The online databases allow you to search selected district certificates, birth notices and South Australian cemetery records.

Coming soon! New dataset search look and feel with a faster search function. Watch this space for release dates. (SAGHS 6 Aug 2019)

What You Can Search

You are about to search the following Genealogy SA databases:

• Newspaper Birth Notices Index from 1960 onwards
• Newspaper Death Notices Index from 1972 onwards
• South Australia Cemeteries Index
• Birth Registration Certificates Index 1842 - 1928
• Death Registration Certificates Index 1842 - 1972 (Certificate transcriptions to 1967*) 
• Marriage Registration Certificates Index 1842 - 1937

Before requesting a birth, death or marriage certificate, check our What is in a Certificate When? document. This lists all of the the fields that may be available in the certificate that you request.

Our index records contain abbreviations that are defined on our site at Abbreviations Explained

* Please note, we do not have original death certificates from 1968 to 1972, only index records, therefore we cannot transcribe death certificates 1968 to 1972. You can order Newspaper Death Notices for this period, send your request via our Research Request form and we will forward an invoice for payment. Once payment has been processed our research service will search for, then send, the required notice from the paper via email.

Search Tips

The default name setting is for an exact search. An exact search should be tried first, but a much wider search is available by deleting the tick next to the surname box. Specifying a date range for your search can speed the search process. The indexes for Birth, Death and Marriage Certificates have date restrictions due to government regulation. Read the story of the Genealogy SA BDM Certificates.

Searches for names with an apostrophe such as O'Brien and O'Neil will not work. The search will churn without providing results. Replace the apostrophe with % and search, eg. O'Neil will be searched as O%Neil, or D'Arcy will be searched as D%Arcy.

Use the % wildcard to search for parts of names, or names that begin or end with certain characters. eg. If searching for Joraslafsky or anything similar, enter %lafsky to find anything that ends in lafsky. 

Likewise, if you want to find someone born in 1888 with Last name beginning with L, you enter Date 1888 and Last name L%. This will give you hundreds of results to wade through.

• Note: Results can only be viewed in groups of 100, so the more information you can provide the less wading you will need to do.

Great!  A Result!  Is there any more?

If your search narrows down to a person of interest, remember that you have only searched an index. An index is usually an extract taken from a more detailed source document. If you get a result from our index and you want more details, order a source document transcription or lookup, which you can do online through this website.

Transcriptions and Lookups are processed on Monday and Fridays, you can expect a response within one week.

No!  Didn't find a thing?

Well don't quit!  If you are certain your missing relative should be in South Australian records, try varying your search criteria. Indexes sometimes have spelling or other errors, often reflecting an error in the original document. Untick the 'exact matches' box and look for different spellings, places or time periods. 

People often contact us about errors they believe they have found. The Society will receive advice of suspected errors, and we may be able to correct index errors in the future, where we can access the original source document. Please send error reports to the webmaster or our research co-ordinator.

Be persistent and try different ways of searching. If your efforts don't help your research, or you still face a brick wall, you could always consider a Genealogy SA Research Request.