St. Mary’s Johannesburg Marriages from 1887 to 1895 are now available on Ancestry24. Over 600 records of marriages providing you with full names of the spouses, occupations and addresses  as well as witness names too.

Churches have always been places of sanctuary. In Johannesburg, many of the older ones supported the fight against apartheid. Others are newly built, bringing fresh peace and succour to the city.

Reflecting its multi-cultural nature, Joburg has a number of places of worship from across the religious spectrum.

Almost every religion is represented in the city, and practised in some of the country’s most beautiful structures. Some of these, like St Mary’s Cathedral in the inner city, played a significant role in the struggle against apartheid. At this particular Anglican church Beyers Naude preached and Desmond Tutu was dean.

Some old churches have been reborn as mosques or temples; some churches simply take place in the veld; new mosques have sprung up in former whites-only suburbs; new temples have been built by the faithful. Some places of worship stand out because of their architecture, their history, their associations, or just their splendour.

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Kind permission Lucille Davie

Where do I find Marriage Records in South Africa?

The initial starting point to get a copy of a marriage certificate is:

• The Master of the High Court or the Church, Mosque or Synagogue where the marriage took place.
• The Department of Home Affairs and for older marriages the National Archives.
• Below is a list of Marriage records

• Cullinan Marriages
• St. Georges Cathedral Cape Town Marriages
• St. Georges Cathedral Military Marriages 1811 – 1829
• All Saints Somerset West Marriages
• Free State Marriages
• Grahamstown Cathedral Marriages
• Mixed marriage records
• Methodist Marriages
• Namaqualand Banns
• Namaqualand Marriages
• St. France’s Simon’s Town Grooms Index
• St. Francis Simon’s Town Brides Index
• St. Francis Simons Town Marriages
• St. John’s the Evangelist Marriages Cape Town 1853 – 1925
• St. Mary’s Barkly West Marriages
• St. Mary’s Cathdedral Johannesburg Marriages 1887 – 1895
• St. Mary’s Port Elizabeth Marriages
• St. Olav’s Marriages Durban 1890 – 1979
• St. Paul’s Rondebosch Marriages 1929 – 1955
• St. Peters Mossel Bay Marriages 1855 – 1879
• St. Stephen’s Marriages Paarl 1876 – 1909
• Swellendam Anglican Marriages 1850 – 1887
• Wynberg Methodist Baptisms 1836 – 1910

Department of Home Affairs

For these certificates you will need to apply+ to the Department of Home Affairs, the official holding office for South African  marriages. Applications should be lodged at your nearest Home Affairs office if applying from within South Africa. If living abroad, you should contact the nearest South African Embassy, Consulate or High Commission. Always request a full, unabridged vault copy. There is no public access at all to the marriages registers or indexes held at the Department of Home Affairs.

When contacting the Department of Home Affairs

Expect delays as they are very understaffed. Average waiting time is three months.
Take down the details of any official you deal with.
Supply an ID number for the person whose certificate you wish to obtain to speed up the process.
There is a charge of R45.00 per item.

National Archives

The National Archives is the custodian for marriage certificates on behalf of the Department of Home Affairs up to the early 1970′s. A closed period of 20 years is applicable for access to  Marriages records.

Below is a table for commencing dates for the registration of  marriages in the various old provinces:

These indexes and registers are heavy and cumbersome. You will first need to know exactly which magisterial district the event took place before you can request the index. These indexes are not made available electronically, but the Western Cape indexes can be searched on Ancestry24. The Home Affairs Western Cape Index (HAWC) is housed in the Cape Town Archives as are the Home Affairs Eastern (HAEC) and  Home Affairs Northern Cape (HANC).

How to search for marriage certificates in the Archives

As an example, if someone was married in Cape Town you will need to check places like Cape Town Central, Wynberg, Docks, Green Point, See Point, Woodstock, Observatory etc – all separate registers. To find the marriage certificate of an individual you will need to first consult the index to the marriages in the area in which it was registered, e.g. Worcester. The earliest reference number begins with 1/3/57/4/1 – which covers 1895 to June 1905.

Once you have got the register 1/3/57/4/1 you will need to look for the dates between 1895 – 1905 for that marriage registration.
The size of the initial index will depend on how many volumes of registers.
Some of these books are very large and the pages are difficult to photograph because of the size. They are on the top floor of the archives. First make sure you get your volume numbers correct before you attempt to order any of these books. Once ordered, be prepared for a very long wait.

Black marriages

Records of black marriages can be found under the Superintendent of Native Affairs in the Cape Town Archives covering the years 1877 – 1900.

Other resources

• Anglican Church Archives at the William Cullen Library at Wits
• Methodist Church Archives at the Cory Library at Rhodes University
• Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Town

Your Family Bible
Some families are lucky enough to have a Family Bible in which an ancestor has written the dates of births, baptisms, marriages or deaths of family members. This information should be checked from other records. In particular, you should check the date of publication of the Bible so that you know what information was written from memory and what information was likely to have been written in the Bible contemporaneously (since that is more reliable). A Family Bible could have been handed down to your cousins, rather than to your immediate family, so enquiries of all relatives are worthwhile. Most Family Bibles have unfortunately been lost or destroyed. Some can be found in secondhand bookshops, but your chances of finding a long-lost family are very small.
Using a Family Bible as a tool in your research can certainly have its advantages as well as pitfalls.

Initially you should take note of the owner of the Bible – generally the head of the household e.g. the father or even the mother. Then you should observe the date of publication of the Bible and then when the first entry was made – if the entry is made not long after the Bible was published and the first event happened shortly afterwards then one can assume the owner of the Bible wrote this in themselves. Many Bibles that have been handed down through the years generally don’t go much further than two generations and others, which were initially not filled in had names and dates added at a much later stage.

For example, if a man’s date of birth is given as 1894 in a genealogical register in a Family Bible, in his death notice, in his epitaph and by his widow, but the baptismal register states that he was born in 1893, the former sources cannot be accepted simply because they are in the majority. The Family Bible was probably the widow’s source of information and she would have been the one to supply details for the death notice and the epitaph. The baptismal register is probably more reliable because the entry was made shortly after the birth of the child. However, one must also consider the possibility of a clerical error in the register.

To obtain certainty on the exact date of birth of the person concerned, one can find out when he was baptized, how old he was at the time and when the children just before and after him were born. An attempt must also be made to determine when the information in the Family Bible was recorded.

Don’t forget to page carefully through the whole book as you will find that many times your ancestors left loose papers with notes, old photographs and sometimes even pressed flowers or leaves.

The Africana Library has in its possession a prize exhibit which is the De Mist Bible – it was sent by Commissioner J. A. de Mist in 1817 as a token of appreciation for the kindness extended by the inhabitants of Uitenhage to the officers and crew of the vessel Amsterdam which ran aground near the estuary of the Swartkops River.
The Hugeunot Museum possesses a fine collection of old Bibles, the oldest being a State Bible printed in 1636 and authorised in 1637 by the Netherlands States General. The genealogical archives form a vast source of information on descendants of the Huguenots, and in this connection special exhibitions are arranged of old portraits of different families together with their genealogies.

The Grey Collection in the South African library holds the so-called Sutton Bible dating from the 13th century, which contains many beautifully illuminated capitals, and several smaller Bibles.
1820 Settler Thomas Philipps ceremoniously present a Bible in 1837 to a Party of Voortrekkers, on behalf of the settlers, as a token of regard and esteem for their departing fellow-countrymen.
The American Zulu mission was the first body in Natal to own a printing-press, and the first to issue literature in the vernacular. The mission was also the first to translate the whole Bible into Zulu. The translation was completed under the editorship of S. C. Pixley in 1883. The translation of the Bible into Zulu was carried out by the Rev. Josiah Tyler.
Written by: Heather MacAlister

Gilmer Family Bible

One of our many and wonderful readers has sent in images of this magnificent Catholic Family Bible in its original box. We, with the help of you, would like to return it to the rightful heir or member of the direct blood line of the Gilmer Family from Ireland.

The information we have is very limited but we do know that Alexander Gilmer was born in Northern Ireland on 5th April 1877, and his wife Jessie Mary O’Callaghan on 5th May 1887 in Queenstown, Eastern Cape.
Inside the Bible the marriage between Patrick Gilmer and his wife Elizabeth Johanna Nel is also mentioned. They lived on a farm called Aqua in Tsistikamma, Storms River, which was later renamed to Cornucopia. If you know anything about this family, then please email us here

IMAGES (From top to bottom):
Gilmer Family Bible
Gilmer Bible
Douay and Rheims Catholic Bible
Typical leather binding and gilt edged pages