Webinar: Gravestone Project in South Africa Over 25 Years: From Only a Name on a Stone to Finding Your Roots!
The IFLA Local History and Genealogy Section cordially invites you to a webinar on 7 March 2024, 17:30 – 19:00 CET about conducting genealogical research in South Africa with the help of tombstones and graves.
As family researcher, we sometimes need to look at sources other than libraries, archives and online material. In South Africa, there are culturally diverse communities with oral histories that are sometimes the only link to the stories of people that lived in an area 100 years ago. In some part of the country that are far away from town or cities, the only way that a researcher might know that the area was inhabited will be a the remains of a mud or stone dwelling and some lonely graves.
In the 1990s, a project was started by the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GSSA), to document graves sites all over South Africa. Looking back at this project over a period of 25 years, with almost 1 million graves listed, we will take you on the journey documenting and creating a platform that is free and open for all to use not only in South Africa.
Speakers
Alta Griffiths
Alta Griffiths is a nursing sister and amateur genealogist, with a love for graveyards. As a genealogist there are many stories and secrets to be find. Finding and photographing gravestones became a hobby within a hobby. To the extend where she no longer just photographed the graves of her own family but ended up taking photos of all the graves in the cemetery. Alta used to manage the gravestone collection on eGSSA, the Virtual branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GSSA) and recently resigned as Chairman of the branch
Petro Coreejes-Brink
Petro Coreejes-Brink is a Library manger at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and cultural historian that focus for the last 21 years on helping people doing family research. She is a past president and Fellow of the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GGSA). For two years she was the editor of Familia, the only journal in SA that focus on genealogy. As active member of Local History and Genealogy section within IFLA , she has a passion to help researchers not only in South Africa. She was involved at the National and provincial Archives in South Africa, on advisory committees.
Riana le Roux
Riana le Roux is the Cemetery project coordinator of the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GSSA). She is always ready to assist volunteers with information about cemeteries that are already reordered in South Africa. She keeps the online free gravestone database updated with all the information that is sent to her. This database are linked with the Google earth plotting of cemeteries in South Africa.