Johannesburg
The testimony ends with a train and a pumpkin. This is what the record shows at the other end of that journey: a family that arrived from the Cape, settled in the southern and western suburbs, and buried most of itself there inside fifty years.
The move, as the birthplaces record it
Nobody wrote down the date the family left the Cape. But children have to be born somewhere, and the register moves.
| Year | Birthplace | Child |
|---|---|---|
| 1884 | Cape Colony | John Barry Booyzen |
| 1885 | Barkly East | Willem Hermanus Booyzen |
| 1891 | Barkly East | Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen |
| 1896 | Barkly East | David Kolbe Booyzen |
| 1901 | South Africa (unspecified) | George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen |
| 1907 | Barkley Oos, Kaap Provinsie | David Schalk Booyzen — the last Cape birth |
| 1925 | South Africa (unspecified) | Willem Hermanus “Willy” Booyzen |
| 1932 | Johannesburg | Georgina Jeanette Booyzen — the first recorded Johannesburg birth |
| 1934 | Johannesburg | Petrus Jacobus “Piet” Booyzen |
Inferred The last Cape birth is 1907; the first recorded Johannesburg birth is 1932. The gap is wide, and two births in between are recorded only as "South Africa" — so the record cannot date the move more closely than somewhere between 1907 and 1932.
That is a much looser bracket than the testimony implies. The story says the family went to Johannesburg "after the war" — that is, from 1902. If so, the 1907 birth at Barkley Oos means either they went and came back, or they left later than the story remembers.
What the record does show plainly is Kathleen Barry dying at Mayfair in 1940. She was born at Barkly East in 1859 and buried out of a Johannesburg suburb eighty-one years later. She made the journey.
The addresses
| Place | When | |
|---|---|---|
| Queen Victoria Hospital | 1946 | where Gertrude Elizabeth Booyzen died, four days old — 85 Rheeder Street was her mother’s address, not the place of death |
| 85 Rheeders Street, Forest Hill | 1944 | where Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius died of a ruptured extra-uterine pregnancy, aged 37 |
| No. 1, Fifteenth Avenue, Mayfair | 1940 | where Kathleen Barry died of carcinoma of the uterus, aged 82 — forty years after leaving the Cape |
| St Joseph's Catholic Church, Mayfair | 15 Jan 1949 | where Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen married Nuno Fernando Lerena |
| West Park Cemetery, Johannesburg | 14 Dec 1947 | where George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen was buried, three days after his death |
| 96 James Street, Germiston | 1941 | where Petrus Jacobus Pretorius died |
| Turf Club Nursing Home | 1947 | where the second infant, Gertrude Booyzen, lived six hours |
| Brixton Cemetery, Johannesburg | 1940 | where Kathleen Barry was buried — a fact the tree does not record at all |
| Primrose Cemetery, Germiston | 1961 | where Margarietha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Barry was buried |
| Vereeniging | 30 Dec 1924 | where George and Anna married |
| Alberton | 2004 | where Pieter Carel Le Roux, Catherine's second husband, died |
Every one of these comes from a FamilySearch-cited record in the MyHeritage tree — Transvaal and Johannesburg civil registration, and Randburg burial records. The citations are on Sources.
Mayfair closes a circle
Kathleen Barry died at Mayfair in September 1940. Nine years later, in January 1949, her granddaughter and namesake Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen married at St Joseph's Catholic Church, Mayfair.
The family that came off the train stayed in one part of the city. And a Dutch Reformed family out of the Karoo — Kathleen Barry was married in the DRC, her mother christened in it at Graaff-Reinet — put its granddaughter's wedding in a Catholic church, because she was marrying an Argentine-descended Catholic named Lerena. That marriage is the hinge between this archive and The Lerena Archive.
Three years that emptied a house
26 February 1944. Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius dies at 85 Rheeders Street, Forest Hill, aged 37 — "haemorrhage due to ruptured tubal pregnancy (extra-uterine)". She is buried at West Park Cemetery. Six children survive her; Catherine is fourteen.
11–15 May 1946. A daughter, Gertrude Elizabeth, is born ten weeks premature and dies four days later at the Queen Victoria Hospital. She is buried at West Park.
11 May 1947. A second daughter, Gertrude — born on the same day of the year, a year later, at seven and a half months — lives six hours at the Turf Club Nursing Home. She is buried at Primrose, Germiston. Documented
11 December 1947. George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen dies at 85 Rheeden Street, aged 46 years and 6 months. He is buried at West Park Cemetery three days later, on 14 December. Documented His death notice gives his employer as the South African Railways and Harbours. The document →
Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen was eighteen years old and had no parents. Two years later she was married at St Joseph's, Mayfair.
She lived another sixty-four years, buried a husband in 1971 and a second in 2004, buried two of her own five children — Catherine Tersia in 1999 and Paul Raymond on Christmas Eve 2000 — and died in Johannesburg on Christmas Day 2013, aged 84.
What has not been searched
The testimony says "the boys initially all got jobs on the mines." That is the one part of the Johannesburg story with an obvious documentary home and no work done on it: Witwatersrand mining company employment registers, and the Rand's own trade directories.
West Park Cemetery holds both George and Anna — her 1944 death form names it, where the tree gives only "Johannesburg". Kathleen Barry is at Brixton Cemetery, which the tree records nowhere at all. Three burial places recovered from three certificates. Open questions →