Errands
Four questions in this archive now end at a building rather than a search box. This page is what somebody standing at each door could settle, with the references written out so nobody has to find them twice.
Why this page exists
Four separate questions in this archive now end at a door rather than a screen. This page is what somebody standing at each of those doors could settle, with the references written out so they do not have to be looked up again.
Everything on this site was read from Australia, off microfilm, through a browser. That has taken the work a long way and it has now stopped in four specific places — not for want of searching, but because the records are restricted, unfilmed, or catalogued in a way no name search can reach.
Three letters are out and none has been answered. If you are near any of these buildings, or know somebody who is, the references below are complete and every one has been checked against a catalogue or a film. Sources →
National Archives Repository, Pretoria
Private Bag X236, Pretoria 0001 · (+27) 12 441 3207 · enquiries2@dsac.gov.za
Six Booyzen estate files whose FamilySearch films refuse to serve images — film 007830063 and every film after it returns 403, and those are exactly the ones running to 1946 and later. A letter went on 13 September 2026 and has not been answered.
| Reference | What it should give |
|---|---|
| TAB MHG 1095/48 | GEORGE DOWNING MOUNTJOY BOOYZEN, d. 11 Dec 1947, Forest Hill. Railway clerk. His wife's file, 2945/44, is read. |
| TAB MHG 3734/46 | CATHERINE MARY SOPHIA DASCHNER, born BOOYZEN, b. 22 Apr 1891. HER NOTICE SHOULD NAME HER PARENTS — the most wanted page in this list. |
| TAB MHG 769/52 | JOHN BARRY BOOYZEN, b. c. 1884, who signed the 1905 Indwe form. |
| TAB MHG 5155/51 | GERT JACOBUS BOOYZEN, b. 19 Jan 1870. |
| TAB MHG 10/57 | HENRY JAMES BOOYZEN. |
| TAB MHG 52653 | JACOBUS NICHOLS BOOYZEN, 1923 — the reference may be wrong; it cannot be found on film at all. |
The death notice from each is worth more than any one complete file. Six death notices beat one estate.
Western Cape Archives, 72 Roeland Street, Cape Town
021 483 4000 · Reading Room Mon–Fri 08:00–16:00 · archives.clientservices@westerncape.gov.za
Two documents that would break the oldest wall in this archive, and one series that cannot be searched by name from anywhere. A letter went on 9 September 2026 and has not been answered.
| Reference | What it should give |
|---|---|
| MOOC 7/1/104: 42 and 43 | JAMES MOUNTJOY's wills of 1818 and 1827, joint with ANNA CATHARINA SLIER. A Cape will of 1818 very often states where the testator came from, and every other document for this man leaves it blank. |
| CO 3972: 17 | A Colonial Office memorial of 1834 — “the widow of J Mountjoy, requesting remission of a fine”. A petition in her own voice. |
| MOOC 7/1/268: 87 | The 1845 will of JOHANNA CATHARINA MONTJOY, made eighteen years before she died. Not name-indexed and not evidently filmed. |
| MOOC 13/1/221: 6 | The 1866 liquidation account for her estate. It would divide it among eight children and give the daughters their married surnames. |
| The WAR LOSSES COMPENSATION COMMISSION, 1902 | KAB, source NA, volume 564, reference A1068 onward. CATALOGUED BY SUB-COMMISSIONER, NOT BY CLAIMANT — so no search from outside the building can reach it. The question is whether any BOOYZEN or BARRY of Barkly East, Lady Grey or Wodehouse claimed. This is the burned-farm question, and it has never been properly asked. |
The compensation registers are the errand nobody can do remotely. Everything else on this list is a copy request.
The Master's office at Grahamstown, and the Eastern Districts
Records now held by the National Archives; the FamilySearch collections index them as “Grahamstown, Albany”.
Discovered on 13 September 2026 and never searched. John Barry's 1915 estate was administered HERE, not at Cape Town, which is why no member of this family appears in the Cape Master's Index of Estates 1834–1912.
| Reference | What it should give |
|---|---|
| JOHN BARRY, estate 1915, Grahamstown | He died 25 August 1903 and the estate was not reported for twelve years. The liquidation and distribution account would name every surviving child with their married surname — which is exactly what the Barry line needs and does not have. |
| MARGARETHA WILHELMINA ELIZABETH MARY KOLBE, d. 1912 | Filed the same day, 29 March 1915, by another son. |
| Any BARRY, MOUNTJOY or BOOYZEN estate at Grahamstown | The whole depot is unsearched by this archive. |
This is the newest lead on the site and the least worked.
Barkly East, Indwe and Dordrecht
North-eastern Cape. Dutch Reformed congregations at Barkly Oost, Indwe and Dordrecht; the district cemeteries.
Four farms and three churches, all documented, none photographed. Everything below was read off a film in Australia.
| Reference | What it should give |
|---|---|
| MANOROWEN | John Barry died here on 25 August 1903, aged 84, and was buried here. Harriet Louisa Barry, eighteen, was buried here in 1912. Margaretha Kolbe died here in 1915. THREE BURIALS IN TWELVE YEARS — is the ground still findable? |
| CHERRYVILLE and JERPOINT | The other two named Barry farms. Cherryville is where Harriet died of typhoid. |
| DUGMORE MINE, Indwe | Where a Booyzen worked underground in 1908. The only mine in this archive attached to a named member of this family. |
| The Indwe lidmaten and doop registers | Read here only through FamilySearch's index. The originals would settle what became of Willem Hermanus Booyzen after September 1910, when he vanishes at twenty-four. |
| Indwe cemetery | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy died here in June 1911 — the church register says so and the civil index does not have her. |
Photographs of Manorowen, Cherryville and the Indwe workings would be the first images in this archive that are not of paper.
And one thing anybody can do
Read the corrections page before you trust anything here. This archive has published twenty-one things it had to take back, and the pattern in them is the most useful thing on the site: a negative built from a list mistaken for a population, a search run over part of the ground and written up as the whole, a fact read off a reference number and then quoted back as evidence. What was taken back →
If you find something here that is wrong, it is wrong on purpose in only one sense: it was published so that it could be checked. Method → · Open questions →