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Cape Town Marriages 1757-1803

This is the fourth series of marriage registers of the Dutch Reformed Congregation in Cape Town following the third register which covered marriages and memberships for the period 1713-1756. This register contains marriages over the period 1757 to 1803. The pages are rubber stamped with ascending numerals starting with no. 1 and ending with no. 267.

The page following number 6 is stamped as number 10. The pages that follow 10 are numbered 9, 7, 8 ,11, 12, 13, 14, ... etc. This suggests that (some) the pages were bound in a different order at the time of rubber stamping them, and rebound at a later date to order the pages chronologically.

The readability of the register is fair to good considering these are photographs of photocopies of the original. Text that was already faded and smudged in the original has become even more difficult to read. Also when the photocopies were made, the imaging technology was not what it is today. The initial pages of the register have some overexposed areas, probably caused by this process. Any problems of missing information of this kind, as also doubtful interpretation or legibility, are indicated with square brackets.

The transcription was done by Corney Keller. The register has been transcribed exactly as found, that is text and spelling as best we can read them. In order to make the reading easier we have transcribed all personal names, geographical place names and names of months, as well as the beginning of sentences or entries, to begin with an upper case letter, although this is not always how they are written in the original. In addition, with certain letters it is not always possible to judge if upper or lower case is intended. Insertions in the text are marked as <text> and deletions as either [text] where the text is still readable and as [xxx] where it is unreadable.

There are no doubt still mistakes, both of typing and transcription. We will be pleased to receive any suggestion for corrections.

I hope these transcripts may be of some use to researchers.

Corney Keller

©August 2016

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Source: This transcription has been made from photographs of the Cape Archives Verbatim copies document VC 622 - Cape Town marriages and memberships 1757-1803, which is a photocopy of the original register, now housed in the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerkargief, Noordwal-Wes, Stellenbosch, as G1-13/2. This photocopy was made for the Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and a copy was donated to the South African Archives, a copy going to the Cape Town Repository (VC series) and to the Pretoria Repository (where it is part of the FC series).
The marriages cover pages 1 through 267 of this register.

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