"This Is the Mark of the Widow": Domesticity and Frontier Conquest in Colonial South Africa

Her brother Jacobus represented Elsje in the settlement; their uncle Andries represented the children. Both men could sign their names, though not well.62 Her sister-in-law Margaretha signed Barend's inventory, but with a shaky hand. The third generation, however, signed with a flourish. Both Hester and Helena Smit had mastered handwriting-at least as far as their names. The opportunity for some education came with other trappings of better living. Greater agricultural wealth, increased domestic comforts, some markers of European civility, and a few luxuries differentiate the Burgers living in the last quarter of the eighteenth century from their forebears who died before 1750. The archival records changed» too, making a transition from short, perfunctory lists to orderly pages of carefully described household and farmyard equipment.

Barend the younger, Schalk Willem, and their mother Elsje were frontier farmers with sustained claims to a residential farm; their wealth derived from running cattle and sheep at home and on more distant grazing permits. The brothers were living a very different material life at the two moments when the state intervened to document the entirely of their family's possessions-when their father died and at the time of their own deaths.*3

The third generation of Burger men lived longer than their predecessors, giving more time to produce and accumulate before the state counted their assets. The simple facts of working longer and having more possessions do not explain what the families acquired, though. In variety and bulk, the ten pots, two griddles, and four frying pans of Halve Dorschvloer represent both a quantitative and qualitative change from the kitchen described in Barend Burger the elder's inventory of 1729, which had but three iron pots and a kettle. Widow Margaretha Passman's few goods were apparently more than those of her sisters-in-law, whose housewares were too paltry even to be itemized. Thus, we see a clear generational difference in the material circumstances of brothers Barend the elder, Willem, and Andries compared to Willem's sons: Barend the younger and Schalk Willem.

The difference lies not only in the total value of the community property assessed at the death of a spouse, but in what that increased wealth meant in terms of daily living. The small lump-sum assessment of housewares reported by sisters Maria and Elsje van der Merwe in the 17205 and 17305 suggests a different class position than the more elaborate inventories of sisters Helena and Hester Smit in the 17705 and 17805, yet all four women were Burger wives living in the contested zone of a colonial frontier. In spite of the sizable land claims and evident prosperity associated with Schalk Willem and Hester, they were no more a part of the Cape gentry than their parents or grandparents had been.64 They were, instead, more affluent stock farmers who chose to display some of their wealth through domestic consumption, the description of which is detailed in household inventories that differ significantly from those of their parents1 generation of frontier settlers.