Janetta Sophia van Zyl

I have been told that she came to Koebee to teach at a small school in the Koebee Valley. Some years later, she married a man who had been a student and moved to the farm known as,Koebee (possibly Klein Koebee), their spring farm was known as Ondertuin, where the fruittrees grew. and another area above the valley was used to grow crops. Her younger daughter remembered that she used to get people together to sing.The school was on one of the family farms until the small numbers caused its closure, and all the children had to board in Vanrhynsdorp during the week to attend school there.

They had 5 children. the eldest son became a university professor, the next daughter, known as the maker of the best butter in the valley, cared for her brothers until her death, the third , trained as a nurse, married and moved to Australia. The younger 2 boys stayed in the Koebee valley, though the vagarie of inheritance  meant that their home farm Koebee  was left to other family members. The eldest son and his family bought Ondertuin back, and this part remains in his family.

She died rather young, her youngest child was only 13. She is buried next to a cousin of exactly the same name, some 40 nyears her senior, on a hillside in the Koebee valley, which was part of the larger Koebee farm,now in other hands. Her younger sons made had written gravemarkers, as the family graveyard at  Koebee famstead had no name markers, van Zyls are buried there from the 1760s onwards. The eldest son's ashes . are enclosed in a rock cavity on Ondertuin as the baboons are still grave robbers..

Jannettjie Sophia and Janetta Sophia are one and the same people as far as I can ascertain. There is significant confusion as there are a number of women with the names Jeanetta/ Jannetta/Jannettjie around that time, one Janetta sophia van Zyl is in fact buried next to my Maternal Grandmother Janetta Sophia van Zyl (born Nieuwoudt), who had the nickname of Tannie Ousus (???auntie older sister??) she seems to have been some 30 or 450 years older than my grandmother, but sufficiently close to have been buried side by side in the Koebee valley on a plat of land which was I believe part of groot Koebee, now in between Koringland and Melkboom, but no longer in the van Zyl family ownership as far as I can make out.