HAPPY PETRUS REMEMBERS

Happy Petrus, who was later postman in Somerset East, is an old pupil of the William Oates Memorial School. He started school in 1936 when Mr Goodman was the principal, and was taught Sub A and Sub B in the Hope Church by his teacher, Mrs Johnson.
He says you learn a lot about life as postman, and that some people were happy to get letters while others don’t want them at all. Others quarrel about them.
He remembered the first poem he learnt at school, and he recited it to us, first giving the title.
AS OUMA KOM KUIER
As ouma kom kuier
Dan bring sy koekies mee
Ons oupa is nog beter
Dit is speelgoed wat hy gee.
Tant Hessie glo dat kinders
Nie moet bedorwe word
Sy gee gewoonlik
‚n Koppie, piering of ‚n bord.
Oom is ‚n terggees
Maar tog hou ons van hom
Hy gee ons elk ‘n sjilling
As hy op kuier kom!
For readers not conversant with Afrikaans, a loose translation is:
When granny comes visiting she brings us cakes. Grandpa is better because he gives toys. Aunt Hessie says children mustn’t be spoilt, and gives a cup, a saucer or a plate. Our uncle is a tease, but he’s the one we really like because he gives us each a shilling when he comes visiting!

William Oates Memorial School

My great news is that the William Oats Memorial School, which thought it was 120 years old, was established in 1843 as the Ebenezer School, and is 163 years old.
I was very puzzled about the school’s age when we went home. Luckily when my Dad, the Rev Alwyn Charles Lloyd, died in 1982, I found old papers about Somerset East in his desk and kept them.
He wrote to the London Missionary Society in 1937 asking for the foundation date of the school. They sent the extract of the London Missionary Society report of 1843, page 96. This said that Thomas Merrington, a teacher, started the mission in 1843 on the plot bequeathed by Dorothy Evans. About 120 to 150 attended the Sabbath service. There were 35 in the Day School and 65 in the Sabbath School.
The School was originally called the Ebenezer School, and only became the William Oates Memorial School in 1936 when it was enlarged. It was 26 years older than Gill College, and is, I think, the oldest school in South Africa.
(We have gone back over the SACS history, and agree this is the oldest school in the country. Certainly the William Oats is probably the oldest in the Eastern Cape and one of the oldest in the country.)
The William Oates School was built by the congregation under the leadership of John and Appolis Hufkie. The congregation burnt the bricks, and put scrap metal and old brass from beds between the layers of bricks to make the walls strong.
My Mother, who laid the foundation stone, said “The Hufkies said they were going to build it like Fort Knox, and it wouldn’t crack. Seventy years later there’s not a crack in the place! It’s just the floors need redoing, and it needs a coat of paint. Will all the old boys and girls please contribute. This is a place to be proud of.

Mom and I

My mother, Marjorie Hilda Lloyd lives in Cape Town and is, at 98 years of age, my best source of life in Somerset East in the 1930’s and 1940’s. She learnt to use a computer when she was ninety and wrote up a good deal about her life as a minister’s wife at Hope Manse and as a trained nurse. Mom’s cousin, George Hill, was a noted WWI spy, and Mom would have been an excellent British agent if only she had had the chance as her information would always have been early, accurate and to the point. I have been Dr Taffy Shearing since April 2005 because I thought a PhD was a fine thing to do and I’m no good at sport or bridge. In the picture I’m giving a copy of my thesis to Mom. I am 68 and I reckon I’ve got a good fifteen years ahead of me. I trained as a nurse way back just after Florence Nightingale’s time, was a farmer’s wife for 34 years, became a newspaper correspondent, ran our farm school and discovered a forgotten war memorial to the Irish and Grenadier Guards on top of the Nuweveld Mountains. This led to my present enthusiasm for the SA War which I wrote about mostly from the position of the Cape Rebels point of view because underdogs are always more interesting. Being a late developer, I did my MA and PhD late, since turning fifty. I want to get my project completed by Mom’s centenary.

Another Profile

To do the Paulet Street project justice I give you another profile;
My husband David, author of Karoo Wildflower Guide No 6, is a noted conservationist and now that we have left the Karoo where we farmed on Layton in the Beaufort West district for 34 years, he calls the whole Karoo his farm. He has always supported all my projects and enthusiasms, and has been my Commandant, my agterryer, and my sub-editor who tinkles my text so that it runs smoothly. We have published four books in the Cape Commando series on the South African War, and are not yet finished. He has always been a leader in the community from those early years when he started two farm schools in his twenties. Today he is Chairman of the Sedgefield Police Form, a forum that works.

The Search for Bester

Local histories of Somerset East say that the Somerset Farm was situated on two loan farms belonging to Tregard and Bester. We’ve sorted out Tregard, and found his certificates among the Receiver Land Revenue files in the Cape Archives. We’ve had no luck with Bester’s farm, though we’ve found 12 certificates to various Besters, mainly farming along the Breede River. It would be easier if we knew his christian name(s). So if any of the Bester family have been doing family research, would they please post it on the blog, or contact us at either davidtaffy@telkomsa.net or PO Box 1005, Sedgefield 6573.

A puzzle photograph

We found this photograph in the Archives which is said to be of Paulet Street in 1911. But the curve in the road worries us. Was it incorrectly identified, and if so, what street is it?

Do you know Von Nuldt Onkruydt?

Mynhardus Jacobus von Nuldt Onkruydt took transfer of erven 87 and 88 in September 1825 in Paulet Street. He is connected to the founding of the Dutch Reformed Church, and was magistrate of Somerset from 1830 - 1834. He first sold one erven in 1833, and the last in 1843. However, three years later a man with the same unusual name becomes the Commandant of the Stellenbosch Burghers in the Frontier War of 1846 and 1847.

My query is: Is the Magistrate and the Commandant the same person?

Update:
We have discovered Mynhardus Jacobus van Nuldt Onkruydt, born in 1797, was the eighth child of Constantyn van Nuldt Onkruydt, who was born in Amsterdam in 1745 and was later President of the Burger Raad in Cape Town. Constantyn died in 1813. The son, Mynhardus Jacobus, who lived in the small town of Somerset, died in Stellenbosch in 1852. I think it highly likely that he was the Commandant of the Stellenbosch burghers. It was a very hierarchical era, and we have discovered his father’s name as a Landdrost who dealt with loan farms and worked at the castle, and this shows he came from an important family.

What Happened to John Austin?

John Austin was granted a freehold title of Erf 57, which was the important building, the Officers' Mess, known today as the Walter Battis Art Gallery. Austin was 24 when he landed in the Cape as an 1820 Settler who had sailed from England on the Zoroaster. He was a member of Dyason's Party. Austin sold the property in 1832. Does anybody know how he used the place? Was it an inn, or was it a shop? Then what happened to him next?
A John Austen was killed in the Frontier Wars in 1850. Is there a spelling error here, or were they not connected?

A Visit to Somerset House

In September 2005 Vega and Stephen van Niekerk of Somerset House invited David and I to visit their luxury B&B, once my school way back in 1947. That evening I was speaker at their celebration of the centenary of the school building. We slept in a marvellous front room, and as I wondered at the comfort, the luxury and the soft sheets, I said to the room, "You've certainly come up in the world since we did sewing here on a Wednesday, when we Rooineks joined the Afrikaans girls for class!" That night I woke to hear a soft murmur coming from the walls. They were whispering, "Aren't we smart? Aren't we smart!" And so this book was born.