[2] For fifteen months he joined the Orange Free State forces in the Basuto Gun War.
[2] Between 1881 and 1897 de Villiers was the landdrost of several towns including Pretoria, Barberton and Lydenburg.
[8][9] The British then appointed Colonel Walter Alfred John O'Meara as the new mayor and administrator of the city.
[2] They had 8 children: Rachel Gerhardina, Secondus Petrus, Anna Matilda, Margaretha, Johan Zulch Voight, George Ferdinan Esselen, Ludowicus van der Merwe, and Septima Elizabeth Bland.
[11] His daughter Anna Matilda later married George Wreford Hudson, the master and registrar of the Swaziland court.