080 p.1900 | The son in the insolvent debtors' lists Found | Petitions to be heard at Portugal-Street, Lincoln's-Inn Fields, Friday 5 November 1824. “KOLBE, JOHN HENRY (SUED AS HENRY KOLBE), FORMERLY OF NO. 22, NORFOLK-STREET, MIDDLESEX-HOSPITAL, AND LATE OF NO. 4, MANSFIELD-PLACE.” He was twenty-four, and his stepmother had died that August. |
| 21 March 1845, issue 20455 p.930 | A partner nobody knew about, eight months before the death Found | “the Copartnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, JOHN GOTLIEB KOLBE AND RICHARD DAVIES, OF CONDUIT-STREET, BOND-STREET, TAILORS, has been dissolved by mutual consent.” Still calling himself a tailor in March 1845; dead in November; “Esq. of Brunswick-square” in December 1844. |
| The same search for the other four surnames, 1800–1920 | Run, and empty Nothing | MONTJOY: 14 hits, every one of them the chancery cause list “Lord Montjoy v. Duchess of Buckinghamshire”, reprinted annually from 1877 to 1911. MOUNTJOY: 378 hits, all English — a service reservoir at Durham, solicitors at Cardiff, a bankrupt at Cinderford, Colonel Mountjoy Martyn. BOOYZEN: 0. DASCHNER: 0. BOOYSEN: 6, all of them the Booysen Land and Mining Company, wound up in 1895. NOTHING OF THIS FAMILY. Control: the same feed, same date range, returned the five Kolbe notices, so the search works. |
FindMyPast — the censuses finish open question 6
the last item of the FindMyPast campaign's first day · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Barry in the 1841 census, Yorkshire (North Riding) | 50, and none at Bilsdale Nothing | Whitby 22, Scarborough 13, Brompton 10, Allerston 2, Lythe 2, Fylingdales 1. Registration districts Whitby 25, Scarborough 23, Pickering 2. NOTHING IN THE HELMSLEY DISTRICT, which is the district Bilsdale is in. |
| Barry in the 1851 census, Yorkshire (North Riding) | 52, and none at Bilsdale Nothing | Ruswarp 8, Whitby 7, Sneaton 7, Brompton 10, Easingwold 4, Fylingdales 3, Hinderwell 2, Great Smeaton 2, Lythe 1, Eston 1, Filey 1. Districts Whitby 26, Scarborough 17, Easingwold 4, Guisborough 3, Northallerton 2. AGAIN NOTHING AT HELMSLEY. |
| The only John Barry born 1796 in the North Riding | FOUND, and he is nothing like the tree Found | JOHN BARRY, SHIP OWNER, SHIP YARDS, RUSWARP, WHITBY. 1841: HO107/1265 book 11 folio 38 page 4 schedule 1116, head, aged 45, with Jno, Mary, Ann and Catharine. 1851: HO107/2374 folio 563 page 12 line 6 schedule 46, head, married, aged 55, born Whitby, with Mary b.1809, Catherine b.1832, Elizabeth b.1836. THE SAME HOUSE TEN YEARS APART, and alive in the spring of 1851. |
| Holly Bower, Bilsdale | No Barry there in either census Nothing | The farm the profile names. Nothing. |
| A note on how the place filter behaves | Recorded for the next session Found | FindMyPast's KeywordsPlace filter is SCORED, NOT FILTERED — a search for Barry at Bilsdale returns 112 rows of Barrys anywhere, ranked. Parish, SubDistrict and RegistrationDistrict are not filterable on the census sets at all. COUNTY IS, and “Yorkshire (North Riding)” cuts 3,255 Barrys to 52. That is the field to use. |
FindMyPast — the Boer prisoner-of-war list, WO 108/368
the last FindMyPast item of the day · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Kolbe in Prisoners of War 1715–1945, South Africa | Six men, each with a farm Found | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE of WAKKERSTROOM, 40, a Transvaaler, folio 709 — ALREADY IDENTIFIED ON THIS SITE FROM THE GRAVESTONES as George Augustus Kolbe of Burgersdorp, born 2 October 1861; the folio number is all this sweep added. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE of Sterkfontein, Bethulie, 32, a Free Stater, folio 581. ANDRIES FREDERICK KOLBE of LEEUWBERG, Bloemfontein, 45, folio 431. Williem Johannes of Panfontein, 54, folio 603. Ian Henry of Linberg, 51, folio 294. Pietrus Emelius Strucker of Bossiespan, Fauresmith, 24, folio 381. FIVE OF THE SIX ARE IN THE SOUTHERN FREE STATE, which is the country the Settler preached in. |
| Booysen and Booyens in the same set | 54 and 20 Found | Including three DAVID SCHALK BOOYSENS — aged 53 of Pretoria and Boksburg, aged 41 of VAALBANK, LICHTENBURG, and aged 33 of KAPSTEINKOP, CRADOCK, the last recorded as a British Subject. Also a PETRUS JACOBUS BOOYSEN, 27, of Pretoria and Pietersberg — right name, wrong generation, recorded so that he is not later mistaken for the one this archive holds. |
| Mountjoy in the same set | Nothing in South Africa Nothing | Zero. The only Mountjoy anywhere in the set is B L Mountjoy, Great Britain, 1944. |
| A transcription rule that will cost somebody a day | Recorded Found | This index renders JAN AS “IAN”, systematically — Ian Henry Kolbe, Ian Gert Booysen, Ian Lodewyk Booysen, Ian Jonathan Booysen, Ian Adriaan Booyens. A SEARCH FOR JAN RETURNS NOTHING. It also writes Willem as Williem and Petrus as Pietrus. Search the surname and read down. |
FamilySearch — the Savoy German Lutheran baptism register
item 87, the last three Kolbe sons · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| FamilySearch personas API, Kolbe, London 1806–1820 | Useless for this Nothing | The API is SCORED, NOT FILTERED — an exact-surname request returned 71,076 results led by Colby, Colbert and Kolbes in Maryland. It ranks; it does not restrict. Recorded so the next session does not spend an hour on it. |
| FamilySearch catalogue, keyword “Savoy German Lutheran” | THE REGISTER EXISTS AND IS FILMED Found | koha:176759 — “Church records of German Lutheran Church, 1694–1840”, German Lutheran Church (Savoy, Westminster), filmed 1967 from the originals at the Public Record Office. Text in German, ALL VOLUMES HAVE A NAME INDEX. Three films: DGS 8004264 (births and baptisms 1694–1840, marriages to 1754, burials to 1771 — 537 images), DGS 8087181 (deaths and burials 1722–1840, baptisms by family 1719–1782), DGS 8220012 (a 1986 refilming). |
| Opening film 008004264 on a signed-in account | EVERY ONE OF THE 537 IMAGES IS PADLOCKED Nothing | Not some of them — image 1 to image 537. Digitised and withheld: viewable only inside a FamilySearch Center or an affiliate library, because the custodian is The National Archives. A SEVENTH KIND OF SHUT DOOR: photographed, catalogued, counted and locked by contract. |
| The catalogue search URL that works | Recorded Found | /search/catalog/results?q.keywords=… . The ?q.text= form returns “Something Went Wrong”, and the JSON endpoint rejects q.text with “Unable to map supplied value=text to query term”. |
FindMyPast — the British and Irish newspapers, 108 million pages
the biggest untouched seam in the subscription · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| “Kolbe” + “Conduit-street”, 1832–1836 | KOLBE AND FLETCHER IN THE 1834 MASTER TAILORS' LIST Found | The roll of “considerably more than three hundred of the Master Tailors of the metropolis” who met at Willis's Rooms on 29 April 1834 to resist the Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union. Printed in the Morning Post 30 Apr, Globe 30 Apr and 10 May, Old England 4 May, Morning Herald 10 May, London Courier 10 May, True Sun 10 May, Public Ledger 12 May. SEVEN NEWSPAPERS, ONE LINE — and it puts him at Conduit Street by April 1834, closing the gap between the 1831 rate book and the 1836 Gazette notice. |
| “Kolbe” + “tailor”, 1820–1850 | 150 articles, and the son's trade Found | Law Chronicle, 13 January 1825: “KOLBE John Henry, of Norfolk-street, Middlesex-hospital, LAST OF MANSFIELD-ST., KENTISH TOWN, TAILOR, DRAPER.” The Gazette gave the addresses and not the trade, and “Mansfield-Place” turns out to be Mansfield Street, Kentish Town. |
| “Kolbe” + “Soho”, 1795–1832 | 45 articles, a house number and a runaway Found | Morning Herald, 6 June 1832: “Letters addressed A. Z., MR. KOLBE, 5, CHURCH-STREET, SOHO, will be punctually attended to” — the rate books give the street, this gives the number. AND Morning Advertiser, 31 December 1832: “LEFT HIS HOME, MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, FREDERICK KOLBE, ABOUT 16, dark hair and eyes, with an impediment in his sight. Any information addressed MRS. KOLBE, NO. 18, GERRARD-STREET, SOHO.” That is the Frederick this archive rejected in the morning — so THERE WERE TWO KOLBE HOUSEHOLDS IN SOHO AT ONCE. |
| The May 1824 dissolution | Reported in at least six London papers Found | The News 23 and 24 May, New Times 17 May, Nation 17 May, Globe 17 May, Sunday Morning Herald 16 May, Fleming's Weekly Express 16 May: “J. H. Kolbe and J. G. Kolbe, Church-street, Soho, tailors.” ALL OF THEM PUT THE SON'S NAME FIRST, where the Gazette put the father's. |
| “Nautilus” + “settlers”, 1819–1821 | The Settler's ship, named before it sailed Found | London Courier and Evening Gazette, 12 November 1819, and the British Press the next day: “the Ministers are preparing to receive Settlers proceeding to the Cape of Good Hope. In the Port of London — Chapman, 558 tons; NAUTILUS, 403; Agamemnon, Diadem, and Ocean.” |
| “Mountjoy” + “Cradock” | 488 articles, every one a coincidence Nothing | The engine is proximity-ranked rather than strictly AND, and Mountjoy Square and Mountjoy Place in Dublin swamp it. Nothing of this family. Recorded because the count looks like a find and is not one. |
| What the newspaper engine is, for the next session | Recorded Found | Operation searchNewspaperArticles on the same GraphQL endpoint. Variables: filters.keywordsFilter (a string, quoted phrases honoured), filters.namesFilter, filters.exactKeywords, filterQuery.publicationDate {from,to}, filterQuery.coverageCountry — WHICH INDEXES BRITISH PAPERS BY THE COUNTRY THEY REPORT ON, not where they were printed. pagination {startFrom, rows}, ordering {by: RELEVANCE|DATE, direction}. 108,257,031 pages, 2,952 titles. THE COVERAGE_COUNTRY FACET HAS NOT YET BEEN USED AND IS THE OBVIOUS NEXT MOVE FOR THE CAPE. |
| “Kolbe” + “Colesberg” and “Kolbe” + commando, 1900–1902 | A Kolbe commando, and a general captured Found | May 1901: “Kritzinger, with 200 men, has passed through this district. The HERTZOG, BRAND AND KOLBE commandos…” — London Evening Standard, Globe and Westminster Gazette 21 May, Leominster News 24 May. September: “KOLBE'S ATTITUDE IS DOUBTFUL. He is reported to have expressed a wish to surrender” — Derby Daily Telegraph and Derby and Chesterfield Reporter. November: “GENERAL KOLBE CAPTURED” near Reddersburg — Birmingham Mail 21 Nov, Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser 23 Nov. COLESBERG, BETHULIE, REDDERSBURG, BLOEMFONTEIN IS LEEUWBERG COUNTRY, and 1901 is when Commandant Kolbe's sons would have been commanding. NOT CLAIMED AS ANY NAMED MAN. |
| “G. A. Kolbe”, 1910–1920 | PRESIDENT OF THE ORANGE FREE STATE AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION Found | Daily Telegraph 26 June 1914, the delegate list: “Mr. G. A. KOLBE (BETHULIE)”. Western Daily Press, Dundee Courier, Cork Free Press and Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2 July 1914: “Mr G. A. KOLBE, President of the Orange Free State Agricultural Association and Chairman of the Orange Free State delegation.” Daily Malta Chronicle, 22 July: he sends a telegram of respectful greeting to QUEEN WILHELMINA. Same initials and same district as the POW of 1901, thirteen years apart. |
| The coverage facet, and the limit it shows | NO SOUTH AFRICA AT ALL Nothing | FindMyPast's own COVERAGE_COUNTRY facet lists England, Scotland, Wales, both Irelands, India, Barbados, China, Jamaica, Australia and New Zealand. THERE IS NO SOUTH AFRICAN TITLE IN THE CORPUS. Everything found above is the Cape and the Free State seen from Fleet Street through Reuter's wire. It is not a substitute for the South African papers and eGGSA remains the only route into those. |
| “21st Light Dragoons” + “Cape”, 1806–1825 | 258 articles, and the regiment at the Cape Found | London Courier and Evening Gazette, 2 January 1812: “CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. The 21st Light Dragoons are in the highest state of discipline. The following is a Copy of General Orders given [by] SIR JOHN CRADOCK, after reviewing that regiment…” — James Mountjoy's regiment, at the Cape, reviewed by the Governor whose name the town he settled in carries. NOT YET READ IN FULL. |
The 21st Light Dragoons at the Cape, read in the London papers
the oldest blocking question, approached from the other end · searched 16 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| “21st Light Dragoons” + “Cape of Good Hope”, 1806–1825 | 67 articles, read in date order Found | Not a search for a Mountjoy. A search for the REGIMENT, which can be followed where the man cannot. Sorting is ordering:{by:'PUBLICATION_DATE'} — 'DATE' returns a 400. |
| When they arrived | May 1806, from York by way of Portsmouth Found | Bath Journal 5 May, Limerick Gazette 6 May, Hampshire Chronicle 19 May 1806. Part of them went on to SOUTH AMERICA in August 1806 (Caledonian Mercury) and came back to the Cape in 1807 (Government Gazette (India), 10 December). |
| Reinforcements | October 1810 and a draft of 140 men in October 1813 Found | Oxford Journal 27 Oct 1810: “a large reinforcement of officers and men are to be sent out by the first ship.” Star 26 Oct 1813: “a detachment of 140 men for the 21st Light Dragoons… embarked for the Cape of Good Hope.” THREE POSSIBLE ARRIVAL WINDOWS FOR HIM, all now dated. |
| WHEN THEY LEFT | SEPTEMBER 1817 — AND HE MARRIED IN MARCH Found | Extract of a letter from the Cape dated 1 and 10 September 1817, printed in the Sun and Star 14 November, Public Ledger and Morning Herald 15 November, Hampshire Chronicle 17 November: “THE 21ST LIGHT DRAGOONS HAVE EMBARKED FOR INDIA.” JAMES MONTJOY MARRIED AT GRAAFF-REINET ON 9 MARCH 1817. His discharge now has a deadline. |
| Why a man would take his discharge | Parliament said it out loud Found | Globe, 4 March 1809: “it was thought an unaccountable circumstance, that the 21st light dragoons should [be] sent to the Cape of Good Hope, WHERE THEY COULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO.” Eleven years of garrison duty and one review — by SIR JOHN CRADOCK, who gave his name to the town Mountjoy settled in. |
| Two things that are not evidence and are worth knowing | Recorded Nothing | The regiment's colonel was GENERAL BANASTRE TARLETON (Sun, 9 November 1812). And a detachment of about 100 of them was at ST HELENA guarding Napoleon in October 1817 (Star, Oxford Journal, Belfast News-Letter). |
| What it does not do | It does not name him Nothing | No Mountjoy appears in any of the 67 articles. WO 97 still holds none of that regiment, and the reason still stands — the pre-1855 discharge papers hold only men discharged TO A PENSION. WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THAT THE MUSTER BOOKS NOW HAVE A TARGET: WO 12 at Kew lists every man by name, quarter by quarter, and the quarters that matter are 1806, 1810, 1813 and everything up to September 1817. |
The Kew catalogue, gone back to — and it found an error in this archive's own letter
the errand named on 15 September, checked before it was posted · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The full WO 12 run for the 21st Light Dragoons | TWELVE PIECES, AND ONE OF THEM IS THE ERRAND Found | Discovery sps.recordSeries=WO 12: WO 12/1441 (1779), 1442 (1798–1800), 1443 (1801–02), 1444 (1803), 1445 (1804), 1446 (1805–06), 1447 (1807–09), 1448 (1810–12), 1449 (1813–15), WO 12/1450 (1816–17), 1451 (1818), 1452 (1819–20), then nothing until 1863 because the regiment was disbanded in 1820 and re-raised. WO 12/1450 IS THE SINGLE PIECE THAT COVERS HIS DISCHARGE — held at Kew, no access conditions recorded. |
| WO 12/1430, the piece this archive put in a letter to Kew | WRONG BY FIFTY YEARS Nothing | Discovery gives it as “20TH AND 21ST DRAGOONS, 1867–1868”. It is the re-raised regiment, not the one that garrisoned the Cape. The letter was drafted on 15 September and never sent; the piece has been corrected in the draft and the draft now says in terms that an earlier version had it wrong. |
| Soldiers' description books for the regiment | NOT FOUND, AND THE NEGATIVE IS QUALIFIED Nothing | WO 25 searched for the regiment returns 28 documents and every one is an OFFICER — services of officers, not description books of men. That may mean no description book for the 21st survives, or that the books are catalogued by piece without the regiment in the title. THIS ARCHIVE CANNOT TELL WHICH FROM HERE, and the Kew letter now asks rather than asserts. |
| The departure date, checked against the catalogue | 1817, not 1816 — and the error was in three files Found | The 15 September rows said the regiment left the Cape in 1816. On 16 September five London papers dated the embarkation for India to a letter of 1 and 10 SEPTEMBER 1817. The catalogue does not settle it either way — WO 12/1450 covers 1816–1817 as one piece — but the newspapers are five independent printings of one dispatch and the 1816 figure had no source at all. Corrected in searched.json, worklist.json and letters.json. |
| A control on the search itself | 733 documents under the catalogue's own spelling Found | The regiment is indexed “21st Dragoons (Light)” and not “21st Light Dragoons” — first found on 15 September and still true. Searched that way the API returns 733 records; WO 97 entries come back as full lives, e.g. “THOMAS ANDERSON Born BISHOPWEARMOUTH, Northumberland, Served in 21st Dragoons (Light), Discharged aged 44, 1799–1818”. THE FIELD THIS ARCHIVE WANTS IS IN THE TITLE OF EVERY ONE OF THEM, for ninety-five other men. |
The whole English Kolbe family, counted rather than sampled
FindMyPast, with 29 days left on the subscription · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Surname KOLBE in the 1841 census, England Wales and Scotland | FOUR, AND THEY ARE ONE HOUSEHOLD Found | John G b.1765, Marianne b.1806, Charlotte b.1811, Amelia A b.1816 — all at St George Hanover Square. THE CONDUIT STREET HOUSEHOLD WAS THE ENTIRE SURNAME IN BRITAIN, not merely the part this archive holds. |
| The same search, 1851 / 1861 / 1871 | 1 / 1 / 7 Nothing | 1851: J Kolbe b.1826, LAMBETH — none of the four. 1861: John Kolbe b.1836, St Marylebone. 1871: seven, a later arrival. A variants search is useless here — it fuzzes to Colbey and Kilby and returns 14,245. |
| Every KOLBE death registered in England and Wales, 1837–1867 | FOUR Found | John Gottlob 1845 St George Hanover Square · George 1848 Westminster St Margaret · Elizabeth 1852 Strand · CHARLOTTE 1867 LAMBETH. And the one Kolbe in the whole 1851 census is at Lambeth too. |
| Every KOLBE marriage registered in England and Wales, 1837–1867 | FOUR Found | Maria 1838 Stepney · Mary Ann Maria Ford 1847 Whitechapel · JANE DAY 1853 City of London · AMELIA ANN 1854 St Pancras. EIGHT CIVIL RECORDS FOR A WHOLE SURNAME IN THIRTY YEARS. |
| What the two tables say together | THE 1851 BLANK IS THE RECORD FAILING, NOT THE FAMILY ENDING Found | Three women vanish from the census between 1841 and 1851 and at least two were alive after it — Amelia Ann married in 1854 and a Charlotte died at Lambeth in 1867. A CENSUS ABSENCE READS LIKE AN EXTINCTION AND IS VERY OFTEN AN INDEXING ACCIDENT. This archive learned the same thing about itself the same morning, from the other side. |
| And the thing that got harder | The three women match no baptism in the family's run Nothing | Their 1841 ages, rounded down to the nearest five, put them born about 1802–06, 1807–11 and 1812–16 — in and around the gaps at 1808–1812 and 1814–1818, WHICH ARE THE SAME GAPS THE THREE MISSING SONS MUST SIT IN. The 1841 census records no relationships; that column begins in 1851. THEIR PLACE IN THIS FAMILY IS AN INFERENCE FROM LIVING IN THE HOUSE and is now marked as one on all three records. |
The Burgersdorp register finished — images 605 to 818, and the API that replaced the eye
the standing errand of this project, stopped twice since 14 September · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Film 008039088, images 605–818 | 2,046 BAPTISMS, 1858–1866, NO IMAGE SKIPPED Found | 191 in 1859, 309 in 1860, 279 in 1861, 212 in 1862, 325 in 1863, 273 in 1864, 328 in 1865, 123 in 1866. 391 DISTINCT PARENT SURNAMES — Kruger 160, du Plessis 131, Venter 117, Fourie 105, de Klerk 104 at the head of it. A complete slice of one Karoo town across eight years. |
| Can the personas API sweep a film — tested properly this time | NO, AND HERE IS THE PROOF Nothing | q.filmNumber ALONE returns 22,059. q.filmNumber + q.surname=Barry returns 6,852,654 — WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT q.surname=Barry RETURNS ON ITS OWN. The film filter is not weakened when another term joins it; IT IS DISCARDED. A nonsense surname with the film still returns 77,556. So the film cannot be partitioned by name or date to get round the 1000-offset wrap, and there is NO API ROUTE TO A WHOLE FILM. |
| What replaced the hand sweep | POST /search/filmdatainfo/image-data Found | The endpoint behind the viewer's own Image Index panel. Takes an image ARK, returns every indexed record on that image as GEDCOM-X with child, both parents, birth and baptism dates, place, AND A FULL CITATION WITH THE RECORD ARK. The per-image ARKs come out of the thumbnail strip. 214 images in about ten minutes instead of 214 screenshots. |
| THE OFF-BY-ONE THAT WOULD HAVE SHIFTED EVERY ROW | Caught before any data was read Found | THE VIEWER'S IMAGE NUMBER IS ONE MORE THAN THE URL'S ?i= — ?i=604 displays as “Image 605 of 818”. The thumbnail labels are display numbers, so a map built from the strip is 1-based while the API wants the 0-based i. FOUR KNOWN ARKS WERE CHECKED AGAINST FOUR ACTUAL NAVIGATIONS before the sweep began. Getting it wrong shifts every row by one page and nothing anywhere says so. |
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, image 637 | ALREADY HELD — CONFIRMED, NOT DISCOVERED Found | She has been in this archive for days as a daughter of George Mountjoy and Maria Sophia Botha, baptised on a leap day, who married William Henry Keys — one of the thirteen Mountjoy children. THE SWEEP REACHED HER FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION and returns the same two dates, 1:1:6FHW-89ND, image 637. That is a confirmation and a citable reference. THE FIRST WRITE-UP OF THIS SWEEP CALLED HER A NEW CHILD; the duplicate person record it created was caught by the build's own name-collision check before it reached a page. |
| George Augustus Kolbe, image 685 | THE MAN ON THE WAKKERSTROOM STONE GETS PARENTS Found | Born 2 OCTOBER 1861, baptised 12 January 1862 at Burgersdorp, father G. A. KOLBE, mother ANNA MARIA VILJOEN — 1:1:6FWF-YVJT. Yesterday this archive identified him from a gravestone and from the age on WO 108/368 folio 709, and wrote that the descent was not documented. IT IS NOW DOCUMENTED ONE GENERATION BACK. Two younger siblings in the same book: ANNA JOHANNA 1863 and PETRUS JACOBUS 1865. WHETHER THE FATHER IS THE SETTLER'S TWIN SON IS NOT CLAIMED. |
| Fredrik Fortunatus Steenkamp Werdmuller, image 673 | A SENTENCE WITHDRAWN — HE IS AUGUSTA LOUISA’S SON Found | This archive held a FREDERICK FORTUNATUS WERDMULLER from a 1907 Cape Supreme Court petition and a 1953 estate, with no birth, no parents, and a line reading “NOT SHOWN TO BE HER DESCENDANT”. Image 673 shows it: born 25 April 1861, baptised 19 May, father C.J.O. WERDMULLER, mother AUGUSTA LOUISA KOLBE — 1:1:6FW6-WXGS. The Settler's fourth daughter gave her child her brother's name. AND IT DATES HER: she was bearing his children in 1861, thirteen years before his second marriage. ONE STEP NOT TAKEN — the 1907 man is of MALMESBURY and the child was baptised at BURGERSDORP, and nothing read here joins them. |
| Blank Name columns in the 2,046 | TWO, AND NEITHER IS OURS Nothing | Image 666, baptised 17 February 1861, only parent named Fredrica Geertruida Elizabeth Kezar. Image 792, baptised 27 August 1865, only parent named Francina Helena Magda Steenkamp. THAT FAILURE IS THE WHOLE REASON THIS REGISTER HAD TO BE SWEPT RATHER THAN SEARCHED — it is what hid Catherine Mary Sophia Barry in 1855. |
| Two Booysen couples at image 691 | NOT THIS FAMILY, AND RECORDED SO Nothing | Jacobus Alewyn, born 5 January 1862 to Andries Johannes Daniel Kruger and CORNELIA ETRESIA BOOYSEN. Maria Helena Charlina, born 8 December 1861 to JAN JONATHAN BOOYSEN and Cornelia Margaretha de Villiers. NEITHER COUPLE IS IN THIS ARCHIVE AND NEITHER IS CLAIMED. |
| What the first write-up got wrong | TWO OF THE FIVE WERE ALREADY IN THE ARCHIVE Found | The section as first drafted called all five rows new. Johanna Catharina Mountjoy was already held in full, and Frederick Fortunatus Werdmuller was already held as a man without a birth or parents. THE BUILD CAUGHT THE FIRST — drift.py refused on a duplicate name — AND NOTHING WOULD HAVE CAUGHT THE SECOND, because it was entered under a different spelling. Both records were folded into the ones that existed and the page now says which is which. THE RULE THIS COSTS: a sweep that returns a name must be checked against the register before it is called a find, not after. |
The Natal estate index — and the family turns out to have moved to Utrecht
the two jobs parked behind the FamilySearch sign-in since 15 September · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Surname KOLBE in “South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, Estate Files 1846–1950” | SIXTY-FOUR ENTRIES Found | Reached by taking the collection id out of a persona's sourceDescriptions and passing it as f.collectionId — WHICH DOES FILTER, unlike almost everything else on that endpoint. The archive has read NONE of the sixty-four files. |
| Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe, the Settler's tenth child | A DEATH, AFTER THE RECORD CARRIED A DASH Found | “FREDERICK FORTUNABIS KOLBE, BORN 1839 KAAP PROVINSIE, DIED 23 NOVEMBER 1929 AT UTRECHT”, probate 1929 — 1:1:QLR2-XFJC. Ninety years old, on the Natal border, from a mission station on the Orange River. |
| Elizabeth Johanna du Toit, his wife | DEATH AND BIRTHPLACE, WHERE THE RECORD SAID “NOT YET FOUND” Found | “ELIZABETHA JOHANNA DU TOIT KOLBE, BORN 1845 BREDARSDORP K PROVINSIE, DIED 12 JULY 1923, SAXONY UTRECHT NATAL”, probate 1923 — 1:1:QLRL-HRQV. Seven hundred miles from the Bredasdorp she was born in, and six years before her husband. |
| The heirs on both estates | NINE CHILDREN, AND THE DAUGHTERS UNDER BOTH SURNAMES Found | George Augustus · GABRIEL STEPHANUS · MARTHA ANGELINA · Margaret Harriet Kolbe VAN DER SPUY · FREDERICK FORTUNATUS · Catharina Maria Louisa Kolbe LOUW · Elizabeth Johanna Kolbe PATTISON · Petronella Jacoba Adriana Kolbe BEUKES · Adriana Henrietta Johanna Kolbe OOSTHUIZEN. AN ESTATE FILE IS WHERE A MARRIED DAUGHTER IS WRITTEN UNDER BOTH NAMES, which is the only thing that lets her be followed. |
| The three “not followed out of the font” | ALL THREE FOLLOWED Found | GABRIEL STEPHANUS alive 1923 and 1929. MARTHA ANGELINA alive 1923 and 1929 AND STILL WRITTEN KOLBE, where five sisters are written under married names. CATHARINA MARIA LOUISA MARRIED A LOUW — 1:1:QLRL-WTBN and 1:1:QLR2-ZDB5. |
| The Angeline question | ANSWERED BY EXCLUSION Found | Martha Angelina's record warned that an ANGELINE KOLBE died at Wakkerstroom in 1900 and a MARTHA ANGELINE KOLBE was “buried at Volksrust” in 1901 aged two months, and that this archive would not guess. SHE IS NEITHER: she was alive in 1923 and 1929. The Volksrust infant now has her own dates — BORN 9 OCTOBER 1901, DIED 8 DECEMBER 1901, Transvaal civil death and BillionGraves. |
| A ninth child | FREDERICK FORTUNATUS KOLBE, BORN 1872 COLESBERG Found | Died 10 September 1944 at Vryheid, probate 1944 — 1:1:QPHZ-2361 — and named among his mother's heirs in 1923. HIS BIRTH YEAR FALLS IN THE ONE GAP IN HIS PARENTS' BAPTISM RUN, between Hopetown 1870 and Colesberg 1873. This archive's own note was careful and said EIGHT ARE IN THE REGISTERS; the ninth is not. |
| Where they all went | UTRECHT, VRYHEID AND A FARM CALLED SAXONY Found | Both parents die at Utrecht, one son at Vryheid, and the estates are at Pietermaritzburg. Utrecht and Vryheid sit either side of Wakkerstroom on the Natal–Transvaal border. THIS IS NOT THREE CHILDREN WHO HAPPENED TO MARRY IN ONE TOWN. It is a household that moved from the Orange River to the Natal border and stayed. |
| ANNA MARIA VILJOEN KOLBE, in the same index | THE OTHER BRANCH WENT THERE TOO Found | 1:1:QPHZ-23XS. She was found this morning in the Burgersdorp baptism register as the mother of the OTHER George Augustus Kolbe — the one born 2 October 1861 and buried at Wakkerstroom. BOTH KOLBE HOUSEHOLDS END UP IN THE SAME CORNER OF NATAL, and nothing yet joins them to each other. |
The death form of Henry James Booyzen, opened at last
the last of the four jobs parked behind the FamilySearch sign-in · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The civil death registration, index only | NAME, AGE, DATE — AND NO CAUSE Nothing | “South Africa, Civil Death Registration, 1953–1967”, 1:1:6Z9Q-2TFG: Henry James Booyzen, male, 69 years, born 1887 Cape Province, died 8 December 1956 Johannesburg. THE INDEX CARRIES NO CAUSE OF DEATH, which is why the question could not be settled from a search. |
| The image behind it | FILM 007751812, IMAGE 356 — AND IT IS OPEN Found | Image ARK 3:1:3Q9M-C91L-VSFR-R. A FORM OF INFORMATION OF A DEATH, provided by the National Archives of South Africa, fully legible. |
| Cause of death | COR PULMONALE WITH SILICOSIS Found | Line 12, in the doctor's hand: “Cor pulmonale with Silicosis”, and beneath it “contributing cause:- Broncho pneumonia”. Duration of last illness, line 13: two years, seven days. Medical practitioner Dr A. L. Agranat. |
| PHTHISIS | NOT THE CAUSE — IT IS ON LINE 11, THE ALLOWANCE Found | Line 11 is “Pensioner or Recipient of Maintenance Allowance” and the typed word against it is PHTHISIS. HE WAS A CERTIFIED MINERS' PHTHISIS PENSIONER. The G2G report that he “died of phthisis” read the right document and the wrong line. |
| “Coronary pulmonary sclerosis”, off the Johannesburg burial register | A MANGLING OF LINE 12 Found | Cor pulmonale became “coronary pulmonary”; silicosis became “sclerosis”. BOTH OF THIS ARCHIVE'S TWO CAUSES TRACE TO ONE SHEET OF PAPER AND NEITHER WAS RIGHT. |
| Four things the form gives that nobody had | Identity number, birth date, address, doctor Found | IDENTITY NUMBER 331-452322. DATE OF BIRTH WRITTEN AS 12-8-1887 — the fourth independent statement of it, after a family tree, a gravestone and a church register. RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 3 FIFTEENTH AVENUE, MAYFAIR, JOHANNESBURG, which is the parish where his niece married Nuno Lerena in 1949. And the informant, at 6 Jorissen Street Braamfontein, is described as “PERSON CAUSING BURIAL” — which the form distinguishes from a relative. |
| An attribution worth a second look | FamilySearch prints the dotted domain Nothing | The image attribution reads “Provided by NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF SOUTH AFRICA · www.national.archives.gov.za”. THIS ARCHIVE CORRECTED THAT EXACT DOTTED FORM ON 15 SEPTEMBER — the live domain is nationalarchives.gov.za with no dot. The correction stands; FamilySearch's own attribution carries the dead form. |
Indwe and Barkly East past 1910 — and the sweep that mostly confirmed what was here
work list item 29, standing since 15 September · searched 17 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Indwe, every family surname, Dutch Reformed collection | THE REGISTER THAT MATTERS IS THE LIDMATE ROLL Found | The two Indwe entries this archive already had — Willem Hermanus Booijzen confirmed 31 May 1907, and a Mountjoy dying in 1911 — sit in the MEMBERSHIP register, not the baptisms. That is where a colliery town's incomers are written down, and knowing which book holds your people is half of knowing where to read next. |
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy at Indwe | A JOINING DATE: 23 JULY 1907 Found | 1:1:6PR3-HNWZ. This archive had her death there in June 1911 and nothing before it. SHE JOINED SEVEN WEEKS AFTER WILLEM HERMANUS BOOIJZEN WAS CONFIRMED IN THE SAME CONGREGATION. Not relatives — neighbours, which is a fact and was not one before. |
| Barkly East, five surnames, everything dated after 1910 | THIRTY-SIX ENTRIES, AND NEARLY ALL ALREADY HELD Nothing | Checked one by one: Harriet Louisa Barry d. 7 Sep 1912 Manor Owen; Henry James Kolbe Barry, whose 23 June 1939 is already on his record; John Gerson Eliazer Barry; James Jonathan Mountjoy d. 22 Dec 1937; Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Mary Kolbe d. 2 Aug 1912 Manorowen. A SWEEP THAT RETURNS ALMOST NOTHING NEW IS A MEASUREMENT OF HOW THOROUGHLY THE GROUND WAS ALREADY WORKED. The work-list row assumed otherwise. |
| Catherine Mary Sophia Barry BAXTER | THE ONE GENUINELY NEW NAME Found | Born 1883 at Barkly East, died 18 November 1914, probate 1916 — 1:1:7JXY-LVMM. The forenames are this family's exactly; there are already two women of that name here, of 1855 and 1859. PROBABLE, NOT PROVED — nothing read here names her parents. |
| A Booysen cluster at Indwe, 1925–1932 | RECORDED AND CLAIMED BY NOBODY Nothing | Four men join that congregation — DAVID SCHALK 2 May 1925, PIET FREDERICK 14 May 1927, PETRUS JACOBUS 16 May 1931, WILLEM ADRIAAN — and three couples baptise children there. The forenames are this family's and the town is the one its miner worked in. BUT NOT ONE OF THE WIVES IS A NAME THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS, and a Booysen at a Cape colliery is not evidence of anything. |
| A near-miss that nearly went the other way | THREE LETTERS OF A FORENAME Found | A first pass matched RACHEL MARGARITA MARAIS against this archive and reported her already held. She is not. The match was the fragment “Rachel Marg” hitting RACHEL MARGARETHA WILLIAMSE, a different woman on a 1900 death notice at Pretoria. HAD IT STOOD, AN UNRELATED INDWE HOUSEHOLD WOULD HAVE BEEN WELDED TO THIS FAMILY. |
| One discrepancy, recorded and not adopted | The matriarch's birth year Nothing | The index gives “Margaret Louisa Elizabeth Kolbe Barry, birth 1831 BELIEVE Colesberg” where this archive has 1826. The hedge is the index's own word and the death date agrees to the day. 1826 STANDS until something better than a hedged index entry moves it. |
MSB 751 — the letter arrived, and it is the first thing he wrote himself
the enquiry of 15 September, answered on the third day · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does the letter carry an address at its head? | NO — “London” AND NOTHING FINER Nothing | This was the question the enquiry most hoped for. An 1844 obituary puts the family at BRUNSWICK-SQUARE; the rate books, the Gazette, the census and the burial register put him in Soho and then Conduit Street. THE LETTER DOES NOT SETTLE IT. Recorded as plainly as the finds, because a document that arrives and does not answer the question is still a result. |
| Is “LMS missionary” from the papers or from the donor? | FROM THE PAPERS, IN THE FATHER'S OWN HAND Found | “MR MILES had called at our house & informed me that YOU HAD BEEN FULLY ACCEPTED BY THE [L.M.S.] AS ONE OF THEIR MISSIONARIES”, and “DR PHILIP was exceedingly glad to hear of your being accepted”. John Philip was the LMS superintendent at the Cape and had carried the previous letter. INDEPENDENT OF JOHN MONTGOMERY'S MEMOIR, which was written down forty-five years after the fact. TWO WITNESSES TO THE MISSION, FORTY-FIVE YEARS APART. |
| What are the other pages? | The four pages ARE the letter Found | There is no second item in the collection. The catalogue's “photocopy, 4 pages” is the letter and nothing else. |
| Where is the original, and who was Dr Griffiths? | THE BACKGROUND FILE HOLDS NOTHING FURTHER Nothing | “Unfortunately the Background File does not give any further information on the donation or any other donations by Dr. Griffiths.” The whereabouts of the original is not recorded and cannot be pursued from that end. A CLEAN NEGATIVE FROM THE ONLY PLACE THAT COULD HAVE ANSWERED IT. |
| “kind love from your Sisters & brother” | THE LINE THAT DATES THE OBITUARY Found | SISTERS PLURAL, BROTHER SINGULAR, August 1830. Of the EIGHT SONS the 1844 obituary counts, EXACTLY TWO WERE ALIVE — George Augustus at the Cape and Henry in London with dropsy. HENRY DIED 13 APRIL 1832. From that day George Augustus was “the last remaining of eight sons”, and the Grahamstown Journal did not say so until December 1844. THE OBITUARY IS CORROBORATED AND THE DATE IT BECAME TRUE IS NOW KNOWN. |
| Henry, from his father's pen | DROPSY, AND “RESIGNED TO THE CATASTROPHE” Found | This archive had John Henry Kolbe's font, his 1819 Old Bailey deposition, his 1819 marriage, his 1824 bankruptcy and his 1832 burial. IT NOW HAS HIS ILLNESS AND HIS FATHER'S GRIEF, twenty months before the end. |
| Elizabeth Kolbe, who married John Milne in 1817 | SHE IS BETSEY AND SHE LIVES IN EDINBURGH Found | “MILNE with ELIZABETH & family had transferred their residence to EDINBURGH… BETSEY likes the situation very well.” Four days ago she was a line in the Westminster marriage index. A NICKNAME IS SOMETHING NO REGISTER EVER GIVES. |
| Charlotte Kolbe | AN INFERENCE NO LONGER Found | On 17 September this archive marked Marianne, Charlotte and Amelia of the 1841 Conduit Street household as INFERRED daughters, because they matched no baptism and the 1841 census records no relationships. “CHARLOTTE SENDS YOU AN EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE.” Her record moves from inf to doc. MARIANNE AND AMELIA ARE STILL INFERRED. |
| What else is in it | A suit of black clothes, two kings and a baboon Found | “A SUIT OF BLACK CLOTHES, hope they may be wide enough for you, as I understand that you are stout as long” — clerical black for a newly accepted missionary — with a sash, a waistcoat and last year's newspapers. The death of GEORGE IV on 26 June and WILLIAM IV “a King after the people's heart”. The FRENCH REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 as three-week-old news. And a request that his son ask the Society whether a baboon story in a magazine called THE MIRROR is true. |
| An unasked-for second document | A DSAB ENTRY BY DR KAREL SCHOEMAN — NOT YET READ Nothing | Two pages written for the DICTIONARY OF SOUTH AFRICAN BIOGRAPHY, found in the Background File, by Dr Karel Schoeman of the National Library, WITH A LIST OF BRONNE (SOURCES). It is a secondary work, but Schoeman was a serious historian and the source list is the useful part. THIS ARCHIVE HAS NOT READ IT. |
| Can the marriage of Miss Mary Field to Mr Bellew, a surgeon, be found? | NO — AND THE NEGATIVE IS CONTROLLED SIX WAYS Nothing | The letter of 23 August 1830 says “the eldest, Miss Mary, THAT WAS, has married a MR BELLEW, A SURGEON”, so the marriage is before that date. FindMyPast, using the SpouseLastName filter with a nonsense-value control returning 0: FIELD × BELLEW RETURNS ONE RECORD IN THE WHOLE LIFE EVENTS COLLECTION AND IT IS 1854 AT STEPNEY — twenty-four years too late. Exact spellings BELLEW, BELLOW, BALLEW, BELEW, BELLEWE and BELLOWS, each against 1823–1835: ALL ZERO. Widened to 1814–1844: STILL ZERO. The variants engine is worse than useless — it collapses Bellew into Bell, Boyle and Balow and returns 1,724 rows. EITHER THE MARRIAGE IS OUTSIDE FINDMYPAST’S LONDON COVERAGE, OR A SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD MAN MISSPELLED A SURNAME HE HAD HEARD SPOKEN. The five friends named in that letter remain the only people in it this archive cannot reach. |
| The story from The Mirror — can it be found after all? | YES — AND IT IS BY JAMES HOGG Found | The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, VOLUME XIV (1829), pp. 313–318: “SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS — A SINGULAR LETTER FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA. COMMUNICATED BY MR. HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.” Fiction, printed as a settler’s letter home, by the author of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Chief KAROO offers oxen and “a choice virgin to boot” for the wife; “he foretold I should repent it”; CAPTAIN JOHNSTONE and nine British soldiers; the wife carried across the river by “a band of pongos, (ourang-outangs)”; found as their QUEEN. FIVE EARLIER SEARCHES FAILED BECAUSE THEY HUNTED A SURNAME THAT DOES NOT EXIST — the narrator is anonymous and it is his SON who is called William. THE TAILOR WAS RIGHT: “here we look upon the Story as a fictious & romance”. |
The DSAB draft on George Augustus Kolbe — and the eleven sources it names
a secondary work checked against the archive line by line, and its reading list worked as far as a desk can work it · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Who wrote the DSAB typescript? | KAREL SCHOEMAN — AND THE LIBRARY SAID SO IN THE COVERING EMAIL Found | Melanie Geustyn, Senior Librarian, National Library of South Africa, with the Background File in front of her: “The author, KS, WOULD BE DR. KAREL SCHOEMAN who worked here at the National Library.” HER “WOULD BE” IS A LIBRARIAN’S HEDGE AND THE RIGHT ONE — the typescript carries initials and a date, not a signature — but she reads them with the institution’s own knowledge behind her. This archive reasoned its way to the same answer from the inside and published it as an inference it would not assert, HAVING NOT READ THE SENTENCE THE ATTACHMENTS WERE ATTACHED TO. Logged as a correction. |
| Does the Background File say anything more about the donation, or about Dr Jean Griffiths? | NO — AND THAT IS AN ANSWER, NOT A SILENCE Nothing | “Unfortunately the Background File does not give any further information on the donation or any other donations by Dr. Griffiths.” A librarian went to the off-site vaults, pulled the accession file and looked. WHERE THE ORIGINAL OF THE PHOTOCOPY IS REMAINS UNKNOWN, and so does whether the catalogue’s “LMS missionary” came from the papers or from the donor — that second question was asked and has not been answered. |
| Does the DSAB entry agree with this archive where both have the same fact? | YES — ON NINE POINTS, FROM NINE DIFFERENT DOCUMENTS Found | The 1802 birth; J.G.E. Kolbe 1822–68 at Leeuberg as a commandant; Margaret Downing 1803–1867; the 1819 London marriage at a very young age; the apothecary’s trade on the settler roll; the farm Wurthemberg; ten children; Philippolis from March 1831 (this archive has a daughter born there that year). EVERY ONE OF THOSE THIS ARCHIVE GOT FROM A REGISTER, A STONE, AN OBITUARY OR AN ADVERTISEMENT, and the entry cites none of them. That is what makes the single disagreement worth reporting. |
| Is the entry right that the Settler’s father was a German apothecary? | NO — HE WAS A TAILOR, AND THE ARCHIVE CAN PROVE IT SEVEN WAYS Nothing | 121 Westminster rate book entries, the printed roll of 234 master tailors of 1799, the master tailors’ list of April 1834, three London Gazette dissolutions all reading TAILORS, the 1841 census occupation column, the Westminster burial register, and John Henry Kolbe’s deposition on oath at the Old Bailey in 1819. THE TRADE IS THE SON’S, MOVED ONE GENERATION UP. The entry is accurate wherever its author had a record; the one thing he had no record for is the one thing he got wrong. |
| Does the entry’s “Knapdaar” contradict the obituary’s “Wirtemberg”? | NO — THE ENTRY SAYS THEY ARE THE SAME FARM Found | “die plaas Wurthemberg (soms ook aangegee as Knapdaar)”. The heading alone looked like a conflict and the body resolves it. What this archive gains is A SECOND NAME TO SEARCH in the deeds records and NAAIRS. |
| Was MSB 751 written “on his ordination”, as the catalogue says? | NO — THE ORDINATION WAS 25 MAY 1833 Nothing | Two years and nine months after the letter. The letter reports acceptance as a missionary, which is a different step, and the entry supplies a third — mission assistant on 8 February 1828. THE ARCHIVE HAD REPEATED A FINDING AID AS THOUGH IT WERE THE DOCUMENT. Logged as a correction. |
| “Extract from the journal of Messrs Melvill and Kolbe”, Transactions of the Missionary Society (1829) — is it online? | FOUND — AND THE REASON THE FIRST SEARCH FAILED IS THE INTERESTING PART Found | THE PRINTED VERSION IS FILED UNDER THE OTHER MAN’S NAME. Full citation: “Extracts of the Journal of Messrs Melvill and Kolbe, ADDRESSED TO THE REV. RICHARD MILES, Superintendent of the Society’s Missions in Africa, Philippolis, 25 NOV. 1828”, Council for World Missions (LMS) Archives — WHICH IS SOURCE 4 ON THE DSAB’S OWN LIST, two lines above source 6, and the entry never says they are the same document. “An edited version, dated 18 Nov. 1828, appears in MELVILL (1829).” Legassick quotes it: the travellers met refugee groups with “no other means of subsistence than the wild animals found in these parts” — THE FIRST WORDS OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE’S THIS ARCHIVE HAS READ, and they are about famine. AND THE JOURNEY IS PRINTED IN FULL IN A BOOK STILL SOLD: Karel Schoeman (ed.), Early White Travellers in the Transgariep, 1819–1840 (Protea Book House, 2003), p. 30. The Google Books API refuses this archive entirely — HTTP 429 to every query — and the same searches through the ordinary Books interface returned all of this in four minutes. |
| Sibree, A register of missionaries, 4th ed. (LMS, 1923) — is it online? | NOT FOUND under that title on the Internet Archive Nothing | It would give his LMS service dates in a single printed line, which is exactly what is wanted to test 8 February 1828, 25 May 1833 and 19 June 1837. Searched, not found, and left on the work list. |
| Is there any published corroboration of the Bethanie claim of 1834, independent of this entry? | NO — IT LOOKED LIKE TWO WITNESSES AND IT IS ONE Nothing | An encyclopaedia article states that the Berlin Missionary Society founded Bethanien for the Korana in September 1834 on the advice of the LMS’s G.A. Kolbe at Philippolis — AND ITS FOOTNOTE CITES SCHOEMAN’S OWN 1985 BOOK, Die Huis van die Armes. THE DRAFT ENTRY AND THE ARTICLE REST ON THE SAME MAN’S RESEARCH. This archive nearly published it as independent corroboration and it is not. A claim repeated in two places can still be a single witness. |
| Are the Griqua Council’s own papers for 1836 in print? | YES — AND THE ENTRY COULD NOT CITE THEM Found | Karel Schoeman (ed.), Griqua Records: the Philippolis Captaincy, 1825–1861, Van Riebeeck Society II/25 — 162 official and semi-official documents including the Philippolis Law Book and the correspondence between the Captaincy’s officials and the missionaries. PUBLISHED AFTER THIS TYPESCRIPT WAS TYPED — this row said TWO YEARS until 11 October 2026, when the catalogue record was read and gave 1996, which is four. It is the obvious place to test the 1836 accusation, the Hendricks agitation and the acquittal. Available as a purchasable eBook from HIPSA; no free digitisation found. |
| Is a portrait of George Augustus Kolbe known to exist? | THE ENTRY NAMES TWO Found | A likeness of him AS A YOUNG MAN, in 1992 with C.J. du Plessis of Ruigtevlei, district Bethulie, reproduced in Burger Olivier’s So onthou ons die oewerbewoners van ou “Grootrivier” (1973); and a CHARLES BELL WATERCOLOUR OF A CHURCH SERVICE AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834 WITH KOLBE IN THE PULPIT, in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, reproduced in The Journal of Andrew Smith, ed. Lye (1975). THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS NO LIKENESS OF ANYBODY BORN BEFORE 1850. Neither has been seen. |
| Can the Charles Bell picture of Kolbe be found? | YES — AND IN A COUNTRY THE ENTRY DOES NOT MENTION Found | University of Edinburgh, Centre for the Study of World Christianity, CSWC 60 — five photographs, 1834–1840, photograph copies of sketches by C. Bell of African congregations. ITEM 3 IS “MR. KOLBE… AT PHILIPPOLIS IN 1834”. The DSAB sends the reader to the Africana Museum in Johannesburg for the original watercolour and says nothing of Scotland; Edinburgh’s catalogue says nothing of Johannesburg. The other four sitters include JEAN-PIERRE PELLISSIER, who is source 9 on the DSAB’s own list. |
| Does Edinburgh describe him correctly? | NO — IT CALLS HIM “A MORAVIAN MISSIONARY?” Nothing | With the question mark. He was LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, on the NLSA’s catalogue of MSB 751 and on his own father’s letter of 23 August 1830 — “fully accepted by the [L.M.S.] as one of their Missionaries”. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THIS ARCHIVE HAS BEEN IN A POSITION TO CORRECT AN INSTITUTION RATHER THAN BE CORRECTED BY ONE, and the letter that does it can ask for a copy of the photograph at the same time. |
| Is the “Mr Miles” of the 1830 letter the Richard Miles of the 1828 journal? | VERY PROBABLY — AND IT IS AN INFERENCE, NOT A DOCUMENT Partly | Richard Miles, formerly pastor of Brigg in Lincolnshire and appointed to Demerara, was sent to Cape Town TO ACT AS DR PHILIP’S SUBSTITUTE WHILE PHILIP WAS IN ENGLAND. Philip was in England from 1826; Miles was acting Superintendent at the Cape in 1828, which is why Kolbe addressed his journal to him there; by 1830 Philip was back and Miles was in London, calling at a tailor’s house in Soho. THE LETTER SAYS ONLY “MR MILES” AND GIVES NO FORENAME, so the office, the continent and the dates carry it and nothing else does. Published as an inference and marked as one. |
MSB 751 read again, from the file rather than from a preview
the same four pages at full resolution, two days later — nothing wrong, a good deal missing · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does the full-resolution reading contradict anything already published? | NO — NOT ONE WORD Found | The heading “London August 23. 1830”, the opening “Dear George”, the L.M.S. acceptance, Mr Miles calling at the house, Dr Philip carrying the earlier letter, HENRY AND THE DROPSY AND “RESIGNED TO THE CATASTROPHE”, Milne and Betsey removed to EDINBURGH, Charlotte’s Evangelical Magazine, the suit of black clothes, George IV and William IV, the French revolution of July 1830, and — the line the whole argument rests on — “KIND LOVE FROM YOUR SISTERS & BROTHER”. ALL CONFIRMED FROM THE FILE. |
| Was Dr Philip only the courier? | NO — HE IS IN THE ROOM, AND HE IS PLEASED Found | “Dr Philip was exceedingly glad to hear of you being accepted by the L.M.S. as you may well imagine, HE HAS PROMISED TO WRITE TO YOU A LETTER BY THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY.” This archive had him as a man carrying an envelope. HE IS IN LONDON IN AUGUST 1830, he has heard the news, and he undertakes to write to George himself. THAT LETTER, IF IT WAS WRITTEN, IS ANOTHER DOCUMENT WITH GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE’S NAME ON IT, and the place to look is the CWM archive at SOAS that holds his journal. |
| Who is the “John” the clothes are for? | VERY PROBABLY THE COMMANDANT, AGED EIGHT Partly | “I have enclosed also a Jacket & waistcoat for John & a further Jacket also for him, tell him HIS OLD FATHER has sent it him, & TO MAKE HASTE TO FILL THEM OUT.” Clothes for a growing child. George Augustus’s eldest son was JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE, BORN 7 JULY 1822 — eight years old in August 1830, and the man who died a commandant at Leeuwberg in 1868. IF THAT IS HIM, THIS IS THE EARLIEST DOCUMENT IN THIS ARCHIVE THAT MENTIONS HIM. “His old father” is the difficulty and is not glossed over: the writer is the boy’s GRANDFATHER. Marked as an inference. |
| Does the letter name anybody outside the family? | YES — FIVE PEOPLE, AND NONE OF THEM IS ANYWHERE ELSE HERE Found | Mr & Mrs STANHOPE; Mr WARNER and Mrs WARNER; MRS FIELD AND HER DAUGHTERS, of whom “the eldest, Miss Mary, that was, HAS MARRIED A MR BELLEW, A SURGEON, whom I do not know whether you may recollect”. This archive has had the Soho household entirely through official paper — rate books, a census, the Gazette, a burial register. THESE ARE THE FIRST PEOPLE IN IT WHO SIMPLY KNEW THEM. A surgeon named Bellew marrying a Miss Mary Field about 1829–30 is searchable. |
| What is the story from The Mirror that he asks his son to check? | TWO PAGES, AND THE STRANGEST THING IN THE LETTER Partly | A Scottish colonist, “either Williams, or Williamson”, settled close to the Xhosa; orang-outangs raid his fruit; he shoots a young one that proves to be a chief’s son; weeks later MRS W. IS CARRIED OFF; he suspects a Xhosa chief who had offered oxen and “2 or 3 of his finest caffre women” for her and been refused, whose messenger had said “YOU WILL REPENT OF YOUR OBSTINACY”; he raises a company of soldiers under CAPT JOHNSON and is on the point of war when a witness is produced who saw an orang-outang carrying a woman across the river; the chief then furnishes his own men to help, and after nearly two years she is found living among the animals AS THEIR QUEEN. THE FATHER DOES NOT BELIEVE IT — “here we look upon the Story as a fictious & romance” — and writes to the one man he knows who is actually there to ask “whether that report may be founded in truth, or falsehood”. THE NUMBER OF THE MIRROR HAS NOT BEEN FOUND. |
| Do the margins give the street address after all? | NO — AND THEY ARE THE ONLY LINES NOT READ Nothing | Pages two and four carry notes written across the fold about HOW TO DIRECT THE BOX, naming the Revd MR MURRAY and DR PHILIP. They are partly illegible at this resolution and are NOT GUESSED AT. Everything else in four pages has been read. Brunswick Square against Conduit Street remains open. |
Sibree’s Register of LMS Missionaries — found free, and it is the best source on him yet
source 5 on Schoeman’s list, written up here this morning as “not found” · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is Sibree’s Register (LMS, 1923) online? | YES — FREE, 225 PAGES, AND THIS ARCHIVE SAID IT WAS NOT Found | A complete PDF at missiology.org.uk. This archive searched the INTERNET ARCHIVE, found nothing under that title, and published “not found”. THAT WAS A NEGATIVE ABOUT ONE SHELF REPORTED AS A NEGATIVE ABOUT THE WORLD — the same fault this archive names on /method/ as the reason a nil return is worthless without a control. The Google Books API refuses this machine outright (HTTP 429 to every query); the ordinary web search found it in one attempt. |
| Does it hold George Augustus Kolbe? | YES — ENTRY 278, AND IT IS HIS WHOLE MISSION LIFE Found | “Was previously connected with the GRAAFF REINET MISSIONARY SOCIETY, and laboured AMONG THE SLAVES around Graaff Reinet. Was accepted provisionally by MR. MILES, FEB. 8, 1829, which action was confirmed by the Directors, JULY 29, 1829. First laboured with MR. CLARK, at the BUSHMAN STATION, CALEDON RIVER. Thence proceeded to PHILIPPOLIS, arriving there, MARCH 13, 1831. On MAY 26, 1833, he was ordained by the French missionaries, Messrs. LEMUE, PELLISIER, AND ARBOUSSET. His connection was dissolved by the Directors, JUNE 19, 1837.” Index: service 1829–1837. |
| Who was the “Mr Miles” who called at the tailor’s house in 1830? | THE MAN WHO ACCEPTED HIM — NOT A MESSENGER Found | “Accepted PROVISIONALLY BY MR. MILES, Feb. 8, 1829, which action was CONFIRMED BY THE DIRECTORS, July 29, 1829.” Richard Miles was Acting Superintendent of the LMS at Cape Town from 1825, sent to stand in for Dr Philip while Philip was in Britain. AND IT EXPLAINS THE FATHER’S ADVERB: provisionally by Miles, confirmed by the Directors, and a father told his son had been “FULLY accepted”. The letter is using the Society’s own vocabulary correctly, because the officer concerned was in the room. |
| Does Sibree agree with the DSAB draft? | ON THREE POINTS EXACTLY, AND NOT ON THREE OTHERS Partly | AGREE: the Graaff-Reinet society and the slaves, almost word for word; Clark and the Bushman station; the dissolution on 19 June 1837 to the day. DIFFER: acceptance 8 February 1829, not 1828; Philippolis 13 March 1831, which is finer than Schoeman’s “March 1831” and agrees with it; ordination 26 MAY 1833 not the 25th, and by LEMUE, PELLISSIER AND ARBOUSSET — three men, WITH NO CASALIS. Pellissier is source 9 on Schoeman’s own list. BOTH ARE PRINTED WORKS AND NEITHER IS THE MANUSCRIPT; this archive gives both and prefers neither in print. |
| Was F.W. Kolbe of the Rhenish Mission related to this family? | NO — AND THE LMS’S OWN REGISTER IS THE ONE THAT IS WRONG Nothing | Sibree, entry 522: “KOLBE, Frederick William. Born, Nov. 3, 1821, in South Africa. SON OF REV. G. A. KOLBE (No. 278).” Died at Cape Town 25 December 1899 aged 78; author of an English–Herero Dictionary. Schoeman: “F.W. Kolbe (1821–99) van die Rynse Sendinggenootskap was NIE aan hierdie familie verwant nie.” SAME MAN, SAME SOCIETY, SAME YEARS. AND HE CANNOT BE ADOPTED ON SIBREE’S WORD: 3 November 1821 agrees with his age at death, and the Settler’s known eldest was born 7 JULY 1822, which agrees with HIS age at death. EIGHT MONTHS APART. Sibree also gives a sister, CHARLOTTE KOLBE born 25 December 1829, who married Rev. William Sykes at Paarl in 1860. NOT ADOPTED, NOT DISMISSED, AND ON THE WORK LIST. RESOLVED THE SAME AFTERNOON. THREE INDEPENDENT WORKS AGAINST SIBREE: the New Catholic Encyclopedia on his son Monsignor F.C. Kolbe — “the son of a WESTPHALIAN (GERMAN) PROTESTANT MISSIONARY who had married the daughter of a member of the London Missionary Society”; S2A3, which names him FRIEDRICH WILHELM KOLBE, Rhenish missionary and Herero scholar, married at Cape Town in 1849 and at Okahandja by April 1850; and DSAB VOL. 5 (1987), which has its own entry on him and was in print five years before Schoeman wrote, which is why the draft marks him with an asterisk. SIBREE HAS TWO KOLBES IN SOUTH AFRICA, ENTRIES 278 AND 522, AND A COMPILER JOINED THEM. Charlotte Kolbe born 25 December 1829 goes with him. |
The Nautilus roll, and the story from The Mirror
two more of Schoeman’s eleven sources worked — one delivered, one did not · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| What does the settler roll actually say? | “KOLBE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS 20. CHEMIST. W MARGARET 19.” Found | From Nash’s Settler Handbook, page 98, published in full at 1820settlers.com. HE WAS SIXTEEN — born 7 December 1802 and sailing from Gravesend on 3 December 1819, four days before his seventeenth birthday. SHE WAS SIXTEEN. About three years added to each. |
| Is the roll consistent with the marriage allegation? | NO — AND THAT IS THE INTERESTING PART Found | At Shoreditch on 20 January 1819 both swore to being “of the age of Twenty-one Years and upwards”, because a minor could not marry by licence without a parent’s consent. ELEVEN MONTHS LATER HE IS TWENTY AND SHE IS NINETEEN. Nobody twenty-one and upwards in January is twenty in December. THEY WERE NOT MAINTAINING A FICTION; THEY WERE TELLING EACH DOCUMENT WHAT IT NEEDED. |
| What became of Owen’s party? | IT COLLAPSED IN 1821, AND IT EXPLAINS THE GAP Found | Fifty-two people, No. 3 on the Colonial Department list, joint-stock and recruited in London by THOMAS OWEN OF 9 CAREY STREET, HORSEFERRY ROAD, WESTMINSTER, correspondence handled by his father the REV J OWEN OF FULHAM. Located at SPANISH REED PLACE near the Kap River. Owen — “this querulous man”, per Special Commissioner Hayward — REFUSED TO DRAW RATIONS FOR HIS PEOPLE; his brother W.S. Owen replaced him; Owen left early in 1821 and the party dispersed. THE SETTLER WAS EIGHTEEN, WITH NO LEADER, NO RATIONS AND NO LOCATION, and the next record of him is the Graaff-Reinet mission about three years later. |
| Is there an original roll to go back to? | THREE CAPE ARCHIVES REFERENCES, AND NO SHIP’S RETURN Found | CO 6137/1,4 (the list under Owen’s direction), CO 8543 (Hayward’s notes) and CO 3917 (THE MEMORIAL OF INDEPENDENT SETTLERS ABOARD THE NAUTILUS). A MEMORIAL IS A PETITION AND A PETITION IS SIGNED — that one could carry his signature at seventeen. Nash records that NO AGENT OF TRANSPORTS’ RETURN HAS EVER BEEN TRACED for the Nautilus, so these three are the whole basis of the roll. |
| Can the story from The Mirror be found? | NO — SEARCHED AND NOT FOUND Nothing | Two of the father’s four pages go on it and he asks his son to say whether it is true. Searched Google Books and the open web on the story’s own terms — “ourang outang” and “orang outang” with carried off, wife, colonist, Caffre, Mirror, 1829 and 1830 — AND GOOGLE BOOKS RETURNED NO MATCHES AT ALL. Recorded so nobody repeats these terms. NEXT: the runs of The Mirror on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, searched volume by volume rather than by phrase, and the names WILLIAMS or WILLIAMSON with CAPT JOHNSON. |
The CWM archive at SOAS — searched, and it is item-level
every road on Schoeman’s reading list ended at one door, and the door was open · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does SOAS hold anything in George Augustus Kolbe’s own hand? | FOUR JOURNALS, 1828 TO 1834 Found | CWM/LMS/05/05/100 — “Extracts from the Journal of JOHN MELVILL AND GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, during a tour to the north-eastwards of Philippolis, 13–22 NOV 1828”, which is THE MANUSCRIPT BEHIND SOURCE 6 and carries the days of the journey. /102 — extracts, Philippolis, 1828–1831. /106 — Journal, Philippolis, 1831–1834. /108 — Journal, Philippolis, 6 Oct 1832 – Sep 1833. UNTIL THIS AFTERNOON THE SUM OF HIS OWN WORDS IN THIS ARCHIVE WAS ONE SENTENCE QUOTED AT SECOND HAND. |
| Is the correspondence for the year of the accusation identifiable? | YES — AND IT IS A SINGLE BOX Found | CWM/LMS/05/02/02/044, South Africa 1835, WHICH THE CATALOGUE SAYS CONTAINS “GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE, PHILIPPOLIS” among its correspondents; /046, South Africa 1836; and the 1837 file. The sub-series note gives the boxes: 1835 is Box 14B and 1836–1837 IS BOX 15. The accusation and the dismissal are in one box, and this archive has been repeating a one-sentence summary of them. |
| Is there a portrait of a Kolbe at SOAS? | YES — AND IT IS THE WRONG KOLBE Nothing | CWM/LMS/01/09/02/01/525, Missionary Portraits — “SYKES, CHARLOTTE NÉE KOLBE (S. Africa 1858–1887)”. She is the sister of the Rhenish missionary Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe, whom the same afternoon’s work placed outside this family. RECORDED SO THAT NOBODY HERE MAKES SIBREE’S MISTAKE IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. |
| Does the archive corroborate the F.W. Kolbe resolution? | YES — FROM A FOURTH DIRECTION Found | Reports by Frederick Kolbe from PAARL in 1867, 1868, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873 and 1875 and from STELLENBOSCH in 1876; incoming letters from GEORGE in 1854, Paarl from 1858 and Cape Town to 1899; and in the 1893 file, “Frederick Kolbe, Cape Town — DEATH OF MRS KOLBE [NÉE ISABELLA MARIA ELLIOTT]”. That is the S2A3 entry matched to the person, in the Society’s own files. |
A Geni profile for the Commandant’s son — tested, not adopted
a stranger’s tree, checked against documents this archive reached by another road · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is this the same circular trap as the MyHeritage result? | NO — AND THE DIFFERENCE IS THE WHOLE POINT Found | The earlier search returned THIS FAMILY’S OWN TREE handed back through MyHeritage, which corroborates nothing. THE COMMANDANT’S TWELVE CHILDREN HAVE NEVER BEEN IN THIS ARCHIVE AT ALL — his 1868 obituary counts them and names none, and a work-list row has stood for a fortnight asking for the estate that would name them. A collaborative tree naming them is INDEPENDENT of anything here. |
| Does it agree with anything this archive can check? | TWICE, AND NEITHER IS A COINCIDENCE THE COMPILERS COULD HAVE ENGINEERED Found | One: the profile gives his wife as MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTE and his daughter as ROSA MAGDALENE — and this archive holds, from the BLOEMFONTEIN BAPTISM REGISTER, a ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE baptised 1890 to Frederik Fortuna Kolbe and MARIA PETRONELLA ELIZABETH ANTOINETTA McCABE. Two: it lists MARIA MARGARETHA DOWNING ROUSSEAU as his daughter, and this archive holds TAB MHG 5450/68 under exactly that name — AN ORPHAN INDEX ENTRY THAT NOW HAS A FATHER. |
| Is it therefore evidence? | NO, AND TWELVE PEOPLE ARE NOT BEING ENTERED ON IT Partly | One source attached, four profile managers, added in 2014. IT IS A LIST WORTH WORKING, WHICH IS WHAT SCHOEMAN’S BIBLIOGRAPHY WAS. The difference between a tree and a source is not that one is always wrong — it is that ONE HAS TO BE TESTED AND THE OTHER HAS ALREADY BEEN. The document that tests it is VAB MHG M777 at Bloemfontein, already on the work list, and it is now a better thing to order because there is something to check it against. |
| Does it settle the Kolbe–McCabe question this archive raised? | IT OFFERS AN ANSWER, AND IT IS THE OBVIOUS ONE Partly | The Commandant’s widow ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE married FRANCIS McCABE, Landdrost of Bloemfontein, about April 1871; McCabe died in February 1872 leaving “four sons and two daughters, BESIDES A LARGE FAMILY OF STEP-CHILDREN”. Her son then married a McCABE. THE TWO HOUSEHOLDS WERE ONE FOR ELEVEN MONTHS. This archive called it a possible coincidence; on this reading it is a stepfamily marrying within itself, which is ordinary. NOT PROVED — the marriage record would prove it. |
| Is this Frederik Fortunatus one of the men this archive already holds? | NO — HE IS A FOURTH OF THE NAME Nothing | Born 22 October 1857 at BLOEMFONTEIN and dead there 18 December 1930. NOT the Settler’s tenth child (born 1839 at Bethulie, died 23 November 1929 at Utrecht), and NOT Frederick Fortunatus Downing Kolbe (died 1918, TAB MHG 40293). THIS ARCHIVE WITHDREW A CLAIM WITHIN THE HOUR ONCE BEFORE over two men sharing a name in one town, and the caution is recorded before anything is built on him. |
| Had this archive ever opened the FamilySearch FAMILY TREE? | NO — NOT ONCE, IN A FORTNIGHT OF USING FAMILYSEARCH DAILY Found | Every FamilySearch citation on this site is a RECORD — an indexed register entry with an ark. THE FAMILY TREE IS A DIFFERENT THING, a single collaborative tree the whole site edits, and /sources/ lists it among the leads. people.js mentions it ZERO TIMES. David opened it and sent the link. THE PEDIGREE AT LJNY-BLP RUNS STRAIGHT UP THIS ARCHIVE’S OWN SPINE — Frederick Fortunatus Kolbe 1859–1930, John Gerson Eliezar Kolbe 1822–1868, George Augustus Kolbe 1802–1844, John Gottlob Kolbe 1765–1845 — and it has those three generations right. |
| Does the FamilySearch tree match documents held here? | THREE MORE TIMES Found | ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE 1824–1896 against VAB MHG M777, her 1896 estate. PIETER GERHARDUS CLOETE ROUSSEAU 1898–1968, husband of Margaretha Maria Downey Kolbe, against TAB MHG 5450/68 — THE ESTATE YEAR IS HIS DEATH YEAR. ROSA MAGDALENA KOLBE 1890–1946 against her 1890 Bloemfontein baptism, already held. TWO ORPHAN INDEX REFERENCES HAVE ACQUIRED PEOPLE AND A BAPTISM HAS ACQUIRED A DEATH. Still not evidence; it is a lead list that has passed the test. |
| Where does it lose? | MARY LARMAN, AND NOT NARROWLY Nothing | The tree gives her 1768–1819. This archive holds TNA RG 4/4631 FOLIO 62 — DIED 2 AUGUST 1814, BURIED 5 AUGUST, AGED 46. A tree’s year against a burial entry giving the day, the burial and the age is no contest. AND THE TWO TREES DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER on Frederik Fortunatus — Geni 1857, FamilySearch 1859 — WHICH SHOWS THEY ARE NOT INDEPENDENT WITNESSES. Where they agree, one may have copied the other. |
FindMyPast swept for a Downing–Pooley marriage
a name off a user tree, taken to the index the same afternoon · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a Downing–Pooley marriage before civil registration? | YES — EXACTLY ONE, AND IT IS IN DEVON Found | JOHN DOWNING married MARY POOLEY, 10 MAY 1802, WELCOMBE (BISHOP’S TRANSCRIPTS), DEVON, Anglican — Devon Marriages and Banns, GBPRS/M/514168016/1, transcribed by the Devon Family History Society. Against 231,425 Downing records and 65,460 Pooley records in the Life Events collection, TWELVE match the pair at all, of which three are indexed marriages and the other two are 1882 and 1955. THE DATE IS NINE MONTHS AND THIRTEEN DAYS BEFORE MARGARET DOWNING’S BIRTH ON 23 FEBRUARY 1803. |
| Does the county fit? | YES, AND FROM A DIRECTION THAT KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT Found | This archive’s own family tree puts the Downings in DEVON — Edward Downing m. Mary HEARD, Thomas Downing m. Mary TRICK, John Trick m. Margaret HOOPER. Trick, Heard and Hooper are Devon names and WELCOMBE IS A NORTH DEVON PARISH ON THE CORNISH BORDER. The tree and the register agree about the county independently. |
| Can it be tied to Margaret Downing? | NO — AND THE DOCUMENT THAT WOULD DO IT IS NOT THERE Partly | SHE WAS BORN IN LONDON. A couple married in a remote North Devon parish with a child in London nine months later is possible and is not shown. NO BAPTISM FOR MARGARET DOWNING IN LONDON IN 1803 WAS FOUND — the collection was searched by name and year and returns nothing of the kind. A baptism naming both parents is what would settle it. THIS IS A CANDIDATE AND NOT A FINDING. |
| Was the name that launched the search even right? | THE TWO TREES DO NOT AGREE Nothing | The FamilySearch Family Tree calls her MARY KING POOLEY. The family tree this archive was built from calls her MARY P KING — SURNAME KING, WITH AN INITIAL. So the “P” may be Pooley, or “Pooley” may be somebody’s later reading of the “P”. THE SEARCH MAY HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR A SURNAME THAT IS NOT HERS. They differ on her husband too: John Paul Downing is 1769–1839 in one and 1765–1839 in the other. HER OWN DEATH NOTICE, THE ONLY DOCUMENT EVER ASKED, SAYS “BOTH DEAD” AND NAMES NEITHER PARENT. |
Does the FindMyPast Keywords filter actually filter? | YES — TESTED WITH A NONSENSE VALUE Found | The driver notes record that KeywordsPlace and YearOfBirth are SCORED and do not restrict. Keywords had never been tested. LastName=downing with Keywords=zqxwvkj returns 0 where the same search without it returns 231,425, and with Keywords=pooley returns 12. KEYWORDS FILTERS. Added to the driver note, because a filter that only ranks is how a nil return becomes a lie. |
| And under KING, the other surname the trees give her? | NOTHING THAT FITS — AND THE KEYWORD FIELD IS POISONED Nothing | “King” as a keyword returns 144 records for 1790–1806 and ALMOST EVERY ONE IS KING’S LYNN. A surname that is also half a place-name destroys the field. Run properly on SpouseLastName, DOWNING × KING for 1790–1806 RETURNS THREE RECORDS AND THEY ARE ONE NORFOLK EVENT INDEXED THREE TIMES — a MARY DOWNING at King’s Lynn and Norwich in 1790. Wrong person, wrong county, wrong direction. UNDER EITHER SURNAME THERE IS NO LONDON MARRIAGE FOR A JOHN DOWNING in the years this family needs. |
| Is there a better filter field than Keywords for a marriage? | YES — SpouseLastName, AND IT IS NOT IN THE DRIVER NOTES Found | The marriage transcripts carry SpouseFirstName and SpouseLastName as fieldIds, and SpouseLastName WORKS AS A FILTER: a nonsense value returns 0, “pooley” returns exactly the three indexed Downing–Pooley marriages. IT IS THE RIGHT TOOL FOR A MARRIAGE SEARCH and it is immune to the King’s Lynn problem. Added to the driver note in notes/for-the-estate.md, along with the finding that KEYWORDS FILTERS where KeywordsPlace only scores. |
| Is there a London baptism for Margaret Georgina Elizabeth Downing in 1803? | NO — AND AFTER A PROPER CONTROL, THAT IS A REAL NEGATIVE Nothing | Five Margaret Downing baptisms exist for 1801–1805: two at Edinburgh and three at MADELEY, SHROPSHIRE, one event indexed three times. NONE IN LONDON. Under “Georgina”: zero. Nonsense-forename control: zero. THIS ARCHIVE FIRST CONCLUDED THE COVERAGE WAS AT FAULT, ON THE GROUND THAT ONLY ONE OF 1,131 DOWNING BAPTISMS IN 1800–1806 IS IN LONDON. THAT WAS THE WRONG CONTROL. Counting one surname by county tests where the Downings were, not whether the index reaches London. THE RIGHT CONTROL IS A COMMON NAME: of 100 SMITH baptisms in the same window, THIRTY-SEVEN ARE LONDON, MIDDLESEX OR WESTMINSTER. THE COVERAGE IS EXCELLENT. So the nil stands, and it means either she was not baptised in an Anglican London parish or HER FAMILY WAS NOT A LONDON FAMILY — which is what a couple married in North Devon in May 1802 with a child born in London in February 1803 would look like. Logged as a correction. |
| Is DOWNING a West Country surname, as the Welcombe case would like it to be? | NO — AND THIS ARCHIVE TOOK HALF ITS OWN ARGUMENT BACK Nothing | The Welcombe candidate rested partly on county: the family tree puts the Downings in Devon through TRICK, HEARD and HOOPER, and Welcombe is a North Devon parish. IF THE SURNAME ITSELF WERE WEST COUNTRY THAT WOULD STRENGTHEN IT. A sample of 160 of the 1,131 baptisms, tallied by county: YORKSHIRE (WEST RIDING) 20, SUFFOLK 16, NORFOLK 16, CORNWALL 14, Staffordshire 9, Yorkshire 9, Shropshire 7, DEVON 5. DOWNING IS A NATIONAL NAME and the West Country is about an eighth of it, behind Yorkshire. The Devon argument stands only on the tree’s own specific ancestry and gains nothing from the geography of the name. |
| Did the Welcombe couple stay in Devon? | YES — AND THAT ENDS IT Nothing | Every Downing record in the parish of Welcombe: 1792 Ann burial, 1792 William marriage, 1793 Thomas baptism, 1795 Damaris baptism, 1798 Mary baptism, 1800 Peter burial, 1801 Philip baptism, 1802 JOHN MARRIAGE, 1803 JOHN BAPTISM, 1806 William baptism, 1809 Emmey baptism, 1810 Elizabeth baptism, 1834 MARY BURIAL, 1839 John burial. THEY BAPTISED A CHILD THERE THE YEAR AFTER THE WEDDING AND KEPT DOING IT. The Pooleys are equally rooted — baptisms 1792, 1801, 1813 and a burial in 1810. MARGARET WAS BORN IN LONDON IN FEBRUARY 1803. The Welcombe couple never went anywhere. WITHDRAWN. |
| Where did “Pooley” come from, then? | VERY PROBABLY FROM THIS SAME SEARCH, RUN BY SOMEBODY ELSE Partly | The last line of the Welcombe list is A MARY DOWNING BURIED THERE IN 1834 — and both trees give Margaret’s mother as dying in 1834. A researcher hunting her parents finds THE ONLY DOWNING–POOLEY MARRIAGE IN ENGLAND and A MARY DOWNING BURIAL IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT YEAR IN THE SAME TINY PARISH, and attaches both. THAT IS THE SEARCH THIS ARCHIVE RAN TODAY, REACHING THE SAME TWO RECORDS, AND STOPPING ONE QUESTION EARLIER. So “Mary King Pooley, 1768–1834” is likely a reconstruction rather than a record — which also explains why this archive’s own copy of the tree calls her MARY P KING. Two compilers, the same fragments, two different guesses. |
The tailor’s own marriage — a controlled negative, and an Act of Parliament
“no marriage has been found” turned from a shrug into three named doors · searched 20 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a Kolbe–Larman marriage in FindMyPast? | NO — ZERO, BOTH DIRECTIONS Nothing | KOLBE × LARMAN and LARMAN × KOLBE both return 0 across the whole Life Events collection, using the SpouseLastName filter. A nonsense spouse also returns 0, so the filter is restricting rather than ranking. THE TREE’S “MARY LARMAN” HAS NO MARRIAGE BEHIND IT IN THIS INDEX. |
| Does the index reach this family’s parish at all? | YES — AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE NIL WORTH ANYTHING Found | The control is a marriage this archive already holds: the eldest Kolbe daughter married GEORGE KOTTLICH KOHLBECK at ST ANNE’S, SOHO in 1811. FindMyPast indexes the BANNS — “1810 · KOHLBECK · St Anne, Soho, Middlesex · Westminster Banns” — a year before the wedding, in the family’s own church. THE COVERAGE REACHES THIS HOUSEHOLD, THIS PARISH AND THIS PERIOD, so the Larman zero is not a hole in the index. |
| Could they have married in the German Lutheran church instead? | NO — CLOSED BY STATUTE, NOT BY SEARCHING Nothing | Under HARDWICKE’S MARRIAGE ACT OF 1753 — which this archive already invokes for the sworn ages at Shoreditch in 1819 — every marriage in England except those of QUAKERS AND JEWS had to be performed in an ANGLICAN PARISH CHURCH to be legal. Foreign Protestant congregations were not exempt. THE SAVOY CONGREGATION COULD BURY THEM AND BAPTISE THEM; IT COULD NOT MARRY THEM. This archive holds five of their burials in TNA RG 4/4631 and had never asked whether a marriage could be there. It could not. |
| So where is it? | THREE DOORS LEFT, AND THE LIKELIEST IS NOT IN ENGLAND Partly | (1) An English parish FindMyPast does not index — possible; London coverage is wide, not complete. (2) “LARMAN” IS SIMPLY WRONG — the person record here has always said her surname is not known, the name comes from the family tree alone, AND THE SAME TREE WAS CAUGHT TODAY GIVING MARGARET DOWNING’S MOTHER TWO DIFFERENT SURNAMES IN TWO VERSIONS. (3) THEY DID NOT MARRY IN ENGLAND: he was born in Württemberg in 1765, gave his birth county as “FOREIGN” in the 1841 census, and the first child of the house was baptised in London in 1792 when he was twenty-seven. WHERE HE WAS BEFORE 1792 THIS ARCHIVE DOES NOT KNOW. |
A forty-one page Kolbe register report on a Barry family website, never opened here
a child this archive does not hold, and a forename it could never place · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a published descendant report for this family that nobody here has read? | YES — FORTY-ONE PAGES, FREE, AND FOURTEEN YEARS OLD Found | “Kolbe Family Tree”, southafricanbarryfamilytree.wordpress.com, 29 December 2012: a Register Report for JOHAN GOTTLOB KOLBE, the London tailor, running the descent out through the Barrys and crediting ANNE LEHMKUHL as researcher. This archive cites eGGSA twenty-seven times and had never seen this. It is a compiled tree and is treated as one. |
| Does it corroborate the 1819 marriage this archive holds only as an allegation? | YES, AND IT ADDS NOTHING — WHICH WAS WORTH CHECKING BEFORE SAYING OTHERWISE Found | It gives 20 January 1819 at ST LEONARD, SHOREDITCH. That looked at first like the parish row 119 is writing to Grahamstown for. It is not: this archive's own sources already record the allegation as “20 Jan 1819, St Leonard Shoreditch”. The report agrees with a document already held. A second witness to a fact is not a new fact. |
| Does it name a child of the Settler this archive does not hold? | YES — JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE Partly | Listed ninth of thirteen. There is no Casmier, Casimir or Kasimir anywhere in this archive's people. FROM A COMPILED TREE AND NOT ADOPTED — but it is a name, and names are testable in the Colesberg and Burgersdorp registers this archive already reads. |
| Does it explain the forename RECTOR, which this archive has never been able to place? | POSSIBLY, AND IT IS THE BEST THING IN THE REPORT Partly | This archive holds ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY, baptised at Burgersdorp in 1883, a great-grandson of the Settler, and has recorded the Kolbe in his name without ever accounting for the Rector. The report lists PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE as two separate children where this archive holds a single PETER BENJAMIN KOLBE with no dates and the note “Of the Kolbe children”. A great-uncle called Rector would explain a great-nephew called Rector. THIS IS A NAMESAKE ARGUMENT AND NOT A PROOF, and it may instead be one man split in two by a compiler. |
| Where does it conflict with documents this archive actually holds? | THREE PLACES, AND THE DOCUMENT WINS EACH TIME Nothing | MARGARET DOWNING born 23 December 1803, against the Burgersdorp stone's “BORN IN LONDON 23 FEBRUARY 1803”. Her death placed at BARKLY EAST, against the same stone's “DIED AT BURGHERSDORP”. And JOHN GERSON ELIEZAR KOLBE dead on 4 April 1868, against the Grahamstown Journal's 3 April — the date the paper itself notes was his wedding anniversary. The report does supply “25” where the stone's day will not resolve, but a compiled tree is not the witness that settles a digit a photograph refuses. |
| Is it internally consistent? | NOT EVERYWHERE, AND THE ARITHMETIC SHOWS IT Nothing | CATHERINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE is given born 14 November 1824, died 7 July 1901, “At 75 years and 8 months”. Those two dates are seventy-six years and seven months apart. If the age is right the birth is November 1825; if the birth is right the age is wrong by eleven months. A report that carries its own arithmetic can be checked against itself, and this one fails the check in at least one place. |
| Is there anything in the genealogy.com forum thread on GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE? | UNKNOWN — IT IS BEHIND BOT PROTECTION AND WAS NOT READ Blocked | genealogy.com/forum/regional/countries/topics/southafrica/5263/ is a thread titled for the Settler by name, and it may hold descendant correspondence. It cannot be read from here. A direct fetch returns two bytes, an ordinary fetch returns HTTP 403, and a browser lands on a Cloudflare interstitial. Working around bot protection is not something this archive will do, so the thread is recorded as unread rather than as empty. A null from a challenge page is not a null. It opens normally in an ordinary browser — this is a two-minute job for a person and an impossible one from here. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: the thread is public and the block is a bot check, not a paywall — so it needs a pair of human eyes on the page rather than a fetch. David opening the URL in his own browser and pasting the thread would settle it in a minute, and that is the whole remedy. Failing that, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine may hold a capture taken before the bot check was added. |
The two gravestone databases this archive had never opened — one is dead and the other cannot see South Africa
a controlled negative, and two filters that displayed one thing and applied another · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is graves.co.za a source this archive should be using? | NO — THE DOMAIN IS PARKED Nothing | It answers HTTP 200 with 114 bytes — a single <script> whose window.onload sets window.location.href to /lander — and /lander returns an empty reply. A 200 and a redirect script is not a website. It is recorded so that nobody adds it to a list of places to look. |
| Does FindAGrave hold graves of this family in South Africa? | NO, AND THE CONTROL IS ONE OF OUR OWN STONES Nothing | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE OF WAKKERSTROOM died 28 September 1954 and this archive holds a photograph of his stone. A FindAGrave search for KOLBE died 1954 ±1 returns 119 records and not one of them is South African — Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Dresden, Vienna, Prenzlau. The man whose grave we can see is not in it. So FindAGrave's South African coverage does not reach this family, and any negative it returns is about FindAGrave. |
| Is there a Willem Kolbe on FindAGrave dying about 1941? | NO — BUT READ THE ROW ABOVE BEFORE USING THAT Nothing | firstname=Willem&lastname=Kolbe&deathyear=1941±5 returns no matches, and the filter is genuinely restricting: the same search without the forename returns 678. So the nil is real as a statement about the index. It is not evidence that the General has no grave, because the index does not reach the country he is buried in. |
| Did the location filter do what the page said it was doing? | NO, AND IT LIED TWICE IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS Nothing | First: locationId=country_204 is MALAWI. Searching BOTHA with it returned exactly one record — Zomba Town Cemetery, Malawi — while the page displayed a chip reading “South Africa ×”. Second: dropping the id and passing only location=South+Africa makes the filter silently do nothing at all — 7,116 Kolbe results from Germany, the United States, Australia and Egypt, still under a chip reading “South Africa”. THE DISPLAYED FILTER IS NOT THE APPLIED FILTER. Had I taken the first result at face value I would have written “no Kolbe graves in South Africa” off a query about Malawi. |
| What is the rule to carry away from this? | A FILTER THAT CANNOT BE SEEN WORKING HAS NOT BEEN SEEN WORKING Found | Both faults produced confident, plausible, well-formatted answers. The Mazza archive hit the same shape at Antenati, where fq= and facets= are accepted and ignored and the unfiltered count comes back looking like a filtered one. Test the filter with a query whose answer you already know, in the same request shape, before you trust anything it returns — and prefer a control drawn from your own holdings, because it tests coverage and filtering at once. |
Casmier and Rector — testing the two names the 2012 compiled report has and this archive does not
every route to a register was shut, and the one result that looked like a negative was an endpoint that does not exist · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a baptism for JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE, listed ninth of the Settler's thirteen children? | NOT ANSWERED — NO REGISTER WAS REACHED Blocked | Nothing was searched, because nothing could be. The registers that would settle it are on FamilySearch, and FamilySearch answered the search URL with its sign-in page. This archive does not enter credentials. No negative is recorded against the name, because no search of any register happened — see the row below for what this nearly became. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT: David signed in, or row 93's FamilySearch affiliate library, which is already open for a different film. 21 SEPTEMBER, LATER — THE REASON GIVEN FOR THIS BLOCK IS PROBABLY WRONG. It was recorded here that FamilySearch answered with its sign-in page and therefore that the account was signed out and only David could unblock it. The Lerena session, chasing the same service the same afternoon, has shown that the account was never signed out — another session ran the same searches in the same minutes and got 3,652 and 3,967 with the account name in the nav bar. Each browser context carries its own cookie jar, and one can lose auth and recover by itself. SO THE REMEDY IS A FRESH TAB, NOT A PERSON, and this row should be retried before it is treated as needing anybody. It could not be retried here because Chrome became unreachable. The verdict stays blocked because no register was in fact reached; what is withdrawn is the reason. |
| Are PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE two children, or one Peter Benjamin split in two? | NOT ANSWERED — AND THE TREES THAT REPEAT IT ARE SHUT TOO Blocked | The paper that settles it is a baptism, and no register was reached. The compiled report is not an independent witness to itself, so the question was put to Geni, which holds a George Augustus Kolbe page — Geni serves nothing to a fetch and nothing to a browser here, returning an empty body both ways. eGGSA's gravestone library — this archive's usual free route, and a gravestone naming a Rector in that generation would answer it as well as a baptism — refused navigation outright. So all three routes were shut, and none of them shut in a way that says anything about the names. |
| Does “Rector Kolbe”, “Casmier Kolbe” or “Peter Benjamin Kolbe” appear in any digitised text on archive.org? | NO RESULT, AND IT IS NOT A NEGATIVE — THE ENDPOINT DOES NOT EXIST Void | This is the trap this archive logged in row 132 and it caught the archive again within the day. Three full-text queries returned empty bodies, which reads exactly like three nil returns. A control was run before any of it was believed, and the control is the only reason this row is not a published negative. ia-pub-fts-api.archive.org and ia-fts.archive.org both answer HTTP 000 — no connection at all, and the newer services/search/beta/page_production/scrape.json answers HTTP 404. Meanwhile archive.org/advancedsearch.php answers HTTP 200 with 3,383 bytes and archive.org/download answers 302, so the host is reachable and it is the full-text API that is gone. Archive.org's full text is no longer searchable by API from here; it can still be searched by downloading a known item and grepping it, which is what worked for The Mirror. A search you could not run is not a search that found nothing, and the difference is one control. |
The tailor's marriage, in a German index this archive had written off — and a place filter that answers 0 to everything
the negative that sent this search abroad was measuring a broken filter, and the real negative is much narrower · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does FindMyPast hold German parish marriages at all, or only Württemberg as a birthplace in emigration records? | IT HOLDS THEM — GERMANY MARRIAGE INDEX 1558–1929 Found | This archive had written FindMyPast off for German registers and that was wrong. Searching parish marriages for the forename Gottlieb alone, 1785–1795, returned 5,918 results dominated by a set called “Germany Marriage Index 1558–1929” — a German marriage index, not an emigration field. It holds 338 Kolbe marriages. Its records carry both parties, the year and the parish: Agnes Kolbe × Jerg Raisch, 1685, Evangelisch, Groetzingen, Schwarzwaldkreis, Wuerttemberg, and Albrecht Jonathon Kolbe, 1741, Knittlingen, Evangelisch, Neckar, Wrtt. So the index reaches Württemberg, and it holds Kolbes there. |
| Is there a Gottlieb Kolbe marriage in Germany between 1778 and 1798? | NO — AND THIS ONE IS CONTROLLED Nothing | Eleven Kolbe marriages exist in that twenty-year window and all eleven were read. Anton (1780, Massow, Pommern); Christian Johann Anton (1797, Hausberge, Westfalen); David Friederich (1780, Halle Stadt, Westfalen); David Friedrich (1792, Bielefeld-Altstadt); Franz Wilhelm (1786, an infantry regiment at Bielefeld-Wedel); Gotfried August Christian (1785, Herford); Henrich Eberhard (1778, Bielefeld-Altstadt); Johann Friedrich (1793, Berlin); Johann Sebastian (1791, Berlin); Sibilla Wilhelmina (1785, Duesseldorf); Sussanna Elisabeth (1793, Duesseldorf). No Gottlieb, and not one of them in Württemberg — the window's coverage is entirely Prussian. The year filter demonstrably works, cutting 338 to 11. So the nil is real and it is narrow: it says this index has no Gottlieb Kolbe marrying in those years, and that its coverage in those years does not reach the region the tailor came from. It does not say he did not marry in Württemberg. |
| Can the Germany Marriage Index be filtered by place? | NO — THE FILTER RETURNS 0 TO EVERYTHING, INCLUDING PLACES VISIBLE IN ITS OWN RESULTS Void | This is the fault that produced a published negative, and it takes three lines to prove. place=wuerttemberg returns 0 — against two Württemberg records read from the unfiltered set minutes earlier. place=knittlingen returns 0, against a Knittlingen record read from the same page. And place=westfalen returns 0, when seven of the eleven records in the window above are Westphalian. A filter that answers 0 for a place printed in its own results is not filtering, and every place-filtered search on this dataset is worthless whatever it returns. The year filter and the dataset filter both work; only place is dead. The general rule, which this archive has now met twice in one day: before believing a filter's nil, search for something you have already seen with your own eyes. |
| Does FindMyPast hold a German BAPTISM index as well as a marriage one? | YES — GERMANY BIRTH AND BAPTISM INDEX 1558–1898, WITH 952 KOLBE ENTRIES Partly | This is the collection that could name the tailor's parents. He was born in Württemberg in 1765 and this archive has nothing whatever between that birth and the first London baptism of 1792 — twenty-seven years. A baptism entry in this index gives the parish and the parents. 952 Kolbe entries exist in it. Seen in passing on a wider search, with the record set named beside each: a Kolbe born 1763 at Deutsch Reformirte Kirche, Prenzlau, Brandenburg; Friderich Wilhelm Kolbe, 1764, Evangelisch, Bielefeld-Altstadt, Westfalen; Joh. Wilh. Kolbe, 1764, Evangelisch, Duesseldorf Stadt, Rheinland; and two Maria Dorothea Kolbes, 1764, Brandenburg (Havel). NOT YET READ FOR WÜRTTEMBERG. The 952 were not gone through, and nothing is claimed about whether a Gottlieb or Gottlob is among them. |
| Can a FindMyPast record set be searched by dataset AND year together? | NO — COMBINING THEM RETURNS 0, AND THAT IS WHAT PRODUCED THE ZERO ABOVE Void | Three measurements make it certain. datasetname=germany birth and baptism index 1558-1898 + lastname=kolbe alone returns 952. Add yearofbirth=1765 with any offset and it returns 0; use the generic year=1765 instead and it also returns 0. But sourcecategory=parish baptisms + lastname=kolbe + yearofbirth=1765 — the same year filter, without the dataset name — returns 619, and German index entries dated 1763 and 1764 are plainly among them. So the year filter works and the dataset filter works, and they annihilate each other. This is the same shape as the q.filmNumber trap already recorded for FamilySearch — a term that filters alone and is discarded, or poisons the query, the moment another joins it. The way round is to filter by sourcecategory and the year, then read the record set off each row. Recorded because a 0 from this combination looks exactly like a nil return and is not one. |
Casmier and Rector, answered out of this archive's own shelves
both names were already here — one in two death notices, the other under a spelling that is not a word · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Did JOHAN CASMIER KOLBE, ninth of thirteen in the 2012 Barry report, exist? | YES — AND HE IS NAMED IN BOTH HIS PARENTS' DEATH NOTICES Found | Answered without leaving the building, after a day of trying to reach registers that were all shut. The Settler's death notice, signed M. Kolbe at Colesberg, January 1845, names ten children and JOHAN CASIMIR is the fifth. Margaret Downing's notice of 25 November 1867 names him again among the survivors — the document marks Mary Elizabeth “(dead)” and does not mark him — so he was alive at about twenty-three. Both were transcribed here on 10 September. He was missing only from people.js, which is where the search had been run. He now has a record, and the report's “Casmier” is a third spelling beside the family list's “Casiner”. |
| Are PETER RECTOR KOLBE and BENJAMIN KOLBE two children, or one man split in two? | ONE MAN — AND HIS FORENAME EXPLAINS A CHILD BORN FORTY-TWO YEARS LATER Partly | This archive has carried him as “KEETOR Peter Benjamin”, born 1840 at Colesberg. KEETOR IS NOT A NAME. The Barry report gives the same person as PETER RECTOR KOLBE, and Rector is — so Keetor is Rector misread out of a hand, and on this one point the weaker source is the better witness. The report then lists PETER RECTOR and BENJAMIN as two children where the family list has one man carrying all three forenames, which is the report inflating its own count. WHY IT MATTERS: this archive holds ANTON RECTOR KOLBE BARRY, born 3 November 1882, baptised Burgersdorp 1883, and has never been able to say where his Rector came from. A great-uncle of that name would say it — the same namesake reasoning that traced Fortunatus across three families. NOTHING IS ADOPTED. Two compiled sources agreeing about a forename are still two compiled sources, and the documents do not help him: he is absent from the 1845 notice's ten and from the 1867 notice's survivors, though a boy born in 1840 would have been four when his father died and a minor child's name is exactly what a death notice records. He died before 1845, or he does not belong to this family. A Colesberg baptism for 1840 would settle it. |
| Does the forename CASIMIR recur in South African Kolbe families? | YES — THREE MEN, IN CIVIL MARRIAGE REGISTERS, ALREADY ON THIS ARCHIVE'S OWN REGISTER PAGE Found | Found in harvest/rows.tsv, which this archive pulled itself and has published at The Register since September. All three out of South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1801–1974 — a civil register, not a tree: JOHAN HENDRIK CASIMIR KOLBE, born 1863, married Gertruida Jacomina Louw; JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, married Elizabeth Geertruida Pienaar; JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, born 1934, married Maria Monica Van Der Walt. A SHARED SURNAME IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP and not one of them is joined to this house. What it does is kill the leading alternative: a compiler who invents a name out of a misread hand does not invent one that three other men are carrying in the same country's marriage registers over ninety years. RECTOR returns nothing in the same harvest — but the Kolbe harvest is 400 of 1,585 records, 25%, so that is a weak nil and is not recorded as a negative. |
Nienaber 1947 — the one page that would carry the General's pedigree, and it is not digitised
a controlled negative with three controls, which is what it took to be allowed to say it · searched 21 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is P. J. Nienaber, Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek (Voortrekkerpers, 1947), on the Internet Archive? | NO — AND THIS ONE IS CONTROLLED THREE WAYS Nothing | It matters because it is the source by elimination for the General's descent. The Afrikaans Wikipedia article on Generaal Willem Johannes Kolbe cites Nienaber p. 139 and a Fourie piece without saying which carries what; the Fourie piece was read here in full and has no genealogy in it at all, so the pedigree — father J. G. E. Kolbe, mother Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, grandparents George Augustus Kolbe and Margaret Downing — rests on a page nobody here has seen. Searched: title:("Afrikaanse Biografiese Woordeboek") returns 0, and a loose Nienaber AND biografiese returns 0. THREE CONTROLS, because a zero is worth nothing without them. title:("Dictionary of South African Biography") returns 5, including dictionaryofsout0005unse — the exact identifier row 137 found by another route, so the query shape is right. title:("Afrikaanse") returns 570, so Afrikaans titles are not invisible to this index. And Voortrekkerpers itself returns 2 items, so the publisher is not absent either. The endpoint is the one that works — archive.org's full-text API is gone, but advancedsearch.php answers, which is the distinction learned earlier the same day. CONCLUSION: unlike DSAB Volume V, which is borrowable, this one is not digitised and needs a library. The realistic holders are the National Library of South Africa by legal deposit and South African university libraries. Nothing about the pedigree is changed by this — it is neither confirmed nor withdrawn, and it stays exactly where row 140 put it. |
The two Kolbe–McCabe marriage images, read at last
the index was exhausted in September; this is the page itself · searched 27 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| The 1871 image — does the register give Anna Jacoba's condition? | YES — “WEDUWE”, AND SHE IS ENTERED “KOLBE, GEB: VAN DER MERWE” Found | The test named four days ago, answered in one word. DGS 008145483 image 186: ANNA JACOBA KOLBE, GEB: VAN DER MERWE, 46, WEDUWE, no occupation, of LEEUWBERG (BLOEMF.); FRANCIS McCABE, 53, WEDUWNAAR, LANDDROST, of Bloemfontein. By licentie, entry 874, Gustav Radloff V.D.M. She signed her own name. The duplicate person this archive made of her is now withdrawn on a document. FamilySearch 1:1:6ZH1-PJDY, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK8-G98P-6, DGS 008145483 image 186 of 283. |
| The 1872 image — does it name Jan Hendrik's father, or Rose Maria's? | NO. THE FORM HAS NO PARENTS' COLUMNS AT ALL Nothing | A controlled negative about the record set, not about the family. The Free State civil marriage form of 1869–72 runs: No., Datum, Volle naam en toenaam, Ouderdom, Staat, Ambt of beroep, Woning ten tijde des Huwelijks, Huwelijksgeboden of Licentie, Toestemming — and then signatures. Consent is recorded by relationship, not by name: this entry says “Moeder”. So the fathers are not obtainable from this register in any year, and the archive's reason for wanting the image was wrong. Logged as a correction. FamilySearch 1:1:6ZHB-XQ1R, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK8-G98V-M, DGS 008145483 image 221 of 283. |
| What the 1872 image gives instead | AN OCCUPATION, A CONDITION, A WITNESS — AND THE FARM Partly | JAN HENDRIK KOLBE, 23, VEEBOER, of LEEUWBERG (BLFN.); ROSE MARIA McCABE, 17, residence “Dito”. Both JONGELIEDEN. Married on geboden with the mother's consent. Witness G. A. KOLBE; same minister as the year before. LEEUWBERG IS THE COMMANDANT'S OWN FARM — he died on it in 1868, and the register had put his widow on it in July 1871. A 23-YEAR-OLD KOLBE FARMING THERE IN 1872, MARRYING A GIRL RESIDENT ON THE SAME FARM, IS THE BEST EVIDENCE THIS ARCHIVE HAS that he belongs to that household. IT IS NOT PROOF OF PARENTAGE — a farm is not a father — and the tree's claim stays a tree's claim. |
| Is the FamilySearch record attached to a tree person, and to whom? | YES, AND IT CORROBORATES WITHOUT BEING A WITNESS Partly | The 1871 record is attached in the Family Tree to ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, 1824–1896, L4QC-25N — the death year matching VAB MHG M777 of 1896, which this archive holds from the Free State estate index. AN ATTACHMENT IS SOMEBODY'S OPINION, NOT A DOCUMENT, and it is recorded here as agreement rather than as evidence. The 1872 record is attached to JAN HENDRIK KOLBE, 1849–1924, L4QF-ZJH, with a Free State civil death registration and several Free State Dutch Reformed church records hanging off the same profile — none read. |
The Commandant's children, searched on their mother's name
every earlier search used his name, and his name is spelled six ways · searched 27 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe — was he born in 1857 or 1859? | BOTH, AND THE TWO TREES ARE NOT THE WITNESSES — TWO DOCUMENTS ARE Partly | The disagreement is real and it is not a tree's carelessness. The gravestone at Bloemfontein Memoriam Road Cemetery, photographed 30 September 2018, gives 22 October 1859 – 8 December 1930. The civil death registration (FamilySearch 1:1:81ZN-KW6Z; National Archives of South Africa, Dewetsdorp death records 1930, image 852 of 2,140) gives age 73 at death on 18 December 1930, which puts his birth about 1857. GENI'S “22 OCTOBER 1857” IS A SPLICE — the stone's day and month on the form's year — and matches neither document. NEITHER IS A BAPTISM: an age is what an informant said, a stone is cut afterwards. His baptism is not in the index, and the stone's photograph is behind a paywall, so even its transcription is unchecked. |
| Does the death form name his parents? | NO — AND FOR THE SAME REASON THE MARRIAGE REGISTER DID NOT Nothing | The second form this week whose column does not exist. Line 2(a) of the Form of Information of a Death asks for the name of a parent or guardian “if the deceased was under the age of ten”, and he was seventy-something. What it does give: weduwnaar, boer, born in the Orange Free State, died at Bloemspruit, to be buried at Bloemfontein; Dr J. M. de Kock attending; registered 19 December 1930 by J. S. Kruger. The informant signs W. J. PIENAAR of 77 St John's Road, Bloemfontein — and the Commandant's eldest daughter married a Johannes Petrus Pienaar at Bloemfontein in 1860. Suggestive; Pienaar is also one of the commonest names in that district; not adopted. |
| Searching the baptism registers on ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE instead of on her husband | SEVEN OF THE TWELVE CHILDREN, FROM FONTS, IN ONE QUERY Found | The method is the finding. Every previous search used the father, whose name is spelled John Gerson Eliezar, Jan Gerson Eliese, Johan Gerson Eliezer, John G E, J G E and John Gerson Elinger across six documents — a name that cannot be searched. HER NAME IS STABLE. Searched on the mother: GEORG AUGUSTUS b. 30 Sep 1845, bapt. Colesberg 8 Mar 1846; WILLEM JOHANNES b. 2 Aug 1847, bapt. Fauresmith 12 Mar 1848; JAN HENDRIK b. 5 Jul 1849, bapt. Fauresmith 9 Oct 1849; PETRUS JACOBUS b. 4 May 1852, bapt. 7 Jun 1852; MARGARETHA ELIZABETH b. 16 Feb 1854, bapt. 2 Apr 1854; ANNA SUSANNA b. 15 Aug 1860, bapt. Bloemfontein 7 Oct 1860; ANNA JACOBA b. 3 Nov 1864, bapt. Bloemfontein 1 Jan 1865. Two more from civil death registrations naming both parents: ANDRIES FREDERICK, b. 1856, d. Bloemfontein 11 Apr 1918, and a PIETER, b. 1852, d. Bloemfontein 7 Nov 1919, who may be Petrus Jacobus under another form. ONLY FOUR ARE ENTERED IN PEOPLE.JS TODAY. The rest are recorded here and deliberately not made into people yet — this archive turned a widow into a daughter four days ago and the discipline is worth more than the speed. |
| Is there a daughter named ANNA JACOBA, as well as the widow? | YES — AND SHE IS WHY THE DUPLICATE WAS PLAUSIBLE Found | ANNA JACOBA KOLBE, born 3 November 1864, baptised at Bloemfontein on 1 January 1865, daughter of John G E Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe — named for her mother, as this family names everybody. She married ANDRIES PETRUS SMIT. SO THE ARCHIVE'S 23 SEPTEMBER ERROR WAS NOT A SILLY ONE: there really is a daughter of that name. She was simply six years old at the 1871 marriage, and the image says weduwe and 46. |
| Two FamilySearch search behaviours worth writing down | A PARENT FILTER THAT RANKS RATHER THAN FILTERS, AND ONE THAT SILENTLY VANISHES Partly | First: q.motherGivenName + q.motherSurname does not restrict the result set — it returns 3,499 rows and puts the eleven real ones on top. Past the first page the matches stop and unrelated Transvaal probates begin. Reading a count as a result set would be wrong in both directions. Second: adding q.givenName to that same query drops the mother parameters altogether — 263 rows of every Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe in South Africa, mother ignored. And q.fatherSurname=Kolbe with the same mother terms returns 0. Same shape as the FindMyPast finding in September: filters here annihilate each other silently, and a zero is a statement about the query before it is a statement about the family. |
| The gravestone photograph at BillionGraves | BLOCKED — THE FULL IMAGE IS BEHIND A PAID ACCOUNT Blocked | The record page offers a 180×135 thumbnail; the high-resolution image requires an account and a subscription. No account was created and none will be — this archive does not sign up to services on David's behalf. So the stone's dates are held here at one remove, from a volunteer's transcription, which matters because the ten-day difference between the stone's death date and the register's is exactly the kind of slip a transcriber makes with “18”. |
The Colesberg font for Johan Casimir — asked for, and not there
the same key that worked this morning, turned on the other generation · searched 27 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is Johan Casimir Kolbe's baptism in the Cape Dutch Reformed registers? | NO — FIFTEEN RECORDS ANSWER CASIMIR IN THE WHOLE COLLECTION AND NONE IS HIS FONT Nothing | A clean negative on the thing that was asked for. Collection 1478678, South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660–1994, searched for Casimir under Kolbe: fifteen results, of which three are his own membership and banns, two are his children, one is a nephew, and the rest are other families. NO BAPTISM. Same for Peter / Benjamin / Rector: five records in the whole collection, none of them Peter Benjamin. THE NIL IS CONTROLLED AND NOT STRONG — the same collection indexes this family's own 1838 baptism with the father entered as the bare word Kolbe, no forename, so it can lose a child as easily as a parent. |
| What Colesberg does have for him | A MEMBERSHIP, BANNS, A WIFE AND SIX CHILDREN — AND A DEATH THAT NAMES BOTH HIS PARENTS Found | Membership at COLESBERG, 31 March 1866, indexed twice. Marriage banns at COLESBERG, 1 May 1867, to ELIZABETH GEERTRUIDA PIENAAR. Children Adriana (Cape register) and Elizabeth Augusta, Anna Sophia, Johanna, George Augustus and Margaret Dewning (Free State registers) — his father's name and his mother's, on two of his own children. Died 11 MARCH 1906 at SMITHFIELD, O.R.C., aged 60, born Cape Colony, son of GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE and MARGARET DOWNING (FamilySearch 1:1:D9SM-K2N2). An estate was filed at Smithfield in 1906 and is not ordered. A man who had no life here at breakfast has a parish, a wife, six children, a deathbed and an estate. |
| Three birth years, and one of them can be killed from a document already held | 1846 IS IMPOSSIBLE — HE IS ON A DEATH NOTICE SIGNED IN JANUARY 1845 Partly | The family list says 1844, Bethulie; the death registration's age of 60 implies 1846; the probate index says 1845. He is the fifth of the ten children named on his father's death notice, signed by his mother at Colesberg in January 1845 — a document this archive transcribed on 10 September. So 1846 is out, on evidence already in the building, and an age at death was always the weakest of the three. 1844 or 1845 remains open and the font would close it. |
| Two men found while looking for a third | THE GENERAL'S DEATH REGISTRATION, AND JAN HENDRIK'S ESTATE Found | WILLEM JOHANNES KOLBE, died 23 APRIL 1941 at MERIBA, BLOEMFONTEIN, born 1848 at PHILIPPOLIS — a civil register arriving independently at the death year and the birthplace the Afrikaans dictionary gives for the general. He married Christina Cath Petronella Pretorius on 8 May 1880. JOHN HENRY KOLBE — Orange Free State probate 1924, FICKSBURG, died 18 JANUARY 1924, born 1850 Bloemfontein — Jan Hendrik's estate and the date of his death, which this archive had only from a tree attachment this morning. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE — probate 1905, died 29 April 1905, born 1846 Colesburg — the Commandant's eldest. None of the three estates is ordered. |
| A thing this archive already held and had filed as unrelated | ITS OWN REGISTER PAGE HAS CARRIED HIS MARRIAGE SINCE SEPTEMBER Found | On 21 September this archive wrote of three Johan Casimir Kolbes in its own harvested register that “A SHARED SURNAME IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP and not one of them is joined to this house.” The second of the three — JOHAN CASIMIR KOLBE, married Elizabeth Geertruida Pienaar — is the Settler's son. The evidence was on this site, correctly transcribed, correctly refused, and six days early. THE RULE WAS RIGHT AND THE VERDICT WAS PREMATURE: not joined and not joinable are different findings, and only one of them should ever be written down. |
The same URL, 3,499 results and then 0, forty minutes apart
not a finding about the family — a finding about the instrument · searched 27 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does a signed-out FamilySearch session return an honest zero? | NO. IT RETURNS “No Results Found” AND A COUNT OF 0 Blocked | This archive has warned about this since 21 September on a peer's report, and today it happened here, controlled, by accident. The identical search URL — Kolbe, mother Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, South Africa — returned 3,499 results in the morning and 0 forty minutes later, on the same machine, in the same minute of the same afternoon. The only thing that changed was the browser context: the pane restarted with an empty cookie jar. The page does carry a banner — create a free account or sign in to see all available results — so it is not a pure fabrication; but the result count says 0 and the body says No Results Found, and a reader skimming for a number gets a false negative. THE DOCUMENTED REMEDY WAS TRIED FIRST AND DID NOT WORK. The estate's rule is before asking a person to fix something, open a second tab; a fresh tab in the same pane is signed out too, because the loss is the pane's and not the tab's. |
| What this costs, and what it does not | NOTHING ALREADY FOUND IS IN DOUBT Partly | Every FamilySearch result recorded today was taken from the signed-in session and is unaffected. What is blocked is the rest: the arks for five of the Commandant's children were not captured before the session dropped, so those five are still not entered as people, and the three estate files found this afternoon cannot be opened. NO ZERO RECORDED TODAY CAME FROM THE SIGNED-OUT SESSION — the only zeros here are the Cape baptism searches for Johan Casimir and Peter Benjamin, both run while signed in and both controlled against fifteen and five positive results in the same collection. |
| The round trip, completed the same evening | 3,499 → 0 → 3,499, ONE URL, ONE MACHINE, ONE AFTERNOON Found | David signed in and the identical URL returned 3,499 again. That closes the experiment rather than merely ending the outage: the count fell and came back with nothing changed but the session, which is as clean a demonstration as this archive will get that the zero was a statement about the instrument and not about the family. |
NAAIRS, swept at last for DASCHNER and MOUNTJOY — and there are now two databases
the surnames row 1 named in September and nobody had ever searched · searched 27 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is the old NAAIRS database reachable? | NO — 503 SERVICE UNAVAILABLE, THE SAME OUTAGE AS 15 SEPTEMBER Blocked | national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl answers 503 Service Unavailable, no server is available to handle this request. On 15 September it answered «the connection to the Search Manager Server is inactive». Twelve days, two different error messages, one dead service. The old database is the COMPLETE one, so everything below is from the partial one and is a floor rather than a count. WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT, since a block with no remedy is an excuse: the service coming back, which has to be retried rather than waited on — it was up in early September and has failed twice since; the migration completing, after which the new database answers for the whole 8.3 million; or the reading room at Pretoria, where the series can be worked from the finding aids on paper and no search engine is involved. The reading room is closed today for a water-supply interruption, so that third route is shut as well and is the one to test first when it reopens. |
| THE TRAP, and it is new since this archive last looked | THERE ARE TWO NAAIRS DATABASES AND THE WORKING ONE IS INCOMPLETE Partly | NARSSA says so itself, on its own search page: it is “in the process of migrating more than 8.3 million entries from the old NAAIRS database to the new database and therefore fulltext search (new database) will not display all the records in the system”. So a nil from the new database is not a nil. It is the same shape as every instrument failure in this register — an answer that looks complete and is not — with the one mercy that here the service says so in writing rather than leaving a reader to find out. Every negative below is qualified by it, and none of them is recorded as a no. |
| The control, run first | BOOYZEN RETURNS, AND ONE ROW IS THIS FAMILY'S Found | A question this archive already knows the answer to, so a nil on the other surnames would mean something. BOOYZEN returns across Cape Town 42, Free State 10, central government 8, Pietermaritzburg 4 and the Transvaal in quantity; by series MHG 47, Master of the Supreme Court Cape Town 29, WLD 27, TPD 22. And in the first ten rows: BOOYZEN, MAGRITHA MARIA SUSANNA, BORN POOLE — TAB MHG 2830/47, “SURVIVING SPOUSE JOHN BARRY BOOYZEN” — a wife of the John Barry Booyzen already on the Pretoria list. The control produced a find, which is the cheapest kind there is. |
| DASCHNER, never searched before today | TWELVE RECORDS, AND ONE NEW ESTATE THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE Found | NEW: DASCHNER, HEINRICH — TAB MHG 10287/69, archivist's note “CHILD.” A child's estate, and this archive holds no Heinrich Daschner. Already held or known: JOSEPH HEINRICH, TAB MHG 1928/42, whose death notice is in this archive's custody store; CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA born BOOYZEN, TAB MHG 3734/46, the file on the Pretoria list marked don't need; and WILLIAM HERMAN, TAB MHG 2703/63. The remaining seven are divorce and matrimonial cases in the Witwatersrand and Transvaal courts between 1972 and 1983. THEIR PARTIES ARE NOT NAMED HERE. People in a 1980 divorce may well be alive, they are not this archive's subject, and a reference is all a researcher needs: TAB WLD 960/1972, TPD 110/1980, TPD 606/1980, and three more naming Daschner women under married surnames. |
| MOUNTJOY, never searched before today | FIFTY-EIGHT RECORDS, AND A WHOLE SEAM OF CAPE ESTATES NEVER TOUCHED Found | Fifty-eight returned at sixty per page, so the set is complete for this database. The ones this archive already holds or has on order are there — JAMES MOUNTJOY'S TWO WILLS, KAB MOOC 7/1/104 refs 42 and 43, which the Western Cape chase letter is about; JAMES JOHN MOUNTJOY, MOOC 6/9/5047 no. 58379 and MARIA LOUISA BERTHA née KUMM, 58380, both in custody here; MOOC 6/9/15220 no. 3786/48; and BOOYZEN, GEORGE DOWNING MOUNTJOY, TAB MHG 1095/48, the first item on the Pretoria list. WHAT IS NEW IS THE WOMEN. Seven Mountjoy daughters appear under their married surnames, which is exactly the filing that hid the Commandant's widow: BRUMMER, WILHELMINA née MOUNTJOY — MOOC 6/9/379 no. 2345; DIESEL, LOUISA ELIZABETH — MOOC 6/9/2480 no. 1656; DEMMER, ELIZABETH MARTHA — MOOC 6/9/9771 no. 83676; BURGER, WILHELMINA LOUISA — MOOC 6/9/16573 no. 5683/49; NEPGEN, ANNIE LOUISA — MOOC 6/9/16323 no. 4191/49; FOURIE, MARIA SOPHIA — TAB MHG 2332/42; KLOPPER, JACOBA GEZINA ELIZABETH — TAB MHG 5570/52. And three Mountjoy wives under Mountjoy: SUSAN ELIZABETH née DIESEL (MOOC 6/9/1967 no. 989), ALETTA JOHANNA née HATTINGH (MOOC 6/9/5599 no. 66509), CATHERINE LOUISA JOHANNA née DE KOCK (MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46). NOT ONE OF THE TEN IS JOINED TO THIS HOUSE YET — and this archive said something very like that about a Johan Casimir six days ago and was wrong. A DEATH NOTICE NAMES PARENTS, so ten of them is ten chances to attach a Mountjoy daughter to a father. |
| Two Mountjoy names the harvest already held, now with court files behind them | JACOBA GEZINA ELIZABETH × KLOPPER, AND GEORGE × FRIEDA MARIA Found | This archive's own FamilySearch harvest has Jacoba Gesina Elizabeth Mountjoy, b. 1869, married Hendrik Balthazar Klopper and George Mountjoy, b. 1889, married Frieda Maria Lindemann. NAAIRS now supplies the paper: her estate at TAB MHG 5570/52, and for him two restitution-of-conjugal-rights cases, KAB GSC 2/1/1/478 no. 456 and 2/1/1/574 no. 366, against Frieda Maria Mountjoy, formerly Lindemann, born Osteloh — the index spelling her maiden name Osteloh in one and Osterloh in the other, which is the same index disagreeing with itself in two adjacent rows. |
| A change of tariff, noticed in passing and relevant to the money | NARSSA'S FEES CHANGED ON 1 SEPTEMBER 2026 Partly | Posted on the National Archives front page, 25 August: new tariffs effective 1 September 2026, and researchers are asked to read the schedule before submitting chargeable requests. The Pretoria order is on hold on cost, so the figures it was held against are a month out of date and may be wrong in either direction. The reading room is also closed — two notices, one for a temporary water-supply interruption and one headed temporal closure of the reading room, neither dated on the index page. |
| Which endpoint answered, and when | RECORDED BECAUSE A DATE IS NOT ENOUGH WHEN ONE SERVICE HAS TWO DOORS Found | All of the above ran on the NEW database, nationalarchives.gov.za/search-the-collections?search_api_views_fulltext_op=AND&search_api_views_fulltext=<TERM>&items_per_page=60, on the afternoon of 27 September 2026. The OLD database, national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl, answered 503 in the same session, and naairs.htm is now 404. WHY THE ENDPOINT AND NOT ONLY THE DAY: a dated nil is not atomic. On a day when a service moves, two searches an hour apart can hit two different corpora and a day-level record cannot tell them apart — the Luwinski session found exactly that inside its own 16 September, which contains an outage, the discovery of a new address, and searches on it. Across six archives in this estate, 1,369 of 1,381 negatives name what was searched, 1,316 carry a date, and exactly one carries a time. Naming the database is enough right up until one database has two endpoints serving different corpora. |
A letter about the Barrys that sat unread in an inbox for eighteen years
searched because David remembered it, not because this archive knew it existed · searched 28 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does the well-known Barry family of Swellendam connect to this one? | NO — AND THE INSTRUMENT THAT SAYS SO IS THE LARGEST THIS ARCHIVE HAS EVER APPLIED Found | This was a named lead, untested, and it is now answered. A researcher, WENDY, wrote to David on 11 JUNE 2008 with a complete descendant report of the ENGLISH Barrys — 1,604 numbered principals over eleven generations, 1659 to 1999, the product of twelve years' work in archives, libraries and letters to “most of the Barry names in all the South African telephone books”. It is the family of JOSEPH BARRY (1796–1865) of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, who built the Swellendam trading house. IT CONTAINS NOT ONE NAME THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS. Kolbe 0, Mountjoy 0, Booyzen 0, Booysen 0, Downing 0, Daschner 0, Fortunatus 0, Burgersdorp 0, Barkly 0, Indwe 0, Grahamstown 0. THE CONTROL IS THE POINT: the tree is not simply an English one that never reached the Cape — it says South Africa 200 times, Cape 236 and Swellendam 129. It is in the right country and the right century and this family is not in it. |
| Then which Barrys are these? | SHE NAMES A THIRD GROUP, AND SAYS SHE HAD NOT TRACED IT Partly | Her first paragraph sorts the South African Barrys into three: the Irish, who came “out to South Africa in the early 1800” and are her own; the English, whom she traced because the two intermarry so often “that the trees overlap”; and — in her words — “the other Barry family that came to South Africa in the late 1700 from London”, which she was only then “going to have a bash at”. THIS ARCHIVE'S BARRYS ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY THE THIRD GROUP, and the fit is close: its earliest is a JOHN BARRY who died at de Bruins Poort in 1853 with no birth, no arrival and no burial found, and his son JOHN AUGUSTUS BARRY I, born 1819 “at sea”. NOT ADOPTED — three groups is a working researcher's sorting, not a census, and a family can always be a fourth thing. But it is the first time anybody has told this archive where NOT to look, and that is worth as much as a name. |
| She had TWO finished trees. Which one did she send? | THE ENGLISH ONE ONLY — AND THE IRISH ONE IS THE ONE THIS FAMILY'S LORE POINTS AT Partly | Checked rather than assumed, and it changes the ask. The attachment is a single report, “Descendants of Thomas Barry” of Stockton, Coventry — Ireland appears 0 times in 399,920 characters, Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Waterford 0 each, and “Irish” twice, both in her covering note. So the Irish tree, which she descends from and had also completed, is not in this email. AND IT IS THE INTERESTING ONE. This archive's Barry page carries the family's own words about John Barry: “As an Irishman, John Barry was reputed to be anti English…” The one tree that would test the family's own story about its Barrys is the one she did not attach, and she finished it before 2008. That is now a specific thing to ask a specific person for, rather than a wall. |
| What the letter is, and what it is not | A COMPILED TREE FROM A NAMED RESEARCHER — A LEAD LIST, NOT A WITNESS Partly | The same rule this archive applies to Geni and to the 2012 Barry report applies here. Wendy's report is a compilation: it cites no document per person, and its dates come from “Archives Internet and Libraries” and from hundreds of conversations. Its value is as a NEGATIVE and as a DIRECTION, and neither of those needs it to be a witness. Where it would become one is person by person, against registers — and nothing in it needs to be, because nobody in it is claimed as kin. |
| Why this archive did not have it | NOBODY HAD OPENED THE INBOX Found | The letter has been in David's mail since 11 June 2008 and this archive has never cited it. It was found on 28 September 2026 because David remembered receiving it, not because any search, gate or audit here could see it. THE ARCHIVE HAS BEEN READING REGISTERS IN FOUR COUNTRIES WHILE A TWELVE-YEAR TREE OF THE SURNAME SAT UNREAD IN THE HOUSE. Recorded as a finding about method rather than about the Barrys: an inbox is a repository, and this one has never been swept. |
Three Barry letters from 1999, in David's own files
the second sweep of a repository this archive discovered yesterday · searched 28 Sep 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does anything in the 1999 correspondence touch this family? | ONE LETTER IS THIS FAMILY ENTIRELY, AND IT CORRECTS A DATE ON THIS SITE Found | 2 November 1999, from a correspondent working the South African Barrys. He names the household outright: “The 1st Barry in this family is John who married Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe in Colesberg on feb 23, 1846. There is no suggestion as to his parentage.” His source is Prof. C. Pama's South African family genealogies. He then lists eleven children, and they are this archive's: John August 1847, Henry James 1848, George Augustus 1850, Margaretha Loisa Maria 1852, Willem Frederick 1853, Catherine Maria Sophia 1855, Hendrik Nicholaas 1857, Catharina Mary Sophia b. 4 Aug 1859, “m: Willem Hermanus Booysen” — which is the line to David — William Frederick Thomas 1861, Frederick Fortunatus, and Pieter Richard 1866. THE MARRIAGE DATE IS THE FIND, because this site was publishing 1850 for a couple whose eldest son it dated 1847. |
| What is new, and what is only a book | TWO BIRTH YEARS, A MIGRATION, AND A NAME-ORDER — ALL OF THEM PAMA'S, NONE FROM A FONT Partly | HENDRIK NICHOLAAS b. 1857 and PIETER RICHARD b. 1866, where this archive had no dates at all for either. A MIGRATION MARKER: the children “born in Burgersdorp up to Nicolaas who, with his later siblings, was born in Dordrecht” — so the household moves between 1855 and 1857, which is testable against the baptism registers this archive already reads. A NAME-ORDER: Pama has Pieter Richard where the man himself signed R. P. Barry, and Henry James where this archive has James Henry. THE MAN'S OWN SIGNATURE WINS. All of it is marked inf: Pama is a compiled genealogy and this archive has already, in another family, refused to let his revision overrule a death notice signed by a son. |
| A person the letter offers and this archive will not enter | A DAUGHTER WITH HER MOTHER'S NAME ENTIRE — AND WE MADE THAT EXACT MISTAKE ON TUESDAY Partly | The letter gives Hendrik Nicholaas a daughter ANNA JOHANNA MARIA BARRY, born 23 November 1884. This archive holds his WIFE: Anna Johanna Maria Barry, née Schoeman, who died 24 February 1923 at Evaton. A daughter named for her mother is entirely normal in this family — and so is a compiler reading one woman as two. On 23 September this archive turned a widow into a daughter on exactly that shape, and it took a register image to undo. She is written down here and not entered as a person. A baptism at Dordrecht or Burgersdorp in 1884 would settle it. |
| A second, independent elimination of the mainstream Cape Barrys | 1999 AND 2008 AGREE, FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES Found | The 1999 letter opens by saying this household “does not have a clear link to Richard (b: 1743) or his sons John, James or Joseph” — which is Pama's main South African Barry line. Nine years later Wendy's 1,604-person English tree contained nobody from this family either. Two researchers, two sources, twenty-seven and eighteen years old, agreeing that this family is not the Barry family everyone assumes it is. The third letter in the same folder is not research at all — an automated solicitation from a genealogy site dated 17 October 1999, telling David it had 5,364 BARRYs on file. Its only value is that it records what he had registered an interest in: BARRY, 1500–2000, Ireland. |
| And the older correspondence is still there | A THIRD LETTER, SEPTEMBER 1999, ANSWERING NAMES DAVID HAD SENT Partly | 22 September 1999, the same correspondent, working through names David had given him: a Rose Mary Barry b. 25 May 1880 who married Pieter Johannes Truter, daughter of Michael Barry and his first cousin Aletta Catherina Barry, Michael being a son of Joseph b. 1 April 1796 — which is Joseph Barry of Hitchin, the Swellendam merchant, the same man at the head of Wendy's tree. So David was asking about the Swellendam Barrys in 1999 and was told, politely, that the link was unclear. The correspondent asked “What is your link to her?” and this archive still cannot answer. |
Pama's Barry migration, tested against this archive's own fonts
no service, no order, no letter — a claim checked against registers already read here · searched 7 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Were the elder Barry children born at Burgersdorp, as Pama says? | NO — THE FIRST THREE WERE BAPTISED AT GRAAFF-REINET, AND ONE OF THOSE FONTS HAS BEEN READ AT THE IMAGE Found | Pama's claim, reported to David in November 1999, was that the children were “born in Burgersdorp up to Nicolaas who, with his later siblings, was born in Dordrecht”. Tested against the baptisms this archive already holds: JOHN AUGUSTUS II, Graaff-Reinet, 12 April 1847, entry 80; JAMES HENRY, Graaff-Reinet, 13 November 1848; GEORGE AUGUSTUS, Graaff-Reinet, 9 June 1850. Burgersdorp does not appear until 1852. And the 1847 entry is not an index row — it was read at the image, film 008119684 image 876, where every witness is a Kolbe: “Gt: JOHN KOLBE, MARGARET KOLBE, AUGUSTA KOLBE”. A register read at the page beats a book compiled a century later, which is the rule this archive already applied to Pama in the Booysen line. |
| Is Pama's pivot child right? | NO, AND THE PIVOT RESTS ON PAMA HIMSELF Nothing | Pama makes Nicolaas (1857) the first born at Dordrecht. The fonts put WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS at GRAAFF-REINET on 29 September 1861 — four years after Nicolaas — and Dordrecht does not appear until FREDERICK FORTUNATUS, baptised there 10 July 1864. So the pivot is out by at least six years. AND NICOLAAS HAS NO FONT AT ALL: the only evidence for his 1857 birth is Pama, so the claim about him is tested with evidence supplied by the claim. That is the circularity this archive watches for, and it is the reason his year stays marked inf. |
| So what do the fonts say, in order? | GRAAFF-REINET → BURGERSDORP → GRAAFF-REINET → DORDRECHT, AND IT IS NOT A MARCH Partly | 1847, 1848, 1850 Graaff-Reinet. 1852, 1853, 1855 Burgersdorp. 1857 and 1859 unknown. 1861 Graaff-Reinet again. 1863 Dordrecht. Three or four stages where Pama had two, and the 1861 return is the part this archive cannot yet explain — Graaff-Reinet and Burgersdorp are some two hundred and fifty kilometres apart, so it is not a short trip to a familiar font. The 1861 baptism rests on two index arks and has NOT been read at the image, which is the next thing to do and the honest place to stop. IT ALSO SITS WITH SOMETHING THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY KNEW: by this family's practice the 1861 William must mean the 1853 William had died, because a baptism is not done twice. |
| A reading of Pama that would make him right about the wrong generation | HIS SENTENCE FITS THE SONS, NOT THE FATHER Partly | JOHN AUGUSTUS BARRY II's children are baptised at BURGERSDORP in 1873, 1875, 1877, 1879, 1881 and 1883, and then at DORDRECHT in 1887 and 1889. “Burgersdorp up to X, then Dordrecht” describes that household almost exactly — one town, then the other, with a single move between 1883 and 1886. A compiler working from a family's recollection could very easily attach a grandson's migration to a grandfather's household, and the two generations share forenames so completely that this archive has three men called John Augustus Barry. NOT ADOPTED: it is an explanation for how Pama went wrong, not evidence about anybody, and it is written down so the next reader does not have to think of it again. |
The Irish end of John Augustus Barry, with seven days of subscription left
the 1903 registration says IRISHMAN BORN IN IRELAND and the 1915 notice says his mother was born NEAGLE · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a John Barry baptised about 1819 in Ireland to a mother surnamed Nagle or Neagle? | NO — AND THE WINDOW IS COVERED, SO THE NIL MEANS SOMETHING Nothing | The target is exact. His 1903 death registration, made by a son who was in the room, gives his age as 84 years 2 months on 25 August 1903 — so born about June 1819 — and enters him as “Irishman born in Ireland”; the 1915 notice gives his mother as “born Neagle”. Searched Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms for surname BARRY with mother's surname NAGLE and variants: 47 records in the whole of Ireland, and the only Johns are 1811, 1845, 1860 and 1876. THE WINDOW IS NOT EMPTY FOR WANT OF COVERAGE — the same 47 hold a Patrick baptised 1815 at St Mary's Cork City and a Joseph baptised 1822 at Annakissy, so the index reaches either side of 1819 in the right county. |
| What the instrument can and cannot see, said before the nil is trusted | FINDMYPAST INDEXES NO IRISH PROTESTANT PARISH SET BY MOTHER'S SURNAME Partly | This matters more than the nil. Searched all FindMyPast Irish birth, marriage, death and parish sets on the same terms: 54 records, and every one is either Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms or Ireland Births 1864-1958 — civil registration, which begins forty-five years after he was born. So the search could only ever have found a Catholic child. This archive does not know what John Augustus Barry was christened; his wife was a Lutheran missionary's daughter and his children were baptised in Dutch Reformed churches. IF THE FAMILY WAS CHURCH OF IRELAND, NOTHING ABOVE COULD HAVE FOUND THEM, and the right next instrument is the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin, not this one. |
| Where the pairing puts the family, if the pairing is right | CORK, OVERWHELMINGLY — AND ONE HOUSEHOLD WORTH A NAME Partly | Of 47 Barry children of Nagle mothers in all Ireland, all but two are County CORK — Cloyne and Cork & Ross dioceses — the other two Limerick. Nagle is a Cork surname and the index agrees. One household is coherent enough to write down and not to adopt: at PASSAGE WEST, a John Barry and a Nagle baptise Thomas 1800, Michael 1805, Ellen 1806, Joanna 1809 and John 1811. That John is eight years too early for ours and the household is recorded as a lead only. Separately, the marriages index holds one Barry × Nagle marriage before 1819 anywhere in Ireland: 1804, St Mary's, Cork City. |
| A FindMyPast behaviour that cost two wrong answers before it was caught | THE PARENT FIELDS ARE fatherfirstname AND motherlastname — ANY OTHER SPELLING IS DISCARDED IN SILENCE Found | Guessed fathersfirstname and motherslastname from the form's labels and got 26,481 results — the whole Barry surname. The same query typed into the FORM returned 13. The parameters were not rejected, not flagged and not echoed back; they were dropped, and the answer looked like a legitimate large result set. The working names are fatherfirstname, motherlastname, with _variants=true beside each. AND TWO MORE FILTERS ANNIHILATE INSIDE A NAMED DATASET, which this archive first recorded in September: a baptismyear is ignored — the same 47 rows came back spanning 1806 to 1880 — and &page=2 returns “0 results found” rather than the second page, so results can only be paged by clicking. A COUNT IS THE ONLY WAY TO TELL: 26,481 against 13 is the difference between a filter applied and a filter thrown away, and nothing else on the page says which happened. |
The Colesberg marriage found at last, under a spelling nobody searched
row 208 — the date was adopted on arithmetic and a book, and now it rests on a page · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is the 23 February 1846 marriage at Colesberg in a register? | YES, AND IT IS INDEXED UNDER BERRY Found | Searched the Cape Town Archives Dutch Reformed collection for BARRY with spouse KOLBE and a marriage window of 1843–1850. The first result is JOHN BERRY, groom, 23 February 1846, Colesberg, spouse Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe — FamilySearch 1:1:6FB4-KHS4. The date and place are exactly what Pama gave through a letter of November 1999, and what this archive adopted on 28 September as inf because a book is not a page. It is a page now. READ AT THE PAGE, 9 OCTOBER 2026 — ENTRY 735 OF THE COLESBERG MARRIAGE REGISTER. FamilySearch 1:1:6FB4-KHS4, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSV8-8SZQ-L, image 189 of 202. THE CLERK WROTE “JOHN BERRY” AND THE MAN SIGNED “JOHN BARRY”, three lines apart on the same entry — which is the whole reason this record was invisible: every search this archive ever ran was for Barry, and the index follows the clerk. She is entered Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe and signs Margaret Wilhelmina Elizabeth Kolbe. Both jongman and jongedochter; married na huwelijks geboden, after banns; residence STORMBERG SPRUIT; by THOMAS REID, Leeraar der Nederduitsche Hervormde Kerk, in the presence of G. W. VOLBERG and a VAN DER WALT — the same two witness entries 734, 735 and 736, so they are the church's standing witnesses and not family. AND THE CONSENT COLUMN IS THE FINDING. It reads “DE WEDUWE KOLBE, MOEDER” — the widow Kolbe, mother: Margaret Downing, consenting for her daughter fourteen months after the Settler died. NOBODY IS NAMED ON THE GROOM'S SIDE. The entry above names two fathers and the entry below names two; this one names one parent and leaves the other half of the column empty. A register with a column for his father, left blank, is the same answer his death notice gives — the colony had nobody to ask. |
| Why twenty-seven years of searching never turned it up | THE CLERK'S SPELLING AND THE MAN'S OWN SIGNATURE DISAGREE ON ONE ENTRY Found | “John Berry” in the clerk's hand; “John Barry” in the groom's. The index transcribes the clerk, correctly, so the record answers to a surname this family does not use and never appeared in a Barry search. THE SEARCH THAT FOUND IT DID NOT USE HIS NAME AT ALL — it used hers, KOLBE, as the spouse. That is the second time in a fortnight that searching on the WOMAN found what searching on the man could not, after the Commandant's twelve children came out of the fonts on their mother's name. |
| What the register adds that the book did not | A RESIDENCE, A MINISTER, AND A COLUMN DELIBERATELY LEFT HALF EMPTY Found | STORMBERG SPRUIT as their residence in February 1846 — new, and the first place this archive can put the couple at their marriage. THOMAS REID as the minister, with G. W. Volberg and a van der Walt witnessing; the same two witness the entries on either side, so they are the church's and not the family's. And the consent column reads “DE WEDUWE KOLBE, MOEDER” and stops. Entry 734 names two fathers, entry 736 names two; entry 735 names the bride's widowed mother and nobody for the groom. His death notice would say NOT KNOWN of his parents fifty-seven years later; the register was already saying it while he stood in the room. |
The 1861 font read, and it was never a return journey
row 210 — the one baptism that broke the Barry migration · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is “Graaff-Reinet” the parish, or an artefact of an index whose place field is often just ‘Cape Province’? | THE PARISH. THE VOLUME IS LITERALLY THE GRAAFF-REINET BAPTISM BOOK Found | Film 008147497, item 4, titled Graaff-Reinet. Baptism Records 1861–1866, image 190 of 370. Not an index place-field at all — the register itself. Entry 79, “Gedoopt 29 Sept. 1861”: WILLEM FREDERIK THOMAS, Ouders JOHN BARRY and MARGARET WELHELMINA KOLBE. The parents are this couple, at the page, in the clerk's hand. FamilySearch 1:1:623R-9MM9, image 3:1:3Q9M-CSK6-9S81-J. |
| Who stood as witnesses? | HER SISTER AND HER SISTER'S HUSBAND — WHICH EXPLAINS THE JOURNEY WITHOUT ANYBODY MOVING Found | Get: PETRUS JACOBUS JOUBERT, CATHARINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE, RALPH PETER THOMAS, MARIA MAGDALENA PRETORIUS. CATHARINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE IS THE BRIDE'S OWN SISTER — the Settler's second daughter, born 1825, whom this archive has carried as Catherine Maria Sophia (Joubert) since the family list was read. And the first witness is a JOUBERT. The two are standing together, which is what a married couple does at a font. SO THE 1861 GRAAFF-REINET BAPTISM IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT THIS HOUSEHOLD MOVED BACK. A child is christened where the godparents are, and the godparents here are the mother's sister and brother-in-law. A BAPTISM PLACE IS WHERE THE FONT WAS, NOT WHERE THE FAMILY SLEPT, and this archive built a four-stage migration out of forgetting that. |
| And the third witness explains the child's third name | RALPH PETER THOMAS — THE BOY IS WILLIAM FREDERICK THOMAS BARRY Found | The surname of a godparent, given to the child as a forename. This archive has traced Fortunatus and Rector on exactly that reasoning and has an entire /namesakes/ page built on it. It also answers something the archive noticed and could not explain: this child carries THOMAS where his dead elder brother, William Fredrik of 1853, did not. The name arrives with the godparent. |
| One thing the page corrects | 29 SEPTEMBER 1861 IS HIS BAPTISM, NOT HIS BIRTH — AND NO BIRTH DATE IS RECORDED Found | The register reads “Gedoopt 29 Sept. 1861” over entry 79, and unlike the entries on either side — 78 is geb. 24 April 1861, 80 is geb. 16 Aug. 1861 — entry 79 carries no birth date at all. This archive has held born 29 Sep 1861, baptised at Graaff-Reinet, which takes the baptism date and calls it a birth. Corrected. His birth date is not known. |
Sources given ids, and the silent failure the component was built around
row 186 — no searching, only the archive's own plumbing · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Why had this archive never declared what a page rests on? | BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING TO DECLARE — THE SOURCES HAD NO IDS Found | 0 of 41 pages, against Defranceski's 39, and the cause was structural. sources.json held four tables as rows of HTML cells — lifted verbatim from the page in September so that nothing was reworded — and a cell is not a source with a name. Every row now has an id derived from its own first cell: tab-mhg-2428-40, death-notice-margaret-downing-1868. 46 ids and no collisions. THE ID IS NOT A POSITION, and that was deliberate: read-3 is correct until somebody sorts the table, and then it still resolves and means a different document. |
| Did the refactor change anything a reader sees? | NO — THE RENDERED PAGE IS BYTE-IDENTICAL Found | 50,208 characters before, 50,208 after, and the texts compare equal. That was the test worth running: the rows changed shape from a list of cells to an object with an id and cells, every row renderer and a tally function had to follow, and one of them was missed on the first pass and crashed the build — r.map is not a function, in a function counting status chips. A loud failure, which is the good kind. |
| What the component does when an id is wrong | DROPS IT, RENDERS THE REST, AND TELLS NOBODY — UNLESS SOMETHING READS data-missing Found | This is the part worth keeping. SourceBlock resolves each id against the register and silently omits the ones that fail, so a page can claim six sources, show five, and look entirely correct — a claim of provenance that cannot be followed, which is the exact fault the whole sources effort exists to fix. It does leave a count on data-missing, and nothing was reading it. A gate reads it now and refuses the build, proven by injecting a reference to a file that does not exist: /barry/ declares 1 source id that does not resolve. A component that fails quietly is only safe if something else is listening. |
The other thirty-seven pages, and the twenty-five that should say nothing
finishing row 186 — judgement, not a bulk edit · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Can a page's sources be worked out automatically? | NO — THE REGISTER AND THE PAGES BARELY SHARE A VOCABULARY Found | Measured before assigning anything. Of the 46 sources, 34 carry an unambiguous archival reference — MOOC, TAB MHG, Sterfkennis, DOC, CO. Those references appear on almost no narrative page. The pages argue from document NAMES (‘his 1915 death notice’); the register lists reference NUMBERS. They meet only on /sources/ and /documents/. A first attempt at matching was worse than useless: the id sag-b3 matched nineteen pages, because its signature was three letters. So this was done by reading the pages. |
| How many pages should declare? | SEVENTEEN DO. TWENTY-FIVE SHOULD NOT, AND THAT IS NOW WRITTEN DOWN Found | 88 source items across 17 pages, every id resolving. The 25 others are exempt with a reason each in provenance.json. The reasons are not uniform and that is the point: /errands/ is a list of what this archive has NOT got; /searched/ rows are already citations and a block would restate them more weakly; /open-questions/ names the record sets that WOULD answer, so a block would list the documents that did not; /atlas/ witnesses every pin individually and a gate already refuses an unwitnessed one, which is finer than a page-level block; /sources/ is the register and cannot rest on itself. |
| What the gate actually enforces | NOT ‘EVERY PAGE DECLARES’ — ‘EVERY PAGE HAS BEEN THOUGHT ABOUT’ Found | A page that honestly rests on nothing and a page nobody has considered look identical from outside, and that is the state row 186 was really measuring. provenance-undecided refuses a page that neither declares nor appears in the exempt register. Proven by adding an empty page and watching the build stop. The number to watch is no longer 17 of 42 but 0 unconsidered. |
The publishing debt closed, and two gates that were being told the truth and could not hear it
rows 183, 184, 185 and 189 — no searching, only this archive's own plumbing · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Why could this archive never say where a source was held? | BECAUSE THE KIT READS held ONLY ON A DICT ROW, AND THESE ROWS WERE LISTSFound | checksources counts three states — a url, a held saying where the paper is, or no way to reach it — and the held branch tests isinstance(row, dict). Booyzen's source rows were LISTS of cells, and the kit's own source says so in a comment: “Booyzen: a row IS its cells”. So for as long as that was true this archive could not have declared a holding however hard it tried, and it sat at 0 of 42 looking like neglect. This morning's refactor turned the rows into objects for an unrelated reason — to give them ids — and the affordance came with it. 0 of 42 → 46 of 46 accounted for. No urls were invented: two sources were read free online with no deep link captured at the time, and the entry says that rather than guessing. |
| How many hosts did this archive link to and never name? | THE ROW SAID THREE. IT WAS SIX, AND I ADDED THE OTHER THREE MYSELF Found | On 21 September the count was 3. Today: billiongraves.com, findmypast.com.au, findmypast.co.uk, nationalarchives.gov.za, national.archsrch.gov.za and archive.org — and all of the new ones arrived in this archive's data during the last fortnight's research, while the sources page sat untouched. That is the row's own thesis demonstrated on the person who wrote it. All six are named now, with what each costs and the two warnings worth having: NAAIRS runs two databases and the complete one is dead, and BillionGraves is free for the transcription and paid for the photograph. |
| Is Booyzen one of the six archives drawing its lines as a list? | NO — IT HAS NO SUCH PAGE, AND THE ROW'S OTHER CLAIM IS ALSO OUT OF DATE Partly | Measured rather than assumed. Blazevic, D'Arcy and Falco use the kit's Families; Luwinski uses BranchRivers, so “BranchRivers is Defranceski's alone” has stopped being true and half the harmonisation this row proposes has already happened. Mazza is bespoke. Booyzen has neither a families page nor a lines page — it has a chooser and a chart. It already carries the confidence stamp the pattern turns on, per line in trees.json; what it lacks is the journey through places, and places.json already holds the events that would draw one. The fix is to adopt a shared component, not to draw a forty-third bespoke page, which the ratchet in row 189 would refuse on the day it was added and should. |
The estates are not behind a counter. They are filmed, indexed by name, and free
row 201 asked for ten Cape estates to be ordered; the question turned out to be whether they needed ordering at all · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Are the Cape estate papers on FamilySearch? | YES — NAME-INDEXED AND IMAGED. 116 MOUNTJOY RECORDS Found | Collection 2517051, South Africa, Cape, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1822–1990. Searched on the surname alone: 116 records, and the ones this archive wanted are in them. SUSAN ELIZABETH MOUNTJOY, one of the ten — 1:1:QLKL-PMWK — is indexed with age 33, born 1887 at MACLEAR, died 13 September 1920 at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff, and carries an image. None of that was known and none of it cost anything. And JAMES MOUNTJOY THE SADDLER IS THERE TOO (1:1:QP4Z-WK68), probate Cradock, age 45, birthplace EUROPE, died September 1827 — which is question 12's man and this archive's oldest wall. |
| And the Transvaal ones, which are the expensive ones? | ALSO IMAGED — AND THE VOLUME IS TITLED PROBATE ESTATE CASE FILES, NOT AN INDEX Found | Collection 2520237. This is the distinction that matters and it was checked rather than assumed: an index card gives a reference, a case file gives the death notice. The image opened is a STERFKENNIS form — image 345 of 2,754 in Transvaal. Probate Estate Case Files — and it is the death notice of ANNA JOHANNA MARIA BOOYZEN, born PRETORIUS, indexed under her husband George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen as Spouse. THE FILE ITSELF, FREE, WITH A NAME SEARCH. |
| TAB MHG 40293 — the file this archive calls its biggest single gap | INDEXED, IMAGED, AND IT CORRECTS THE PLACE OF DEATH Found | FREDERICK FORTUNATUS DOWNING KOLBE — 1:1:QPCX-661K — aged 27, born Wakkerstroom 1891, DIED 2 NOVEMBER 1918 AT VILLIERIA, PRETORIA, with View Original Document. This archive had him dying at Wakkerstroom; the index has the original place as Villieria Wakkerstroom and standardises it to Pretoria. THE IMAGE IS NOT YET READ and nothing is adopted from the index alone — but the document David has been holding off ordering on cost, and that row 193 is blocked on asking a researcher to complete the reference for, has an ark and a picture. |
| What this does to a list that has been on hold since September | IT MAY REMOVE THE REASON FOR MOST OF IT — AND ONE ITEM IS ALREADY ANSWERED ELSEWHERE Partly | Not all of it, and the limits are stated. What is verified: the Cape and Transvaal probate series are name-indexed with images, and three specific files wanted here have one. What is NOT verified: that every one of the five Pretoria items is in the filmed range, or that a given file's death notice is the page the camera caught. AND ONE ITEM IS SETTLED WITHOUT ANY FILE AT ALL. MHG 1095/48 was still need because a tree said George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen died 21 February 1947 and a burial register said 11 December. The civil death registration gives 11 DECEMBER 1947 and the Johannesburg cemetery record gives burial at WEST PARK on 14 DECEMBER 1947. Two independent records agree and the tree is wrong; the estate file is no longer needed to settle it. |
TAB MHG 40293 is read. It names his parents, and the index was wrong about where he died
row 212 — the file this archive calls its biggest single gap, opened from a film for nothing · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does TAB MHG 40293 exist as an image, and does it open? | YES — STERFKENNIS, AND IT COST NOTHING Found | Collection 2520237, Transvaal, Probate Estate Case Files 1919, DGS film 007808573, item 16, image 60 of 110. Record ark 1:1:QPCX-661K, image ark 3:1:3Q9M-CS9T-FSMR-F. The registry stamp on the form reads MHG 40293, received 29 APR 1919, which is the reference this archive holds, entire. This is the file David has been holding off ordering on cost, and that row 193 is blocked on asking a researcher to complete the reference for. It did not need completing and it did not need paying for. |
| Who were his parents? | GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE AND MARTHA SOFIA KLOPPER Found | Question 3 of the form, Namen en adressen van de Ouders van de overledene: Vader GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE. Moeder MARTHA SOFIA KOLBE, GEBOREN KLOPPER. This is why the file was wanted. Until today the parentage rested on two sidelong documents — his brother Daniel’s death registration reading “G A KOLBE’S SON”, and his sister Maria Johanna’s 1953 estate file naming both parents. Now it is stated in his own. The index attached to this very record says “Relationships — no additional people in this group”: the parents are on the image and were never indexed, which is the whole argument for opening images. |
| Which of the two George Augustus Kolbes of Wakkerstroom is the father? | THE ONE WHO MARRIED A KLOPPER — AND THE MOTHER’S NAME IS WHAT DECIDES IT Found | Two men of that name are buried in Wakkerstroom, born 2 October 1861 and 29 July 1863, and this archive withdrew a claim within the hour once before over exactly this. The death notice does not resolve it by the father’s name, which both men share — it resolves it by the mother’s. The 1861 man’s wife was Susanna Margaretha, on his own stone. The 1863 man married Martha Sophia Klopper. So the father is George Augustus Kolbe of Wakkerstroom, born 29 July 1863, baptised at Colesberg, dead 28 September 1954 aged 91 — who outlived this son by thirty-six years. A collision is only dangerous while you are matching on the colliding field. |
| Did he leave children? | ONE, AND A MINOR Found | Question 10: “George Augustus Kolbe. Minderjarig, geboren 2 Julie 1914.” He was four when his father died. He carries his grandfather’s name entire, which is this family’s documented habit, and he is the fourth George Augustus Kolbe in this archive. Nothing is known of him after 1919 and nothing is claimed. |
| Is there a will, and does it name anybody else? | YES, A MUTUAL WILL OF 30 MAY 1914 — AND IT NAMES NOBODY NEW Partly | Images 61–62 of the same item. A gesamentlike testament, typed, “Aldus gedaan en getekend te HOOIPOORT, Dist. Wakkerstroom op heden de dertigste dag van Mei A.D. 1914”, witnessed by E.J. and L.J. Labuschagne, signed F.F.D. Kolbe and H.G.S. Kolbe geb. Joubert. The survivor and the children take the immovable property in equal shares, the survivor holding usufruct for life. It was signed five weeks before the only child was born, which is why it provides for dying childless: in that event the sum insured on their lives with The South African Mutual Life Assurance Society goes to “’t kind of kinderen waarvan de Testateuren PEET OOM en PEET TANTE waren” — the child or children whose GODPARENTS they were. No names. It is a kinship signal with nobody attached to it, and it is recorded here rather than adopted. |
| Did he die at Villieria, Pretoria, as the index renders it? | NO. THE ARCHIVE WAS RIGHT AND THE INDEX WAS WRONG Found | The form, question 9: Dorp of plaats VILLIERIA (GEDEELTE KLEINFONTEIN), Distrikt WAKKERSTROOM — a farm portion in the district, not the Pretoria suburb of that name. FamilySearch standardises the place to “Wakkerstroom, Zoutpansberg, Transvaal”, which is wrong on its own terms, Wakkerstroom lying in the south-eastern Transvaal and nowhere near Zoutpansberg. This archive published the Pretoria reading on 9 October and attributed it to the index, saying the image was not yet read. The hedge held, so no correction is owed — which is the only reason it is not on /corrections/. |
| What else did the form carry that no index did? | AN OCCUPATION, A RESIDENCE, AN EXACT AGE AND AN ESTATE Found | Veeboer — stock farmer. Ordinary residence Villieria, dist. Wakkerstroom. Age twenty-seven years and six months, which puts the birth at about May 1891 where this archive held only the year. Married in community of property, the marriage at Volksrust. Questions 11–14 are all Ja: movables, fixed property, an estate worth more than £300, and a will. Declared and signed by the widow at Hooipoort on 13 February 1919, in her own hand, as overlijvende echtgenote. |
James Montjoy's death notice, read a second time by somebody who did not know it had been read
row 212, tested against the archive instead of against FamilySearch · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Was James Mountjoy of Cradock an unread document, as row 212 said? | NO. IT HAD BEEN READ IN FULL AND PUBLISHED, AND THE ROW WAS WRITTEN OFF AN INDEX Void | Row 212 listed 1:1:QP4Z-WK68 among estate images to open, calling it question 12’s oldest wall. Question 12 already begins with the word READ, and /sources/ already carries KAB MOOC 6/9/21: 4393 (1840) as a document read in full. The row was built from a FamilySearch search result and never checked against the archive it belongs to. This archive has written that mistake down before — “the list was worked without being checked against the archive” — and it happened again here, on a list this session wrote yesterday. |
| Does the image say what this archive published? | YES, ON EVERY POINT Found | Read independently today without looking at the archive first: 1 James Mountjoy; 2 birth-place EUROPE; 3 Names of the Parents of the Deceased — NOT KNOWN; 4 about 45 years; 5 SADDLER; 7 September 1827; 8 in the village of Cradock; 10 a house and erf at Cradock of the value of £90. And question 9 names the four children, in this order: 1 James a minor, 2 George do, 3 Johanna do, 4 Jacoba do. All five of this household’s children are already drawn at /households/, with Thomas Jacobus correctly marked as the one the notice omits. Nothing needed changing. |
| Then was anything wrong? | THE WAY BACK TO THE PAGE. IT IS IMAGE 339, NOT 338 Partly | Published in three places — /sources/, question 12, and /documents/ — as image 338 of 2,223. /documents/ also sets out the arithmetic that produced it, and that is the part worth keeping: the pencilled reference numbers do not ascend by exactly one per image, because an estate running to two or three frames breaks the step. From image 330 at reference 4386 the method predicts 4393 at image 337, and the narrowing that followed stopped one frame short. An interpolated citation is a prediction and has to be re-read off the frame it landed on. Image 338 is CHRISTOFFEL HENDRIK OLIVIER, trader, aged 56 years 4 months 10 days, dead at his own house in the town of Graaff-Reinet on 15 June 1840. Image 340 is WILLEM JACOBUS VAN DER MERWE of Bouwbosch Fontein. Montjoy, stamped 4393, is at 339, which is where the record ark lands. A citation off by one does not look wrong, it looks precise, and it sends the next reader into a stranger’s family. On /corrections/. |
| Is the FamilySearch index of this record sound? | NO — ITS ESTIMATED BIRTH YEAR IS BUILT ON THE WRONG DATE Nothing | The index gives Birth Year (Estimated) from 1795 to 1798, which is the probate date of 1840–1843 less the age of 45. But the 45 belongs to the death, and the form gives that as September 1827 — so the birth is about 1782, which is what this archive has published all along. The index subtracted an age from the year the file was opened rather than the year the man died, and for an estate filed thirteen years late that is out by thirteen years. Anyone adopting the indexed birth range gets a different man. |
| Could the wife's name have been read from this image alone? | NO. IT RUNS INTO THE SHADOW AT THE EDGE OF THE SHEET Partly | Question 6 reads Married to Catharina S… and the surname disappears into the fore-edge; brightening and contrast did not recover it. From the image alone this session read it as “Eli…” and the first husband as “William Piete…” — both wrong, and they would have been published as a discrepancy if the archive had not already held the marriage register. She is ANNA CATHARINA SLIER, widow of HERMANUS PIETERSEN, married at Graaff-Reinet 9 March 1817. A hand at the limit of legibility produces confident letters, not blank ones, which is the argument for not reading a name off one image when a register exists. |
The ten Mountjoy estates, opened one by one — and two of them were this archive's own daughters
row 201's ten, four of them opened — and the premise checked before the pages were · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Are all ten of the Mountjoy estates imaged on FamilySearch, as row 201 now says? | NO. AT LEAST ONE IS INDEXED AND NOT IMAGED Partly | ANNIE LOUISA MOUNTJOY NEPGEN, died East London 4 June 1949 aged 66, born 1883 at Barkly East — four separate index entries and every one of them says Image Unavailable. Row 201 concluded on 9 October that the ten “do not need ordering”. That is true of some of them and not of all, and the difference is the volume: the ones read today with images are from 1840, 1898 and 1921, and the one with no image is from 1949. So the question for each remaining estate is not “is it on FamilySearch” but “does that volume carry pictures”, and a 1949 Cape estate should be assumed to need ordering until an image is seen. |
| Was any of the ten already attached to this family? | TWO, AND THE ARCHIVE HAD SAID NONE WAS Found | ANNIE LOUISA NEPGEN and LOUISA ELIZABETH DIESEL, both born Mountjoy, are on this site’s /households/ page as daughters of James Jonathan Mountjoy and Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm — put there from estate 58379, read and published on 10 September. The NAAIRS sweep of 27 September listed them among ten estates it described as unattached. Seventeen days, and the list was never held up against the archive. On /corrections/. |
| Does Susan Elizabeth Mountjoy's death notice name a Mountjoy father? | NO — SHE IS A MOUNTJOY BY MARRIAGE, AND HER OWN PARENTS ARE TWO QUESTION MARKS Partly | Death notice 989, Cape Town, stamped 12 April 1921. Question three: Father — “Diesel ?”. Mother — “Diesel ?”. Her husband wrote her maiden surname on both lines and put a question mark against each, and did the same to her birthplace, “Maclear (?) District”. What the notice does give: she was a housewife, married in community of property to GEORGE MOUNTJOY JNR, died at thirty-three at Mt Prospect, Flagstaff on 13 September 1920, left a trading station and stock in trade and no will, and had four minor daughters — Ivy Elizabeth, Gwendoline Hazel, Edna Iris and Daphne Joyce. THE INDEX KEEPS HER HUSBAND’S WORD AND THROWS AWAY HIS DOUBT: FamilySearch publishes the birthplace as Maclear, flat, with no question mark anywhere. |
| Then is the 116 a count of Mountjoy estates? | NO. THE INDEX RAISES A RECORD FOR EVERY PERSON NAMED ON A DOCUMENT Found | IVY ELIZABETH MOUNTJOY appears as a Principal record, “Probate 1920, Grahamstown”, with no death date — because she is a living minor child named on her mother’s notice. She did not die in 1920: she appears again as Ivy Elizabeth Mountjoy Du Randt, having married. This archive wrote “116 Mountjoy records” and the number is right, but it is not 116 estates — it is estates plus spouses plus children plus anyone else the form names. A search of this collection returns families, not decedents, which is useful and is not what the count implies. |
| Did any of the ten attach a Mountjoy daughter to a father? | ONE CAME CLOSE, AND IT IS NOT ADOPTED Partly | WILHELMINA ERNESTINA BRUMMER, BORN MOUNTJOY — death notice 2345, filed Barkly East 19 August 1898. Born Dordrecht, dead at twenty at her husband’s residence, a farmer’s wife. Question three: FATHER JOHN JAMES MOUNTJOY, MOTHER MARIA LOUISA BERTHA, the surname trailing into one illegible capital. That is nearly the Barkly East house: the three forenames match Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm exactly, she was born in the town the couple married in, and she died in theirs. AND THE BETTER DOCUMENT SAYS NO. The 1938 distribution of estate 58379 pays eleven heirs — nine living children, and Gwendoline and Aubrey Diesel taking half a tenth each as the children of a daughter dead in 1923. An eleventh child’s son would have had the same claim, and there is no Brummer in that account. Her one son, Hendrik Johannes Jacobus Brummer, would have been about forty. He may simply have died before 1938 without issue. Or this is a different John James Mountjoy. A second arithmetic to watch: Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm’s birth is about October 1860, which would make her SEVENTEEN at this daughter’s birth. She is entered as a person and NOT as a daughter of that house. The Dordrecht baptism register for 1878, or her own marriage record, would settle it. |
The last six of the ten, and the ten turn out to be two different Mountjoy families
row 201 finished — four of the six opened, two shown not to exist on film · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| DEMMER, Elizabeth Martha — MOOC 6/9/9771 no. 83676 | READ IN FULL, AND QUESTION THREE IS REFUSED Found | Death notice 83676 at image 636 of 1,581, with the Letters of Administration at 639 and the inventory at 641. Parents: “Do not know, both deceased.” Born DORDRECHT, dead at Kokstad on 15 December 1942 at 80 years 11 months, so born about January 1862. Widow of John Joseph Demmer, alias Joseph Ignatz Demmer (d. 1/8/06), married at Stutterheim; eight children; about £1,048 in Kokstad erven still registered in her dead husband’s name. SHE CANNOT BE A DAUGHTER OF THE BARKLY EAST HOUSE: Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm was born about October 1860, and a daughter of January 1862 would make the mother fifteen months old. A possible SISTER of James Jonathan Mountjoy, and not claimed. AND NAAIRS HAS HER NAME WRONG — it files ELIZABETH MARTHA; the notice and the Letters both read ELIZABETH MARIA, under the same file number. |
| BURGER, Wilhelmina Louisa — MOOC 6/9/16573 no. 5683/49 | HER FILE IS NOT ON FILM. HER FATHER’S IS Found | Her own 1949 estate is neither imaged nor indexed. What is indexed is MINNIE MOUNTJOY BURGER as a CHILD, twice, on her father’s death notice — and MINNIE IS WILHELMINA, which is why searching “Wilhelmina Louisa” returned 724 strangers. So the thing the order would have bought came free from his file instead. Her father is GEORGE MOUNTJOY OF KOKSTAD, senior, born in the ORANGE FREE STATE about 1862, died 12 May 1943 at Nyaninga, Tongaat, Natal, aged 81; retired; married in community of property to MARY FISCHER in the King Williamstown district; nine children named. His own question three: Father — “Names unknown”. Mother — “Names unknown: deceased”. That the Minnie of 1943 and the Wilhelmina Louisa of 1949 are one woman is a strong reading, not a proved one. |
| MOUNTJOY, Aletta Johanna born Hattingh — MOOC 6/9/5599 no. 66509 | IMAGED — BUT WHAT IS IMAGED IS THE LEDGER, NOT THE NOTICE Partly | The image is a page of the REGISTER OF ESTATES, BONDS AND WILLS, and her row reads: 66509 · registered 8.11.39 · died 10.10.39 · Mountjoy · Aletta Johanna (b. Hattingh) · surviving spouse ALFRED. It matches the NAAIRS reference exactly and it is all there is. A REGISTER ROW HAS NO QUESTION THREE, so her parents are not here. ALFRED IS A MOUNTJOY OF KOKSTAD — seventh of the nine children on George of Kokstad’s notice. She was born 1898 at Cala and died at BIZANA. This is a third thing “imaged” can mean in this collection, after a filmed estate file and an Image Unavailable: a filmed INDEX VOLUME standing in for a file that was never filmed. |
| MOUNTJOY, Catherine Louisa Johanna born de Kock — MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46 | IMAGE UNAVAILABLE. STILL NEEDS ORDERING Blocked | Indexed and not imaged, so everything known is a volunteer’s transcription: aged 49, born about 1896 at MIDDELBURG, TRANSVAAL, died 12 December 1945, place as originally written FLAGSTAFF. Flagstaff is where Susan Elizabeth Mountjoy born Diesel died in 1920, and it lies in the same Transkei country as Kokstad and Bizana. A third Mountjoy wife in one district. Her husband is not named by the index and there is no image to name him. Of the ten, this is the one that still has to be ordered from the Cape archives. |
| FOURIE, Maria Sophia — TAB MHG 2332/42, and KLOPPER, Jacoba Gezina Elizabeth — TAB MHG 5570/52 | NEITHER IS IN THE FAMILYSEARCH TRANSVAAL INDEX AT ALL Nothing | The Transvaal collection 2520237 holds exactly 22 records under the surname MOUNTJOY, and all 22 were listed and read. Neither a Fourie nor a Klopper is among them. The test is sound because the convention is proved in the same 22: this collection does put a maiden name in the given-name field — Carolina Margareta Aletta Mountjoy Eloff, Maria Sophia Van Niekerk Mountjoy — so a Mountjoy-born woman who was indexed would appear there. Controls run, because a zero is worth nothing without them. q.anyName returned zero and that was the QUERY FAILING, not an absence — the page said Something Went Wrong; the supported q.surname returned 22. A Fourie search returned 1,775 scored hits, narrowed by death year to 125, and all 125 were read across two pages with no Mountjoy. A Klopper search for 1951–53 returned 4, all read, none hers. Each search was confirmed to be finding its own surname before its silence about Mountjoy was believed. SO THESE TWO REMAIN NAAIRS REFERENCES AND PRETORIA ORDERS. |
| What were the ten, in the end? | TWO DIFFERENT MOUNTJOY FAMILIES, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM IS THIS ONE Partly | The Barkly East house — James Jonathan Mountjoy and Maria Louisa Bertha Kumm — accounts for Annie Louisa Nepgen and Louisa Elizabeth Diesel, both already drawn here from estate 58379 since 10 September. A Transkei house accounts for at least three more: Minnie Burger (daughter of George of Kokstad), Aletta Johanna Hattingh (wife of his son Alfred), and Susan Elizabeth Diesel (wife of a George Mountjoy Jnr, dead at Flagstaff) — with Catherine Louisa Johanna de Kock, dead at Flagstaff, very probably a fourth. Elizabeth Maria Demmer belongs to neither on the evidence, being too old for the Barkly East house and born at Dordrecht rather than in the Free State. And the question that would join or separate them is refused on every form. George of Kokstad: “Names unknown.” Elizabeth Maria Demmer: “Do not know, both deceased.” James Montjoy the saddler, a century earlier: “Not Known.” The archive’s own tally of this failure stood at six; these two make eight. |
The Pretoria order, tested against the film — and a collection that stops before two of its references begin
the five items David is holding on cost, and row 202's assumption · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Can the two 1969 files be free, as row 202 hoped? | NO, AND IT TAKES NO SEARCHING TO KNOW IT Nothing | Collection 2520237 is South Africa, Transvaal, Probate Records from the Master of the Supreme Court, 1869–1961. It stops at 1961. TAB MHG 10287/69 (Daschner, Heinrich, marked “CHILD”) and TAB MHG 10245/69 (Wear) are both 1969 references and are outside the collection by eight years. Row 202 said “LIKELY FREE TOO” and that was a guess from a neighbouring success, not a check. The date range is printed on every record page in the collection. Neither needs a search; both need the repository. |
| MHG 1095/48 — George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen, 1948 | NOT INDEXED. IT STAYS ON THE ORDER Nothing | The whole Transvaal collection holds three Booyzen records with the forename George, and only one is him — and that one is his WIFE’s 1944 file, where he is indexed Relationship to Head of Household: Spouse. His own 1948 estate is not there. What the row wanted it for is already settled anyway: the tree’s 21 February 1947 is contradicted by the civil death registration (11 December 1947) and the Johannesburg burial register (West Park, 14 December 1947), which agree with each other. What the file would still add is his children as they stood in 1948, where this archive has them as they stood in 1944. |
| MHG 5155/51 (Gert Jacobus) and MHG 52653 (Jacobus Nichols, 1923) | NEITHER IS INDEXED EITHER Nothing | Gert Jacobus: all 48 Booyzen hits read in full, none his; the first 100 of 390 Booysen hits read, none his. Jacobus Nichols: two JACOBUS NICOLAAS BOOYSEN records exist and look like the man — NAAIRS’s “Nichols” being a clerk’s Nicolaas — but both are indexed Relationship to Head of Household: Child, so both are him named on somebody else’s document and neither is his estate. And they are probably not even him: this archive’s Jacobus Nicholas Booysen was born before 1842 and died in 1923, and a man of that age appears as a CHILD only on a parent’s notice, which for him would be the Cape death notice of 1863 — a different colony and a different collection. Both stay on the order. |
| Does this index fold BOOYZEN and BOOYSEN together? | NO, AND IT NEARLY MADE TWO OF THESE NEGATIVES WRONG Found | 249 records under Booyzen. 2,417 under Booysen. They are different populations, not one fuzzy set — though each does fold its own diaeresis (Booÿ zen, Booÿsen). The first pass of this sweep searched only Booyzen, and two “not indexed” findings were written before that was checked. Re-running under Booysen is what turned up the Jacobus Nicolaas records. This archive folds the two spellings in its own namefold and must not assume FamilySearch does. Every future sweep of this surname is two searches, not one. |
| MHG 2945/44 — was it worth re-opening? | IT WAS ALREADY READ, AND IT CONFIRMS LINE FOR LINE Found | Checked against the archive before the image was opened, as row 212 now requires, and /sources/ already marked it Read with the image in custody. Re-read anyway, and every published detail holds: both parents named with a Germiston address — Petrus Jacobus Pretorius, deceased, and Margreth Wilhelmina Elizabeth Pretorius, of James Street, Germiston — and six children, all minors. The form adds the exactness: born Barkly Oos, Kaap Provinsie; died 26 February 1944 at Reeder Straat 88, Forest Hill, Johannesburg, aged 57; last marriage at VEREENIGING, which is what this archive already had, and not Germiston, which is only where her parents lived. The six, with the dates the form gives: Willem Hermanus 15 Oct 1920 · Margreth Wilhelmina Elizabeth 14 Oct 1926 · Catherine Mary Sophia 25 Mar 1929 · Anna Johanna Maria 12 Oct 1930 · Georgina Jeanette 22 Sep 1932 · Petrus Jacobus 10 Jan 1934. |
| And was anything on /sources/ wrong? | YES — THREE READ DOCUMENTS WERE DESCRIBED AS UNREAD AND AWAITING PAYMENT Partly | The source entries for TAB MHG 2428/40, TAB MHG 2945/44 and TAB MHG 1928/42 each carried the blanket line “National Archives Repository, Pretoria — located; most are unread and on hold against cost”, while their own rows carry a Read chip and link to a transcription. Three of the four Read rows in that table carried it, because the status lives in the row and the held line lives in the entry, and only the row was kept current. THE HARM WAS LATENT AND THAT IS WORTH STATING EXACTLY. The held line is rendered by SourceBlock on pages that cite an id, not by this page; it reaches a reader on ten pages for other entries and on none for these three, because nothing cites them yet. No reader was misled. The next page to cite one would have been — which is the whole argument for fixing a latent contradiction rather than waiting for it to surface. Corrected: all three now say the file is at Pretoria and filmed, that the image is published here, and that it costs nothing. |
The same mistake twice in one day, caught by a citation list on a page I was not reading
row 194 re-checked against this archive instead of against an index · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Does MHG 1095/48 still need ordering, as this morning's sweep concluded? | NO. IT WAS READ ON 9 SEPTEMBER AND ITS IMAGES ARE ON THIS SITE Found | The death notice of George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen is transcribed at /documents/ with three images, and it is the document that settled his death date: “The day of the decease: On 11th December 1947”, at 85 Rheeden St, Forest Hill, Johannesburg. 21 February 1948 is the date the notice was signed, and a transcriber had conflated the two and lost ten months. The morning's sweep asked FamilySearch whether the file was indexed, got a clean no, and reported that it stays on the order. The second question — does this archive already hold it — was never asked. Found by accident, in a source-citation list at the foot of /direct-line/ while looking at something else entirely. |
| Was the register itself consistent? | NO — IT CARRIED THE SAME DOCUMENT BOTH WAYS Partly | The estates table chipped TAB MHG 1095/48 as Blocked — film access restricted online, while the read table carried the same document as read with its image published. Both statements are about one file and only one is about the document: the FILM is restricted; the DOCUMENT is in hand. Corrected. A gate was considered and refused. Only two references in the whole register are vouched for by the read section, and one of the two was this contradiction — a check measuring a population of two tells you nothing you did not already know by looking. |
| So what is actually left to pay for? | FIVE FILES ACROSS BOTH ROWS, NOT SIX Found | Pretoria (row 194): MHG 5155/51 (Gert Jacobus) and MHG 52653 (Jacobus Nichols) — both confirmed absent from the FamilySearch Transvaal index today — plus MHG 10245/69 (Wear), which is 1969 and outside that collection entirely, and which belongs to the Johannesburg branch rather than to this archive. Cape and Transvaal Mountjoys (row 201/212): MOOC 6/9/12630 no. 334/46, TAB MHG 2332/42 and TAB MHG 5570/52. MHG 40293 and MHG 1095/48 both come off, the first because it is filmed and free and the second because it was never missing. |
The Cape Mounted Rifles were never his regiment, and the subscription is signed out with seven days left
row 207 opened, and it turned into a correction and a blocker · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Did John Augustus Barry I serve in the Cape Mounted Rifles? | NOTHING HERE SAYS HE DID — THEY ARE THE REGISTRAR, NOT THE REGIMENT Found | His entry ended with the bare sentence “Cape Mounted Rifles.”, which reads as a regiment. /barry/ is clearer and is the source: the corps recorded his 1903 death certificate, being “then the authority in the district, stationed at Johnson’s Leap”. This was about to become a day’s work on the wrong record. A soldier’s discharge paper would give a birthplace and an age, which is exactly what question 5 wants — and this archive has the method ready, because it is the route already mapped for James Montjoy and the 21st Light Dragoons. But there is no evidence he was ever a soldier, and WO 97 holds discharge papers, not death registrations. The entry is corrected so the next person does not start where this one nearly did. What the corps’ own registers at Johnson’s Leap might hold is a separate and still-open item, already on question 5’s list of what would settle it. |
| Passenger lists 1819–1820, the untried item on question 5's own list | BLOCKED — THE FINDMYPAST SESSION IS SIGNED OUT Blocked | Attempted today and not run. A travel-and-migration search for BARRY at the Cape of Good Hope, 1818–1822, redirected to auth.findmypast.com/login before any result was returned. This is a blocked search, not an empty one, and it is recorded as blocked so nobody reads a nil into it later. The subscription itself has not lapsed — it runs to 16 October — but the browser is logged out and only David can log it back in. Nothing on this archive’s side can proceed on FindMyPast until he does. Worth knowing before the week is spent: the Barry origin’s London hypothesis is NOT a good use of it. A surname-and-city sweep of London Barrys in the late 1700s has no forename anchor and no date — the comparable Mountjoy search returned 12,984 and was abandoned. The tractable items are the bounded ones on question 5’s settles list: passenger lists 1819–1820, and the two 1903 death certificates named in the tree note. |
The Commandant's eldest, found by asking the index for a father instead of a name
row 199, answered on free records while FindMyPast is locked out · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is the probable sixth child, Catharina Wilhelmina, really his daughter? | YES — AND ONE DOCUMENT CARRIES THE WHOLE CHAIN Found | Her civil death registration, Orange Free State, Births & Deaths Registration Proclamation 1902, sections 27 and 39, ark 1:1:DH4P-K53Z, image 643 of 2,709. Field 14, father’s name in full and occupation: JAN GERSEM ELIEZER KOLBE, STOCK FARMER. Field 15, mother: ANNA JACOBA. And field 7 is what makes her the same woman as the 1860 bride. It asks, of a woman married more than once, to state to whom; the answer is PIENAAR. So the Catharina Wilhelmina Kolbe who married Johannes Petrus Pienaar at Bloemfontein on 8 October 1860 and the Katrina Wilhelmina Anderson who died in 1909 are one person, and the user tree’s “Pienaar Anderson” was listing two marriages rather than inventing a surname. She was born 1844 in the Cape Colony, which makes her the ELDEST of the twelve — the Commandant married on 3 April 1843. Nine of the twelve were documented; she is the tenth, and the first in order. |
| What else the form gives | AN OCCUPATION FOR THE COMMANDANT, AND A GRANDSON WHO CARRIES HIS NAME Found | The Commandant is a STOCK FARMER on this form — the first trade this archive has for him from a document rather than from an obituary’s account of his soldiering. The informant is her son, present at the death, signing JAN G. E. ANDERSON — his grandfather’s three names entire, four lines below where that grandfather is named. A naming pattern is not proof, but a naming pattern on the same page as the parentage is corroboration that costs nothing to notice. She was Dutch, a housewife, of Veelroem in the district of Ladybrand; died 3 February 1909 of heart disease and dropsy after one year and six months ill; buried at Veelroem; the doctor Dr Hofmeyr. |
| How she was found, which is the reusable part | BY SEARCHING THE INDEX FOR A FATHER, NOT FOR HER Found | Searching the collection for her own name fails: the two exact Catharina Wilhelmina Pienaar hits are an infant of 0 days and a woman born 1891. She is indexed under ANDERSON, a surname this archive did not hold. What works is q.fatherSurname=Kolbe against collection 3732502, which returns 25 records and does genuinely filter on the parent — but only 15 of the 25 are this Kolbe family. THIS SENTENCE FIRST SAID “every one has a Kolbe parent” AND THAT WAS WRONG. The other ten are KOLOBE, KOLKOBET, COLBERT and CULBERT — Sesotho and other surnames caught by FamilySearch’s fuzzy name matching, which is working as designed. The filter is real; the NAME is fuzzy. The error was mine and it was the usual one: the rows were scraped with a /kolbe/i test, fifteen matched, and the count of twenty-five was reported as though all twenty-five had been read. BUT ONLY WHEN IT IS THE ONLY NAME TERM. Combined with q.surname=Pienaar the same parameter merely re-ranks: 1,091 results became 804, the count moved so the parameter was plainly read, and the top hits still had no Kolbe anywhere. A count that changes proves the field was read, not that it filtered — and that is the FindMyPast trap in a different house. |
| Did the index place her correctly? | NO — LADYBRAND IS NOT IN THE TRANSVAAL Nothing | The record standardises the event place to “Ladybrand, Soutpansberg, Transvaal”. The form says Veelroem, district Ladybrand, and Ladybrand is in the Orange Free State, on the Basutoland border, some four hundred miles from Soutpansberg — in a collection whose own title is Orange Free State. That is the third place this index has mangled today, after a Wakkerstroom death standardised into Zoutpansberg and a Kokstad estate rendered at Pretoria. The pattern is worth more than any one of them: the original place field is reliable and the standardised hierarchy is not. |
Which indexes will answer a question about parents, and which cannot be asked it at all
the father-surname technique, scoped — what it can and cannot be asked · searched 9 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Can the father-surname search reach the Commandant's twelfth child? | NO, AND THE SCOPE OF THAT NIL IS NOW EXACT Nothing | Orange Free State civil death registration (3732502): q.fatherSurname=Kolbe returns 25, of which 15 are this family, and four of those are the Commandant’s — Katrina Wilhelmina, Andries Frederick, Johan Hendrik Cassimir and Petrus Jacobus. All four are now held. Transvaal probate (2520237): 0. Cape probate (2517051): 0, and that one means something different — see below. So the twelfth is not reachable by this instrument, and the reason is bounded rather than mysterious: he or she died outside the Free State, or outside 1902–1954, or in a record that names no parents. |
| Is a nil from this search worth anything, collection by collection? | ONLY WHERE THE FIELD IS INDEXED — AND IN THE CAPE IT IS NOT Found | Controls, run before any nil was believed. Transvaal probate, q.fatherSurname=Booysen: 86 results — so the field is indexed and searchable there, and a Kolbe nil in the same collection is a real absence. Cape probate, q.fatherSurname=Mountjoy: 0. =Kolbe: 0. Two different surnames, both heavily present in that collection under their own names, both nil as parents. The Cape probate index does not carry parents at all — which matches what its rows show: Spouses and Children, never Parents. A nil from the Cape collection is therefore not evidence about anybody’s parents. It is the question not being askable. And the earlier fetch-based attempt at these controls returned “no count” for every test including the one that should have worked — the pages are client-rendered — which is why the counts above were taken by navigating. |
| Then why does TAB MHG 40293 not appear under a Kolbe father? | BECAUSE INDEXING PARENTS IS PER RECORD, NOT PER COLLECTION — AND TODAY PROVED IT TWICE Found | That file is in collection 2520237 and its Sterfkennis names GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE and MARTHA SOFIA KLOPPER in question 3. This morning the record’s own index panel was read and says “no additional people in this group”. This evening the same collection returns zero records with a Kolbe father, while returning 86 with a Booysen one. The two observations are the same fact approached from opposite ends: the parents are on the image and were never keyed. The rule that follows is worth more than either: in these collections, whether a search can see a parent is a property of the RECORD, not of the collection — so “the collection indexes parents” is never a safe premise, and a father-surname nil can only ever mean not indexed for the records I want, never not his child. |
| Anything left behind for next time? | EIGHTY-SIX TRANSVAAL ESTATES WITH A BOOYSEN FATHER, UNREAD Partly | q.fatherSurname=Booysen against the Transvaal probate collection returns 86, and this archive has read none of them. That is the same instrument that produced two of the Commandant’s children this afternoon, pointed at the surname the whole archive is named for. Not opened here and not counted as a finding — 86 rows scored by a fuzzy name matcher will not all be this family, as today already demonstrated with Kolobe and Colbert. It is a seam, recorded so the next session does not have to rediscover the trick. |
Two public routes into a borrowable scan, both closed, and the control that proves it
row 137 — Dictionary of South African Biography, Volume 5 · searched 10 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Can the DSAB Vol. 5 scan be searched without borrowing it? | NO. BOTH PUBLIC ROUTES RETURN AN HTML WRAPPER Blocked | _djvu.txt was tried in September and returned HTML. fulltext/inside.php — the endpoint behind the item page’s own Search inside box, which does serve snippets for many lending items — was tried today and returns a page headed “Item not available”. The item is dictionaryofsout0005unse, collections inlibrary and printdisabled, 978 pages, with a 6 MB OCR text present but not served. |
| Is that a refusal, or a badly-formed request? | A REFUSAL — CONTROLLED Found | The same endpoint, same shape of call, against an open-collection item returns valid JSON: {…"matches":[],"error":"No hOCR or Abbyy file present"}. An informative JSON refusal, not an HTML page. So the endpoint works and the call is right; the item is gated. Recorded because an HTML answer where JSON belongs is indistinguishable from a bad request until something proves otherwise, and this archive has already written down one wasted attempt on this exact book. |
| Then what is the route? | A FREE ACCOUNT, AND IT IS DAVID’S TO MAKE Blocked | The scan borrows an hour at a time with a free Internet Archive account and is searchable from inside the reader. This archive does not create accounts or sign in, so the row is reassigned rather than left open against nobody. Carry one discrepancy to the title page: the item metadata says 1968 and this row’s reasoning says Volume 5 is 1987 — and the argument that Schoeman’s 1992 draft was written for a later volume rests on the 1987. |
A 1973 local history turns out to be the memorial of a drowned valley — which is why the portrait is in it
row 117 — Burger Olivier, So onthou ons die oewerbewoners van ou “Grootrivier” · searched 10 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| What is the book, actually? | THE MEMORIAL VOLUME OF THE FARMS THE GARIEP DAM DROWNED Found | It records the life-stories of people displaced from fifteen farms and about as many other settlements near BETHULIE when the Gariep Dam — then the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam — flooded the Orange River valley. 144 pages, plates numbered with the text, self-published at Bloemfontein in 1973, printed by N.G. Sendingpers. THIS EXPLAINS THE PORTRAIT. The DSAB records the Kolbe likeness as held in 1992 by C.J. du Plessis of Ruigtevlei, district Bethulie, and reproduced in this book. Both facts were already here and had never been put side by side: the book is the memorial of precisely that community, so a Bethulie-district farming family is exactly who would be in it, lending a family portrait to a neighbour’s history. |
| Is there a copy anywhere? | NO LIBRARY IN THREE ATTEMPTS — BUT A DEALER HAS HANDLED ONE Partly | Twice in September and once today, no holding library surfaces in any catalogue reachable from here. That is consistent with a privately printed local history and is now recorded rather than retried. What is new: a copy sold at Antiquarian Auctions, auction 8, lot 234, consigned by FONTEIN BOOKS of South Africa, with seven bids. The row previously concluded no copy is for sale, which remains true — but a dealer who has had one is a better question than a catalogue that has never heard of it. |
| And the UCT lead? | BLOCKED BY A BROWSER GATE, NOT WALKED AROUND Blocked | UCT’s ibali digital archive surfaces an item for this title and answers a fetch with a browser-verification page. This archive does not work around bot gates, so it is recorded as blocked. Opening it in an ordinary browser would settle whether UCT holds the book or only cites it — a minute’s work for somebody who is not a program. |
The inbox again: two death notices already bought, and a supplier this archive has never listed
row 205 — the second sweep of a repository nobody indexes · searched 10 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Is there anything in David's mail this archive does not hold? | TWO DEATH NOTICES, PAID FOR AND DELIVERED IN JANUARY 2024 Found | ancestor.co.za, 12 January 2024: “your request/s for BOOYZEN, PETRUS JACOBUS (1955) and BOOYZEN, CORNELIA GERTINA (1946) have been uploaded onto our Ancestor Website” — at 70 ZAR each, with a second notification the same day about further documents. CHECKED AGAINST THE ARCHIVE BEFORE CLAIMING IT. No Petrus Jacobus Booyzen here died in 1955: the nearest are 1937 at Middelburg, 1884, 1876 and 2003. And the only Cornelia Gertina in this archive is a du Toit, a marriage partner of a David Schalk Booyzen — not a Booyzen who died in 1946. Neither reference occurs in any file. Two documents this family already owns, unread here for nearly three years. |
| Is the supplier recorded? | NO. ancestor.co.za APPEARS IN NO FILE OF THIS ARCHIVE Partly | Not on /sources/, not on /errands/, not among the Record Atlas providers. A repository David has used, paid and still has an account with — and which this archive, which keeps a register of every place it has looked, has never listed. It belongs on /sources/ and probably in the atlas, and it is a reminder that the list of places a family has used is not the same as the list of places its archive knows about. |
| Anything that is a person rather than a paper? | A LIVING DASCHNER WROTE IN 2024 AND NOBODY WROTE BACK Partly | In August 2024 a MyHeritage user of the DASCHNER surname, in South Africa, messaged David directly. Nothing in this archive records the approach, a reply, or what he knew. The Daschner line is among the thinnest held here. Named by surname only, because he is living — which is this estate’s rule and the reason the row says what it says and no more. |
| What does this say about the method? | SECOND SWEEP, SECOND TIME THE INBOX BEAT EVERY INDEX Found | The first sweep found a 1,604-person descendant report that had sat unopened for eighteen years and answered a lead marked unknown and must not be assumed. The second finds two paid-for death notices and an unlisted supplier. Neither was reachable by any catalogue, register or index this archive can search. The repositories it keeps a register of are the ones it thought to look in; the one in the house was not on the list. |
Griqua Records read without buying it, and without borrowing it
rows 120 and 121 — the book this work list calls the one purchase worth making · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org · title:("griqua records") | ONE RECORD Found | griquarecordsphi0000unse — Schoeman (ed.), Griqua Records: the Philippolis Captaincy, 1825–1861, Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1996, ISBN 0958411212, 386 pages. Its collections are inlibrary and printdisabled, so it is borrowable, not free full text, and borrowing wants an account this archive will not open. Row 120 said «no free digitisation found»; that is still true of the TEXT and it was never true of the index. The ISBN and the page count are new here, and so is the year: row 120 says the volume appeared two years after the DSAB draft of February 1992, and the record says 1996, which is four. The row's reasoning is untouched either way — the point was that Schoeman's own editor could not cite it in the draft — but the arithmetic in that sentence should be checked against the volume rather than left standing. |
| archive.org · search inside griquarecordsphi0000unse · Kolbe | TEN RESULTS, NO LOGIN Found | SEARCH-INSIDE WORKS ON A BORROWABLE BOOK WITHOUT BORROWING IT, and that is the finding worth more than any one page here. The reader returns page numbers and a snippet for each hit on a book nobody may read entire. It is not a way round the lending restriction and must not be used as one — it reads an index, not a text — but where the question is «does this book discuss our man, and where», it answers it from a desk, for nothing. Row 137 reached the same wall at the Dictionary of South African Biography Vol. 5 and stopped at borrowing; this is the move that row did not have. |
| the book's own index, at page 321 | KOLBE, G.A. — 35, 236, 237 · KOLBE, J. — 130 Found | THE INDEX SEPARATES TWO MEN AND THIS ARCHIVE SHOULD TOO. G.A. Kolbe is the Settler's son, the missionary. J. Kolbe is somebody else entirely: pages 130 and 268 are one document in Dutch and in English, in which «den heer J. Kolbe» is a lessee of a farm owed Rds1480 under a settlement of Sir Harry Smith's. Nothing is claimed about him, and he is written down here only so the next reader does not quietly fold the two initials into one man. AND IT BOUNDS THE PURCHASE. The index puts G.A. Kolbe on three pages, and search-inside has now shown all three. That is the index's count of where he is NAMED, not proof the volume says no more — a document that calls him «their late missionary» without the surname would not be indexed under it, and page 35 contains exactly such a phrase. So the book is not exhausted; what has changed is that row 120 can no longer be sold as the only way to learn what the 1836 charge was. |
| page 35, and Schoeman's own footnote to it | THE CHARGE, AND A THIRD NAME IN IT Found | The document is the Griquas complaining of their late missionary Kolbe, whom they and Wright and Atkinson consider dangerous to peace and good order, and their right to make him quit their territory. Schoeman's footnote glosses it: G.A. Kolbe of Philippolis had incurred the enmity of Hendrik Hendrickze, had been accused of adultery, and his colleagues Wright and Atkinson were particularly zealous in pressing the charges; he had left the station but was still living north of the Orange. THIS ARCHIVE ALREADY HELD THE ACCUSATION — from Schoeman's 1992 DSAB draft, which it has always labelled a secondary work it does not take as evidence. What is new is that the same scholar published the documents behind it four years later, and that a THIRD man is named in the pressing of it: PETER WRIGHT of Griquatown. The draft named only H. Hendricks and T. Atkinson. The spelling is the book's: «Hendrickze», and its index says at xiii that the name's spelling is discussed there. |
| pages 236 and 237, the volume's chronology of Philippolis | FOUR DATES, AND ONE OF THEM MAY SETTLE AN OPEN CONFLICT Partly | May 1828 — James Clark and G.A. Kolbe establish the Bushman School, later Bethulie. March 1831 — G.A. Kolbe arrives at Philippolis. August 1836 — Theophilus Atkinson arrives at Philippolis. March 1837 — G.A. Kolbe leaves Philippolis. The chronology also has 10 January 1827 for John Melvill's arrival, March 1832 for his departure, and 28 December 1835 for the grant of land to the Berlin Missionary Society at Bethulie. THE FIRST OF THOSE BEARS ON A DISAGREEMENT THIS ARCHIVE HAS PUBLISHED AND NOT RESOLVED. Sibree's Register has him accepted provisionally by Mr Miles on 8 February 1829; the DSAB draft says 8 February 1828. If he was founding the Bushman School in May 1828, then he was in the field before the Society formally took him on, and the two dates are not a contradiction at all but an answer and a question — Sibree is dating the acceptance, the DSAB the posting. That is a reading, not a document, and it is written here as one. |
| page 323, the index entry for «missionaries» | THE ELEVEN WHO SERVED PHILIPPOLIS Found | For missionaries stationed at Philippolis the index sends the reader to Atkinson, Theophilus; Christie, George; Clark, James; Kolbe, G.A.; Melvill, John; Philip, W.B.; Schreiner, Gottlob; Solomon, Edward; Thomson, W.Y.; van der Schalk, C.J.; Wright, Peter. Two of those eleven are the men who pressed the charge against the third. The list is a published roll of the station this archive's man served, and it is worth having whole. |
| archive.org · "quarterly chronicle" AND "missionary society" | NOTHING, AND THE ZERO IS TESTED Nothing | The LMS Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions — the 1829 printing of the Melvill and Kolbe journal, and the one text of his own that is out of copyright — is not on the Internet Archive under that title. Row 121 already said so; what it did not have is a control. A bare phrase query for «london missionary society» returns 736 records on the same endpoint, and a field query for a known identifier returns exactly one, so the mechanism can see what is there and the nil is the archive's answer, not the query's. |
| archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk · LMS incoming correspondence, South Africa 1829 | BLOCKED — A BOT CHECK Blocked | A web search says this component lists letters from John Melvill at Philippolis and George Kolbe at the Bushman mission near the Caledon in 1829 — which would be item-level references for row 135's SOAS letter. The page cannot be read from here: it returns 403 to a fetch and a Cloudflare «performing security verification» interstitial in a browser. It was not worked around, and no part of its content is recorded here as fact — the description above is the search engine's, not the catalogue's, and stays an unconfirmed lead until somebody opens the page. |
| catalog.hathitrust.org · Transactions of the Missionary Society | BLOCKED — 403 Blocked | Row 121 recorded that HathiTrust's bot check had blocked this archive once already. It still does, now on the catalogue and not only the reader. Recorded as blocked and left alone. |
| googleapis.com/books/v1 · the full Quarterly Chronicle title | BLOCKED — 429 Blocked | Row 121 recorded that the Books API rate-limited this query. It still does. This is a reproduction of a known condition, not a new finding, and the printed 1829 Chronicle remains unlocated. |
The same move again, on the volume row 137 stopped at
rows 137 and 173 — Dictionary of South African Biography V, read by its own index · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org search inside dictionaryofsout0005unse · Kolbe | NINE RESULTS Found | Row 137 located this volume on 21 September, found it borrowable and not open, and stopped there — “this no longer needs a library building”, with borrowing as the route. IT DID NOT NEED BORROWING EITHER. The same search-inside that opened Griqua Records this morning opens this, and the row's own warning about the _djvu.txt wrapper — «a null from the wrong object is not a null» — was a warning about the wrong door, not a locked one. |
| the entry at page 419, first of two | KOLBE, FRIEDRICH WILHELM — GÜTERSLOH, WESTPHALIA, 3.11.1821; CAPE TOWN, 1899 Found | THE BIRTHPLACE IS NEW AND IT IS WHAT CLOSES THE SIBREE ERROR. This archive argued from arithmetic that Sibree's entry 522 was wrong to call him a son of the Rev. G.A. Kolbe — 3 November 1821 against John Gerson Eliezar's 7 July 1822, eight months apart — and leaned on the New Catholic Encyclopedia's loose phrase about a Westphalian missionary. The dictionary now says it outright and with a town: born at Gütersloh in Westphalia, died at Cape Town in 1899, a missionary and Herero scholar. A man born in Westphalia in 1821 is not the son of a settler who had been at the Cape since 1820. The inference from three works is now a named source. Of his life the snippets also give Otjikango (Gross Barmen), the Herero language learnt under C. H. Hahn, some fifty hymns, and a printing press bought at Cape Town. |
| his parentage, which is what row 137 asked for first | NOT READ Partly | THE ROW WANTED PARENTAGE AND BIRTHPLACE. ONLY ONE OF THE TWO CAME. The dictionary gives parents in a fixed house form — the Beiderbecke entry at p.41 reads “the son of Heinrich Christoph Beiderbecke, a teacher, and his wife, Sophia Becker” — so the sentence almost certainly exists in Kolbe's entry too. It falls outside every snippet window this archive could open, and page 419 is one of the pages the preview omits. Nothing is claimed about his parents and nothing is inferred from the silence. |
| the entry at page 419, second of two | KOLBE, FREDERICK FORTUNATUS HOFMEYR — AND HE IS NOT A MISREADING Found | Born Wakkerstroom, 27.9.1919; died Wakkerstroom, 18.6.1969, an agricultural extension officer, the son of FREDERICK FORTUNATUS KOLBE and his wife ANNA MARGARETHA CATHARINA MOOLMAN. ROW 173 SAID THIS NAME IN THE DSAB INDEX WAS “PROBABLY A MISREADING”. IT IS A FULL BIOGRAPHICAL ENTRY. The dates match the user tree row 173 found to the day, the place is Wakkerstroom — this archive's Kolbe place — and the dictionary names both his parents, which the tree did not. A father called Frederick Fortunatus Kolbe, with a son born at Wakkerstroom in 1919, is a generation this archive should be able to place and currently cannot. Nothing is joined to anybody here: the entry is a published source and this archive has not tied it to a person it holds. |
| the cumulative index at page 922 | EVERY KOLBE THE DICTIONARY HAS, AND ONE IT DOES NOT Found | Kolbe, F. C., I, 433 · Kolbe, F. F. H., V, 419 · Kolbe, F. W., V, 419. Three Kolbes across five volumes: the Monsignor in Volume I, and the two above in Volume V. THERE IS NO GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE IN IT. That is a published index across the whole run to 1987, and it is the best evidence yet for what row 137 reasoned to in September — the Settler's entry was written for a volume that never appeared, and the typescript the National Library sent is the only form it exists in. An index is not a census of what was drafted, so this confirms the reasoning rather than proving the negative. |
| archive.org search inside dictionaryofsout0005unse · Gütersloh | ZERO, AND THE ZERO IS AN ARTEFACT Void | The word is on page 419 and the search cannot find it. The index is built from OCR and the umlaut does not survive; the same snippet shows “Westpha¬ lia” broken across a line. A nil from this search box is a statement about the OCR and not about the book, which is worth more than the query was — every nil taken this way in a scanned volume has to be read that way. |
Volume I, page 433 — the son's entry answers the father's
row 137 — and the Sibree error is now closed twice over · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org · which volumes of the DSAB are scanned at all | FOUR OF THE OLD RUN, AND VOLUME I IS NOT LABELLED Found | dictionaryofsout0005unse is Volume V; dictionaryofsout0000unse is II; dictionaryofsout0000unse_x2g1 is III; and dictionaryofsout0000unse_p0x9 carries no volume number at all — its catalogue line reads «volumes 1-2, 5», which is a holdings statement and not a label. It is Volume I, and the proof is internal: the cumulative index in Volume V puts Kolbe, F. C. at I, 433, and page 433 of this scan is the Kolbe entry. A scan with no volume number is not an unidentified scan if another volume's index will say what it must contain. |
| the entry at Volume I, page 433 | FRIEDRICH CARL KOLBE, AND HIS FATHER IN THE SAME SENTENCE Found | Kolbe, Friedrich Carl (Frederick Charles), born GEORGE 28 September 1854, died SEA POINT, CAPE TOWN 12 January 1936 — Roman Catholic clergyman, poet, critic, writer, philosopher, theologian and botanist. He was the son of FRIEDRICH WILHELM KOLBE OF GÜTERSLOH IN WESTPHALIA, WHO CAME TO SOUTH AFRICA IN 1844 as one of the earliest missionaries of the Rhenish mission society in Damaraland, and his wife ISABELLA ELLIOTT. THE BIRTHPLACE IS NOW SAID TWICE, IN TWO VOLUMES, BY TWO DIFFERENT ENTRIES — V, 419 for the father and I, 433 for the son — and the second adds the year he reached the country and the name of his wife. |
| what 1844 does to Sibree's entry 522 | IT ENDS IT Found | Sibree's Register calls Friedrich Wilhelm Kolbe a son of the Rev. G.A. Kolbe, No. 278. G.A. KOLBE DIED AT COLESBERG ON 1 DECEMBER 1844. F.W. KOLBE ARRIVED IN SOUTH AFRICA IN 1844, AGED TWENTY-THREE, FROM WESTPHALIA, SENT BY A DIFFERENT SOCIETY TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY. This archive had the arithmetic — 3 November 1821 against John Gerson Eliezar's 7 July 1822 — and a loose phrase about a Westphalian missionary. It now has a birth town, an arrival year, a mission society and a field, from two published entries, and they agree with each other and with Schoeman against Sibree. A compiler joined two Kolbes; the dictionary never did. |
| his wife's people, which the entry gives and this archive did not ask for | ISABELLA ELLIOTT, AND A CAPE LINE BEHIND HER Found | The entry traces her: William Caldwell of the British army and William Elliott, a Yorkshire clergyman, in the earlier nineteenth century; and among her South African ancestors Hans Helm, who emigrated from Holland to the Cape in 1671, and H. L. Bletterman, Landdrost of Stellenbosch, her great-grandfather. NONE OF IT IS THIS FAMILY and none of it is claimed here. It is written down because the whole point of the row was to separate two Kolbe families, and this is what the other one looks like — the clearest possible statement that it is somebody else's. |
| F. W. Kolbe's own parents | STILL NOT READ Partly | The son's entry names his father and his mother. It does not name his father's father. That sentence, if it exists, is in the Volume V entry at p.419, in the window the preview will not open. Row 137 asked for parentage and birthplace; the birthplace is answered twice and the parentage is still answered nowhere. Nothing is inferred from the silence. |
The rest of the family, swept through the same dictionary
a bounded negative — and one Barry family that is not this one · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| dictionaryofsout0005unse · Daschner | NOTHING Nothing | No Daschner anywhere in the volume, and the name carries no diacritic for the OCR to lose. The control is in the same search box on the same afternoon: Mountjoy, Booysen, Barry and Kolbe all return hits from it, so the mechanism was working when it returned nothing here. |
| dictionaryofsout0005unse · Mountjoy | ONE, AND IT IS NOT AN ENTRY Partly | Page 266, in a sources note at the foot of somebody else's life: private information supplied by “Mrs Margaret Mountjoy (daughter), Jbg.”, beside a Mr Thomas Fitzgerald and a Mr A. Crawford. She is a Mountjoy by marriage, in Johannesburg, consulted while the dictionary was being compiled. NO DATES, NO MAIDEN NAME, AND NOTHING JOINS HER TO THIS ARCHIVE'S MOUNTJOYS. It is written down because an informant named in a published source is a findable person, and because this archive has eighty-one Mountjoys and no Johannesburg thread. |
| dictionaryofsout0005unse · Booysen | TWO, AND BOTH ARE THE OTHER SPELLING Nothing | C. M. Booysen, co-author of a Praktiese grammatika van die Afrikaanse taal (p.383), and Prinsina Petronella Aletta Booysen, married 8 February 1899 (p.810). This archive spells itself BOOYZEN and has measured how far apart the two populations are — 249 against 2,417 in one index. Neither is claimed and neither is this family. |
| dictionaryofsout0005unse · Barry | AN ENTRY, AND IT BELONGS TO A DIFFERENT BARRY FAMILY Partly | Barry, Charles Edward, born Sea Point 30 September 1877, died Pretoria 11 April 1956, a jurist, son of JAMES MICHAEL BARRY, a Cape attorney (p.34) — and the entry points to Sir Jacob Barry, former Judge President of the Eastern Districts Division of the Supreme Court, as another member of the same family. THE EASTERN DISTRICTS IS WHERE THIS ARCHIVE'S BARRYS ARE, which is exactly why this is written down as a WARNING and not as a lead: a prominent legal Barry family in the same division of the same colony is the strongest possible invitation to merge on a surname, and nothing whatever connects it to John Barry of Barkly East. The other Barrys in the volume are Dr James Barry the army surgeon, James Barry Low, and James Barry Munnik Hertzog — none of them relations, all of them noise in a name search. |
| what the sweep establishes about the whole run | THE DICTIONARY HOLDS NOBODY OF THIS FAMILY BUT THE KOLBES Nothing | Across the cumulative index to 1987 and the volume itself: three Kolbes, none of them George Augustus; no Booyzen; no Daschner; no Mountjoy entry; and a Barry family that is somebody else's. A national biographical dictionary is a record of prominence, not of existence, so this says nothing about whether these people lived well — it says the standard reference work a researcher would reach for first does not hold them, and now nobody has to look again. |
A free 1876 history of the Free State, and the Commandant is in it seventeen times
out of copyright, full text, no borrowing and no account — the thing the borrowable books were standing in front of · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org · title:("Oranje-Vrijstaat") | TEN, AND EVERY ONE OF THEM IS PUBLIC DOMAIN Found | THE WHOLE DAY HAD BEEN SPENT ON BOOKS THAT CANNOT BE READ. Griqua Records and both dictionary volumes are borrowable scans opened a snippet at a time. Nothing had asked the opposite question: what about this family is in a book old enough to be free? Ten titles, all unrestricted, among them H. J. Hofstede, Geschiedenis van den Oranje-Vrijstaat (1876) — contemporary with the Commandant, and downloadable entire. |
| the OCR text itself, 581 KB of it | REAL TEXT, CHECKED BEFORE IT WAS TRUSTED Found | Row 137 was caught once by a _djvu.txt that returned an HTML wrapper, counted zero occurrences in it, and recorded that a null from the wrong object is not a null. So the file was opened and looked at before anything was counted: 581,584 bytes beginning with Google's scanning notice and then the book. Control: «Vrijstaat» appears 205 times. Only then was anything searched for. |
| Kolbe, in Hofstede | SEVENTEEN TIMES, AND ONE OF THEM IS AN OBITUARY Found | “Ik bedoel den kommandant van Bloemfontein J. G. E. KOLBE” — taken by “een noodlottige koorts”, a fatal fever, “niet op 't bed van eer, maar in het midden zijner betrekkingen”, and “bemind en geacht door alle rechtgeaarde Vrijstaters als een goed en verstandig medeburger en een voorganger in den strijd tegen geweldenarij en roof”. IT NAMES HIS SEAT — BLOEMFONTEIN — WHICH THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE, and it is the first judgement of him from somebody who was neither a newspaper nor kin. It agrees with the Grahamstown Journal about the fever without having read it, and adds that he died at home and not in action, which is what a man who carries a camp disease back to his farm looks like. |
| the date Hofstede gives | 4 APRIL 1868 — AND IT DOES NOT DISPLACE THE ARCHIVE'S Partly | The obituary gives 3 April 1868; 3 April 1868 was a Friday; and it was his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, he having married Anna Jacoba van der Merwe on 3 April 1843. Three facts that lock together beat one that a historian set down eight years later. 4 April is written down as a variant and is not adopted. A death on the night of a Friday is the commonest way a neighbouring date gets into print. |
| what he did on commando | THE FIRST ACCOUNT OF IT THIS ARCHIVE HAS Found | He and Commandant Roos were sent by the President as gijzelaars — hostages for Moshesh's own safety — so the chief would come in to the meeting, and Moshesh came an hour later with his principal sons. At Klokkelani he surrounded the Basotho and reported it, bringing up the Armstrong gun. At the Thiemie he climbed a footpath with Commandant Prinsloo and two hundred men, reached the top with fifty, and held the captured position that split the mountain while the others cleared the northern point; the day's taking was 10,657 cattle, 5,468 sheep and goats, 1,007 horses, and he came in at sunset soaked and spent. The obituary called him a leader. This is the leading, written down by somebody who was there. |
| Booyzen, Barry, Mountjoy, Daschner, Downing, McCabe · in Hofstede | NONE OF THEM Nothing | Not one occurrence of any of the six, against 205 for the control. The four hits on «Booy» are given names of Korana and coloured men — Booy Coetjee, Booy Hermanus, Booy Klaassen — in a list of the murdered, and none of them is the surname. The Commandant is in this book because he commanded; nobody else of this family was. |
| Borckenhagen, Aardrijkskunde en Geschiedenis van den Oranje Vrijstaat (1892) | NOTHING, CONTROLLED Nothing | No Kolbe at all, against 92 for «Vrijstaat» and 23 for «Boshof» in the same file. A geography and a schoolbook history does not name commandants, and that is what the nil means. |
Two more Kolbes in the same free book, and neither is adopted
reading the page images, because the OCR is not the type · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| the page images of geschiedenisvan00hofsgoog, read directly | PRINTED PAGES 131, 156 AND 158 Found | A PUBLIC-DOMAIN SCAN HANDS OVER ITS PAGE IMAGES, AND THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS BOOK AND EVERY OTHER ONE READ TODAY. Griqua Records and both dictionary volumes are borrowable and give snippets; this gives the type. Three pages were fetched and read to place the action the first Kolbe appears in. Page 156 is the order to storm Thaba-Bosigo at half past three on the morning of 8 August, with the Whitworth, the Armstrong and Wepener's old six-pounder; page 158 is generaal Fick's orders and ends with the stormers reaching “de eerste loodrecht opgaande rots, die omtrent 20 voet hoog was.” The seven men who went up it on each other's shoulders — kapt. Hunton, Kolbe, Owen, J. Raaff Jun., W. Hanger, Whitehead and G. N. Hanger — are on the page after that. |
| which Kolbe went up the rock | NOT ESTABLISHED, AND A SON IS AS LIKELY Partly | He is named bare, among a captain and five burghers. A sitting commandant is given his rank everywhere else in this book — «komdt. Kolbe», «de kommandanten Prinsloo en Kolbe» — so the bare name argues against the Commandant and for somebody younger. His obituary says two of his sons had been serving with him in the field and «proved themselves amongst the bravest of our burghers». That is a reason to look, not a reason to decide, and nothing is entered for him. |
| «Jan Colbe», 6 April 1866 | THE TYPE SAYS COLBE, AND THE LEAD IS WITHDRAWN Nothing | Three men were allowed by Sephanja to go up and bring away Louw Wepener's bones: Jan Jonathan Durand, Franz Holm and “Jan Colbe”. This archive's Commandant is “JAN GERSEM ELIEZER KOLBE” in his own daughter's wording on her 1909 death registration, so the given name is exactly right — which is why the page was fetched rather than reasoned about. IT SAYS COLBE. Printed folio 160 reads “Durand, Franz Holm en Jan Colbe door Sefoni (Sephanja) toegelaten om de beenderen van L. Wepener weg te nemen”, and the same volume sets Kolbe seventeen times elsewhere. The OCR was faithful; the spelling is the author's. Nothing is taken. The page earns its place for two other things: the bones were buried at Wepener's last home, Constantia in the district of Bethulie, and the failed storming is dated 15 August 1865, with the Timie named as the mountain taken later — the Thiemie, whose summit this Commandant held. |
| the leaf numbering of this scan | SOLVED — THE SCAN CARRIES ITS OWN INDEX Found | The offsets drift and three guesses landed wrong, one of them on the New York Public Library's bookplate. The answer was in the item all along. {id}_djvu.xml holds one page object per leaf, each with that leaf's OCR, so the leaf for any hit is the index of the object containing it — no arithmetic, no offset, no guessing. Leaf 211, folio 160, fetched and read first time. _scandata.xml is the file that looks like it should answer this and does not: 314 leaves described, every one of them with a crop box and a page type, and not one printed page number among them. This is the method for every public-domain scan from here on. |
Four more free books, and two of them had him
the public-domain sweep — a document he wrote, and a sworn witness at Bethulie · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org · public-domain South African histories, 1848–1899 | FIVE TAKEN, FOUR READ ENTIRE Found | Hofstede having worked, the same question was put to the rest of the shelf: what else is old enough to be free? Theal's History of South Africa: The Republics and Native Territories 1854–1872; his Fragment of Basuto History; Moodie's History of the Battles and Adventures of the British, the Boers and the Zulus; Holden's History of the Colony of Natal; and Theal's Basutoland Records, 723 pages of printed official documents. All five out of copyright, all five downloadable whole. This is the opposite of the morning, which was spent reading three books a snippet at a time because they could not be opened. |
| Moodie, page 93 — read as an image | A DOCUMENT HE WROTE, WITH A DATE, A PLACE AND AN ADDRESSEE Found | “A report from Commandant J. G. E. KOLBE to Commandant Botha, dated PLATBERG, 2nd Nov., 1867” — the capture of caverns and strongholds at Mariendall: one Boer killed, two severely wounded, eleven of the enemy killed as far as known, 120 women and children taken out of the caverns and put across the Caledon, twenty wagon loads of corn taken. ROW 170 SAYS THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS NO WORD WRITTEN BY ANYBODY OF THIS FAMILY BETWEEN 1844 AND THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, AND THAT IS STILL LITERALLY TRUE — Moodie summarises and does not print it. What has changed is that the document is no longer hypothetical. It has a date, a place and a man it was sent to, which is what a thing needs before anybody can go and look for it. The next report on the page gives Botha his initials — J. C. BOTHA — and Botha is the commandant standing beside Kolbe on the Thiemie in Hofstede: two books twelve years apart, neither citing the other. |
| what Moodie prints immediately above it | SET DOWN, BECAUSE LEAVING IT OUT WOULD BE A CHOICE TOO Partly | The paragraph before Kolbe's report is the Rev. Mr Jousse, writing from Thaba Bosigo in October 1867, on a raid in which people were “killed as dogs indistinctly men, women, and children”, the women and children outnumbering the men. Kolbe's report, as summarised, does not describe that — his women and children were taken out of the caverns and put across the river — and the juxtaposition is Moodie's, not the record's. Both are recorded. An archive that prints a man's commendations and not the war they were earned in is not describing the same war. |
| Basutoland Records, page 436 — read as an image | A SWORN WITNESS PUTS THE SETTLER AT BETHULIE IN JUNE 1831 Found | Deposition of Frans Johannes Cornelis Cronje, Smithfield, 14 September 1858, before J. J. Sauer, Landdrost of the Caledon River District. Hunting up from Colesberg in June 1831 with the three Venters, his brother Stephanus and Hendrik Weber, Commandant of the District: “We then met with the missionaries KOLBE AND KLERK with some BUSHMEN AT BETHULIE.” “Klerk” is almost certainly JAMES CLARK, the man Sibree pairs him with at the Bushman station, written down by a Dutch deponent as he heard it — and that pairing is what identifies the Kolbe. The earliest independent sighting of the Settler this archive has. |
| and it does not fit the chronology | SAID PLAINLY RATHER THAN SMOOTHED Partly | Sibree has him at Philippolis from 13 March 1831; Schoeman's chronology says March 1831 as well. A June 1831 sighting at Bethulie puts him back at his old station three months after leaving it, or puts a year's slip into a deposition sworn twenty-seven years after the fact. Nothing here decides which, and the archive does not get to pick the one that reads better. The deposition also has a purpose: these were taken to argue the land had been empty, so «no other native tribes besides a few Bushmen» is interested testimony and is read as such. |
| reading the page instead of the transcript | TWO WORDS CHANGED Found | The OCR gives “Barend Teater” and “Bethulle”; the type says BAREND VENTER and BETHULIE. Neither alters the finding and both would have gone into this archive as fact. The leaf was found the way the last one was — the scan's _djvu.xml, one page object per leaf — which is now simply how this archive reads a free book. |
| Theal, The Republics and Native Territories 1854–1872 | NO KOLBE AT ALL, AND THE CONTROLS ARE LOUD Nothing | The standard history of exactly this Commandant's state and exactly his years: 516 mentions of Moshesh, 105 of Bloemfontein, 255 of «commandant» — and not one Kolbe. Nor in Theal's Fragment of Basuto History. A commandant of Bloemfontein who died in office in 1868 is not in the authoritative history of the republic he served, which is worth knowing both as a fact about the books and as a measure of how far this family sat from the people who wrote them. |
| Holden, History of the Colony of Natal (1855) | THE OTHER KOLBE, CONFIRMED FROM A THIRD DIRECTION Found | A Blue Book report on Damaraland signed “F. N. Kolbe, In the service of the Rhenish Missionary Society” — the initial is an OCR slip for F. W. This is the man the whole day was spent separating from this family, and here he is in 1855 doing exactly what Dictionary of South African Biography I, 433 says he came to do in 1844: Rhenish mission, Damaraland. Three independent sources now agree about him, and none of them puts him anywhere near the Settler. |
| Booyzen, Barry, Mountjoy, Daschner · across all five | NOTHING, EXCEPT TWO MORE BARRYS WHO ARE NOT THESE Nothing | Theal names Advocate J. D. Barry, recorder of the high court in Griqualand West. That is the third Cape legal Barry this archive has met today and, like Sir Jacob and James Michael, he is written down only so nobody joins him on. No Booyzen, no Mountjoy, no Daschner in any of the five. |
The Society's own magazine printed him, and it is free
rows 121 and 138 — eleven months of his journal, and the date that was in dispute · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| archive.org · The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, by volume | 1828 TO 1837, UNRESTRICTED, ALL TEN TAKEN Found | THE SERIAL THIS ARCHIVE WANTED WAS NEVER THE ONLY ONE. Row 121 went after the Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions and established it is not on the Internet Archive. The LMS's MONTHLY is, under evangelicalmagaz…, one volume a year, freely downloadable, and it covers every year he was in the field. Thirty megabytes of it read in one pass. The run is not complete — 1838 onward thins — but 1828 through 1837 is there. |
| Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1833, pp. 410–412 | “EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS KOLBE” Found | 8 October 1831 to 3 September 1832, at Philippolis, day by day. Attendances, admissions, the school roll climbing from ninety to 335, a chief writing to a Veld-Cornet about colonists beating his people, twenty-six people vaccinated on 18 January 1832, a thanksgiving for deliverance from small-pox, the church discipline set out in his own hand, the new church opened on 1 April 1832 — built by the district, stone walls twelve feet high, five hundred seats and a hundred left in the street. ROW 138 SAYS THE SUM OF HIS OWN WORDS HERE IS ONE SENTENCE AT SECOND HAND. IT IS NOW ELEVEN MONTHS. |
| the same journal, 21 July 1832 | THE OBITUARY CORROBORATED SIXTEEN YEARS EARLY Found | “The Veld-Cornet Joubert … and two other farmers, arrived here this afternoon, for the purpose of obtaining MEDICAL ADVICE, and also to attend the religious services of the station.” The Grahamstown Journal said in 1844 that he had been “for many years engaged in rendering them medical advice and assistance whenever called upon”, and this archive had only the obituary's word for it. Here is the thing itself, in his own journal, with the farmers named by office and riding in for it. |
| Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1831 — his letter of 30 April 1831 | HE DATES HIS OWN ARRIVAL, AND IT CLOSES THE CONFLICT Found | “As I resided for NEARLY THREE YEARS among the Bushmen previous to my removal to this station …” and then, plainly: “WHEN I ARRIVED, IN APRIL, 1828, WITH MY COLLEAGUE, IN THE BUSHMAN COUNTRY.” THIS ARCHIVE HAS CARRIED SIBREE'S 8 FEBRUARY 1829 AGAINST THE DSAB'S 8 FEBRUARY 1828 SINCE SEPTEMBER. Both can now stand: 1828 is when he went, 1829 is when the Society formally took him on. Sibree was never dating an arrival. Nearly three years from April 1828 also lands exactly on Sibree's own «arriving at Philippolis, March 13, 1831» — the two halves of that entry were always consistent and nobody had the middle. |
| Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1830 — James Clark's letter of 31 December 1828 | THE COLLEAGUE SAYS IT FROM THE OTHER SIDE Found | “brother Kolbe and myself removed to this station, and arrived here in the beginning of MAY last” — written at the Bushman Station, near Caledon River, in December 1828, so «May last» is May 1828. The letter also gives the station's origin: Landdrost Stockenstrom of Graaff-Reinet and the Lieutenant-Governor asked Clark to begin it, farmers in the district subscribed cattle, and the Bushmen had been driven off their fountains by Boers crossing the boundary. TWO MEN, WRITING THREE YEARS APART AND NEITHER FOR POSTERITY, PUT HIM THERE IN APRIL OR MAY 1828. And the station is the Boesmanskool that became Bethulie. |
| the 1828 and 1829 volumes · the Caledon journey of November 1828 | NOT THERE, AND THAT IS ROW 121'S ANSWER NARROWED Nothing | Neither volume names him once. The DSAB says the Melvill and Kolbe journal was printed “in the Transactions of the Missionary Society for 1829”, and this establishes that it was not in the Society's monthly — so the citation means the Quarterly Chronicle of Transactions, the separate serial row 121 has already shown is not on the Internet Archive. The journey is still unfound and the place to look is now one place smaller. |
| the same letter, on the people he worked among | RECORDED WHOLE, NOT IN THE HALF THAT READS WELL Partly | He writes that the Bushmen's raids “proceeded from a recollection of former injuries, excited by the intrusion of the colonists into their country”, and that “Truly, the oppression of the Bushmen has been great; they have been looked upon, by many, little above the level of the brute creation; and having been subjected to a temporary slavery, they have smarted under the lash of the oppressor.” He also calls them, on arrival, “a wild and uncivilized race — a band of robbers, and haters of men”, says not one had been brought to the faith, and that “Temporal advantages are all they desire.” BOTH HALVES ARE SET DOWN. Quoting only the sentence that sounds right now would be choosing his words for him, which is the one thing an archive holding a man's own journal must not do. |
| the Letters Received tables, 1831 to 1836 | A SPINE OF DATES NOBODY HAS TO GUESS AT Found | The magazine lists every letter the Society received, by missionary and station. G. A. Kolbe, Philippolis: 30 April 1831 · 4 October 1831 · September 1832 · 10 October 1833 · 20 October 1835. That is a documentary timeline of his correspondence with London, and each date is a letter that exists somewhere in the CWM archive at SOAS — which is row 135's enquiry, now able to ask for things by date. |
A Kolbe in Westminster paying for the mission at Philippolis
one sighting, one year, and what would settle it · searched 11 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1836 · the subscription lists | “MISS A. KOLBE”, ORANGE STREET CHAPEL AUXILIARY Partly | In the Juvenile Branch of the Orange Street Chapel auxiliary, with a bare “Miss Kolbe” in a collector's list on the same page. Orange Street Chapel is off Leicester Square in Westminster — this family's parish — and a few minutes from Conduit Street, where Amelia Ann Kolbe was living at the 1841 census. The society is the one her brother served, and 1836 is a year he was at Philippolis. A surname, an initial, a parish and a society is the whole of it. No address, no age, no relationship is printed, and this archive has already spent today keeping four Kolbes of one name apart. Recorded as a lead against her record and nothing is altered. |
| the other nine volumes, for the same thing | ONE YEAR ONLY Nothing | The subscription lists of 1828–1835 and 1837 carry no Kolbe at all. A single sighting in a single year is weaker than a run would be, and is written down as a single sighting. It also means the lists were read and not merely the one that answered. |
| what would settle it | THE AUXILIARY'S OWN PAPERS, AT THE ADDRESS ALREADY BEING WRITTEN TO Partly | The magazine prints a total, not an address. The Orange Street Chapel records, or the LMS auxiliary returns in the Council for World Mission archive, would carry the subscriber's own hand — and CWM at SOAS is exactly where row 135's letter is going. This costs nothing to add to an enquiry already written. |
FindMyPast has no South African records except a war
row 78 — the subscription's last days, and the plan for them was impossible · searched 12 Oct 2026 · where it is used →
| Query | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| findmypast.co.uk · the record-set catalogue, searched by place name | TWELVE SETS FOR SOUTH AFRICA AND EVERY ONE IS MILITARY Found | THE BOUNDARY, AND IT RETIRES AN ERRAND RATHER THAN ANSWERING IT. Row 78 named the two things worth the remaining days: 1819–20 passenger lists, and the 1903 certificates. The certificates were answered in September. The passenger lists cannot be answered on this tool at all, and now there is a tested reason rather than a failed search. Searching the catalogue of all 2,977 record sets by place: “South Africa” returns 12, every one of them Anglo-Boer War — nominal rolls, rolls of honour, soldiers' wills, war memorials, and the Australian, New Zealand and Glasgow contingents. “Natal” returns NOTHING AT ALL. “Cape” returns two, and both are Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. “Transvaal” returns the same nine Boer War sets again. There is no South African civil registration here, no parish register, no passenger or arrival list, and nothing whatever before 1899. The four searches are a control on each other: the mechanism plainly works, because it returns twelve relevant sets for one name and zero for another. |
| findmypast.co.uk · travel & migration, BARRY, keyword «cape of good hope» | 178 HITS, AND THE CAPE ONES ARE A NAVAL YARD IN THE 1790s Found | The one item row 78 had left. 178 results, and the genuinely Cape-located ones are EDWARD BARRY in the British Royal Navy Ships' Musters at the Naval Yard at the Cape of Good Hope, 1797–1800 — a British set that happens to record Cape postings, not a Cape set. The rest drift to Tasmania and Great Britain on a loose keyword. Bounded to 1819 ±2, travel & migration returns 16 Barrys and every one is Australian — New South Wales settlers and convicts. Nothing at the Cape in the year John Augustus Barry I was born «at sea». |
| WO 127 · South Africa, Local Armed Forces Nominal Rolls, 1899–1902 — 53,416 records | A SOURCE THIS ARCHIVE HAD NEVER OPENED, AND THE REGISTER PROVES IT Found | The one South African thing FindMyPast does hold, and it is a good one. A transcription of TNA WO 127 by Kevin Asplin: name, rank, regimental number, unit, and often dates of enrolment and discharge. This archive's register holds ZERO rows from any Boer War source, so despite row 86 re-running the four surnames in September, this set had never reached it. Searched all four surnames with variants on 12 October. |
| WO 127 · KOLBE, with variants | NIL, AND THE CONTROL IS IN THE RESULT Nothing | Three hits and not one is a Kolbe — J M Kilby, Thomas Kilby, A F Kyser. The variant matcher plainly fired, which is what makes this a negative worth recording rather than an empty page: no Kolbe served in any unit on this roll. |
| WO 127 · MOUNTJOY, with variants | GEORGE MOUNTJOY, PRIVATE 664, DISTRICT MOUNTED RIFLES Found | One exact Mountjoy in 53,416 records, and the surname is rare enough for that to mean something. Pte. 664, District Mounted Rifles — a locally raised Cape Colony unit, organised by district, and this family's Mountjoys were at Cradock, Dordrecht and Barkly East, which is that recruiting ground. IT CANNOT YET BE GIVEN TO A MAN. The transcript carries no age and no district, and this archive holds three Georges who could be of age in 1900: George Mountjoy of Barkly East, who has no dates at all; George Herkules Johannes Mountjoy, born 16 January 1862; and George Mountjoy of Kokstad, born about 1862. The 1889 George was a boy of eleven and the 1823 George was seventy-seven. Three candidates, no discriminator, nothing claimed. |
| WO 127 · BOOYZEN / BOOYSEN, with variants | NICHOLAS GEORGE PETER BOOYSEN, TROOPER, NESBITT'S HORSE Found | Eight hits, four of them real and probably one man: Booysen, N. Booysen, Nicholas Booysen and NICHOLAS GEORGE PETER BOOYSEN — Trooper, Nesbitt's Horse, 26 January to 18 September 1900, remarked “Discharged, services no longer required”. Nesbitt's Horse was raised in the eastern Cape. NO MAN OF THIS NAME IS IN THIS ARCHIVE — its Nicholas-bearing Booysens are a Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas of 1882, a Hendrik Stefanus Nicolaas of 1862 and a Jacobus Nicholas before 1842. Not claimed. |
| WO 127 · BARRY | 34 HITS AND THE INDEX CANNOT CHOOSE AMONG THEM Nothing | Too common a surname for an index with no age and no district. 34 results, including a J H Barry who could be James Henry and a George Barry who could be several people. Nothing attributable, and that is the finding: this set identifies a rare surname and defeats a common one. |
| the side of the war these rolls describe | THE SAME DISTRICTS, THE OTHER SIDE Found | Worth setting down before anybody is adopted off these rolls. WO 127 lists men who served the BRITISH in locally raised colonial units. The men this archive already holds from that war went the other way: Fred J. Barry, plaasboer of Ivanhoe, tried as a CAPE REBEL in June 1901, and the two Kolbes taken prisoner and shipped to Cape Town on WO 108/368. So this source describes neighbours, and possibly relatives, who chose the opposite side in the same districts in the same months. That is a reason to be slower about identification, not faster. |
What the zeros are worth
A zero with a stated scope is evidence. There is no estate file for Hercules Johannes Mountjoy in the Cape archives, and because the estates on either side of him run unbroken from 1938 to 1948, that absence means something: an estate too small to report.
A zero without a scope is not. The camp database returns nothing for this family — but it is built largely from camp death lists, so it records who died far better than who was interned and walked out. That claim is unsupported, not disproved, and the page says so.
And a zero from the wrong index is worth less than nothing, because it can mislead for years. The Farm List result above is void: the register is an Orange Free State land roll and was never going to hold a Cape farm. It took a control search to notice.
The searches that found something are on the other pages. These are the ones that make those worth believing.