Paulina's ghost at Rickety Bridge

Carrying on with Celia at the wine farm.

Being marketing minded, Celia promoted the idea of Paulina’s ghost being around, telling clients at the tasting that if they drank enough wine they might be able to see Paulina. While people laughed, the idea stuck and became legend but backlashed at harvest time.

In those days it was fashionable to harvest at midnight and the pickers felt the clammy hand of a ghost in every breath of breeze and heard the rustle of a spectre’s dress in each flutter of the leaves. Celia spent a good deal of time reassuring nervous wide eyed pickers that they were not about to be snatched into another world. 

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The tragic tale of Paulina's Dal/Rickety Bridge continued into 1867 when the then owner, Du Toit, lost the farm. In his insolvency papers he complained he had to pay interest on the whole of the purchase price annually as well as support a large family despite the value of his wine crops falling due to the disease in the vines. Du Toit owed £1125, the amount he had paid for the property fourteen years earlier but,which was now worth only £580.

He had two main debts, one for £700, the outstanding balance of the loan from Paulina's father, Paul, which he used to buy the farms. Had the loan still been in Paul's name, things might have been different, but,for some reason, the loan had been transferred to Paulina's grandson, who was probably in similar financial difficulties and dependent on the interest.

There may be more to it, of course. The second claim on poor du Toit was for the £425 outstanding on the bond he had given to Paulina's husband, Pepler, which had been transferred to an outsider.  As Pepler's will showed his estate consisted of  no more than ‘some furniture valued at £25’ and his death certificate noted that he had been ‘lately a shopkeeper’, it may be that Pepler's grandson felt du Toit's inability to pay his debts had forced grandfather Pepler into virtual poverty and was unsympathetic to du Toit's problems. I'm making this into a story and must stick to facts but the temptation to create motives and turn this into a family saga is great because ~~~ in 1868, Paulinas Dal was auctioned and bought by Willem Jacobus Dirkse van Schalkwyk, whose wife, Francina Hester de Villiers, was another descendent of the original de Villiers brothers, the great-grand-daughter of Paulina's uncle Jacob.

The image is of the tea garden at Franschhoek memorial.

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In the 1850’s the group of small farms that included Paulina's Dal suffered two major convulsions, first when it was sold to Daniel Jacobus Du Toit and later, when du Toit sold a portion of the property and created what became Rickety Bridge out of what land he retained. This Du Toit could trace his ancestry back through his mother Anna Margarita de Villiers to David, a brother of Paulina’s father and a grandson of Jacques de Villiers. 

Leading up to 1850 the wine industry had taken a knock and was heading for depression.

In 1840 the exports had been   465 773 gallons

In 1850 they were reduced to  246 132 gallons

By 1853 this was down to       182 322 gallons

In that year a consignment to England lost its owners £3000 and on a similar consignment to Madagascar, £4000.

However, at that point, the local industry received a boost when the powdery mildew, Oidium Tucheri, devastated the vineyards of Europe, lifting the price of a leaguer of Cape wine, roughly 120 gallons, from 67 to 82 Rix dollars.

It may be that this created one of those sudden surges in an economic sector for which South Africa is famous and convinced people, like D. J. du Toit, that the wine industry was ripe for investment.

Whatever the reason, du Toit bought the farms, including Paulina's Dal for £1125 in 1853, taking a mortgage bond from Albertus Jacob de Villiers for £500,

Du Toit also took a mortgage on the properties from Paulina’s father, Paul, for £1000, presumably to finance a replanting and expansion. It meant Du Toit's mortgage on  the property now stood at £1500 when its market value, set by his own purchase, was only £1125, and the scene was set for his insolvency.

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Rickety Bridge - Going back to 1830. In that year the farm was owned by Catharina, the widow Pepler, and when her son married Catharina's second cousin, the twenty year old Paulina de Villiers, Catharina installed them in the newly built manor house with its built in wall cabinet that still graces the ‘voorkamer’ in thee picture.

The marriage was a family affair and Paulina and the Peplers could both trace ancestry back to Jacques de Villiers, one of the three original immigrant Huguenot brothers. Palina had two children and enjoyed the manor house for only six years before dying at her father's farm.

What was Paulina like? 

No pictures have come to light. Since she died in 1836 at the age of twenty six, one assumes she was not particularly robust and a picture of a frail beauty comes to mind. Paulina did have two children however, so frailty seems inappropriate.

Her death certificate records only that she died at Groot Drakenstein but the law required it to be signed by ‘a close relative, who had been present at, or near the persons death or, in the absence of such, by the person who shall have chief charge of the house in, or of the place on which, the death took place’.

It is Paulina’s father, Paul, who signed the certificate bu t it makes no mention of whether she was thrown from a horse, or if she had gone to her mother to be nursed.

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Rickety Bridge story. In 1847 Pepler sold the farm, really a collection of smaller farms, to a chap called du Toit who paid a deposit but agreed a mortgage of £500 for the balance with Pepler. Du Toit also arranged a loan of £1000 from Paul de Villiers of Boschendal, Paulina's father and his own father-in-law, giving himself a debt of £1500 on a property he had bought for £1125, and set about farming. In 1860 the bottom fell out of the wine business and du Toit was left with a debt of £1500 on a property valued at £580 - negative equity!! Du Toit declared bankruptcy and the piece of the farms that included what is now Rickety Bridge was bought at auction by Willem Jacobus Dirkse van Schalkwyk, the husband of Francina Hester de Villiers. The farm was owned by the van Schalkwyks from then until 1953.

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Paulinasdal

SO much for the general history of South African wine after Waterloo. Let me concentrate on Rickety Bridge.

In 1831, Albertus Pepler married Paulina Maria Deborah de Villiers, the daughter of Paul de Villiers of Boschendal and the couple moved into the new manor house on what was, at that time, part of a bigger farm called Zanddrift, owned by Albertus's mother, Elizabeth Catharina, the widow Pepler.

 Two years later, in 1833, to adapt to the changing conditions when Britain reduced the tariff on French wines, Elisabeth Catharina extended her holdings by 81 morgen of grazing land, giving the whole the name Zanddrift and seems to have used her son, Albertus, as farm manager.

In 1836 Paulina died at the age of twenty-six and, in her memory, her husband changed the name of the enlarged farm from Zanddrift to Paulina’s Dal, the change being recorded on several maps and documents.

The picture is looking up the valley from the manor house towards Franschhoek.

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My research into Rickety Bridge and the state of the South African wine industry uncovered the unscrupulous dealings in all kinds of rot gut during the Napoleonic wars, which almost finished that industry when Napoleon was defeated and French wine became available in Britain. One must remember that soldiering often exposed soldiers to water of doubtful quality and, those who could afford it drank wine, even rot gut in preference to what could be scooped out of the open sewers that were rivers in those days. The result was that South African wine, quite deservedly gained a reputation fr being undrinkable except 'in extremis' and the farmers, like the Pepplers at what would become Rickety Bridge, were forced to turn turn to alternative crops - like milk and pork.
The picture is of the Rickety Bridge the winery is now named after.

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There it is, a tractor museum, a canon from the Napoleonic wars and a wine farm all on Hooggelegen. Just let me add this last item. When I was there Ryk de Wit was trying to organise a stipr of land some 12 miles long as a nature ramble and conservation area but was having difficulty convincing his neighbours that they should all participate. His idea was that it would not just be a ramble but a corridor along which small mammals could travel and maintain the health of the gene pool. As well as this and the views from the top of the mountain there are more species of flora in the Western Cape than in the whole of the UK.
On the top of the rocks in front of the trees, one of the dassies is sitting. Unfortunately, the image won't magnify to show it properly.

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