Izelle’s paternal grandfather. Born 11 October 1914 at Fauresmith in the Orange Free State; died 22 September 2006 at Bloemfontein, age 91. On 5 May 1951, aged 36, he married Francina Carolina Meades at Koffiefontein — the couple settled at Ryno Straat in the same town, and Jopie is recorded as a masjienbestuurder (machine operator) in government service.
His parents are Marthinus Petrus du Plessis (1878–1963) and Martha Maria Jansen van Rensburg (1877–1952), married at Jacobsdal in April 1903. Marthinus’s own known son Marthinus Petrus Jr. (b. 1908 Luckhoff) is one of the naming echoes — Izelle’s father, born 1952, is also a Martinis Petrus, three generations of the name.
The “Fourie” middle name is now most plausibly commemoration of the Boer martyr Josef Johannes “Jopie” Fourie, executed by court-martial on 20 December 1914 — a “potent factor in the rise of the National Party”. Jopie du Plessis was born ten months after the execution, and other Afrikaner boys born in the same window were similarly named (a Jopie Fourie Erasmus surfaces in Gereformeerde Kerk records). The alternative reading — a Fourie mother or grandmother — becomes unlikely once Marthinus’s wife is known to be Jansen van Rensburg, not Fourie.
Two duplicate FamilySearch tree profiles exist for Jopie: G2N2-8K3 (the well-sourced profile attached to the 1951 marriage record, with no parents attached) and G8RC-GTB (an empty stub attached as a child of Marthinus × Martha, with no vitals). They should be merged. This site follows G2N2-8K3.
The original image is restricted by the holding archive.
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Civil marriage record — Josef Johannes Fourie du Plessis × Francina Carolina Meades, 5 May 1951, Koffiefontein. Certificate no. 6, Ned. Geref. Kerk, officiant C. Halbig. Signed by two witnesses whose signatures include an M.P. du Plessis (plausibly Marthinus, the groom's father).
South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1801-1974, FamilySearch. [link]
Same year, same province, both couples: 5 May 1951 Koffiefontein (du Plessis × Meades) and 29 December 1951 Verkeerdevlei (Tait × Duvenage). Without those two OFS weddings, the daughters' side of the family does not exist.
Jopie du Plessis carries a Fourie middle name. Once thought to point at a Fourie mother up the line, it now looks more like commemoration of the Boer martyr Jopie Fourie, added at baptism in the weeks after the martyr's December 1914 execution.