c. 20 Mar 1754 The name
Johanna Booyzen born “in this Colony”
Not this family — and her dates are the two this archive has for Magdelena Elisabeth de Beer, which is why she is on the site at all.
124 dated events · 1754–2013
The Timeline
Everything this archive can put a document behind, in order. Where a document was written long after the event it records, both dates are given — that gap is one of the things this archive is about.
Two hundred and thirty-four years
Larger marks are the documents this archive turns on.
124 dated events · 1754–2013
1750s1
1770s1
1779 The name
The spelling BOOYZEN is already in use at the Cape
KAB CJ 2633: 29 — the will of Christina Booyzen. One hundred and twenty years before the war.
1780s2
c. 1782 Life
James Montjoy born, in “Europe”
Given as “about 45 years” at his death in 1827. His birthplace is recorded as a continent, not a country.
c. 21 Sep 1788 Life
Petrus Jacobus Booysen baptised at Graaff-Reinet
The oldest date on the male line that a register carries.
1790s1
1792 The name
BOOIJZEN too
KAB MOOC 13/1/33: 5, the liquidation account of Susanna Booijzen.
1800s3
7 Dec 1802 Life
George Augustus Kolbe born in London
Baptised at St Anne's, Soho, 2 February 1803, son of John Gottlob and Mary.
12 Dec 1806 Document
David Schalk Booijzen born, and Anna Maria van der Merwe stops being a rumour
Baptised 4 January 1807. Father PIETER JACOBUS BOOIJZEN, mother ANNA MARIA VAN DER MERWE — the only document in this archive that puts Anna Maria in the family at all. The ancestor chart carried a wall against her reading “only a family tree puts her here”, and that was wrong. Her son is FIRST OF THE EIGHT on the 1876 Sterfkennis, and his father was eighteen when he was born. It also resolves a contradiction marked Serious: they were married by 1806, so the 1805 marriage at Graaff-Reinet stands and the 1825 Cape Town record is a different couple.
5 Apr 1807 Life
Anna Catharina Slier marries Hermanus Pietersen
At nineteen. Two sons — Willem Hermanus in 1809 and Johan Christiaan in 1810 — and a widow by March 1817, when she married James Montjoy.
1810s6
8 Dec 1816 Document
The Oliviers marry at Graaff-Reinet
OCKERT JOHANNES STEPHANUS OLIVIER and ANNA CATHARINA BOTHA — the parents of the woman who would marry Hendrik Stephanus Booijzen at Potchefstroom thirty-four years later. GRAAFF-REINET is the town where Petrus Jacobus Booysen was baptised in 1788, where his son was born in 1812 and where Hendrik Stefanus was born about 1829. The two families were in the same small Karoo town, moved to Cradock, and their children married six hundred miles north. INDEX ONLY: the image is not available.
9 Mar 1817 Document
James Montjoy marries Anna Catharina Slier
Graaff-Reinet marriage register. She is entered as the widow of Harmanus Pieterzen. No origin is recorded for him — a ruled dash, on a page where three other couples are entered “beide van Uitenhage”.
9 Mar 1817 Document
James Montjoy marries Anna Catharina Slier at Graaff-Reinet
She is a widow. His origin is left blank on a page where the clerk filled everyone else's in — the blank starts here, twenty-three years before the death notice.
1819 Document
George Augustus Kolbe marries Margaret Downing on a sworn falsehood
St Leonard's, Shoreditch. Both swore they were twenty-one; he was sixteen and she fifteen. She signed with a mark.
30 Apr 1819 Life
Johanna Catharina Montjoy born at Graaff-Reinet
Computed from an age given to the day — “44 years & 19 days” — on her 1863 death notice.
4 Dec 1819 Life
The Nautilus is caught in a storm in the Downs and strikes the sands
A day out of Gravesend. “Men, women and children all mixed together, tumbling over one another” — and when the ship struck, “even the sailors seemed panic struck”. From the letters of John Penny Mandy, who led another party on the same ship. George Augustus Kolbe was four days short of seventeen.
1820s8
14 Apr 1820 Life
The Nautilus lands at Algoa Bay
George Augustus Kolbe arrives as an 1820 Settler, in Owen's party.
Jan 1822 Document
John Montgomery lodges with James Mountjoy at Cradock
And names the whole town — about six people — including “James MOUNTJOY (a saddler, who was discharged from the 21st Light Dragoons)”. It is the only statement anywhere of where he came from.
11 Jun 1823 Life
George Mountjoy born at Cradock
He will be four when his father dies, and will take up his father's trade.
4 Oct 1824 Document
Anna Johanna Olivier baptised at Cradock
Born 10 September 1824, baptised at Cradock on 4 October. Father OCKERT JOHANNES STEPHANUS OLIVIER, mother ANNA CATHARINA BOTHA. Read her father's name entire: it is exactly what her son was called. Her sister Aletta Catharina had been baptised in the same church eleven months earlier, and her own daughter would be Aletta Catharina Johanna.
c. 1824 Life
George Augustus Kolbe keeps a Bushman mission school at Koolskop
Where Colesberg was laid out six years later. Recorded by John Montgomery, founder of Burgersdorp, writing in 1869 — and corroborated by a Cape Town library catalogue that calls him an LMS missionary.
Sep 1827 Life
James Montjoy dies at Cradock
A saddler, leaving a house and erf worth £90 and four children under nine.
c. Jun 1828 Document
Hendrik Stephanus Booysen born in the Cape Colony
His mother is ELIZABETHA van der Merwe — a second wife this archive did not have, and the resolution of its oldest “Serious” contradiction.
1829 Document
The magazine story the tailor would ask his son to verify
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. XIV, pp. 313–318 — a settler’s letter from southern Africa, orang-outangs, a wife carried off. IT IS FICTION BY JAMES HOGG, the Ettrick Shepherd, and the father asked about it in August 1830. Found after five failed searches, by downloading the volume and reading it.
1830s4
23 Aug 1830 Document
Johan Kolbe writes from London to his son, newly accepted by the L.M.S.
The only document this archive has ever found showing the tailor of Conduit Street and the settler of Colesberg in contact. Four photocopied pages, MSB751, in a Cape Town library. READ AT FULL RESOLUTION, 20 SEPTEMBER 2026, AND IT IS NOT AN ORDINATION LETTER — the catalogue says so and the page does not. The father reports being told his son was “fully accepted by the [L.M.S.] as one of their Missionaries”, which is the acceptance and not the ordination, and he asks whether a story in a London magazine about a settler’s wife carried off by orang-outangs is true.
1834 Document
Charles Bell draws Kolbe in the pulpit at Philippolis
A watercolour of a church service with the missionary preaching, made on Dr Andrew Smith’s expedition. Catalogued twice: the original credited to the Africana Museum, now MuseumAfrica, and a photographic copy at the University of Edinburgh as CSWC 60 item 3, “Mr. Kolbe”. NEITHER HAS BEEN SEEN. It would be the only likeness of anybody in this archive born before 1850.
4 Nov 1838 Document
Petrus Jacobus Booysen marries Johanna Catharina Mountjoy
At Cradock — the marriage that brings the Mountjoy descent into this family.
4 Nov 1838 Document
Booysen marries Mountjoy at Cradock
The junction. The two surnames that carry this archive are joined in one town, eight months after her sister married in the same one.
1840s11
25 Jun 1840 Document
“Names of the Parents of the Deceased. Not Known.”
James Montjoy's death notice, written THIRTEEN YEARS after he died, by a relative who knew his trade, his house, its value and his wife's first husband. KAB MOOC 6/9/21: 4393.
16 Jun 1843 Document
Johanna Booyzen dies at 28 Roze Street, Cape Town
Death notice 6167, and the earliest failure of the parents line in this archive: “both dead”. Eighty-nine years old, with fifteen pounds of somebody else's debt.
3 Apr 1843 Life
John Gerson Eliezar Kolbe marries Anna Jacoba van der Merwe
He would die on the anniversary, twenty-five years later.
1 Dec 1844 Life
George Augustus Kolbe dies at “Wurtemburg”, Colesberg
Estate 7698. His widow signs the death notice in January 1845.
15 May 1844 Document
Johanna Catharina Booysen born at Brak Rivier
Second on the 1863 death notice, and until this week nothing but a position in a list.
26 Nov 1845 Document
Johan Gottlieb Kolbe buried at the German Savoy Church
Entry 55, grave 7, aged 81 — not St John the Baptist, Leamington, as the family tree has it.
23 Feb 1846 Document
John Augustus Barry I marries Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Mary Kolbe at Colesberg
DOCUMENTED 9 OCTOBER 2026, entry 735 of the Colesberg register. The date this site had wrong until 28 September 2026. It was published as about 1850 at Burghersdorp — the word “probably” on a son's 1915 death notice — while the same archive dated their eldest son to 1847. Pama gives 23 February 1846 at Colesberg, which this archive's own people file had said all along. Marked inferred: the Colesberg register has not been read. AND THIS ARCHIVE INDEPENDENTLY PUTS THE FAMILY AT COLESBERG THAT FORTNIGHT. Her brother the Commandant had a son, GEORGE AUGUSTUS, baptised at Colesberg on 8 MARCH 1846 — thirteen days after this wedding, in the same town, at the same font. Their father the Settler's own death notice had been signed at Colesberg in January 1845. Pama's date is not corroborated by Pama: it is corroborated by a baptism register this archive read on its own account, for a different household, a fortnight later. THE REGISTER ITSELF: the clerk wrote John BERRY and the man signed John BARRY — which is why no search for Barry ever found it. Residence Stormberg Spruit, after banns, by Thomas Reid. Consent: “de Weduwe Kolbe, moeder”, and nothing at all on the groom's side, where the entries above and below each name two fathers.
8 Mar 1846 Document
George Augustus Kolbe baptised at Colesberg, the first of the twelve this archive can name
Born 30 September 1845, son of Johan Gerson Eliezer Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, and named for the grandfather buried at Colesberg the year before — the 1820 Settler, whose own death notice was signed in that town in January 1845. The same font is in the index twice, a week apart with the identical birth date, which is one event and two transcribers rather than a second child.
12 Mar 1848 Document
Willem Johannes Kolbe baptised at Fauresmith, entry 18
Born 2 August 1847, son of John Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe — the first document this archive holds that names a child of the Commandant's household. It also corrects his birthday: the Afrikaans dictionary account, read at one remove through a Wikipedia article, gives 9 July 1847 and the district of Philippolis. A register entered seven months after the birth beats a dictionary compiled a century later. Whether this child is General W. J. Kolbe (1847–1941) is still an inference from a year and a district.
20 Aug 1848 Document
George Mountjoy, saddle maker, marries Maria Sophia Botha
Cradock, certificate 735.
9 Oct 1849 Document
Jan Hendrik Kolbe baptised at Fauresmith
Born 5 July 1849, son of Jan Gerson Eliese Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe. THIS IS THE ENTRY THAT CLOSES A QUESTION THIS ARCHIVE HAD CARRIED SINCE 20 SEPTEMBER — that he is the Commandant's son was a user tree's claim, refused here as a claim, and it is now a register's. The same event is indexed a second time in the Cape collection as “Hendrik Kolbe”, with the same dates and parents.
1850s5
3 Jul 1850 Document
A Booijzen marries at Potchefstroom, before there was a Transvaal
Entry 206 of the Potchefstroom marriage register: HENDRIK STEPHANUS BOOIJZEN, 23, and ANNA JOHANNA OLIVIER, 25. This archive began by saying the family went north to Johannesburg by railway in the twentieth century; then the 1876 Sterfkennis put the direct ancestor dead in the district of Rustenburg. This is TWENTY-SIX YEARS EARLIER AGAIN — fourteen years after the Great Trek and two years before the Sand River Convention made the South African Republic a state at all.
31 Oct 1851 Document
Willem Hermanus Booyzen baptised at Achter Sneeuwberg
Entry 2809. The father is written BOOYZEN with a z — and so, three lines below in the same hand, are the godparents PIETERZEN. The z is the clerk's Dutch, not the family's claim.
7 Jun 1852 Document
Petrus Jacobus Kolbe baptised, five weeks old
Born 4 May 1852. Sixty-seven years later a Pieter Kolbe, son of J. Kolbe and A. v. d. Merwe, died at Bloemfontein aged sixty-seven — the same year of birth and the same parents reduced to initials. This archive joins the two and says the join rests on a year and two letters.
23 Oct 1853 Document
Two Kolbe sisters, one page, one afternoon
Burgersdorp, Het Jaar 1853. Entry 2187: WILLIAM FREDRIK, born 23 August, father JOHN BARRY, mother MARGARETH KOLBE, godparents JOHN KOLBE, ANNA VAN DER MERWE and GEORGE KOLBE. Entry 2186, two lines above and the same day: AUGUSTUS KOLBE, father GEORGE FREDK ENSLIN, mother MARY ELIZABETH KOLBE. This archive spent weeks proving the Enslin marriage belonged to Margaretha's SISTER and resolved it from Margaret Downing's 1867 death notice. Here are the two sisters baptising a son each, two entries apart, on one page. It also finds WILLIAM — who existed yesterday on a single line of his mother's 1915 death notice and nowhere else — and puts the family at BURGERSDORP, where the 1915 notice only guessed the marriage was.
2 Apr 1854 Document
Margaretha Elizabeth Kolbe baptised
Born 16 February 1854, and the index spells her father's forenames a fourth way — John Gerron Eliezar. She carries Margaret Downing's name, her father's mother, who was alive and would outlive the christening by thirteen years.
1860s15
7 Oct 1860 Document
Anna Susanna Kolbe baptised at Bloemfontein — and the font records a move
Born 15 August 1860. The children before her were christened at Colesberg and Fauresmith; the children after her at Bloemfontein. Somewhere between 1854 and 1860 this household moved to the town the Commandant would sit in the Volksraad for, and no document says so except the order of the fonts.
29 Sep 1861 Document
A Barry child is christened at Graaff-Reinet, with his mother's sister at the font
Entry 79 of the Graaff-Reinet baptism register: Willem Frederik Thomas, of John Barry and Margaret Welhelmina Kolbe. The godparents are PETRUS JACOBUS JOUBERT and CATHARINE MARIA SOPHIA KOLBE — the mother's own sister and her husband — with Ralph Peter THOMAS, whose surname the child carries as a forename. This archive had read the place as a migration, a return to Graaff-Reinet between Burgersdorp and Dordrecht. It is not: a child is christened where its godparents are. And the date is the baptism; the register records no birth date for him.
25 Dec 1862 Document
A baptism at Rustenburg that spells the name this archive got wrong
Hendrik Nicolaas Stephanus Booijsen, born 31 January 1862, baptised on Christmas Day at Rustenburg. Father Hendrik Stephanus Booijsen; mother ANNA JOHANNA OLIVIER. The birth date agrees to the day with the age on his 1891 death notice, and the mother's surname — indexed by somebody who never saw this site — is the one the archive read as Alberts. Index only: no image.
19 May 1863 Document
Johanna Catharina dies at Zevenfontein
Her death notice names her parents — James Montjoy and Anna Catharina Sleer — gives her age to the day, and lists eight children. KAB MOOC 6/9/104: 499.
9 Mar 1864 Document
A promissory note for £154 lost on the Market Square at Bloemfontein
Drawn by George Augustus Kolbe in favour of J.G.E. Kolbe — two of the Settler's sons in one document, over a debt. The advertisement is signed “J.G.E. KOLBE, Kafferberg, Kaalspruit”, which is how this archive knows the farm.
1 Jan 1865 Document
Anna Jacoba Kolbe baptised at Bloemfontein on New Year's Day — the real one
Born 3 November 1864, daughter of John G. E. Kolbe and Anna Jacoba van der Merwe, and named for her mother. She is not the woman this archive invented on 23 September: that was her mother, entered in an 1871 marriage index under her first husband's surname as a widow is. This girl was six at that wedding. The name really is in the family, and it was still an error.
16 Jul 1866 Document
Hercules Johannes Mountjoy born
Baptised 29 July, father George Mountjoy, mother Maria Sophia Botha — the entry that settles the Mountjoy parentage from a register instead of a tree.
1866 Life
He sits as foreman of a jury at Bloemfontein
A forgery trial before Mr van Soelen, who would speak at his graveside two years later. The paper prints his initials wrong.
21 Nov 1866 Document
A nephew is baptised Johan Casimir at Graaff-Reinet
Born 17 November 1866 to Coenraad Johannes Otto Werdmuller van Elgg and Augusta Louisa Kolbe — the Settler's fourth daughter naming her son after her brother, eight months after he took membership at Colesberg and six months before he married. The index files the child under his mother's surname, which is the only reason he was found.
31 Mar 1866 Document
Johan Casimir Kolbe takes church membership at Colesberg
The first act of his own that this archive can see. He was named in his father's death notice of January 1845 as the fifth of ten children and in his mother's of 1867 among the survivors, and nothing between. He was about twenty-one.
1 May 1867 Document
Banns called at Colesberg for Johan Casimir Kolbe and Elizabeth Geertruida Pienaar
Six months before his mother died. Their children carry the grandparents entire: a GEORGE AUGUSTUS and a MARGARET DEWNING, alongside Adriana, Elizabeth Augusta, Anna Sophia and Johanna. The third Pienaar marriage in this circle — the Commandant's eldest daughter married a Pienaar at Bloemfontein in 1860, and a Pienaar reported Frederik Fortunatus's death in 1930. Pienaar is also one of the commonest surnames in that country, and no relationship is claimed from the coincidence.
25 Nov 1867 Life
Margaret Downing dies at Burgersdorp
Aged 64 years, 9 months and 2 days. She died owning a house and a farm, having signed her marriage with a mark.
Oct 1868 Document
A horse thief takes a mare from his widow at Springfield
“1 black mare, with dark brown foal, the property of ANNA JACOBA VAN DER MERWE, widow of late J.G.E. KOLBE” — beside a mare of John Kolbe junior and a riding horse of Jephts, a man of colour living at Leeuwberg. The only document in this archive that shows her doing anything at all.
2 Aug 1869 Document
Two of the Commandant's sons take church membership at Bloemfontein on the same day
John Henry Kolbe and Willem Johannes Kolbe, both entered on 2 August 1869 in the Free State registers — which was Willem Johannes's twenty-second birthday, and sixteen months after their father died. Two brothers presenting themselves together is a household act, and it is the only day this archive can see the two of them in one place.
3 Apr 1869 Document
Two brothers admitted to membership at Rustenburg on one Sunday
Petrus Jacobus Booÿsen, born 20 April 1851, and “Ceker” — Ockert — Johannes Stephanus Booÿsen, born 15 September 1852. Seventeen and sixteen. They are the first two names on their mother's 1891 list and the two who turn up again on their father's 1908 notice. Index only: no image.
1870s9
13 Jan 1870 Document
Wildebeestkooi advertised, “adjoining the farm Leeuberg, the property of the late J.G.E. Kolbe”
“About two hours ride from the town of Bloemfontein” — the line that moved the pin off Fauresmith and closed a contradiction this archive could not reconcile.
19 Jan 1870 Life
Gerrit Jacobus Booÿsen born
Seven years after the first wife died — the child who proves the second marriage.
13 Jul 1871 Document
His widow marries Francis McCabe, Landdrost of Bloemfontein
Fifteen months before he died. For about eleven months there were eighteen children attached to one household. 27 SEPTEMBER — THE IMAGE IS READ AND THE CONDITION IS THERE IN WORDS. The register enters her as “ANNA JACOBA KOLBE, GEB: VAN DER MERWE”, 46, WEDUWE, of LEEUWBERG, and him as 53, WEDUWNAAR, LANDDROST, of Bloemfontein — a widow and a widower, married by licence, entry 874, by Gustav Radloff V.D.M. She signed her own name. The family tree's “about April 1871” is superseded, and the duplicate person this archive made of her is withdrawn on the document rather than on the arithmetic. AND IT PUTS HER ON THE FARM: Leeuwberg is where her first husband died, and this is the first record to say she was living there.
23 Feb 1872 Document
Francis McCabe dies on the Modder River road
Of heart disease, after a spring-cart went into a rain-cut sluit in deceptive moonlight, an hour short of G.F. Enslin's farm. He had spent the day superintending the burghers' annual target shooting. He died insolvent.
4 Jun 1872 Document
Jan Hendrik Kolbe marries Rose Maria McCabe at Bloemfontein
He is 23 and a veeboer; SHE IS SEVENTEEN, and she marries fifteen weeks after her father died on the Modder River road. A fifth bride in this archive married before eighteen. 27 SEPTEMBER — THE IMAGE IS READ. Both are entered JONGELIEDEN and both live at LEEUWBERG — his farm named, hers written “Dito” — which is the Commandant's own farm, where the register had placed his widow eleven months before. Consent was given by the MOEDER, the bride being a minor and fatherless. A G. A. KOLBE WITNESSED IT. The form carries no parents' names at all, so the fathers this archive wanted are not obtainable from this register in any year.
29 May 1873 Document
A Petrus Jacobus baptised at Lady Grey, six years before the family married there
Born 29 May 1873, baptised 24 August at LADY GREY. Father DAVID SCHALK BOOIJSEN, mother ELIZABETH MARGARITHA MARAIS — the couple whose 1900 Pretoria death notice opened this whole household. He is the eldest of their eight, the “Petrus Jacobus Booijzen (unmarried — major)” of that notice, and he now has a birth date and a font. And the font is the same small Cape church where his uncle Willem Hermanus would marry Kathleen Barry in 1879.
1 Sep 1876 Life
Petrus Jacobus Booysen dies at Rustenburg, aged 88
Far north of where he was baptised.
1 Sep 1876 Document
Petrus Jacobus Booysen dies in district Rustenburg, aged 88
Generation six, on a farm called Brakfontein, with nothing to leave. His Sterfkennis names GERTHARDUS LÖDEWIKUS BOOIJSEN and MAGDALENA DE BEER — the top of the male line, documented for the first time.
22 Dec 1879 Document
Willem Hermanus Booyzen, boer of Lady Grey, marries Kathleen Barry
He is a farmer here and a mason at his death. Something takes the land away in between.
1880s5
4 Jan 1882 Document
A nephew named for an uncle who had nine years to live
Hendrik Stephanus Nicolaas Booyen born, baptised at Rustenburg on 30 January; father Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen, mother Elisabetta Johanna Sophia Myburgh. His uncle of the same name was twenty and would die at Brakfontein in 1891. The nephew lived until 1959 and outlived him by sixty-eight years.
30 Mar 1884 Document
A farmer dies owning his clothes
Petrus Jacobus Booysen dies at Zevenfontein leaving “moveables only, such as wearing apparel”. Line 3 of his death notice: the father in full, then “mother's name, not known”.
25 May 1885 Taken back
Jan Gerthardus Lodewikus Booijsen dies at Vaalbank, Lichtenburg
Estate O/2899 — which this archive gave to his nephew for months, along with a death date invented from the file number.
8 Oct 1888 Document
Hercules Johannes Mountjoy marries at Dordrecht, aged 22
A year before the font at Barkly Oost.
15 Sep 1889 Document
Two grandparents at a font
Johanna Catharina Booyzen baptised at Barkly Oost with John Barry and Margaret Kolbe standing. Three weeks later, on the facing page, the Mountjoy baptism.
1890s7
14 May 1891 Document
Five days later, her son
Sterfkennis 6361. Hendrick Stefanes Booijsen, 29 jaar 3 maanden en 14 dagen, landbouwer, ONGEHUWD, dies on the same farm. Line 3 names his parents: Hendrick Stefanus Booijsen and Anna Catrena gebooren Oliefier. Movables only, not above £25. Nobody on this site knew he existed.
24 May 1891 Document
Catharina Maria Sophia Booysen baptised
Entry 120, same register, fifty pages on — a daughter named for her mother, and new to this archive.
9 May 1891 Document
The first wife dies at Brakfontein, and the archive misreads her twice
Sterfkennis 6332. Anna Johanna Booijzen, gebooren OLIEFIER — Anna Catharina Johanna Olivier — born in the district of Cradock about September 1823, daughter of Ocken Johannes Oliefier and Anna Johanna Botha, dies GEHUWD at the farm BRAKFONTEIN in the district of Rustenburg, leaving seven children all of age. This site published her as “born Alberts”, at “Boekfontein”, NOT PROVED TO BE KIN. She is the first wife of Hendrik Stefanus Booijsen and she died on the family's own farm.
14 Apr 1892 Document
Two widows of Graaff-Reinet marry at Zeerust
Entry 13 of the Zeerust register. Hendrik Stefanus Booijzen, 63, weduwnaar, of Brakfontein in Rustenburg; Charlotta Elizabeth Roos born Dormehl, 51, weduwe, of Driefontein in Marico. Both born at Graaff-Reinet. The clerk writes him Booijzen and he signs himself Booysen. Because she was fifty-one, his four children are his FIRST wife's — which this archive had wrong.
1896 Document
Anna Jacoba van der Merwe dies under her second husband's name
VAB MHG M777 — “MCCABE, ANNA JACOBA, nooiensvan VAN DER MERWE, eggenote JOHN GHERSON ELEASAR KOLBE EN FRANCIS MCCABE”. Twenty-eight years a widow of the first, twenty-four of the second.
26 Apr 1898 Document
Richard Pieter Kolbe Barry baptised at Barkly West
Son of Richard Pieter Barry. He carries the forename of the man on the Cape Rebel roll and the surname of the 1820 Settler family in one name.
Oct 1899 The war
The Anglo-Boer War begins
The family is living in the most rebellious corner of the Colony.
1900s16
1 Jun 1900 The war
A zinc building in Market Street, four days before Pretoria fell
ELIZABETHA MARGARETHA BOOIJZEN, BORN MARAIS, 50 years 2 months, born in the district of Cradock, dies in a zinc building in MARKET STREET, PRETORIA. Lord Roberts entered the town on 5 June. Her husband is DAVID SCHALK BOOIJZEN — born 9 June 1848, fourth on the 1863 list, and THE DIRECT ANCESTOR'S BROTHER. They married at LADY GREY, the same church where Willem Hermanus married Kathleen Barry in 1879. Eight children. Nothing movable left, and a COMPENSATION CLAIM FILED. He did not file her death notice for three years and nine months.
6 Jan 1900 The war
Stephanus Francois Booysen is wounded at Platrand
In the right leg above the knee, at Wagon Hill. A ZARP of the Pretoria police under Commandant Schroeder, he was in action at Talana in the first week of the war, then Modder Spruit, Colenso, Platrand, Spion Kop and Dalmanutha — the ZARPs' last stand. He was awarded the ABO with the Lint voor Verwonding. FROM A MEDAL-ROLL DATABASE quoting an auction catalogue, tied to this archive by his prisoner number and not by his name.
1 Jun 1901 Life
George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen born
In the middle of the war.
25 Apr 1901 The war
Three Booyzens of the Pretoria commando are taken at Tolosberg
Prisoners 18463, 18464 and 18465 — Stefanus Francois, 26; Petrus Jacobus, 27; David Schalk, 53 — all of Pretoria, all of the Pretoria commando, all captured at Tolosberg on one day. Six weeks later they sailed from Cape Town on the City of Cambridge. The register's ages match this archive's own dates, which the shipping list's did not.
3 Jun 1901 The war
Three Booyzens sail as prisoners of war on the City of Cambridge
Numbers 18463, 18464 and 18465 on one transport out of Pretoria — Stephanus Francois, 28; Petrus Jacobus, 29; David Schalk, 54. Consecutive numbers mean they were taken together. This archive had spent months establishing that no Booysen is on a Cape Rebel roll, which was the right answer to the wrong question: these were Transvaal burghers, not Cape rebels, and the family's own war testimony has a document behind it for the first time.
July 1901 The war
A wedding in a rebel's house
Five weeks after Schoeman was tried, the family marries in his house at Caerlaverock. He signs the register.
June 1901 The war
Two men of this district are tried as Cape Rebels
Daniel Willem Schoeman of Caerlaverock, and Fred J. Barry of Ivanhoe, Barkly East / Wodehouse.
18 Dec 1902 Document
Carolina Deybella Margrietta Alletta van Niekerk dies at Dordrecht
Hercules Johannes Mountjoy's mother-in-law — the only Cape probate hit that comes up under his name, because his name is written on her form.
6 Feb 1902 Document
Charlotta Dormehl dies at Driefontein, and her notice ends an argument
Death Notice 844. CHARLOTTA ELIZABETTA BOOYSEN, BORN DORMEHL, farmer's wife, 60 years 4 months, born Graaff-Reinet, father JACOB DORMEHL and mother UNKNOWN, dead at Driefontein in Groot Marico three months before the peace. THREE husbands — Jacob van Staden, Matthys Roos, Hendrik Stefanus Booysen — and SIX children, two van Stadens and four Rooses, NOT ONE OF THEM A BOOYSEN. One wagon and household furniture, £51 8s 0d, and a will. Signed at Zeerust by her husband six months later.
25 Aug 1903 Document
John Barry dies at Manorowen — “Irishman born in Ireland”
Entry 74, Barkly East, made by his son Richard, present at the death. A carpenter, eighty-four, with eleven children. It answers the oldest question on the Barry side and corrects two things this archive had published.
13 Sep 1905 The name
The name changes on one sheet of paper
Willem Hermanus Booyzen dies at Indwe of an ulcer of the stomach after fourteen months' illness — not shot by the British. The clerk writes BOOYSEN; his son signs BOOYZEN four lines below.
27 Nov 1905 Document
David Schalk marries again at Pretoria, and the register cites the estate number
Entry 105. DAVID SCHALK BOOYZEN, 56, WIDOWER, born CRADOCK, Cape Colony, of GOEDE HOOP, PRETORIA — married JOHANNA ELENA LOWIES, born STOLS, 51, widow, of Skinners Court. And the Remarks column reads: “Remarriage Certificate from Master Supreme Court NO. 4795 dated 4/11/05.” 4795 is the number of his first wife's death notice. The Master would not let a widower remarry until the first estate was in order, so the marriage clerk copied the estate number into the register — which links the two documents by reference and not by inference.
5 Jun 1905 Document
Charles Petrus Barend Lowies dies in the Pretoria asylum
Death Notice 7081, the OTHER number cited in the Remarks column of the marriage register of 27 November 1905. A HAWKER, born Dutch in the DISTRICT OF CRADOCK about October 1848 — within four months of David Schalk Booysen, and in the same district. He died on 5 JUNE 1905 in the LUNATIC ASYLUM at Pretoria, aged 56 years and 8 months, leaving TWELVE children, six of them still minors, movables but no land, and a will. Parents Jan Lowies and Elizabetha Maria born Lubbe. AND HIS ADDRESS IS GOEDEHOOP, PRETORIA — the exact address David Schalk Booyzen gave on the marriage register three weeks later. The two men lived in the same place. His widow signed this notice on 27 October and married David Schalk on 27 November.
11 Mar 1906 Document
Johan Casimir Kolbe dies at Smithfield, and the register names both his parents
Aged 60 by the register, born in the Cape Colony, son of George Augustus Kolbe and Margaret Downing — the Settler and his wife, named outright in a civil death registration sixty-one years after his father died. The age is wrong: he is on the January 1845 death notice, so he cannot have been born in 1846. An estate was filed at Smithfield the same year and has not been ordered.
31 May 1907 Document
Willem Hermanus Booijzen confirmed at Indwe, aged 21
An eighth child this archive did not have — in a class that also holds the two Roodt women who would bear his children.
11 May 1908 Document
Hendrik Stephanus Booysen dies at Koedoesfontein, Rustenburg
He signed his father's Sterfkennis in 1876. His own names his mother — and gives his place of last marriage as ZEERUST, in the district of Marico.
1910s6
2 Aug 1912 Life
Margaret Elizabeth Barry née Kolbe dies at Manorowen
In her son's house, forty miles from her father's carved headstone.
2 Aug 1912 Document
Margaretha Kolbe dies at Manorowen, and names a ninth child
Death Notice 1291 — found at last, indexed under the KIMBERLEY probate collection though the probate was granted at Grahamstown, which is why three searches missed it. MARGARET LOUISA ELIZABETH BARRY, BORN KOLBE, 84, “Afrikander of European extraction”, born “Believe Colesberg District”, father “Kolbe, thinks James was Christian name”, mother “Unknown”. She died in the house of her son R. P. BARRY at Manorowen and LEFT NOTHING — estate Nil, no will. Her son filed it three years later and named NINE children where his father's notice names eight. The ninth is WILLIAM.
7 Sep 1912 Document
Harriet Louisa Barry dies of typhoid at Cherryville, aged eighteen
Entered as DUTCH, born in the district of Barkly East — nine years after the same printed question called her grandfather an Irishman.
13 May 1915 Document
“Father: Kolbe, thinks James was christian name. Mother: Unknown.”
Written three years after her death by her son, with the 1820 Settler's monument still standing at Burgersdorp.
29 Mar 1915 Document
John Barry's estate reported, twelve years late
Estate 925 at Grahamstown, filed with his wife's on one afternoon by two of their sons. It names eight children where the 1903 registration counted eleven.
25 Oct 1918 The war
Black October: Richard Peter Booyzen, twenty-four, dies at Turffontein
18 Anderson Street. MARRIED, a SAWYER, dead of INFLUENZA AND PNEUMONIA after eleven days, and buried at Brixton on the 27th — the centre of the second wave, which killed some fourteen thousand people on the Rand in six weeks. This archive did not have him. He is added as a ninth child of Willem Hermanus and Kathleen Barry on three grounds and no document: RICHARD PETER is her own brother's name; a birth about 1894 falls exactly in the gap between her daughter of 1891 and her son of 1901; and the form gives his birthplace as the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. It also kills a good theory — he was not a soldier, so he does not explain his mother's military pension.
1920s4
1 May 1920 Document
Magdalena Susanna Maria van den Berg, born Booyzen, dies at Vaalbank
On the same farm as her father, thirty-five years later. Two deaths on one farm is settlement, not passage.
16 Jan 1921 Document
Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen dies at Klerksdorp
Aged sixty-nine. The man who signed his father's death notice in 1908, and who carried his mother's father's name out of the district of Cradock and into the western Transvaal. A civil registration, which names no parents.
30 Dec 1924 Document
A tree nurseryman marries at Vereeniging
George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen and Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius, she aged eighteen with her father's written consent — and a first cousin once removed.
25 Mar 1929 Life
Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen born
The third woman of that name in seventy years, and the starting point of this archive.
1930s5
18 Dec 1930 Document
Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe dies at Bloemspruit, and his stone disagrees with his death form
A widower and a boer, aged 73 by the form his family gave the district registrar the next day, dead of valvular disease of the heart at Bloemspruit outside Bloemfontein. His gravestone in the Memoriam Road cemetery says he was born 22 October 1859 and died on the 8th — which would make him 71. The two trees that disagree about his birth year are not two opinions; they are these two documents, and Geni's “22 October 1857” is the stone's day and month spliced onto the form's year, matching neither.
31 Mar 1930 Taken back
Isabella Fredrika Booyzen, born Coetzee, dies at Middelburg
Her husband did not report it until 1943. This archive had been using the filing year as her death date.
29 Jul 1932 Document
An ex-miner dies at Johannesburg Hospital, and nobody who knew him is there
WILLIAM HERMAN BOOYZEN, 47, born Cape Province, married, EX MINER (TOLD) UNDERGROUND, of 62 Langford Street, Booysens — a perforated duodenal ulcer, general peritonitis, pulmonary tuberculosis, about one day in hospital. The informant was an officer of the hospital. Buried at BRIXTON on 31 July. This is almost certainly Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe, the mijnwerker of Dugmore Mijn: the occupation, the province, the age within a year and the cemetery all fit, and his widow was buried at Johannesburg in 1968 as Susanna Adriana Booyzen. No parents are named, so it is inferred and not documented.
1 Mar 1935 Document
A transport rider dies at Voorbedacht, and names his parents
Sterfkennis 87882 — the first document in this archive printed in AFRIKAANS. DIEDERIK ARNOLDUS BOOYSEN, KARWEIER of Zwartruggens, 47 jare 7 maande, dead at Voorbedacht No. 401 in the district of Rustenburg, estate over £300 with a will. Vader: Ockert Johannes Stephanus Booysen, oorlede. Moeder: Elizabeth Johanna Sophia Booysen, gebore MYBURGH, oorlede — which puts on a readable document the couple this archive had only from an index entry with no image.
22 Dec 1937 Life
James Jonathan Mountjoy dies at Barkly East
Estate KAB MOOC 6/9/5047: 58379; his wife's is the very next file.
1940s9
1940 Life
Kathleen Barry dies in Mayfair, a “Military Pensioner”
No. 1, Fifteenth Avenue. Buried at Brixton.
6 Sep 1940 Document
Kathleen Barry buried at Brixton, grave 9760
The City of Johannesburg Register of Persons Buried at New Cemetery: BOOYZEN, CATHERINE M.S., 82, buried 6 September 1940, section D.R., grave 9760. This archive has carried her as “1859–1940” and nothing else. An Irishman's daughter out of Barkly East, a Kolbe's granddaughter, married to a Booyzen at Lady Grey in 1879 and widowed at Indwe in 1905 — in the Dutch Reformed section of a Johannesburg cemetery.
12 May 1941 Life
Hercules Johannes Mountjoy dies in Wodehouse, aged 74
No estate file exists for him in the Cape archives under any spelling.
23 Apr 1941 Document
Willem Johannes Kolbe dies at Meriba, Bloemfontein
The civil death registration gives him born 1848 at PHILIPPOLIS — which is the place the Afrikaans dictionary gives for the general, arrived at independently by a registrar who never read it. The year loses to his own baptism entry, which has him born 2 August 1847 and baptised at Fauresmith.
19 Apr 1942 Document
Joseph Heinrich Daschner dies at Kenilworth, Johannesburg
His notice gives the marriage at INDWE and eleven children, six of them carrying Booyzen and Barry names.
26 Feb 1944 Life
Anna Pretorius dies at Forest Hill, aged 37
An ectopic pregnancy, at 85 Rheeders Street. She leaves six children; Catherine is fourteen.
11 May 1946 Document
Gertrude Elizabeth Booyzen born and dead within four days
And a second Gertrude, eleven months later, on the same date. Two children, two certificates, two cemeteries.
11 Dec 1947 Life
George dies at the same address, and Catherine is orphaned at eighteen
Coronary thrombosis. Clerk, South African Railways. Buried West Park three days later.
15 Jan 1949 Life
Catherine marries Nuno Fernando Lerena
St Joseph's, Mayfair — the hinge to the Lerena archive.
1950s2
8 Dec 1956 Document
Henry James Booyzen dies, and stops being only an estate number
Aged 69, buried at Johannesburg on 12 December. This archive had him as the name on Transvaal estate MHG 10/57 — one of the six files in the letter to Pretoria — with no birth and no death at all. The burial register gives both.
8 Dec 1956 Document
Henry James Booyzen dies at Mayfair, and Mayfair gets a street number
Aged 69, at the FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE NURSING HOME, of CORONARY PULMONARY SCLEROSIS — usual residence 3 15TH AVENUE, MAYFAIR. Buried 12 December at Johannesburg, D.R. section, GRAVE 7110/1, a double plot. His mother died at Mayfair in 1940 and his great-niece was married at St Joseph's, Mayfair in 1949; this archive has had the suburb as a word on two pages and never as an address. He is also the man whose estate MHG 10/57 is one of the six files in the letter to Pretoria — and this morning he had no birth and no death at all.
1960s1
29 Aug 1968 Document
Susanna Adriana buried in her husband's grave, and an inference becomes a fact
Town Council of Johannesburg, consecutive grave numbers. GRAVE 6889: “Boysen, William” — folio 49 — and beneath him SUSANNA ADRIANA BOOYZEN, 29.8.68. She was sixteen when she married him at Indwe in 1908 and she outlived him by thirty-six years. It is also the test that closes the 1932 identification: the ex-miner who died at Johannesburg Hospital shares a grave with the woman Willem Hermanus Booyzen of Indwe married.
1990s1
2 Nov 1999 Document
A correspondent sends David the household out of Pama, and nobody re-reads it for 27 years
He names the marriage — Colesberg, 23 February 1846 — lists eleven children, and says of the father “there is no suggestion as to his parentage”, which is still true. He also reports that this household has no clear link to Richard Barry (b. 1743), Pama's main South African line. Nine years later a second researcher independently found the same thing about the English Barrys. Read here on 28 September 2026.
2000s1
11 Jun 2008 Document
A twelve-year tree of the English Barrys arrives, and is not opened for eighteen years
A researcher sends David her complete descendant report of the English Barrys — 1,604 people over eleven generations, Hitchin to Swellendam. Not one name this family holds is in it, which answers a question this archive would not raise until September 2026. She also sends nothing about the Irish Barrys, whose tree she had also finished, and who are the ones this family's own story points at. The letter was read here on 28 September 2026, because David remembered it.
2010s1
25 Dec 2013 Life
Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen dies at Johannesburg
Where this archive begins, and works backwards from.
Nothing of that kind.
What this page rests on
Death registration, Willem Hermanus Booysen, 1905document read hereWestern Cape Archives, Cape Town — civil death registers; the image is published on this site
Marriage register, Booysen–Barry, 1879document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Nederduits Gereformeerde duplicate registers, Barkly East; the image is published on this site
Death notice, George Augustus Kolbe, 1845document read hereWestern Cape Archives — KAB MOOC 6/9/35 no. 7698; the image is published on this site
Death notice, Margaret Downing, 1868document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Master of the Supreme Court, estate 4094; the image is published on this site
Death notice, John Barry, 1915document read hereWestern Cape Archives — Master of the Supreme Court, estate 925, Grahamstown; the image is published on this site
KAB: MOOC 6/9/21: 4393 (1840)archival reference in handWestern Cape Archives, 72 Roeland Street, Cape Town — located, not digitised, and ordered by reference
Sterfkennis 678 Transvaal, WeeskamerTransvaal Weeskamer referenceNational Archives Repository, Pretoria — Transvaal Weeskamer
The spine of the timeline rather than all of it: the documents that carry more than one entry each. Every row names its own source on the row.
The full bibliography, with what each source gave and where it is weak →