Jan Christoffel is the first child out of Matthys Stephanus' second marriage. His oldest half-brother is no less than 47 years older than him -- almost two generations in time. He is eleven years old when his 84 year old father dies in the Bloemfontein district. His mother, Susanna van den Berg, remarries some three years later. Jan and his younger siblings move with their mother to Fontainebleau, the farm of their new stepfather, Gideon Philippus van Zyl, in the Ladybrand district of the Eastern Free State.

Jan is confirmed in the Ladybrand Dutch Reformed Church on 22 February 1884. After this, we lose track of him for one-an-a-half decades.

On 26 March 1889, he marries Aletta Elisabeth Lategan of the farm Altona in the same district. At this time Jan is on the farm Lowridge or Louwridge in the Ladybrand district. The marriage is in the Ladybrand parish of the Dutch Reformed Church. He is described at this time in the marriage documentation as a "Zaaiboer" (a crop farmer). Until 1898 the couple baptises four sons and one daughter in the same church. However, in 1898 the family moves to Brandfort north of Bloemfontein, where they baptise at least one more son in 1899. And this is when the Anglo-Boer War breaks out and devastates the pastoral democracy of the Orange Free State.

At this point, somewhere in the vicinity of Brandfort in the Free State, we lose track of Jan Christoffel Stephanus and his wife and family. We can find absolutely no further record of either Jan or Aletta Lategan; no concentration camp records, no death notices, no Anglo Boer War records, no baptisms; absolutely nothing. They simply disappear from all records to which we have access.

Any information from family members would be welcome, as would any help from genealogists.