Elsie Rachel van der Merwe

Homemaker, Gardener, and Heart of the McCarthy Household

Story Introduction:

Some people leave their mark through great public achievements. Others leave it quietly through the warmth of a home, the smell of fresh bread and Sunday lunches, the sound of hymn singing in the early morning, and the small acts of care remembered long after they are gone.

That is how I remember my grandmother, Elsie Rachel van der Merwe. She belonged to an old frontier farming family whose roots stretched deep into the difficult history of the South African interior.

Her grandfather, Willem Petrus van der Merwe, was born in the Sneeuberge near Graaff-Reinet in 1825. After the death of his first wife, Johanna Christina Vlok, he remarried Elsie Rachel Pretorius and later joined the Dorsland Trek into South West Africa.

For a time the family lived in Kaokoland where Willem built a stone house on a farm called Rusplaas. Eventually the family returned through Walvis Bay and travelled by train to Kimberley before continuing by ox wagon into the western Transvaal. There Willem Petrus settled on the farm Doornbult near Wolmaranstad, where both he and his wife were later buried.

These stories formed part of the frontier world into which Elsie Rachel van der Merwe was born. Her father, Willem Sterrenberg van der Merwe, was born in Middelburg in the Cape in 1876. He married Aletta Sophia Janse van Vuuren in 1903, and together they raised a remarkably large family of fourteen children. Elsie Rachel van der Merwe was their third child.

She was born on 11 October 1906 on the farm Doringbult, about eighteen kilometres outside Makwassie. South Africa during these years was changing rapidly.

The Anglo-Boer War had ended only a few years earlier, leaving many Afrikaner farming families financially devastated. At the same time the growth of the gold and diamond mining industries was transforming the country’s economy. Increasingly, young men left the farms to seek work on the mines of the Witwatersrand while rural districts struggled through droughts, poverty, and economic uncertainty.

Elsie grew up in this changing world between old frontier farming traditions and the rise of industrial South Africa. She was baptised in the Dutch Reformed Church in Makwassie and attended the local primary school, eventually completing Standard Six. Later her father relocated the family to Klipplaasdrift near Ventersdorp. On 26 July 1927 Elsie Rachel van der Merwe married Gert Hendrik Rautenbach McCarthy in Ventersdorp. She was twenty years old. He was twenty-two.

The wedding took place in the Dutch Reformed Church, while Gert was living at Heuningkrans near Wolmaranstad with his Uncle Harry.

Their early married years were difficult. For the first two years they lived around Lichtenburg where Gert worked on the diamond diggings with his father. Their eldest son, Hercules Jacobus McCarthy, was born on 14 October 1928 at Klipplaasdrift near the diggings.

But like many young Afrikaner families during the difficult economic years of the late 1920s and early 1930s, they struggled to make ends meet. Eventually Gert moved to the East Rand gold mines searching for stable employment, and the family settled in Brakpan where they would spend the next fourteen years. Elsie became a full-time homemaker for the rest of her life.

Their children born during the Brakpan years included:

• Aletta Sophia
• Willem Sterrenberg
• Gert Hendrik Rautenbach

The mining towns of the Witwatersrand were expanding rapidly during these years. Thousands of Afrikaner families moved into company housing around the mines, trying to build stable lives while South Africa battled through the Great Depression, droughts, and the uncertainties surrounding the Second World War. Yet despite the hardships of mining life, family memories of Elsie are filled not with struggle, but with warmth.

In 1941 the family moved to a farm near Welverdiend where Gert attempted farming once again. Their son Piet was born there. But severe drought conditions forced them to abandon farming after only two years. Once more the family returned to the mines.

Gert joined Blyvooruitzicht Mine and the family moved into a mine house at 12 Saville Street, Blyvooruitzicht. That is where many of my own childhood memories begin. I still remember the beautiful cannas and dahlias growing in the garden. There were always flowers in the house. The rooms were cool and dark behind heavy green velvet curtains. Copper vases stood polished and shining.

Their house in Blyvooruitzicht

Grandmother always seemed to have something prepared for visitors or grandchildren. Once she made me homemade ice cream using fresh cream and large amounts of sugar. I enjoyed it far too much and became terribly sick afterwards — a memory that remained part of family laughter for years.

I remember seeing her early in the mornings already busy with the washing around the corner of the house. Her hands, white and worn from years of hard work, told their own story of labour, sacrifice, and care. Her cooking became legendary within the family.

Grandmother’s Sunday roast seemed to come from heaven itself. She could prepare meat better than anyone I have ever known. Sunday lunches were enormous gatherings with fifteen or more people often sitting around the table.

Hendrik and their sons and grandchildren

Grandfather loved gardening and fruit trees, and Grandmother carefully preserved the harvest. There were always bottles of jam, canned fruit, and homemade butter in the house. Even today I can still remember thick slices of fresh white bread covered with butter and jam.

She also believed deeply in Grandfather’s medicine. Out would come the bottle, two or three pink tablets would drop into the hand, followed by a glass of water. Another detail forever remembered by the family was her small snuff box. Every now and then she would take a pinch of snuff and sneeze loudly afterwards. Hospitality remained one of her defining qualities throughout her life. When guests arrived, coffee, rusks, snacks, and food would immediately appear as though it had been waiting all along.

By the late 1960s South Africa itself was changing once again. Mining towns expanded, mechanisation increased, and many older families retired from the demanding mining lifestyle. On 30 April 1968 Gert retired from Blyvooruitzicht Mine, and the couple moved to Makwassie where he built a house for Elsie at 4 McMillan Street near their daughter. In her later years Elsie struggled increasingly with her hearing and eventually required a hearing aid. Yet family members continued remembering her as:

• deeply religious
• hardworking
• exceptionally neat
• generous
• and devoted entirely to her family and home.

In 1977 Elsie and Gert celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary during a family gathering arranged in Carletonville. Few couples of their generation were fortunate enough to share such a long life together.

Speaking to her daughter Lettie in 2009, she still remembered her mother as a woman of quiet strength who worked tirelessly for her family throughout her entire life. Elsie Rachel van der Merwe McCarthy died on 21 October 1985 at Makwassie at the age of seventy-nine years and ten days. Her funeral service was held in the Dutch Reformed Church in Makwassie, and she was buried in the Makwassie cemetery.

Today, through fading photographs, family memories, old recipes, flower gardens, and the stories carried by children and grandchildren, Elsie Rachel van der Merwe still remains one of the warmest and most deeply loved figures within the McCarthy family history.

Timeline:

Year	Event
8 Aug 1825	Elsie’s grandfather, Willem Petrus van der Merwe, born in the Sneeuberge near Graaff-Reinet
20 Oct 1828	Elsie Rachel Pretorius, Elsie’s grandmother, born near Colesberg
16 Jan 1876	Willem Sterrenberg van der Merwe, Elsie’s father, born in Middelburg
30 Dec 1883	Aletta Sophia Janse van Vuuren, Elsie’s mother, born at Klipplaasdrift near Ventersdorp
17 Sep 1889	Willem Petrus van der Merwe died and was buried on Doornbult farm near Wolmaranstad
23 Mar 1903	Willem Sterrenberg van der Merwe married Aletta Sophia Janse van Vuuren
24 Apr 1905	Gert Hendrik Rautenbach McCarthy born at Broedersput near Vryburg
11 Oct 1906	Elsie Rachel van der Merwe born on the farm Doringbult near Makwassie
4 Feb 1912	Elsie Rachel Pretorius van der Merwe died on the farm Doornbult
26 Jul 1927	Elsie Rachel van der Merwe married Gert Hendrik Rautenbach McCarthy in Ventersdorp
14 Oct 1928	Eldest son, Hercules Jacobus McCarthy, born
1929	Elsie and Hendrik relocated to Brakpan
12 Mar 1930	Daughter Aletta Sophia McCarthy born in Brakpan
31 Dec 1932	Son Willem Sterrenberg McCarthy born in Brakpan
13 Jul 1937	Son Gert Hendrik Rautenbach McCarthy born
1941	Family moved to a farm near Welverdiend
1943	Family relocated to Blyvooruitzicht Mine
20 Apr 1946	Son James McCarthy born in Randfontein
11 May 1948	Son Gert Johannes McCarthy born at Klipplaasdrift near Ventersdorp
24 Nov 1948	Hercules Jacobus McCarthy purchased property in Brand Street, Wolmaranstad
6 Sep 1952	Elsie’s father, Willem Sterrenberg van der Merwe, died at Klipplaasdrift
1 Jul 1959	Maria Johanna McCarthy, born Furstenberg, died in Klerksdorp
24 May 1960	Hercules Jacobus McCarthy died at Odendaalsrus
18 Apr 1965	Elsie’s mother, Aletta Sophia Janse van Vuuren, died at Klipplaasdrift
30 Apr 1968	Hendrik retired from Blyvooruitzicht Mine
1968	Hendrik and Elsie moved to Makwassie
1977	Elsie and Hendrik celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in Carletonville
21 Oct 1985	Elsie Rachel van der Merwe McCarthy died at Makwassie
1985	Elsie buried in the Makwassie cemetery

Open Questions:

Despite the large amount of family memory preserved about Elsie Rachel van der Merwe, several important questions still remain:

• Can additional records from the Dorsland Trek connections of the van der Merwe family still be located?
• Are there surviving photographs of the original Doornbult and Klipplaasdrift farms?
• Can more information be found regarding the family’s years on the diamond diggings near Lichtenburg?
• Are there surviving recipes, household books, or handwritten notes connected to Elsie’s cooking and preserving?
• Can the original Blyvooruitzicht mine house at 12 Saville Street still be identified?
• Are there surviving family letters from the Brakpan or Makwassie years?
• Can further church records from Makwassie and Ventersdorp provide additional details about the extended van der Merwe family?
• Are there descendants who still preserve memories, photographs, or recordings connected to Elsie and Hendrik’s later years?
• Can the surviving family photographs be digitally restored and archived for future generations?