The rebels
One paragraph of family testimony carries this archive. It names a war, a betrayal, an execution, a camp, a burned farm and a train. Here it is in full, and here is each of its claims taken apart and tested.
The testimony, in full
"According to my dad the story goes that they were living in the Cape Colony and were rebels fighting on the side of the Boer republics at the turn of the century but there were some Booysens who were joiners, fighting on the side of the British, so our great grandfather changed the spelling to Booyzen so as not to be associated with them. Our great great grandfather was shot and killed by the British and all the women and children were put in a concentration camp and the family farm in the Eastern Cape was burned to the ground with Kitchener's scorched earth policy. After the war our great great grandmother (with nothing but a pumpkin to eat) put herself and her kids on a train to Johannesburg where the boys initially all got jobs on the mines to make ends meet."
Recorded on the MyHeritage profile of Willem Hermanus "William Henry" Booyzen and attributed there to Tersia Booyzen, who gives her own father as her source. It is therefore third-hand at best, and none the worse for saying so.
Eight claims, one at a time
| The claim | Status | Why |
|---|---|---|
| They were living in the Cape Colony | Confirmed | Every birth, marriage and death in the line from 1788 to 1907 is in the Cape Colony — Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Barkly East, Dordrecht, Indwe. |
| They were rebels fighting for the Boer republics | The household is documented; the family is not | The Cape Rebel register has now been searched. The man in whose house they married in July 1901 — D. W. Schoeman of Caerlaverock — was tried as a Cape Rebel the month before. But NO Booysen of this district appears on the roll; the 26 Booysens on it are all Northern Cape. |
| Some Booysens were joiners on the British side | Searched; inconclusive | The national register of 952 joiners contains exactly one Booysen — J. J. Booysen of HEILBRON, Orange Free State. A real man, but not a Cape colonist and not of this district. |
| Our great-grandfather changed the spelling | The change is recorded | MyHeritage carries “Former name: Booysen” on Willem Hermanus Booyzen (1851–1905) as a formal fact. The motive is testimony; the surname distribution independently fits it. |
| Our great-great-grandfather was shot and killed by the British | Disproved for both candidates | Petrus Jacobus died in 1884, fifteen years before the war. Willem Hermanus died in 1905 of a stomach ulcer after fourteen months’ illness — the death registration is now read. Whoever the story means, it is neither of them. |
| The women and children were put in a concentration camp | Untested | Camp registers survive and are indexed by name. This is the single most answerable claim on the list and it has not been searched. |
| The farm was burned under Kitchener’s scorched earth | One new piece of evidence | No farm has been identified. But he is a Boer — a farmer — at his marriage in 1879, and a Mason at his death in 1905. A man who works land and then works stone has often lost the land, and the war sits in that interval. |
| Great-great-grandmother put the family on a train to Johannesburg; the boys went onto the mines | HALF PROVED, AND HALF IN THE WRONG PLACE | THE MINE IS FOUND, and it is not in Johannesburg. The Indwe marriage register of 21 September 1908 enters WILLIAM HERMANUS BOOYZEN, 22, under Rang of Beroep as MIJNWERKER, of DUGMORE MIJN — a son of Willem Hermanus and Kathleen Barry, and a name this archive did not have until the register turned him up. Indwe is a COLLIERY town in the north-eastern Cape. So the boys did go onto the mines; the first one this archive can name did it on Cape coal, three years before the family reached Johannesburg, and while his widowed mother was still living at Indwe — she stood godmother at his son’s font there in December 1908. Birthplaces do move from Barkly East (1907) to Johannesburg (1932), and the family is at Forest Hill and Mayfair by the 1940s. The testimony has compressed a slow migration into one train. |
What the documents did to the story
Four civil records were read for the first time in September 2026. They cost the testimony one of its central claims, and handed it a new piece of support it never had.
Lost: the murdered forebear
Documented Willem Hermanus Booysen died of an ulcer of the stomach at Doorn Street, Indwe, on 13 September 1905, after fourteen months of illness, attended by Dr W. C. Macdonald, with his eldest son present at the death.
Neither he nor his father was shot. The claim survives only if it belongs to a man this archive has not yet identified. The three surviving readings →
Gained: a farmer who became a mason
At his marriage in 1879 his occupation is Boer — farmer, of Lady Grey. At his death in 1905 it is Mason.
Inferred A man who works land and then works stone has, in the interval, very often lost the land. The war sits in that interval. It is the first documentary support the burned-farm claim has ever had — and it is circumstantial. The documents →
They lived in the most rebellious corner of the Colony
This is the strongest thing the archive can currently say, and it does not depend on the family at all. It depends on where they were.
A Cape Rebel was a British subject of the Cape Colony who took up arms with the Transvaal and Orange Free State against British forces — that is, a man committing high treason in his own country. Roughly 15,433 of them have been documented.
The districts that produced them are not evenly spread. Burgersdorp alone produced 1,048. Aliwal North and Lady Grey together produced 1,268. And Barkly East and Dordrecht supplied about 550 combatants before the Battle of Stormberg in December 1899 — with a commando known as the Barkly East Rebels under Commandant J. F. de Wet.
Now place the family on that map:
| District | Rebel contribution | The family there |
|---|---|---|
| Burgersdorp | 1,048 rebels | six Barry children born 1847–1863; George Augustus Kolbe buried in the Old Cemetery, 1844 |
| Barkly East | part of ~550, own commando | Kathleen Barry b. 1859; four Booyzen children b. 1885–1907; Margarietha Barry b. 1880; Anna Pretorius b. 1905; John Augustus Barry died at Manor Owen, 1903 |
| Dordrecht | part of ~550; in rebel hands 1899 | Kathleen Barry christened there, 1859; Hendrik Nicholaas Barry b. 1857; James Henry Barry married there, 1867 |
| Lady Grey | part of 1,268 | Richard Peter Barry b. 1866 |
The family was not near the Cape rebellion. The family was inside it — living, marrying and burying across the four districts that supplied the largest share of its manpower.
Inferred This establishes overwhelming opportunity and milieu. It does not put a rifle in any named ancestor's hands, and the archive will not pretend otherwise until a name is found on a roll. What would settle it →
The rolls have now been searched — and one name came back
The Anglo-Boer War Museum at Bloemfontein publishes fifteen registers, among them Cape Rebels — 12,792 records, Joiners — 952 and a Farm List — 10,282. Searched 9 September 2026.
No Booysen of this district is on the roll
26 Booysens appear among the Cape Rebels. Their addresses are Kenhardt, Campbell, Koopmansfontein, Daniel's Kuil, Vaalgras, Blauwputs, Aberdeen — the Northern Cape and Griqualand West, two to five hundred miles west of Barkly East.
Not one is from Barkly East, Dordrecht, Wodehouse, Indwe, Lady Grey or Elliot. Negative result
One tease: David Schalk Booysen of Kapteinskop — a forename pair that runs in this family. But the district is wrong, and the surname is common. It proves nothing.
And one Booysen joiner, from the wrong colony
The testimony says "there were some Booysens who were joiners." The national register of 952 joiners contains exactly one Booysen — J. J. Booysen of Heilbron.
Heilbron is in the Orange Free State. A real man, but a Free State burgher, not a Cape colonist and not from this district. The claim is neither confirmed nor refuted.
"Booyzen" with a z returns zero records in all fifteen registers — but read that cautiously. The z-form is 83 times rarer; its absence from a 12,792-name index is what base rates predict, and proves nothing on its own.
Then the farm name was searched instead of the surname
| Cape Rebel register | Occupation | Trial date | Address | District |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCHOEMAN, DANIEL WILLEM | Plaasboer | Junie 1901 | CAERLAVEROCK | Wodehouse – Barkley-Oos |
| KLOPPER, CHRISTIAAN F. | Plaasboer | Junie 1901 | CAERLAVEROCK | Wodehouse – Barkley-Oos |
Now set that beside the marriage register this archive had already read:
8 July 1901 — Petrus Jacobus Pretorius married Magrita Wilhelmina Elizabeth Barry "in woonhuis D. Schoeman te Caerlaverock", district Barkly Oost — witnessed and signed by D. W. SCHOEMAN.
Until now this archive could say only that the family lived in a rebel district. It can now name the man, the farm, the district and the month of his treason trial — and show the family in his house, weeks later. A second rebel, Christiaan F. Klopper, farmed the same place and was tried the same month. Caerlaverock was not incidentally connected to the rebellion; it was a rebel farm.
The Farm List was searched too — and the answer is "wrong register"
The museum's Farm List (10,282 records) looked like the obvious place to test the burned-farm claim. It is not.
| Searched | Farm List | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| Caerlaverock | 0 | Cape Rebels 2 |
| Manorowen | 0 | 0 in all fifteen registers |
| Wolwekloof | 0 | Cape Rebels (Schoeman) |
At first sight that reads as a negative result. It is not a result at all.
The one Booysen record in that register resolves to: Booysen, Petrus Gerhardus · Farm Blydschap · Number 316 · District Kroonstad · Morgen 2002 · SRds 56 · Number of Owners. Farm number, morgen, square roods, owners — a land and property roll, not a record of destruction.
And it does not cover the Cape. Sampling about 1,280 records from across the full 10,282, every district returned is in the Orange Free State: Winburg, Fauresmith, Vrede, Rouxville, Bethlehem, Bloemfontein, Hoopstad, Kroonstad, Philippolis — and nothing else. A control settles it: "Dordrecht" returns 670 Cape Rebels and 0 Farm List records.
The Farm List is an Orange Free State land register. Caerlaverock and Manorowen are Cape farms. Their absence from it carries no information whatever — it is a category error, not a finding, and this archive will not present it as one.
So the burned-farm claim remains completely untested, and this database was never capable of testing it. The right sources are Cape Colony compensation claims, the post-war farm-burning returns, and the Cape's own district and refugee-camp records. None has been touched. Open questions →
What the Schoeman finding does not establish
1. It still does not put a Booysen or a Barry on a rebel roll. The rebel here is the host, not the family. The testimony's claim that "they were rebels" remains uncorroborated for the family itself, and that distinction matters.
2. It does not prove he was "Commandant D. Schoeman" of Labuschagne's Nek. The record's Commando field reads N/A, and there is a cluster of D. W. Schoemans tried in the same division — Daniel Wilhelmus of Wolwekloof and Daniel W. of Waschbank, both farmers, both tried 1 May 1901, plus a Danie J. W. tried in July 1902. They may be relatives, or one man entered several times. Unresolved.
3. Inferred A June 1901 trial with no sentence recorded fits Class 2 treatment — rank and file, disenfranchised for five years rather than imprisoned. That would explain how he was at home hosting a wedding in July. Not documented.
The joiners register holds exactly one Booysen, and he is nowhere near here
The testimony's whole motive rests on there having been Booysen joiners. There is a register of them.
The Anglo-Boer War Museum keeps a Joiners register of 952 names. Searched for Booysen it returns one:
| Surname | BOOYSEN |
| Name | J.J. |
| Farm / Town | Heilbron |
| Source | Vrystaatse Argieflys (Free State archive list) |
Heilbron is in the northern Orange Free State — roughly four hundred miles from Barkly East, in a different country at the time. Booyzen returns nothing at all.
What this does to the motive. The testimony says the spelling was changed because "there were some Booysens who were joiners". The register of joiners holds one Booysen in the whole of South Africa, and he is a Free State man.
That is not fatal to the story. Joiner lists are notoriously incomplete, and a family need only have believed the association existed for it to have acted on it. But the archive can no longer say the joiners are unexamined. "Some Booysens" is not what the record shows.
The Barrys were searched — and the family is on the Cape Rebel roll
The archive had searched Booysen and Booyzen and come back with nothing from this district. It had written down the obvious next step and not taken it: "the surname BARRY, which has not been searched at all."
| Cape Rebel | Occupation | Address | District | Tried |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BARRY, FRED J. | plaasboer | Ivanhoe | Barkley-Oos, Wodehouse | June 1901 |
| BARRY, RICHARD PETER | plaasboer | Jerpoint | — | — |
| Barry, Adolf | plaasboer | Keimoes | — (Northern Cape) | — |
| Barry, Thomas Andrew | — | Vlakteplaats | Oudtshoorn | 21 Mar 1902 |
Two of the four are in this family's own district, and one of them bears a name this archive has already read on a document.
Richard Peter Barry is Kathleen Barry's brother — the "R. P. Barry" who signed his mother's death notice in 1915 as "Son in whose house deceased died", at Manorowen, Barkly East. A Richard Peter Barry, plaasboer, is on the roll of Cape Rebels.
Fred J. Barry farmed Ivanhoe in Barkly East / Wodehouse and was tried in June 1901 — the same district, and the same month as Daniel Willem Schoeman of Caerlaverock, in whose house this family married five weeks later.
Identity not proven The register gives no birth dates and no parents, so the archive cannot yet show that these are the same men. Richard Peter Barry is a distinctive name in the right region; Fred J. does not match this family's Frederick Fortunatus Barry on the middle initial, and may be a cousin or no relation.
But the shape of the testimony has changed. It was never wrong that this family was rebel country. It was looking at the wrong surname.
The claim "the family were Cape Rebels" has been tested three times now. Against Booysen: twenty-six on the roll, every one of them Northern Cape. Against Booyzen: nothing, in any of the fifteen registers. Against Barry: two men in Barkly East and Wodehouse, one of them tried in the month of the wedding. The Barrys →
Jerpoint, Ivanhoe, Manorowen, Caerlaverock
Four farms in one small district, named for an abbey in County Kilkenny, a novel of Saxons and Normans, a village in Pembrokeshire and a castle in Dumfriesshire. The archive had already noticed Manorowen and Caerlaverock. Jerpoint is new, and it is Irish — which is where the Barrys are supposed to have come from, and where this archive has never been able to place them. Open questions →
A coincidence worth chasing: Commandant D. Schoeman
On 8 July 1901 — with martial law in force and the war still running — Margarietha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Barry married Petrus Jacobus Pretorius. The tree records the venue with unusual precision:
"At the home of D Schoeman, 'Caerlaverock', Barkly East district, Cape Colony."
In March 1900, about 400 Cape Rebels under Commandant D. Schoeman held Labuschagne's Nek, north of Dordrecht — the next district over.
The bride's mother was Anna Johanna Maria Schoemann. The wedding was held at a Schoeman house. The couple's granddaughter's line is the one that carries the rebel story.
And there is now a third Schoeman, twenty-two years earlier. The 1879 marriage register for Willem Hermanus Booysen and Kathleen Barry names its two witnesses: J. Sutherland and P. Schoeman.
Then the 1901 register itself was read, and it gives the man a signature: D. W. SCHOEMAN. Not "D. Schoeman" from a note, but full initials in his own hand, witnessing in his own house at Caerlaverock, sixteen months after the Nek.
Commandant D. Schoeman, Labuschagne's Nek, March 1900. · D. W. Schoeman, of Caerlaverock, Barkly East, July 1901.
Hypothesis, sharpened That is a specific and searchable identity to set against the commandant lists, where before there was only an initial. It is still not proof. The register →
Hypothesis The family married in the house of a Cape Rebel commandant, sixteen months after he commanded on the Nek, and he was a relative by marriage.
It may be nothing. Schoeman is a common Afrikaner surname and "D." is one initial. But the district is right, the years are right, and the family connection is documented. This is the most promising single lead in the archive, and it is cheap to test: the rebel rolls name their commandants. Open questions →
What happened to rebels who were caught
Because the testimony says one of them was shot, it matters what the British actually did.
The system
Lord Roberts split surrendered rebels into Class 1 — leaders, who faced fines and prison, and Class 2 — rank and file, who got five years' disenfranchisement. The Special Tribunals Act of October 1900 handled the cases. From April 1901 martial law took over and military courts tried some 800 cases.
The sentences
Forty-four Cape colonists were hanged or shot for high treason. 409 younger rebels were transported for life to St Helena and Bermuda. Named men from these districts were imprisoned — Johannes de Wet, three years and a £1,000 fine; Octavius Vermooten, a Dordrecht lawyer, four years in Tokai Gaol.
The camps
The MyHeritage biography for Willem Hermanus Booyzen carries a long passage, quoted from a published history of the war, on Kitchener's reasoning for clearing the farms: that Boer women sustained the commandos with food and intelligence, that removing them would starve the war of both, and that men might surrender for their families' sake. The passage is a copyrighted extract and is summarised rather than reproduced here; it is not evidence about this family, but it is evidence about what the family understood its own story to mean.
Whoever attached that passage to Willem Hermanus's profile did so because they believed his wife and children were among the women and children it describes. That belief has never been checked.
Kathleen Barry was forty when the war began, with children aged from an infant to fifteen. If the family was cleared off a farm in the Barkly East district, she and they would appear in a camp register by name, with ages. Those registers are indexed.