This is where I'm planning to put the Oosthuizen family history, or anything of family-interest for any Oosthuizen, Oosthuyzen, Oosthuyse Oosthuisen of Oosthuysen.  For example, if you don't know what the family crest looks like, here it is.  I didn't know either, until I found it at Corrie Oosthuizen's website in June 2004.  In the meantime, if you have anything family-related that you think people would like to or should see (or if you only have something to say about the website or the family), go ahead and e-mail me.  My address is Jeremy at Oosthuizen.name*.

At some point, I'll also add a guestbook, so people can see your comments sooner.  However, if you're bashful about your comments, you may still e-mail me privately!

The main reason I started this website, was to make the Oosthuizen-history available to everyone.  Whether it is in my branch or not, doesn't really matter - there is a link somewhere in the past.  If you have a website with Oosthuizen-related family history, please let me know and we can swap links.

What I've found out so far (except what I know about my immediate family), is that every Oosthuizen, Oosthuyzen, Oosthuysen and Oosthuisen comes from Johannes Oosthuyzen (or Oosthuysen).  He originally came from Weert in the Netherlands and became a Cape burgher in Drakenstein in 1691.  Therefore, he must have arrived some time before that.  He was married to Johanna Martens (from Grijpskerk, also in the Netherlands) and they had seven children.

 In the meantime, here is the town in the Netherlands (this link doesn't always work; if not, go look at the train station) after which we were named, or maybe it was named after us.  There is also a website with pictures of the train station, which is apparently not used anymore.  Maybe I'll go there sometime – I currently live in Paris, France -- and put a picture or two here.  That's if I can drag my wife there.  Let me know if you have a picture in electronic format, which I can place here.

Until later!

Jeremy

*  I know you're smart enough to figure it out, but of course the word "at" has to be replaced by the “@”.  I'm writing it like that here, to "fool" the "spambots".  In case you don't know what a spambot is: It is a program that searches for e-mail addresses on any websites on the Internet, after which the spambots' owners will send those addresses spam – any garbage, mainly advertisements for drugs and pornography.  The word spambot comes from the words “spam” (any junk e-mail) and “bot” (from “robot”, because it does a menial task repetatively).  The spambot's job is very simple: it looks for an @-sign in each word.  Of course an e-mail address looks like a single word to a computer program, since it contains no spaces.  The bot then tries to check if the word really is an e-mail address, which mostly means that it would end in something like .com, .name, .co.za, .edu.  When it finds one, it goes on a list and voila! the poor e-mail address' owner gets more spam than they can delete.  The lesson from this: be careful with your e-mail address!

More spam-info: Some “spammers” (the people who send out spam) secretly put spam-programs on the computers of unsuspecting people.  Without the user knowing, the computer then sends spam to other people.  ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) have started to cut these unsuspecting people off from e-mail.  It may sound cruel, but it really is a good thing.  The unsuspecting user is informed that this program is on their computer, and told how to remove it.  They can then continue sending e-mail undisturbed, while the spammer has to look for another victim.

 Click here if you want to know more about spambots and junk e-mail - and it is a good thing, if you don't want to be overwhelmed by junk.