Matching long forgotten signatures

The Death Notice for Arend Johannes van der Veen also fleshed out an insight into my grand-father's siblings.

In the winter of 1967 I was in Messina visiting my Pa's family, I have traces of the visit in my little Autograph Book, a copper plate with an etched baobab and a poem, a signature and  the date.

I now know who that signature belongs to, my Pa's sister, Johanna Jacoba Roos (nee van der Veen). Also known as Sissie.

One of the documents in the folder I had requested at the National Archives in Pretoria is a Notarial Deed of Donation and gives the detail of Arend donating his property in Gezina to his 3 children on the 2 September 1939.

Doreen calls me the 'detective'. So here is what I am surmising. Arend's wife Sarah Petronella had died the year before, in 1938, he then met Ellis Vivian, wanted to marry her but also needed to secure his children's inheritance, hence the donation of his property a year later.

What I love though is that this document lists his children, so I know now that Pa was the oldest, born in 1905, of 3 and he had 2 sisters, Johanna Jacoba, born in 1909 and the youngest Mary Wilhelmina, born in 1913.

At the time of the donation both sisters were married.

They all signed the document in 1939. How remarkable to see my great-grandfather's signature as donor, my grandfather William Henry's signature as a donee as well as those of his 2 sisters.

Sissie's signature is identical to that in my little Autograph Book, 28 years later in 1967. I wonder why she got to chose this extract from the rather melancholy Clough poem?

Arthur Hugh Clough: 1819 - 1861

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!