Andries Johannes Retief (Gen 5) died at twenty-five, leaving three minor children. The eldest, his son and namesake, was six years old when his father’s estate was inventoried.
Attie’s whole line continues only because that six-year-old survived 1843 — and his sister Sophia, baptised at Swartland four years earlier, survived too. The 1843 Death Notice that anchors the whole spine is, in a quiet way, also the document that records the moment the line nearly didn’t continue.