Genealogical Society of South Africa
Durban and Coastal Branch
Volume 22 Issue 4/2006
New Members
We would like to extend a very warm welcome to our new member, Dennis Andrews, and wish him lots of success in his research and a fruitful association with the Society.
***
Message from the
Treasurer
GOOD NEWS!!!!
Our membership fee for 2007 remains at R100. Please note that subscriptions may be deposited in ANY branch of
Nedbank in South Africa – our banking details are :
Account Name : The
Genealogical Society of South Africa
Bank : Nedbank
Account No. : 2144
092 346 (Durban North)
NB : Members banking via
INTERNET must quote the Code No. 114405 as well as our account number. Please notify the treasurer of your renewal
either by post, telephone (evenings) or by e-mail.
We would like to remind members of our local
branch, who are familiar with the internet, that they are entitled to RENEW
their membership of the GSSA in the electronic (virtual) branch, i.e.
eGSSA. If our members decide to avail
themselves of this option, please remember to elect “Durban and Coastal” as
your land-based branch. In this way you
will have the best of both worlds, the facilities on offer at the FHC in
Durban, as well as all the resources based in the internet branch. For more
information on this option, please contact one of the committee members.
The members’ section of eGSSA includes access to
this year’s issues of genesis and Familia (the quarterly journal of GSSA). These can be downloaded as zipped PDF
files. A special issue of genesis,
commemorating the 40th anniversary of GSSA is available on http://www.fmxau.com/feesskrif.pdf
(± 1.5 mb).
A complete list of all the articles which have
appeared in Familia during the period 1964 to 2004 is available on the eGSSA
web page. The URL is : http://www.eggsa.org.
The Familia index is divided into the following
sub-groupings :
Miscellaneous / Family and General
Genealogies / Cemeteries /
Biographies of Members / Emigration
/ Genealogical Services and
Genealogists / Heraldry
/ Surnames A-Z / Immigration General, British Settlers, Germans,
Huguenots, Irish, Italians, Jews, Military, Dutch, Portuguese, and St. Helena,
to name but a few groupings.
***
Library News
Continuation of available books in our library :
Research Material :
·
Cape Death
Notices : F – K
This file contains Cape Death Notices
from F-K. together with a comprehensive index of associated names which appear
on these Notices, i.e. maiden name of spouse, and married names of children This is worthwhile looking at if you are
researching the Cape !
Books :
·
“History
of the Italians in South Africa : 1489 – 1989” by Gabriele Sani,
·
“Tongaat :
An African Experiment” by R G T Watson,
·
“Richmond
Natal : Its People and History” by Charmian
Coulson
***
Feed-Back
Annual Visit to
Pietermaritzburg Archive
Members who visited the Pietermaritzburg Archives
on 12 August enjoyed the hospitality of Mr Pieter Nel and his staff. Although this outing was not supported by
many members those who attended found the visit to be a worthwhile excursion.
Family History Fair - Pietermaritzburg
The
joint collaboration of the Voortrekker Museum, Pietermaritzburg Archive
Repository and the Natal Inland Family History Society held a Family History
Fair in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday 9 September 2006. It was held at the Msunduzi Museum and the
adjoining Dutch Reformed Church.
We congratulate this joint collaboration on a very
interesting and enjoyable day. Members
who attended were entertained by the various speakers who spoke on the Zulu,
Afrikaans and English cultures.
We look forward to the next Fair and of this event
being a regular diary date in the future.
***
Durban To Host
2007 GSSA National AGM
Our region has been given
the honour of hosting the 2007 GSSA National AGM on Saturday 24 February
2007. This will take place at the
Pinedene Hotel in Pinetown and will be an all day affair. The dinner in the evening will be an
especially enjoyable occasion which will include the award ceremony, with a few
prominent speakers. ALL members are
most welcome to attend and to extend a hand of welcome to our fellow national
members. Please give us your support
by keeping your diaries open for what should be an enjoyable evening.
Once arrangements have been
finalised a full programme including the cost of the dinner will be circulated
to members.
National Archives
List of Publications for Sale
Our
Treasurer, Shirley Richardson, has a list of the publications which are
available for purchase from the National Archives in Pretoria The list comprises titles published by or on
behalf of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa.
Some
of the titles on the list are :
·
The
Inventory of the Archives of the Registrar of Marriages, Births and Deaths, for
the Eastern Cape Region, 1864 to 1972".
(It gives the Volume No for the registers housed in the Cape
Archives. For instance, if you needed
to look up the marriage register for Barkley East in 1893 you would inform your
researcher that the volume number is 1/2/2/1/1, or the birth index for Barkley East
would be 1/2/2/4/1.
·
Inventory
of Archives of Marriages, Births and Deaths for Northern Cape
·
the
"Southey Papers",
·
the
"Southey Papers for CALA",
·
the
"Archives of the Magistrate of CALA"
·
the
"Inventory of the Archives of the Town Clerk, Jacobsdal".
·
the
cemetery lists for the East End cemetery in East London,
·
the King
William's Town cemetery,
·
the
Stutterheim cemetery and a cemetery in Grahamstown.
Should you require any “look-ups” Shirley would be very happy to
assist you. Her contact details are :
Phone: (031) 266 1753 E-Mail : therichardsons@telkomsa.net
***
New Service for ALL Members of GSSA
The
following notice was received from GSSA National Office :
It
is with great pleasure and also some excitement that eGSSA announced its latest
service offer to all GSSA members.
After
extensive consultations with some of our members, the archives as well as other
interested parties, (and about 4 months of preparatory work!) eGSSA has entered
into agreements with 3 genealogists (who are also more than competent
photographers!) in Cape town, Pretoria and Bloemfontein, who will take digital
photographs of Archive documents for all members of GSSA, at very reasonable
rates.
This
service will allow you to easily and inexpensively obtain copies of documents
in the 3 above-mentioned Archive depots.
You need not be “geographically challenged” any more.
In
a nutshell: You can go to the eGSSA shop (http://www.eggsa.org
- Contents – Online shop, select the appropriate options and enter the
shop then select “archive photos”) –
complete an online order form (with the details of which photos you require in
which archives). Once you submit your
order, the form will be electronically mailed to us and we will arrange to have
the photographs taken. Only when the
photos have been taken will you be requested to pay the appropriate amount, and
once payment has been received, the photographs will be available for you to
download.
You
will obtain the non-exclusive right to use the photos for any purpose. However, as part of our aim to make these
types of documents available to a wider genealogical public, and also to assist
in preventing damage to the physical documents due to repeated handling, the
photos will not be copyrighted in any way.
Apart from making these available on our website, eGSSA may in future
offer collections of these photos for sale or provide them to the
Archives. So by ordering through our
webshop you’re not only getting the products you want at a reasonable price,
but you’re assisting in the preservation of documents in the archives as well
as making the document available to a larger audience – now if that’s not a
win-win situation, the I don’t know what is!
The
cost of the photoservice is calculated as follows :
R6
per order handling charge (independent of the number of items ordered) plus
R6
for the first page of each document
R2
for each other page of a document
Income
generated from the flat-fee component will be used to develop the service
further and also to make available a larger number of documents to our members,
free of charge.
As
an additional benefit, each eGSSA member will receive an R18 credit towards
their first order – that is almost ¾ of your annual eGSSA fee! (Perhaps another reason to join eGSSA!)
As
mentioned, the photos are available from the following Archives Depots :
KAB -
Cape town
VAB -
Bloemfontein
TAB -
Pretoria
We
have been unable to source the same service at the same prices in other depots,
but will continue to work on this and will hopefully be able to provide the
service in other archives in the future.
***
Bulletin Board
·
We have been advised by Jenny Harries of the FHC
that the registers of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa are now
available on DVD at the FHC in Johannesburg.
They are not allowed to be distributed to other FHC's, but can be viewed
at the FHC in Parktown, Johannesburg.
Please note that the Durban FHC does have a hard copy of the index of
registers in their library.
·
Here are a few email addresses / website which may
be of interest :
diosecretary@dionatal.org.za :
Natal Anglican Church records
www.behindthename.com : the etymology
and history of first names and giving variants in several languages.
·
We are proud to announce that another of our
members has joined the ranks of author!!
Our octogenarian and long time member, Anneliese Peters has published
the history of her family in a book entitled “THE KONIGKRAMER FAMILY
HISTORY”. This family was one of the
original Bergtheil settlers from Bramsche,
Germany who settled in New Germany, and outlines the history of the family
since 1848. It is a 96-Page A-4
document. If you would like to purchase
a copy you can contact the publishers Partners in Publishing, on Durban
031 563 7815.
·
Post 1890 Passenger Lists
For those members who do not visit the Genealogy World
website frequently below is an extract from one of their newsletters :
1837online comment as follows:
"Have you reached a brick wall with your family history
research? Do some of your ancestors seem to have completely disappeared? If
your ancestors emigrated overseas, 1837online.com's latest online project can
help you track them down. In association with the National Archives we are
scanning and transcribing the passenger lists from ships departing the UK on
long-distance voyages between 1890 and 1960, covering routes to the US,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, among
others."
Would members please note that this is a “pay” service. http://www.1837online.com/index.html
***
My Memories of Old Durban
– by Elizabeth Robb – Continued
(Kindly submitted by Doreen
Nicholson)
We
were soon in a war again and thousands of our men and young boys were enlisted
in the Army, Navy and Air Force and the young women too entered into
Services. Ouma Smuts came to Durban and
spoke to the women in the city Hall about the War effort and what we could do
to help our fighting men. The Hall was
simply packed. The Red Cross and St
Johns was speedily organised with transport for the C.P.S. in case of
emergencies. A branch was organised in
various centres with a Control Officer in charge of each centre. A strict black out at night was enforced and
every time the siren sounded, all concerned had to assemble at their various
centres until it was safe to leave.
Durban
was a very important city. We had the
largest dry-dock in the Southern Hemisphere and the Cape Route for shipping was
very important, when the Suez Canal was closed.
The
canteens too soon got under way, The Victoria League, Navy League, Wesley Hall
and the Y.M.C.A. How we all worked
cooking those endless pans of eggs and bacon, sausages and chips, huge basins
of fruit salad to be cut, bread to be buttered and tea and coffee made. Ice cream and minerals to be served. All were charged at a small fee.
Entertainment
was laid on for the troops; the huge military camp at Clairwood where thousands
of British Troops were stationed, waiting to be sent to the East, the Assegai
Camp on the Bluff which the British Admiralty erected for the Navy. Once again we had Australian and New Zealand
troops passing through Durban. Durban
received a great name for its hospitality to visiting troops.
Here
I must mention the Lady in White who was always in evidence at the docks. When the transports were expected she would
wait for them, and sing through her megaphone with her voice ringing across the
bay to welcome our visitors to our shores.
Hundreds of cars lined up outside the dock to take the men into town or
to their homes.
I well
remember the day from my lounge window at Durban North, seeing those three
large ships conveying the First Division up North with their naval escort. Later from my flat window high up on the
Berea seeing a convoy slipping quietly out of the bay with the Naval escort
putting up a smoke screen. A line of
ships arriving from the Cape to join them.
I could see over the top of the Bluff; sometimes you would be expecting
them back for dinner that night and to your disappointment you would see them
slipping away to rendezvous with the convoy.
To be continued…..
***
Diary Dates
09 December Ancestral
Tea *
20 January 2007 AGM : Durban & Coastal Branch
24 February 2007 AGM : GSSA National
* Can you believe that this is the last meeting of 2006!! Where did the days go!!!
Our
December meeting is where members have an opportunity to regain contacts with old
members, to meet new members, and to chat about their successes during the
year. All you have to do is come along
and bring a little something for the tea-table, and if you have a special
recipe for that scrumptious cake that was handed down to you by grandma, we
would LOVE to taste it!!
***
Committee Members 2006 - 2007
Chairman
Jacques Benadie, P.O.Box 2337 Pinetown, 3600.
Phone: (031)708-3746 E-Mail: jaqb@telkomsa.net
Treasurer/Membership
Shirley Richardson
Phone:
(031) 266 1753 E-Mail : therichardsons@telkomsa.net
Secretary/Newsletter
Judy Letard, P O Box 1000, Mount Edgecombe
4300
Phone: (031) 563-0522 Cell: 072-146-7922
E-Mail: kdee@mweb.co.za
Librarian
Dawn van Niekerk, 3 Beaconsfield Road,
Westville 3629
Phone: (031) 262-4308 E-Mail : matthysv@iafrica.com
Octogenarian
Annelise Peters - Ph: (031) 208-2910
***
Our Venue for Meetings
Family History Centre,
Church of the Latter Day
Saints,
144 Silverton Road.
Entrance in Montgomery
Road
Phone: (031) 202 3024
Our meetings are held at 2.30 on the 2nd Saturday of every month
except in August when we have an arrangement to go to the Pietermaritzburg
Archives between 8.30am and 12.00pm.
Our AGM is held on the 3rd Saturday in January.
For the record, the F.H.C.
is also open at the following times:
Tuesday 10 am – 12 noon.
Wednesday 1 pm – 4 pm
Thursday 9 am – 12 noon and 6.30 pm – 9 pm
Last Saturday of every month from 10 am – 4 pm
Or by appointment phone –
cell 083 661 4457
“Only
a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress”