Record Atlas
6 eras · 1500–2026 · 1 places

Cape West Coast and the Southern Peninsula

Saldanha, Vredenburg, Langebaan, Muizenberg, Simon's Town, Constantia. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1500–1652 Before registers. no registers survive

Before registers. A ship under António de Saldanha called at the bay in 1503; the name passed to Saldanha Bay in 1601, when Table Bay received its present name.
1652–1795 Dutch East India Company - the Cape FamilySearch · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa

Jan van Riebeeck founded the VOC supply station in 1652; former employees leased farms as free burghers, with slaves brought from Madagascar, Mozambique and Asia. The Merestein was wrecked near Jutten Island on 3 April 1702, and in 1781 a British squadron seized six Dutch East Indiamen sheltering in Saldanha Bay.
1795–1803 First British occupation of the Cape eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa

Britain occupied the Cape in 1795. The Martello tower at Simon's Town dates from the British works of 1795-96.
1803–1806 Batavian Republic eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa

Britain returned the Cape to the Batavian Republic in 1803 under the Peace of Amiens.
1806–1910 Cape Colony NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa · FamilySearch

Britain occupied the Cape again in 1806 after the Battle of Blaauwberg, and the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 confirmed British sovereignty. Civil registration of Cape births and deaths began about 1895 (approximate), and the Saldanha Bay Canning Company was founded in 1905.
1910–2026 Union and Republic of South Africa - Western Cape NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa

Simon's Town has been a naval base for over two centuries, first for the Royal Navy and now for the South African Navy; Saldanha Bay was developed as the port for iron ore railed from the Northern Cape.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1500–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

1 places on this ground

33 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

All record regions · The map