General Notes

Christened 5 June 1774

This is the Piet Retief family by author?

Jacobus Retief (christened 07.09.1754 - 12.05.1821) born on D’Oliphantskop
Married 01.11.1772 in Paarl to Deborah Joubert (christened 04.05.1749- 09.06.1814)
Second Marriage July 1815 to Johanna Petronella van Blerk (christened 05.06.1774)
Life for Jacobus changed dramatically after Deborah died. They had been married since
he was 18 years old and at the age of sixty, life as a widower did not suit him at all. It seems
that there was a widow, twenty years his junior, living on Doolhof at that time. Perhaps it was
inevitable that they were drawn to each other, and a year after Deborah had died, Jacobus and
Johanna Petronella van Blerk, the widow of Joel Daniel Herholdt, were married in July 1815.
My father told me that Jacobus married the widow who lived on Doolhof and went to live
there with her. He always said that Daniel finished the building of our house. There is no record of Joel Daniel Herholdt or his wife Johanna van Blerk owning Doolhof. However, there is a grey area in its ownership in the 10 years between 1813 and 1823 and Jacobus and Johanna were married for six of those years. When Johanna married Jacobus, she may simply have preferred to stay where she was in her own household, and may even have made it a condition of their marriage. There was all that building going on at Welvanpas and the old house was due to be demolished at the end of it.