page_title: Koopmans-de Wet House
section_title: Occupants
hierarchical_section_title: Koopmans-de Wet House / Occupants
caption_attribution_description: English: Marie Koopmans-de Wet as a young woman by the studio of Lawrence Brothers of Caledon Street, Cape Town, South Africa
context_page_description: Koopmans-de Wet House is a former residence and current museum in Strand Street, Cape Town, South Africa. The house became part of the South African Museum in 1913 and was opened to the public on 10 March 1914. It was declared a National Monument under National Monuments Council legislation on 1 November 1940. It is the oldest house museum in South Africa.
context_section_description: The early dwelling, now substantially extended and altered, was built in 1701 by Reijnier Smedinga, silversmith, goldsmith, jeweller and joint assayer to the Dutch East India Company. In 1722, Anthonij Hoesemans, lessee of a Company's wine license, took ownership of the house and erf 8. His enjoyment of the property was brief, for in 1723 the minutes of the Council of Policy at the Cape of Good Hope begin to refer to Claas van Donselaar, a soldier who had been released from his contract on 4 May 1723, as the lessee of the wine license. Both Hoesemans and his wife, Rijkje van Donselaar, had died earlier that year. Claas van Donselaar was uncle to Rijkje van Donselaar and was made executor of the estate, along with Daniel Thibault and Jan Smit. The property was transferred to Jacob Leever in 1724, to Hendrik van Aarde in 1730, and from him to Willem Pool (c.1744).
  A German carpenter, Johan Fredrik Willem Böttiger, the owner from 1748 to 1771 increased the area of the property and enlarged the house. Böttiger was a Burgher Councillor and is thus distinguished for being a member of the very first town council in South Africa.
  Pieter Malet, the owner from 1771 to 1793, and his wife, Catharina Kruins, added to the property by installing the slave-quarters over a coach-house at the back, building a second rear wing and adding uppers stories to both wings. It is also in his time that the current façade was added. When Malet died, Hendrik Vos bought the house from his widow.
  Vos and his wife, Maria Anna Colyn, lived in the house from 1796 to 1806. They had four children while living in there.
  Margaretha Jacoba Smuts, the widow of the President of the Burgher Council, Hendrik Justinus de Wet, acquired the property in 1806. Some time after her husband died in 1802, she had sold their house on the corner of Heerengracht (Adderley Street) and Castle Street and moved with their five children and her stepson.
  De Wet left a large estate, including slaves. Margaretha had retained seven slaves: Jonas van de Caab, a cooper; Citie, his "wife"; Hector and Jacob, their children; Theresia; Kito van Mosambique, a cook; and July, a houseboy. By 1816, ten slaves were registered to the widow Smuts. July is not listed, but the new slaves were: Lafleur, a woodcutter; Lendor, a woodcutter, who in a later document is reported to have died on 31 December 1822; Kado (alias Bejoen), a tailor; Nancy, a girl, aged about 4.
  The brothers Johannes, Fredrick and Petrus de Wet inherited the house after her death in 1840, and Johannes decided to buy the others out. He married Adriana Dorothea Horak, a granddaughter of Martin Melck, and the daughter of Jan Andries Horak, whose ancestor had built the Smedinga house. They had two daughters Maria (Marie) and Margaretha. Marie had been born in the house on 18 March 1834.
  Marie de Wet married Johan Koopmans in 1864 and it is this union that gave rise to the current name of the house. The death of Johan Koopmans in 1880, sent Maria into an extended period of mourning, during which she travelled abroad, meeting King William III of the Netherlands. On her return she and her sister lived in Koopmans-de Wet House and turned it into a salon, and a transit point for supplies donated to Boer prisoners of war during the South African War.
caption: Marie de Wet as a young woman
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