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No more is known about Cornelis Verwey except that two years after receiving his grant he sold

the land to one Francois Smit for 2,600 guilders (about £65), thus ensuring a tidy profit for doing
nothing at all! It was Francois Smit, his wife Huibrecht, and their descendants who sub-divided

the land and sold it off piece by piece over the next 50 or so years. Parts of the 1817 grant were
finally transferred as derelict land from the Smit estate by the City of Cape Town as late as 1960.

Francois Smit died in about 1825. In 1839 his widow Huibrecht, then aged 74 and living on a

plot at Kalk Bay, wrote to the Governor asking for a waiver or reduction in taxes. She said she

had lived in the district for 54 years (ie. from about 1775.) Her husband had died 14 years before,
leaving her with children to support. Her son had an injured leg and often could not work. She

also mentions that she has a lime-burning business but the shells had to be fetched from a great

distance. On her plot she could only grow some potatoes and other vegetables and she had a
mortgage for £150. She had paid taxes up to 1836 but was now asking for relief.

The Governor’s office noted on her letter that if relief was given to one person everyone would

be writing in, and so this tale of woe was rejected and tax relief refused.

Land Grant to Lorentz Alexander Oxholm, 1824

The second land grant was to Lorentz Alexander Oxholm. (Fig. 3.4, being Erf 89749 – on this

can be seen the position of the future Belmont Road, and there is reference to the fish house of P.
L. Cloete, which would have been on Fishery Beach. Cloete was an early resident of Kalk Bay

and in 1807 had applied to erect a temporary furnace here for blubber-burning.

Oxholm had an interesting background. He was an officer with the Danish East India Company

and had lost everything at the fall of the Danish trading fort at Tranquebar on the Indian coast to
the (British) East India Company in 1808. He arrived in Cape Town the following year in very

poor health with a 3-year old daughter, and it is assumed his wife had died. What father and

young daughter had gone through is hard to imagine. He was given a lowly job by the Cape
Government and within months was writing to the Governor complaining that his superior was

treating him badly. This is background to his being granted a piece of land of 1 morgen 440