Most Relevant SA States

[david64]

Evening,

In Britain and Ireland, the old, relatively unchanged ancient county jurisdictions are typically used by genealogist as opposed to the new-fangled government civil parishes etc. I am interested to know what divisions are most relevant for SA genealogists? Is their a particular set of divisions which are typically used as in the case of the UK and Ireland?

[Nookie]

South Africa was previously divided into four Provinces - Cape of Good Hope; Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State.  Hope that this answers your question! 

[david64]

Thanks for the details. I'll take a line of research from here.

[Nookie]

If you need any help put up a posting and II am sure help will be forthcoming

[david64]

Thanks, but that was all the help I needed, those provinces seem to be the best to use, as opposed to the 1994- ones.

I am currently having two South African gazetteers transcribed, which will be freely available online, and was looking for the best divisions to arrange the towns into. I'm doing this for a few countries, hence why I have no knowledge of SA genealogy and governance; and figuring out the best provinces/states/counties to use is always a problem, as most of the civilised world changed so much from century to century.

[Nookie]

That is fantastic news.  If you get stuck at all help is just a posting away.

[david64]

Thanks 

Do you by any chance know of any good topographical, geographic, gazetteer sources for SA? I found few and the ones I have a short. Particularly compared to source for the UK & US. The sources I have used are:

S. W. Silver & Co.'s Handbook to South Africa c. 1880
South Africa and its future: including the Commercial & general gazetteer of South Africa c. 1900

I suspect there may be more sources for the provinces. My initial search was for nationwide sources.

[Nookie]

There is a very nice old map listed near the bottom at

www.lib.utexas.edu › Finding Information › PCL Map Collection

Will give it some more thought and come back to you with anything else I can track down.