This text has been kindly donated by Daphne Goldsmith
Home page http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/golden/

Being an amateur genealogist, initially I found it difficult to know how to research in South Africa so as I learned I compiled this list.

The pages are compiled from various sources.

The main source used by SA genealogists is deceased estate files.These are the most easily accessible and have the most comprehensive information.

Whenever someone dies, the nearest relative or connection of the deceased is supposed to submit a Death Notice (not the same as a Death Certificate) to the Master of the Supreme Court who has jurisdiction where the person resides.
The death notice should give the names of parents, spouses and children of the deceased, and if no children, the names of brothers and sisters, and should also say whether the deceased left a will, movable or immovable property, and property over a certain value.

If the Death Notice is filled up properly, it can be very informative, but if the informant was a boarding house keeper and the deceased was a transient with no property, it may not tell one much. Sometimes people who have no property to speak of do not get death notices filled in, and no one notices. If the person had a bank account however, even with only a few cents in it, there has to be authorisation from the Master to close it. If the deceased owed money, again, there has to be authorisation from the Master for creditors to collect.

So the records are not complete. Someone who died without a bank account, owing nothing, and owning nothing that needs registration, might not be recorded. The family would divvy up the property amicably (old clothes, perhaps a goat or two, a few bits of furniture or whatever) and the Master would be none the wiser. On the other hand, intestate estates where people owned immovable property, a messy divorce, a complicated will or other such things can lead to a lot more information than is contained in the death notice, including sworn affidavits about who was related to whom. If there isn't anything in the deceased estates, then, depending on the period, one looks at the records of births, marriages and deaths.

However you can't look at them directly: you have to apply to the Department of Home Affairs, and very often they want you to give them precisely the missing bit of information you are looking for in order to find the record you want. Like they want to know the place and date of birth. Actually, only birth records are much help - marriage and death certificates don't record parents names etc. There are church records, but with 8000+ different denominations, you need to be something of a fundi in church history to know where to look. When I found the marriage I was looking for at the correct church, I was disappointed to find that it named only bride and groom and two witnesses.

Voters rolls can help, and the 1989 tricameral one is available on microfiche in some institutions. And earlier white one was available as well, about 1978, I think. It can help to group families at the same address, and establish dates of birth, but the relationships are guesses. Others before that are patchy. One sometimes find them in Government Gazettes and similar publications. The Natal Government gazette has some lists of voters before 1910. But most South African genealogists use these as supplementary information. The main source remains the Deceased Estate records.

An example of one of my family death index listings -

MOOC 6/9/2451 ref 1071:
Lydia Bennett, nee Ball,
born in Yorkshire,
parents: William and Maria Ball,
residing at Southampton Villa, Ashleigh Road, Green Point, Cape Town,
died at the above address on 24 April 1923, aged 81 years,
married at St Georges Cathederal, Cape Town to John Bennett,
children:
Hannah Maria Bennett - spinster,
John David Bennett,
Harriet Bennett - deceased,
Alice Bennett - deceased,
Annie Nita Musgrave,
Mary Anne Hazelwood,
Emily Hardy,
Robert Bennett.

Incidentally Robert BENNETT was my grandfather and he said he was born in Burnley Lancs in the UK and would only give his mother and fathers names nothing else. The family did know he had a sister that had lived in SA but only her christian name 'Nita'. I searched the UK endlessly for 4 years.

Then after trying to find a researcher in SA to try and find 'Nita' as a last ditch effort, at last I had a major breakthru, and the above was the first result a few weeks later.

To find that my grandfather was one of 8 children blew me away and from this first I have since traced my living family in SA. who are suprised to find there is a whole family branch here in NZ they didn't know about.

You may want to use a researcher to do the work there -

Two researchers I am familiar with are
Grant Nurden nurden@futurenet.co.za
Paul Cheifitz pcheiftz@global.co.za

Here are a couple more that I have not used personally
Val Hayes
PO Box 7648, Pretoria, 0001 RSA
sentpta@acenet.co.za


Steve Hayes
PO Box 7648, Pretoria, 0001 RSA
methodius@bigfoot.com

Don McArthur
Box 513, Parklands, 2121, RSA
donmac@netactive.co.za
If you feel up to doing the research yourself then here is a list of Archive etc addresses -
THE SOUTH AFRICAN GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
http://genweb.net/~mercon/

NATIONAL ARCHIVES
arg01@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Registration
arg02@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Secretary of Directorate If all else fails
arg03@dacst4.pwv.gov.za National Archivist
arg04@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Mariaan Anderson
arg05@dacst.pwv.gov.za Verne Harris
arg06@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Hendi Slump
arg07@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Clive Kirkwood
arg08@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Mandy Gilder
arg09@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Ethel Kriger
arg10@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Letitia Calitz Reading Room
arg11@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Louisa Venter
arg12@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Madelaine Meyer
arg13@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Marcel van Rossum
arg14@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Ramila Naidoo
arg16@dacst4.pwv.gov.za Records Management
arg17@dacst4.pwv.gov.za National Archives Repository

DURBAN ARCHIVES
darch01@webmail.co.za

darch02@webmail.co.za

darch03@webmail.co.za


PIETERMARITZBURG ARCHIVES
pmarch01@webmail.co.za

pmarch02@webmail.co.za

pmarch03@webmail.co.za

CAPE TOWN
capearch01@webmail.co.za

BLOEMFONTEIN ARCHIVES
fsarch01@webmail.co.za


Once you start to explore in SA you will hear of the STAIRS file - this is an explanation

Basically a STAIRS file is extractions from the Index to the data contained within the National Archives in South Africa. Among this data you may found Death Notices, Wills, probates, adoptions, land grands, photos etc. A treasure chest for the genealogist. You can request a surname search from the archives in Pretoria, but they are currently short of staff and a request might take months before it is processed. Alternatively, you can visit the archives in person ??? and do the search yourself, or you may obtain the services of a professional genealogist that will do the search and also retrieve the relevant documents for you at a fee. STAIRS is an acronym coined by the developers of the STAIRS mainframe database system -IBM, and stands for: STorage And Information Retrieval System.

A group of genealogists recently formed SAGenTech, and the first project they tackled was to collect all the STAIRS data that is in the possession of people from around the world. This data will be made available online for searching purposes. A demonstration of this project can be viewed at: http://24.192.27.53/SaGenTech/

There is a South African list at SOUTH-AFRICA-L@rootsweb
To join the list SOUTH-AFRICA-L-request@rootsweb.com with subscribe in the message section.

(Submitted by: Dafanie Goldsmith)