The women
The male line of this family is Cape Dutch and almost unbroken. Everything else about it — its forenames, its politics, its religion, its 1820 Settler descent and its German origins — arrived through the women. This page puts them back at the front.
The wives of the direct line
| Name | Dates | Family | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magdelena Elisabeth De Beer | 1754–1843 | Huguenot-descended Cape | m. Gerthardus Lodewikus Booysen. Lived to 89. Her husband has no dates at all — she is better recorded than he is. |
| Anna Maria van der Merwe | 1785 – bef. Mar 1825 | one of the largest Cape families | m. 2 Nov 1805, Graaff-Reinet. Her husband was about seventeen. |
| Johanna Catharina Mountjoy | 1819–1863 | English | m. 4 Nov 1838, Cradock. Died at Zevenfontein aged 44. Gives “Mountjoy” to the family. |
| Catherine Maria Sophia “Kathleen” Barry | 1859–1940 | Irish / English at the Cape | m. 22 Dec 1879 in the DRC at Barkly, after banns. Thirteen children. Occupation: Needle Woman. Died at Mayfair, Johannesburg. |
| Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius | 1906–1944 | Afrikaner — and a Barry granddaughter | m. 30 Dec 1924, Vereeniging. Six children. Died at 37 of a ruptured extra-uterine pregnancy. Born 1906, not 1905 as the tree has it. |
| Gertruida Alexandra Kinnear / Kinnier | — | Scottish | second wife of George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen. Two daughters, both named Gertrude Elizabeth, both died as infants. |
A Cape Dutch male line that married British women in three successive generations — Mountjoy in 1838, Barry in 1879, Kinnear in the 1940s — is not a coincidence of the district. It is the whole character of the family.
They are inside the men's names
David Defranceski's great-grandfather was christened George Downing Mountjoy Booyzen. On an Afrikaans surname that reads like an affectation. It is the opposite: every one of those forenames is a woman's surname.
| Name | Comes from | Who |
|---|---|---|
| George | George Augustus Kolbe (1802–1844) | his great-great-grandfather — the 1820 Settler |
| Downing | Margaret Georgina Elizabeth Downing (1803–1867) | George Kolbe's wife; married at Shoreditch aged about fifteen |
| Mountjoy | Johanna Catharina Mountjoy (1819–1863) | his great-grandmother, married at Cradock in 1838 |
| Booyzen | Willem Hermanus Booyzen (1851–1905) | his father — who changed it from Booysen |
The pattern repeats across the family: David Kolbe Booyzen (1896–1980) carries the Kolbe surname outright; John Barry Booyzen (1884–1952) carries Barry; Augustas Kolbe Enslin (1853–1937) carries Kolbe into a third family. And Frederik Fortsenatus Booÿsen (b. 1899) is a worn-down copy of Frederik Fortunatus Kolbe (b. 1839), by way of Frederick Fortunatus Barry (b. 1863).
The women's families did not vanish into the Booyzen name. They were carried inside it.
They worked
Three occupations are recorded for women in this ancestry. All three are manual.
| Name | Dates | Occupation as recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Margaretha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Mary Kolbe | 1826–1912 | LAUNDRESS |
| Catherine Maria Sophia “Kathleen” Barry | 1859–1940 | Needle Woman — and, at her death, “Home Duties” and “Military Pensioner”. No son of hers is among the First World War dead; the pension must come from one who served and survived. |
| Margarietha Wilhelmina Elizabeth Barry | 1880–1961 | Housewife |
Set beside the men — carpenter, builder, grocer, labourer, tailor, chemist — this is not a gentry family at any point in its recorded history, on either side of the marriage. The Barrys of Swellendam, the great Cape merchant house, are a different Barry family unless and until a document says otherwise, and this archive makes no claim on them.
The dead children are named after each other
Catherina Maria Sophia Barry died at Burgersdorp on 30 July 1859, aged four. Her sister Catherine Maria Sophia Barry was born on 4 August 1859 — five days later, and was given her name.
That name then travelled: Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen (1891–1946), and Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen (1929–2013) — David Defranceski's grandmother, who died on Christmas Day 2013 in Johannesburg still carrying the name of a four-year-old who died in a Karoo village in 1859.
It happens again, and harder. After Anna Pretorius died in 1944, George remarried and had a daughter Gertrude Elizabeth, born 11 May 1946, dead four days later at 85 Rheeden Street, Forest Hill. A second Gertrude Elizabeth is recorded born 11 May 1947 — the same day of the year — and dead within it. Unverified The exact date repetition may mean a duplicated record rather than a second child; it needs checking either way.
And Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius was named after her own grandmother, Anna Johanna Maria Schoemann — the tree records the intention explicitly, and the 1923 Sterfkennis of that grandmother names her parents in turn as Ruben Schoeman and Magdalena Johanna Botha of Barkly Oost. The documents →
A correction. This archive previously wrote that Anna was born on 3 October 1905, "five weeks after her infant brother Hendrik Nikolaas died." Her baptism register gives her birth as 3 October 1906, and her death form gives her age as 37, which agrees. The gap was thirteen months, not five weeks, and the sentence is withdrawn.
Anna Johanna Maria Pretorius, 1906–1944
Documented Born at Barkly East on 3 October 1906 — not 1905, as the tree has it. Three records agree against it: the baptism register (geb. 3 Oct. 1906), her 1944 death form (age 37) and her marriage register (age 18, with her father's written consent). Married at Vereeniging on 30 December 1924, aged eighteen. Six children between 1925 and 1934. The one-digit slip →
She died on 26 February 1944 at 85 Rheeders Street, Forest Hill, Johannesburg, aged 37. Her death form gives the cause in full: "Haemorrhage due to Ruptured Tubal Pregnancy (extra-uterine). Not 1st child." An ectopic pregnancy, which in 1944 in a Johannesburg suburb was very often fatal. She is buried at West Park Cemetery — the same ground as her husband.
She left six children, the eldest eighteen and the youngest ten. Catherine was fourteen. Her husband remarried, lost two infant daughters, and died himself of a heart attack on 21 February 1947. Catherine Mary Sophia Booyzen was eighteen years old and had no parents. Two years later she married Nuno Fernando Lerena at St Joseph's, Mayfair. Johannesburg →
Margaret Downing signed with a cross
The 1819 marriage register at St Leonard's Shoreditch records the entry in the usual form — and then, where the bride should sign:
Margaret Downing † her mark.
She could not write her own name. She was fifteen years old, and had that morning been sworn to be twenty-one and upwards. Her husband signed — after striking through a first attempt.
Forty-eight years later she died at Burgersdorp owning a dwelling house and a farm in the division of Albert, having buried her husband at forty-one and raised ten children on a mission circuit from Uitenhage to Bethulie and Philippolis.
It is the steepest arc in this archive, and it begins with a cross in a Shoreditch register. The entry →
Her brother's family was still there in 1889
Reading a Booyzen baptism in the 1889 register of Barkly Oost, the archive noticed Mountjoys on the facing page. They turned out to be family.
JAMES MOUNTJOY (1786-1827) === ANNA CATHARINA SLIER / SCHLEHER (1787- )
m. 9 March 1817, GRAAFF-REINET
|
+--------------------+---------------------+
| |
JOHANNA CATHARINA MOUNTJOY GEORGE MOUNTJOY (b. 1823, Cradock)
(1819-1863) SADDLE MAKER
=== Petrus Jacobus Booysen === Maria Sophia Botha (1827-1911)
m. 1838, Cradock m. 20 Aug 1848, CRADOCK
| | (13 children)
THE BOOYZEN LINE +-----------------+-----------------+
| |
JAMES JONATHAN MOUNTJOY HERCULES JOHANNES MOUNTJOY
(1854 Burgersdorp - (c.1866 - 1941 Wodehouse)
1937 BARKLY EAST) === Maria Sophia van Niekerk
= the 1889 witness m. 8 Oct 1888, DORDRECHT
|
GEORGE MOUNTJOY (1889-1963)
= the child baptised at
Barkly Oost, 6 Oct 1889 George Mountjoy, saddle maker of Cradock, was Johanna Catharina's younger brother. The two Mountjoy men on that register page — Hercules Johannes as father and Jakobus Jonathan as witness — are his sons.
It fits to the month: Hercules Johannes married at Dordrecht on 8 October 1888; his first child George was born 21 July 1889 and baptised at Barkly Oost that October.
| Booyzen | Mountjoy | |
|---|---|---|
| Child | Johanna Catharina Booyzen, b. 20 June 1889 | George Mountjoy, b. 21 July 1889 |
| Baptised | 15 September 1889, Barkly Oost | 6 October 1889, Barkly Oost |
| Father | Willem Hermanus Booysen | Hercules Johannes Mountjoy |
| Godparents | John Barry and Margaret W. E. Kolby — her grandparents | van Niekerk and Mountjoy kin |
The two children were second cousins, born a month apart and baptised three weeks apart in the same church. Their fathers were first cousins. And the Booyzen daughter was christened Johanna Catharina — after the great-aunt who is the link between them.
Sources. The 1889 register read by this archive; the 1820 Settlers database (James Jonathan I145380); the FamilySearch Family Tree (George Mountjoy GVQ6-TDR, 31 sources; Hercules Johannes MG9W-8F6, 23); and South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, George Mountjoy and Maria Sophia Botha, Cradock, 20 Aug 1848, certificate 735. The 1823 baptism, the 1848 marriage and the 1888 marriage are record-backed.
This no longer depends on a user-edited tree. The caution that used to stand here — that the arrangement of the family was FamilySearch's — can be withdrawn. The Dutch Reformed baptism register records Herculas Johannes Mountjoy, born 16 July 1866, baptised 29 July 1866, father George Mountjoy, mother Maria Sophia Botha. His 1941 death registration gives his age as 74, which fits a July 1866 birth exactly, and his marriage at Dordrecht on 8 October 1888, aged 22, falls a year before the 1889 font. George Mountjoy → Hercules Johannes is now a church register. The full search →
Documented And Johanna Catharina Mountjoy herself now has a birth date. Her 1863 death notice gives her age as "44 years & 19 days" — the form asked only for years. Counted back from 19 May 1863 that is 30 April 1819, at Graaff Reinet, which the same document gives as her birthplace. The death notice →
Four corrections it offers our own tree: Anna Catharina is recorded there as Slier, not Schleher; her marriage to James Mountjoy is dated 9 March 1817 at Graaff-Reinet; Thomas Jacobus lived to 1827, not 1818; and there is a sibling our tree lacks entirely — Jacoba Catharina Mountjoy (1820–1842).
Johanna Margaritha Pretorius — the woman four documents refused to name
She was the hardest person in this archive to find, and the reason is worth as much as the answer.
Petrus Jacobus Booysen's first wife died in 1863. His own death notice of 1884 enters him as married — twenty-one years later — and names a child, Gerrit Jacobus, born 19 January 1870, who could only be another woman's. Three children in all were born after 1863, and the family tree had attached every one of them to a woman already in her grave.
So the archive knew she existed, and went looking. It looked in the wrong kind of document, for months.
- His 1884 death notice proves her and never asks her name. The form has no line for a wife.
- Her son Stephanus Francois's death notice of 1940 does have a line for his mother. His widow wrote "oorlede" — deceased.
- Her own death notice, if one exists, has never been found under any spelling.
Every route ran through a death, and death is exactly where this family stops remembering its women.
She was named by a christening. A baptism register asks for both parents, at the moment when everyone concerned is alive and standing in the same room. Gert Jacobus was baptised on 19 June 1870:
Oud: Petrus Jacobus Booyzen en Johanna Margaritha Pretorius
And at the font stood Petrus Jacobus Booijzen junior (b. 1839) and Magdalena Johanna Francina Booijzen (b. 1853) — the third and sixth children of the first marriage, on the 1863 death notice. Two of the dead wife's children godparented the new wife's first baby. The register →
Three times the form asked, and three times it was the mother who was gone
This is the clearest thing the documents say about women in this family, and it was not visible until the third one was read.
| Written | Death notice of | "Names of the Parents of the Deceased" |
|---|---|---|
| 1840 | James Montjoy | "Not Known." Both parents, together. |
| 1884 | Petrus Jacobus Booysen | Father written out in full. "Mother's name, not known" — underlined. |
| 1915 | Margaret Elizabeth Barry née Kolbe | "Father: Kolbe, thinks James was christian name. Mother: Unknown." |
Read down the right-hand column. In 1884 the father has a full name and the mother has none. In 1915 the father survives as a surname and a guess; the mother is Unknown. Only in 1840, the oldest of the three, do both disappear at once.
The women in this archive are not missing because the records failed. They are missing because the men filling in the forms could not remember them — and the archive can name three of them anyway, from other documents, because someone eventually looked.
Anna Maria van der Merwe is the 1884 blank. She had died before March 1825, when her son was twelve; fifty-nine years later nobody in his house could give her name. The three notices →
The oldest woman in the archive
Anna Catharina Sleer / Slier / Schleher (1787–1885), mother of Johanna Catharina Mountjoy, lived to ninety-eight. Documented Her daughter's 1863 death notice names her, in the informant's hand, as Anna Catharina Sleer — the first time this archive has had her from a document rather than from a tree. The hand is ambiguous between Sleer and Steer, and it is settled from outside: the tree carries Schleher, FamilySearch Slier. Three renderings, three independent sources, all with an l and none with a t. Documented Her first marriage is now on record too: her second husband's 1840 death notice describes her as "Catharina Sl[i/e]er, widow of William Pietersen". The archive had only inferred the Pieterzen marriage, from a godparent standing at an 1851 font. Here it is named, in a document eleven years older. She married a Pieterzen first — four sons between 1808 and 1813 — and then James Mountjoy, who died in 1827 leaving her with a son, Willem Jan, born and dead in 1828. She outlived her second husband by fifty-eight years.
Schleher is a third German surname in this ancestry, alongside Kolbe of Württemberg and the Kohlbeck/Larman circle of German Lutheran Soho — and, if the Booysen progenitor is right, a fourth on the male line. The name →