koster, noun

/ˈkɔstə(r)/
Origin:
DutchShow more Dutch, verger, beadle.
1. The verger or caretaker of a Dutch Reformed church.
1786 G. Forster tr. of A. Sparrman’s Voy. to Cape of G.H. I. 67 (Pettman)A little further on lived a koster or sexton, a set of people that are more respected by the colonists than with us.
1909 George & Knysna Herald 11 Aug. 3I have to pay the Predikant and the Koster their fees, then there would have to be swell clothes and carts and eetmaal..no, I prefer the court to the Koster.
1934 Week-End Advertiser 10 Mar. (Swart)After the funeral address the koster requests the bearers to bring the corpse forward, and the coffin is placed with its two extremities on the seats of two chairs until the sterflys is read by the koster.
1951 L.G. Green Grow Lovely 30Cape Town has only one trilogy of eighteenth-century buildings — the Dutch Lutheran Church with the koster’s (sexton’s) house on one side and the Martin Melck, formerly the parsonage, on the other.
1957 L.G. Green Beyond City Lights 23Paarl said farewell shortly after World War II to an oak planted in the main street in 1824 by Mr J.J. Luttig, koster of the Dutch Reformed Church.
1991 H. Ault Informant, Port Alfred, Eastern CapeWe’re thinking of asking the dominee, the landdros, the diakens and ouderlinge, and the koster.
1993 C. Louw in Weekly Mail 4 June 8Walking up and down like a Dopper koster.., making sure that everything was in order.
‖2. combinations in historical contexts.
kosterhuis/-hœɪs/ [Afrikaans, huis house], a house provided for a beadle;
koster school [Dutch (plural scholen)], see quotation 1934.
1873 W.L. Sammons in A.M.L. Robinson Sel. Articles from Cape Monthly Mag. (1978) 267The Kosterhuis stood on the site of the present Groot Kerkgebou and slightly in front of the Church.
1934 C.P. Swart Supplement to Pettman. 96Koster Scholen,..In the nineteenth century schools in sparsely populated areas were run by Church clerks who received an annual government grant of £60 and a plot of land.
1934 M.E. McKerron Hist. of Educ. 18Schools run by Church clerks, and known as Koster Scholen (i.e. beadle schools) were instituted.
The verger or caretaker of a Dutch Reformed church.
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