The keystone document of the whole family is a single sheet filed at the Master’s office in Cape Town on 9 August 1843: the Death Notice (Doodkennis) of Andries Johannes Retief, no. 6273, recorded under Ordinance 104 of 1843. He had died of something — illness, accident, the records don’t say — at twenty-five years old, on the farm Windhoek in the Zwartland.
What that one page does, in its own clerk’s hand, is name three generations of the family at once:
- Field 3 — his parents: Andries Johannes Retief × Sophia Bauermeister (Gen 4).
- The deceased himself, age 25, farmer, married (Gen 5).
- Field 9 — his three minor heirs: Andries Johannes, Sophia Johanna Elizabeth, and Frans Johannes Retief (Gen 6 — including Attie’s direct ancestor, then six years old).
Anchor a family record to a primary document and you get one rung. This one happens to give you three. It is also the document that confirms the farm name Windhoek — which the family had carried down by memory alone for the better part of two centuries. The memory turned out to match the 1843 clerk’s spelling, exactly.