The Team of transcribers and editors worked in the Cape Town Archives Repository (Western Cape Archives and Records Service). The transcriptions can be found on the TANAP web site and the public computers at the Reading Room in the Cape Archives, or purchased as a CD (see Products page).

The Team deciphered the handwriting of the original documents and transcribed the documents using a computer programme called Corel™ XmetaL®. The digitized transcripts are archived and made available to the public via the Internet. You are therefore able to read the Orphan Chamber inventories and other transcribed material on the Internet and won’t have to go into the Archives or to struggle with the handwriting. This also saves wear and tear on the original documents.

Before 2005, the only typed version of inventories available to the public was Annemarie Krzesinski-de Widt’s transcription of Stellenbosch district inventories from the MOOC and 1/STB series. She started by typing the inventories on a typewriter, then retyped them on computer, then converted them to a format suitable for publication on CD and as a book (published by Stellenbosch Museum in 2002). We were fortunate to have Annemarie on the transcription team for a while.

The Team considered what information most researchers would be looking for and inserted ‘tags’ to make searching quicker and easier. For instance, they have ‘tagged’ the reference number of the inventory, the date, the names of people (free people and slaves), names of places and even names of ships. This means that researchers can quickly search for and compile lists of heirs, slaves, and the names and locations of farms and houses. With further searching other items can be found: columns of money value, debtors, creditors, livestock, crops, and so on.

Transcription Team 2007: Marianne de Kroon, Fiona Clayton, Illona Meyer, Maureen Rall,
Rina Guillion, Erika van As, Helena Liebenberg, Kobus Faasen.

The digitised version thus makes it easier to put together a picture of life at the Cape and to recreate neighbourhoods through history: to track the growth of settler families, the number of marriages, ownership of land and slaves and other forms of wealth, and how assets were moved back and forth through time. For instance, we can trace the movement of slaves between household members and families. 

Some visual features of the original document cannot be incorporated into the transcribed material. These include the wax seals of individuals and of the Orphan Chamber, the colour of the paper, the different handwriting within one document, and the signatures of burghers, free blacks and officials. A solution would be to photograph every page and make these images available in conjunction with the transcribed material. See the presentation on the Downloads page for illustrated examples.

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