Genealogy Chat

A lady I was talking to the other day who told me about her father. His parents were British but they moved to Cape Town to work where he and his two brothers were born -he was born Andrew Frank Jackson c 1888 and died in 1934 in England. His brother Herbert Jackson was killed in WW1. They moved back to the UK but she never saw his birth certificate and would love a copy now. Anyone know where to apply for one please?

I don't think they had birth certificates in South Africa in those days. Have a look at the cyndislist site and the south africa section - there's a good article called researching in south africa and it says there they didn't have birth certs before 1895 and anyway they're very difficult to get hold of even after then. Apparently baptism certificates are more common. I am researching my husband's grandfather who was born in Cape Town and fortunately we have his baptism certificate. When I get time I plan to see if it's possible to find the marriage of his parents in hopefully the same church. Not sure how I'm going to go about this though. Perhaps see if the church still exists and ask if they still have records. My general impression is that research in S.A. is very difficult.