South African Ancestry was established to assist people around the world in researching their South African family history.

While researching our own family history we found that there were extensive resources available to research our family tree in the United Kingdom and other continents but once our ancestors left those shores for Africa it became extremely difficult to trace what happened to them.

The South African Ancestry database of records is constantly expanding and we strive to update our records on a weekly basis. If you don’t find any search results at first then please give it a couple of weeks and visit us again to see if those all important records that you are looking for have been added to our database.

Currently we have the following databases that you can search:

• Death Notices
  Details include: First name, Surname, Maiden name, Age, Date of death, Place of death and their Occupation (images available)
  
  
• Graves
  Details include: First name, Surname, Name of spouse, Date of death, Cemetery and the Town or City name (images available)
  
  
• Historical Monuments
  Details include: First Name, Surname, the Historical monument, Date of death and the Town or City name (images available)
  
  
• Photographs
  Details include: First name, Surname and the Photograph source (images available)
  
  
• Books
  Details include: First name, Surname, Name of book, Author and the Publisher
  
  Note: Due to our compliance with South African publishing laws we are unable to make extracts / images of the books available.
  
  
• Obituaries
  Details include: First name, Surname, Which newspaper and the Date of the obituary (images available)
  
  
• Deceased estates (National Archives)
  Details include: First Name, Surname, Maiden name, Name of spouse and the Estimated year of death
  
  
• Deceased estates (Master's Office)
  Details include: First name, Surname, Date of birth, Name of spouse and the Town or City
  
  
• Deceased estates (Newspapers)
  Details include: First name, Surname, Name of spouse, Date of Birth and Date of death (images available)
  
  
• Who's who (published more than 50 years ago)
  Details include: First name, Surname, Date of birth, Father, Mother and Name of their spouse
  
  Note: The information transcribed from these Who's who editions is made available with the permission of Who's Who of Southern Africa, a business unit of the Naspers Group of Companies.

Images for download

We have, as far as possible, tried to make the relevant images available for download to enable you to print them out or save them for later use. In certain instances such as books, we are unable to provide images due to copyright restrictions (South African copyright laws only allow for the printed publications to be reproduced if the author passed away more than 50 years ago or where there is no author, the publication date should have been more than 50 years ago).

Capturing errors

We acknowledge that as a result of the quality of the handwriting on some of our source documents that there may have been capturing errors. If you pick up such an error please feel free to contact us regarding any errors so that it they can be rectified. Where applicable, please quote the relevant reference number to assist us in tracking down the correct record.

Documenting of graves

During the documenting and photographing of the graves we have tried our utmost to respect the grave that is being documented as well as their families. Our policy is not to disturb the grave in any way whatsoever. This means that if there is a vase, flowers, plant etc obstructing the details on the gravestone then the gravestone was photographed “as is”. We are aware that this has often meant that certain information maybe obstructed or that the quality of the photograph may have been sub-standard but this is something that we have willingly sacrificed to ensure that we respect those that have passed away as well as their families.

Please visit our “Hints and Tips” page for practical information that may assist you in your family research journey.