Record Atlas
6 eras · 1652–2026 · 36 places

The eastern Cape

Graaff-Reinet, Cradock, Somerset East. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1806–1910 — There is no general civil registration of births and deaths at the Cape until 1895, and it stays patchy after. Hunting for a birth certificate is hunting for something nobody wrote. What names a family instead is the ESTATE FILE — the Master of the Supreme Court's MOOC series, indexed on NAAIRS — together with the Dutch Reformed Church register and the death notice inside the estate file, which lists the parents and the children.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1652–1795 Dutch East India Company — Cape of Good Hope FamilySearch · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa

The Dutch Reformed Church register IS the record — baptism, marriage, and the opgaaf rolls. There is no civil registration and there will not be for two hundred years.
1795–1803 First British occupation eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa
1803–1806 Batavian Republic eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa
1806–1910 Cape Colony NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa · FamilySearch

THE TRAP. There is no general civil registration of births and deaths at the Cape until 1895, and it stays patchy after. Hunting for a birth certificate is hunting for something nobody wrote. What names a family instead is the ESTATE FILE — the Master of the Supreme Court's MOOC series, indexed on NAAIRS — together with the Dutch Reformed Church register and the death notice inside the estate file, which lists the parents and the children.
1910–1961 Union of South Africa NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa · eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa
1961–2026 South Africa — Eastern Cape NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa

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, 1652–2026, 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.

36 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