Page 129 - Bulletin 19 2015

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In 1897 Brown sold to Hendrick Pieter Hablutzel and Frederick Hermanus Scheundorff Hugo
who in turn sold it to Frederick James Mills the same year. It is assumed that it was from the

Mills family that it came to be known as Millwood.

Frederick was married to Johanna Jacoba Gertruida van Blerk and they had children aged 9, 7
and 2 years when he died unexpectedly aged only 48 on 21 July 1900. This was obviously a

tragedy for the family. He had taken several mortgages, including one from Isabel Jane
Findlay for £1,700 to buy this and other property in Kalk Bay and 18 plots in Muizenberg.

Fortunately for his family the estate was solvent and his widow inherited £3,595 17s 5d.

Just over a year after her husband’s death, Johanna married Frederick’s brother Henry
William Mills at St. James on the 26 September 1901. In terms of the laws of the time by

marrying Johanna he assumed ownership of her properties and over the next 6 years took out

mortgages totalling £7,200 on them. They were from a variety of sources, among others Kate
Isabella Trill, Stephen Trill and second and third mortgages from Brown Lawrence & Co.,

who by then were trying to keep him and the business afloat.

It seems that Henry was not as astute as his brother. With a deep post-Anglo Boer War

recession the inevitable happened. He was declared insolvent in 1908 but was rehabilitated in

1910. Trading as F J Mills & Co. he was declared insolvent again in 1911. Proceedings went
on until his insolvent estate was wound up in 1915 and he disappeared from the Kalk Bay

record. Poor Johanna had lost her own and the children’s inheritance. To rub salt in the
wound after a lengthy battle with the executors of her father’s estate she had received a small

inheritance. Law at the time meant half of it went in to her husband’s insolvent estate. A
further tragedy was that her eldest son, also Frederick, was killed on active service aged 21 in

1917.