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Inventories of the Orphan Chamber
of the Cape of Good Hope


Into Cape homes of the 17th and 18th century

by Erika van As, TEPC editor

The Cape Archives holds documents of the Dutch East India Company that offer the researcher an incredible amount of information – approximately 300 linear metres of documents on the shelves. The inventories and auction lists of deceased estates (together with other surviving documents such as wills and requests to and reports from the Court of Justice) offer invaluable insights into life at the Cape for researchers and people who want to know more about their forefathers and foremothers. Whom did they marry, how many children did they have, were they slave-owners or slaves, did they own a house or land, how did they make a living, could they sign their names?

By reading the inventories and auction lists the researcher enters the homes of people who lived at the Cape of Good Hope during the 17th and 18th centuries. The inhabitants and the contents of Cape households reflect the rich diversity of Cape society. The documents being transcribed reflect the daily lives of people, whether rich company officials, underpaid soldiers, free burghers or slaves. One gets an idea of how the day might have started and ended, what people ate and drank, the clothes they wore, the arrangement of rooms and furniture in their houses, the pictures on the walls, the books they read, leisure and social life, goods imported from the East and the West, remedies. Private indoor details reveal the wealth and status accumulated by some – the number of chairs in an official’s diningroom, the silver buckles of a soldier in the company’s garrison.

 


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