Maria Susanna Furstenberg

 

“The Woman on the Veranda”

Story Introduction:

By the time Hercules Jacobus McCarthy married for the third time, he had already lived through hardship, war, loss, and years of uncertainty across the South African interior.

His first wife, Susanna Cecilia Stoffelina Elisabeth Therblanche, had died in 1909 during an influenza outbreak in Marico, leaving him with five young children. His second wife, Maria Jacoba Elizabeth van Heerden, died in 1918 on the farm Heuningkrantz near Wolmaranstad. No children were born from that marriage.

For many years, almost nothing was known about Hercules’s third wife.

Then, during a research trip in January 2005, another piece of the family story slowly began to emerge.

I visited my aunt Lettie Swaters, my father’s only sister, who was then living in an old age home in Makwassie. She introduced me to one of the daughters of Hercules’s third wife. Although she could remember only fragments, she referred me to another family member, Louwrence van Heerden, living in Potchefstroom.

That meeting changed everything.

Louwrence proved to be a remarkable source of family memory. Much of what is now known about Hercules and Maria’s later years survived through the stories he shared.

Maria Susanna Furstenberg married Hercules Jacobus McCarthy in Wolmaranstad on 19 February 1924.

Hercules (Back row right) and Maria (Front row right)

Before marrying Hercules, Maria had been married to Phillipus Stephanus Botes, who passed away in 1919. From that earlier marriage she had several children:

• Phillipus Stephanus Botes
• Hansie Botes
• Petrus Jacobus Botes
• Elizabeth Maria Botes
• Maria Catharina Botes

Later records and her death certificate confirmed additional family names connected to the Botes family, including:

• Elizabeth “Bettie” van Bergen
• Johannes Botes
• Petrus Botes
• Maria Catharina Erasmus
• Ivy Haupt

No children were born from Maria’s marriage to Hercules.

After their marriage the couple moved deep into the Kalahari to a remote place called Genesa, far beyond Kuruman.

There Hercules farmed with oxen while the family lived in a neat corrugated iron house standing alone against the harsh Kalahari landscape. Family memories from this period remain vivid.

The farmhouse at Genesa in the Kalahari

Lettie Swaters later remembered visiting the farm as a young girl in 1929, travelling there in a Dodge motorcar across the long dusty roads of the northern Cape. She especially remembered Maria’s homemade bread, baked using natural yeast. The bread had a slightly sour taste which she loved and never forgot.

Eventually Hercules sold the farm at Genesa and purchased a smallholding called Ebenaezer about five kilometres outside Klerksdorp on the Ventersdorp road. Life there reflected the self-sufficient rural existence common among farming families of the time.

Louwrence van Heerden at Ebenaezer

Louwrence van Heerden remembered travelling into town with his grandfather by horse and cart. Hercules made fresh butter, carefully wrapped and marked with his name, which would be exchanged in Klerksdorp for groceries and supplies. As a child, Louwrence eagerly looked forward to these trips because his grandfather would buy him “niccerballs” as a treat.

Later the family moved again, this time to a house at 17 Brand Street in Wolmaranstad. There Hercules continued growing oats and selling produce while the couple settled into a quieter routine during their later years.

The memories preserved by Louwrence paint one of the most human and intimate portraits found anywhere in the McCarthy family history. When he visited them as a child, the old couple would rise at 04h30 each morning. Hercules would light the Union stove while maize meal porridge cooked for breakfast and stampmielies simmered slowly for lunch. Afterwards Hercules would read from the Bible and hymns would be sung together before they settled onto the veranda. It was there that much of family life unfolded.

Hercules enjoyed watching people pass by in the street while drinking coffee and eating rusks. Maria would teasingly ask him:

“Word jy dan besimpeld?” Sometimes Hercules would sigh quietly and say: “Ag ja, Here.”

Maria would softly echo the words beside him. One family story remained especially memorable.

Louwrence, Maria and Hercules

Louwrence recalled an occasion when Hercules suddenly stood up from the veranda, walked to the gate, opened it, and then quietly closed it again. Maria asked what he was doing because nobody was there.

Hercules calmly replied that Rita, one of Louwrence’s sisters, had come to say goodbye. Later the family received news that Rita had died in hospital at that same time. Stories such as these became part of the quiet folklore surrounding Hercules during his old age.

Louwrence also remembered details that brought the old couple vividly back to life:

• the wrought-iron bed with large brass knobs
• the “bulsak” mattress
• the hidden money bag beneath the bed
• Hercules’s hat and brown jacket
• and the peaceful rhythm of their days together.

In January 1958 Hercules and Maria drew up their joint testament in Wolmaranstad. Their son Daniel was appointed executor of the estate. The listed beneficiaries included both McCarthy and Botes children, reflecting the blending of two later-life frontier families:

• James Daniel Christoffel McCarthy
• Daniel Johannes Jacobus Philippus McCarthy
• Hercules Jacobus McCarthy
• Gert Hendrik Rautenbach McCarthy
• Hester Jacoba Venter
• Maria Catharina Erasmus
• Ivy Haupt

Maria Susanna McCarthy, born Furstenberg, died on 1 July 1959 at the age of eighty in Hendrik Potgieter Street, Klerksdorp.

Family members remembered her as a strong farm woman who endured the hardships of rural South African life with quiet resilience.

Her husband Hercules died less than a year later on 24 May 1960. Both were buried in Klerksdorp.

Today, through family memories, estate records, photographs, and stories preserved across generations, Maria Susanna Furstenberg remains an important part of the later McCarthy family story — a woman remembered not through dramatic events, but through the warmth of bread baking on a stove, conversations on a veranda, and a life shared across the dusty landscapes of the western Transvaal and Kalahari.