23 June 2009 - South African Commercial Advertiser extracts complete to 1847

Sue Mackay's most recent transcripts from the South African Commercial Advertiser 1847 have joined the large collection of her transcribed extracts from a early Cape newspapers from the originals located in the British National Archives at Kew.

The extracts are mainly of items to do with individuals, such as births, marriage and death announcements, as well as other interesting snippets such as the reports of the Veldcornets in 1837 of the families leaving the Eastern Cape for the interior.

These transcripts are available in the eGGSA Libary - Newspaper section where a search facility is available to search through all these newspaper extracts.

Our grateful thanks to Sue for the enormous amount of time and effort she has devoted and is still devoting to this very valuable project and for making it available to all.

June 2009 - 140 000 Gravestones!

The total number of gravestone pictures in the online Gravestones in South Africa collection has now passed 140 000. Congratulations are due to Alta Griffiths and her helpers.

Another 15 000 photographs have been received and are in process of being captioned and indexed behind the scenes. If you would like to help with this process, which is done by volunteers, please contact Alta Griffiths at alta@pinnaclespot.co.za

7th March 2009 - New President of the Genealogical Society of South Africa elected

Hendrik Louw, who recently joined the management team of eGGSA, has now resigned in order to become the President of the South African Genealogical Society, having been elected a member of the National Executive and President at the Annual General Meeting of the GSSA this weekend past at Bloemfontein.

Johan Janse van Rensburg, the retiring president, will remain a member of the national executive, concentrating on technological aspects and the GSSA web site.

GSSA agreement with Western Cape Archives about document copying:

On the 14th July 2008 representatives of the GSSA met a representative of the WCA and issued a statement about the photography of documents in the WCA.  More information can be found here ....

Document Ordering Service

We are able to organise the photographing of documents from the South African Archives at Pretoria (TAB), Bloemfontein (VAB), Pietermaritzburg (NAB) and Durban(TBD).

Please read the FAQ for more information.

The eGGSA Library

houses a collection of photographs:

South African  gravestone photographs.

Family Bible inscription pages

Postcards

South African Archive Documents

eGSSA serves its members by:

• providing genealogical skill development through information, publications, research education, and networking opportunities.

• establishing important links with other groups world-wide.

• increasing public awareness of opportunities for discovering family history.

• promoting interest in the fascinating field of genealogy.

• promoting a number of projects aimed at expanding the availability of South African genealogical sources online.

For many years, there have been people who, for various reasons, could not join a regular GSSA branch. Some of these reasons include living too far from a branch or living outside South Africa. These people still have a need to belong to a branch and to enjoy the benefits of GSSA membership, such as receiving GSSA's journal, Familia. eGSSA has been established to meet these needs. This is an ideal opportunity to become part of GSSA and to step into this exciting era.

At eGSSA we have an online shop where you can buy the various publications of the Genealogical Society of South Africa, as well as a number of other genealogical, historical and cultural items.

There are indexes to the articles in Familia, the quarterly journal of the GSSA and those in genesis, journal of eGGSA itself. In addition we now have a download library with some free books in pdf format, a number of documents from the South African Archives as well as photographs of graves in South African cemeteries.

Check out the benefits of becoming a member!