MATRIMONIAL RECORD OF A BOER WIDOW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1035, 5 December 1912, Page 4

MATRIMONIAL RECORD OF A BOER WIDOW.

Mrs Theila M. de Beer, a widow, seventy-eight years of age, residing at Pretoria, probably holds the world's record in matrimonial ventures.

At the age of eighteen she married Petrus Jacobus Lubbe, who died, leaving her with one child.

Ten months later she took another husband, a widower with three children.

A year and five months afterwards he also died, leaving her with four children. Within five months she married for the third time, another widower, this time with seven children. With him she lived for eleven years, and had seven children, when he also died. After five years’ widowhood she married for the fourth time, on this occasion a widower with eight children. With him she bad four children, and after eleven years he, too, died. Five, years later she married a man named Hendrik Klopper. Another eleven years elapsed, and then her fifth husband died, leaving her with ten children. In two years’ time she contracted another marriage with Hendrik Van Wyk, a widower, who brought five children to swell the family.

Another eleven years passed, and he 100, went the way o! his five predecessors, his death occurring only recently.

Mrs de Beer is now the mother and stepmother of 49 children and the grandmother of 270.