Ewald Johannes Jooste
& Charmeon Theresa Fish

I · The union

Kosmos, Hartebeespoort Dam · 23 August 1986

Ewald Johannes Jooste, born 19 August 1957, and Charmeon Theresa Fish, born 14 April 1962, were married on 23 August 1986 at Kosmos on the Hartebeespoort Dam. Three children followed at Sandton, each baptised at Edenvale; the first grandchild arrived at Sydney in 2025. This card stands at the union itself — the generation the documented line passes through on its way from the Cape and the Transvaal to a fourth continent.

II · Two houses, one shield

Impalement — the marshalling of a marriage

Heraldry marshals a marriage by impalement: the shield is divided per pale, the husband's arms fill the dexter half (the bearer's right, the viewer's left) and the wife's paternal arms fill the sinister half. Of the four marshalling methods it is the one "most often used to denote the union of a husband and wife" (Fox-Davies 1909, ch. 33, via the engine's CAP-MAR-001). Frans Joosten and Maria Mouton's 1706 marriage was this family's first such union on record; the 1986 marriage is the ninth in the direct line.

What the halves hold is the substance of the next two sections. The dexter half has an answer with a history attached: arms the family has displayed for at least eighty-one years, which the canonical register assigns to another family. The sinister half has no answer yet, and the project's own rules forbid inventing one — the industry this record stands against would have sold a "Fish coat of arms" by return of post.

III · The carriers

The families marshalled at this union

By the record's own rule, a family's arms speak its full identity: the father's and the mother's sides sit at equal weight. At this union the dexter side carries eight documented families in the Jooste direct line; the sinister side carries one, newly opened.

IV · Position in the lineage

G1 · the rung the surfaces were missing

Until this card the atlas ran from G4 (1906) straight to G-1 (2025): the three living generations between had no surface and no claims in the family register. The spine below fills G1–G3 from the workbook and the family Bible; the rows above and below are as the Jonty card carries them.

G1–G3 from the workbook (Jooste sheet R3–R18) + SRC-2026-063; G4–G12 as carried at the Jonty card §III and the atlas chrono-index. Generation numbering follows the atlas (G9 = Frans), not the workbook's eight-generation count.

V · The arms, as the record has them

Eighty-one years in print, in iron, and at home — and whose they are

The family has displayed one coat of arms for as long as anyone now living remembers: a chevron between three mascles, tabbed JOOSTE or JOOSTEN. The record can say when that began, by what route it arrived, and what the canonical armorials say about it. The card tells all three, and holds what it cannot settle.

The chain, oldest to newest

1884 · the canonical register

Rietstap, Armorial général, vol. 1 (Gouda 1884), p. 1048, Joost — Holland: “D'arg. au chev. d'azur, acc. de trois mâcles de gu.” — Argent, a chevron Azure between three mascles Gules; crowned helm; crest a greyhound issuant; supporters two greyhounds; motto Fidelitas mea lex. An exact blazon match for the family's displayed arms (SRC-2026-016, dispositive).

1945 · the Afrikaans popular-genealogy column

Die Brandwag prints the same shield, tabbed JOOSTE, beside the Swart arms, in a column literally titled Know Yourself. The family's association with these arms is in print from this date — some forty years before the grandfather's ironwork, and by an Afrikaner route rather than (only) an Anglo mail-order one (SRC-2026-063 §3).

Mid-20th century · the album image

A printed “family name + arms” product in the grandfather's album, surname JOOSTEN in Roman capitals at the base — the actual design he worked from (SRC-2026-004).

The gate and the wall

Ewald Cronjé Jooste commissioned the arms in wrought iron for a gate and a wall mount; the family has used them across generations since (SRC-2026-001).

2026 · this record

The displayed arms are entered in the family register at the family-private tier with their blazon and their provenance (CLM-ARM-006); the canonical attribution stands beside them.

SRC-2026-001 · SRC-2026-003 · SRC-2026-004 · SRC-2026-016 · SRC-2026-063 §3 · CLM-ARM-006 · CLM-JOO-001 · DEVELOPMENT_CHAIN_MILESTONE §2.1

VI · What only you can tell the record

The readings and the facts that live at this table

The record reads old handwriting as well as it can, and then stops. You two can read the rest: Ewald, the man whose baptism certificate is tucked in the Bible was your father, and the couple on the hand-written page were your grandparents. What the record cannot read, you can — and what you tell goes into it.

• The year on the Bible page. The workbook says your grandparents married on 14 December 1914; the hand-written page reads 1916 or 1918 at the photograph. One look at the original settles it.
• Your father's baptism certificate. Day, month, year, parish and his mother's first name — the record's first reading was wrong on at least two of these; the reading above is a second look, not a settlement. Is it right?
• Charmeon's family — now on record, and yours to confirm. The record now holds the line from you through your father Terence and your grandfather Fred, the Mayor of Bathurst, back to the Somerset parishes the saved page begins in. What it would love from you: your own memories — the house on Rocket Street and at Kelso, the school, the old workshop; how a Bathurst girl came to Kosmos; who saved the lineage page; any papers, photographs or objects the Fish family holds; and whether a coat of arms was ever used or spoken of — a ring, a seal, a plaque, anything from the mayoral years.
• The Lombard and Cronje parents. Maria Magdalena Lombard's father is written in the workbook as “Paul(us)…” and Hermina Elizabeth Cronje's parents are blank. Their names start two long threads back to the Cape — to Pierre Lombard at Stellenbosch in 1715 and to Pierre Cronier.
• The certificates. Your own marriage at Kosmos in 1986; Ewald Cronjé and Maria Magdalena's at Tulbagh in 1955; your grandparents' in Johannesburg — none is in the record yet.
• The 1945 column. Its Jooste genealogy is now transcribed; where Theunissen got the coat of arms from is still the open question — and the story he relays, that the Joostes came from Italy, from a D'Aosta: have you heard it told?