The family way: tangled tale of Tesselaarsdal

WHEN the German VOC soldier Johannes Tesselaar applied for burgher papers in Cape Town in 1750, he and his wife, Johanna Catharina Smuts, had two children. Five more were soon born and although the family does not appear to have been that prosperous, Johanna’s connections to the Table Valley gentry ensured the next generation’s upward mobility.

When Tesselaar died in 1758, Johanna remarried within a few months. Her husband was Michiel, son of the prominent burgher Servaas de Kock, who was an early owner of the historic market garden Nooitgedacht (now St Cyprian’s School in Oranjezicht). Michiel had five progeny from his first marriage, Johanna contributed seven Tesselaars and they had six more children together.

Such vast families were by no means unusual in the 18th century, and kinship networks were extended as each generation reached marriageable age. Interconnected families looked after each other by advancing loans, securing appointments, bidding jointly for contracts and recycling slaves and properties.

Johanna Smuts was related in some degree to the Jurgens, Koel, Bergh, Mostert, Versfeld and Van Breda families, among others, many of whom lived on prosperous Table Valley estates. Her eldest son, Johannes Jacobus Tesselaar (1748-1810), took advantage of these powerful connections and became a speculator, buying and selling for profit.

He also made an advantageous marriage to Alida (“Aaltje”) van der Heijden (1755-1832) in 1774. Her aunt, who bore the same name, had been the third wife of a dynamic, affluent German entrepreneur named Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen. The couple married in 1719 and had 12 children before Eksteen’s death in 1741. His wealthy widow outlived him by 40 years and didn’t remarry.

Nooitgedacht was transferred to Willem Versfeld, husband of Johanna’s cousin Hilletje Smuts, in 1777, the same year that Tesselaar acquired Rheezicht, next door. He didn’t build on it, perhaps because he and Versfeld had a boundary dispute with their short-tempered neighbour, Pieter van Breda of Oranjezicht, which was not settled until their properties had been re-surveyed. Tesselaar sold Rheezicht in 1782 to Alexander van Breda, who built the present gabled house.

Other pickings that came Tesselaar’s way included the position of adjutant in the prestigious Cape Burgher Cavalry in 1781 and the acquisition of five Overberg loan farms during the following decade. These were presumably run as undeveloped grazing places before the Tesselaars settled permanently in the Overberg during the early-1800s.

The childless couple are remembered today because they left the farm Hartebeestrivier to nine mixed-race beneficiaries and their successors in a joint will signed in 1809. The population grew and the quiet rural settlement, 21km south of Caledon, is now known as Tesselaarsdal.