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Back in Action

The haitus has ended! I am back from my time in Chicago. Looking at the blog stats and the amount of comments I have received over the last 18 months – I will continue making posts and providing links and information regarding South African Family History and Genealogy. I am glad that this site has been useful to so many and hope I can better it as time continues!

18 MONTH HIATUS

I am away for the next 18 months and will not be posting or commenting on this blog. Please feel free to read previous posts however! 🙂 This can be a helpful site to beginners of South African research.

Research Log Template

An important part of research is to keep track of what you have searched and what you find (even if you find nothing). This is imporatant because eventaully you will forget, especially when you have large time gaps between your researching or your volume increases. Family Search has a free research log template that you can download as PDF for free. Click here and then you will find the PDF link in the top right hand corner of your screen.

Free Translation

A friend shared this site with me a little while ago, and it is definitly one of the best kept secrets of the web. You can translate words or portions of text from numerous languages into English or from Engligh into many languages. This is very helpful as a genealogist doing research in other counties or in foreign languages and records. I absolutely love Babel Fish translator.

South African History Online

I discovered this site the other day while doing a research for one of my history classes. SA History is a wonderful site that I highly recommend. I love its layout too, very cool. This is a great place to start some back ground research on place or things in South Africa’s past. Make sure to check out the Chronology tab as well.

International Genealogical Index

FamilySearch has developed a very extensive index of millions of people worldwide from many different sources. Granted there are errors and duplications, especially in a project its size, but the IGI (as it is called) is a great place to look for clues and find information on your ancestors and can help those working on their family trees. They have many South Africans indexed too. Try it out, but make sure you ALWAYS verify and source information with primary and origional sources to be sure its right.

World Biographical Information System Online

The WBISO is an absolutely wonderful site. I have used it and found biographies of South African ancestors. It is a great resourse. You wont be dissapointed, check it out.

Passenger & Ships Lists

I haven’t used the following two sites yet, but they looked good.
The first is the Hamburg-South Africa passenger lists. The second is the “South African Passenger Lists”
Happy searching!

German Genealogy in South Africa

I found a great site on Germans in South Africa and how to go about such research if this is something you are interested in. One of my lines originated form the Berlin Missionaries. I found a link on this site that points right to information on my ancestor. Check it out you may get lucky!