Willem Johannes Jooste

I · The Instruments

Four legal instruments, twenty-six years, three places

The file gathers — as Master of the Supreme Court files always do — every instrument the deceased's estate touches. For Willem Johannes Jooste, that span runs from the joint will he and Elizabeth Magdalene signed at Worcester in the early 1880s, through the 1894 codicil they added at Potchefstroom after the move north, to the final distribution account closed by his executors in December 1909.

A note on the languages

The instruments are bilingual by period convention. The joint will and codicil are in Hollands — the formal written Dutch that served as the legal language of both the Cape Colony and the South African Republic into the early twentieth century. Afrikaans was the household vernacular but not yet a standardised written language; it would not be recognised in legal documents until 1925. Each instrument was accompanied at filing by a sworn translation into English, certified by a notary public, so that the Master's Office could process the estate in the language of the Transvaal Colonial administration after 1902. The English transcriptions below are drawn from those sworn translations where available; the Hollands originals are quoted directly where their phrasing is load-bearing.

II · Instrument I — The Death Notice

Braamfontein, Johannesburg · 18 January 1906

Willem Johannes Jooste, a Gentleman of forty-nine years, married in community of property to Elizabeth Magdalene née Humphries, died at his home at 63 Lebombo Road, Braamfontein, in the District of Johannesburg, on the sixteenth day of January 1906. The notice was filed at the Master's Office two days later, on the eighteenth.

He was the son of Willem Johannes Jooste the elder and Fanny Johanna Carr, later Geldenhuys — the latter remarrying after her first husband's death at Tulbach, Cape Colony, in 1889. The deceased's surviving spouse Elizabeth had borne him five children, all of whom were majors at his death.

From the form itself

III · Instrument II — The Joint Will

Worcester, Cape of Good Hope · early 1880s

Eight folios in Hollands, written before the deceased and his wife left the Cape Colony for the Transvaal. The will bears revenue stamps of the Cape and an English sworn translation appended for use under Transvaal probate law.

The instrument is a joint will of Willem Johannes Jooste and his wife Elizabeth Magdalene, executed in their Worcester home in the early 1880s in the conventional Cape Dutch form: each spouse appoints the other as sole executor and universal heir, the deceased's estate passing to the survivor in community of property until the survivor's own death, at which point the joint estate descends to the children of the marriage.

The Affidavit of Execution — folio 891

IV · Instrument III — The Codicil

Potchefstroom · 4 April 1894

Eight years after they signed the joint will at Worcester, the spouses added a codicil at Potchefstroom — the Transvaal town to which the family had migrated by 1886 — modifying the executor clauses to reflect their new local circumstances.

V · Instrument IV (i) — The First & Final Account

The Estate at Death · 1906–1907

Filed by the executors as the First and Final Liquidation and Distribution Account of the joint estate. The deceased's portion of the joint estate at death consisted of farm holdings in the Potchefstroom magisterial district, mining and trading-company shares, the household furnishings of the Braamfontein house, a Life Policy with Mutual, and a small London bank balance — together amounting to approximately £14,861 17s.

The Farms

Other Estate Assets & Realisations

VI · Instrument IV (ii) — The Distribution

The Supplementary Account · 16 December 1909

Three years after the main account closed, the executors filed a Supplementary Liquidation and Distribution Account dealing with residual assets — chiefly the deceased's stake in the African Board of Executors, a Transvaal trust company of which he had held one hundred shares.

The distribution observed the Cape-Dutch community-of-property convention: the surviving spouse Elizabeth took her half of the joint estate by right of marriage, and a child's share of the remaining half by right of inheritance. Each of the five major children took a child's share of the deceased's half.

VII · The Chronology of Eleazer

From speculation to family seat · 1886–1950

Of the five Potchefstroom-district farms in the deceased's estate, only one would carry forward as a family seat. Eleazer — Farm No. 519, two thousand four hundred and forty morgen — was the parcel the deceased had once acquired in undivided half share during the Witwatersrand gold-rush years, and the parcel on which his second son Willem Johannes — born at Potchefstroom in 1886 — would eventually live as a farmer until his own death in 1950.

• 1886
  Witwatersrand gold discovery. Speculation in farms along the geological reef extends west from Johannesburg toward the Western Transvaal goldfields. Witwatersrand
• pre-1906
  G4 acquires ½ undivided share of Farm Eleazer No. 519. Two thousand four hundred and forty morgen in the Potchefstroom magisterial district. Potchefstroom
• 16 Jan 1906
  G4 dies at Braamfontein, Johannesburg. His ½ share enters the joint estate. Braamfontein
• 24 Sep 1906
  Estate executors sell the ½ undivided share for £1300. The other ½ remains in family hands. Potchefstroom
• (intervening)
  G3 — Willem Johannes Jooste, b. 1886 Potchefstroom — consolidates the farm into family ownership over the following decades. (Mechanism undocumented at present; Transvaal Deeds Office title chain would close this.)
• 1905
  Klerksdorp magisterial district expanded. Land that was administratively "Potchefstroom" in 1906 begins to be recorded as "Klerksdorp" in subsequent registrations. Western Transvaal
• 11 Oct 1950
  G3 dies at home, a farmer at Eleazer, Klerksdorp, aged 64. Klerksdorp

VIII · The Family

Five children, the widow, two parents

The five children

The Cape-to-Transvaal arc

• 2 May 1856
  Willem Johannes Jooste bornWorcester · Cape Colony
• 18 Dec 1877
  Married Elizabeth Magdalene Humphries at St James' ChurchWorcester
• c. 1880s
  Joint will executed before notary R. LurkenbergWorcester
• 14 Apr 1886
  First child of the marriage born after the family's move north — G3 Willem JohannesPotchefstroom
• 4 Apr 1894
  Codicil to the joint will signed at the family's Transvaal seatPotchefstroom
• 16 Jan 1906
  Died at home, aged 49, at 63 Lebombo Road, BraamfonteinJohannesburg
• 18 Jan 1906
  Death Notice filed at the Master of the Supreme Court of the TransvaalPretoria
• 24 Sep 1906
  Executors sell ½ undivided share on Eleazer for £1300Potchefstroom
• 1906–1907
  First & Final Liquidation and Distribution Account closed
• 16 Dec 1909
  Supplementary Account closed · estate finally distributed

IX · Provenance & Methodology

How this reconstruction was made

The reconstruction draws on the file itself — held in original at NARSSA Pretoria's Transvaal Archives Depot, microfilmed by FamilySearch and made accessible at primary-source citation depth via authenticated FamilySearch.

Source chain

Method

FamilySearch image-viewer screenshots captured at full Retina resolution from the authenticated session, then read by AI vision in agent context at the Heraldry portfolio project. Each handwritten reading marked with bracketed italics denotes a transcription uncertainty at the resolution available; cross-source corroboration noted in the underlying SRC item. The Hollands originals are quoted directly where substantive; the sworn English translations append. Transcription convention follows standard archival practice: italics for handwritten responses to printed form fields, square brackets for editor interpolations or uncertain readings.

Honest gaps

Companion sources at this project

• SRC-2026-034 · this estate file at primary-source citation depth
• SRC-2026-035 · WikiTree extended record for G3 (Willem Johannes Jooste 1886–1950)
• SRC-2026-036 · Bergh & Visagie 2014 · canonical Transvaal landownership and gold-speculation scholarly context