Searching for information on your ancestors?

Since death notices are housed mainly offline as explained below, don’t frustrate your efforts by limiting your search to death notices. The information you are hunting – and more – might be in other records. Do a broad search for the target surname or specific ancestor to see what you can find here.

Ancestry24 is the largest website to focus on South African genealogy exclusively. Many of the databases contain information that you would otherwise only find in physical archives while much of the information is not available anywhere else.

Search Death Notice Indexes online at Ancestry24

Indexes for death notices you can search on this website are:

• Cape  Province from 1841 – 1959
• Transvaal from 1855 – 1976

Where else can I look?

Several thousand tombstone images are available in a collection that grows monthly. There are many success stories of researchers who found their ancestors here. Even building your family tree online might prove useful, as one of our members explains:

“I am  very happy that I started my family tree on Ancestry24 as family of mine have been re-united after 35 years. The family member was found in my family tree.  It shows that there are many ways of finding family members.“ – Lorraine Van Vuuren

Where to find Death Notices offline

Death Notices for all provinces prior to the dates listed below can be searched on the National Archives website, although this service is often unstable. Later dates could be found in these Master of the High Court Office’s:

Cape Town 1959
Grahamstown 1962
Kwazulu-Natal 1975
Transvaal 1978
Orange Free State 1951
Kimberley 1957

* Not every person had a death notice.

Abbreviations for the various Repositories for Death Notices are:

• MOG: Master of the High Court, Grahamstown
• MOK: Master of the High Court, Kimberley
• MOOC Master of the High Court, Cape Town
• MHG: Master of the High Court, Pretoria
• MSCE: Master of the High Court, KZN
• MHG: Master of the High Court, Orange Free State Provincial Division

To search for a death notice on the National Archives website you will need to have an idea where the person died. Note that the Archives have neither complete transcribed records nor images of documents online.

For death notices from Zimbabwe, the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria claim that they have microfilm copies. Death notices for 1892 – 1951 are kept in the Harare Archives.

Related Articles

What is a death notice?

What information does death notice contain?

You can also obtain death notices privately at a cost through a finding service called Ancestorfind.net.