The archives answer
On 8 September 2026 the South African National Archives index was searched for the surname. It returned thirteen documents — and with them the first real names this archive has ever had.
Documented NAAIRS, the National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System, database RSA (all repositories and national registers), searched for LERENA, 8 September 2026. Thirteen hits, of which twelve are genuine; the thirteenth is a false positive where Lerena is a woman's given name. All thirteen records are preserved in this project.
The Cape: Robert Paul Lerena
Five of the twelve are one man in Cape Town, and they run from 1931 to his death.
| Date | Reference | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1931 | 3/CT B796 | Plans of proposed STABLES, Koeberg Road, Rugby. RP Lerena. |
| 1932 | 3/CT B352 | Unauthorised wood and iron structure, Madeira Road, Rugby. RP Lerena. |
| 1947-48 | 3/CT B3099 | Completion of house and garage, Lot 1202, Hove Road, Camps Bay. Mr R Lerena. |
| 1948-50 | 3/CT B2892 | Completion of additions, Madeira Street, Rugby. Mr R Lerena. |
| 1950 | MOOC 6/9/17017, ref 1847/50 | LERENA, ROBERT PAUL. Estate papers. |
Depot KAB — Cape Town Archives Repository.
The stables
RE: PLANS OF PROPOSED STABLES KOEBERG ROAD, RUGBY. RP LERENA. — 1931
Documented This is the first hard corroboration of the family's horse tradition. A Lerena submitted plans to build stables in Cape Town in 1931 — not a remembered claim but a municipal building file. The horses →
Rugby is a suburb on the northern edge of Cape Town, beside Milnerton — and Milnerton had a racecourse. Whether the stables were racing stables is not yet established, but the location does nothing to discourage the idea, and the building file itself should say what was proposed.
The estate file
MOOC 6/9/17017, reference 1847/50. MOOC is the Master of the Orphan Chamber, the Cape's deceased-estate series, so Robert Paul Lerena died in 1950 — and he was still improving the Rugby property that year. A Cape estate file of this period ordinarily contains the death notice, which names the deceased's parents, birthplace, spouse and children.
If he was born in Argentina, that death notice is where it will say so. It is now the single highest-value document in the project. Open questions →
The Transvaal: the Johannesburg generation
| Date | Reference | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 | MHG 6746/71 | LERENA, NUNO FERNANDO. Surviving spouse Catherine Mary Sophia Lerena. |
| 1973 | MHG 1518/73 | LERENA, ROGUE [Roque] LUIS ARMANDO. Surviving spouse Rheena May Lerena; predeceased spouse Rosina Wilhelmina Lerena. |
| 1977 | WLD 8043/77 | Stadium Timber and Hardware Co. Ltd versus Anton Lerena. |
| 1979 | TPD 1248/1979, M680/1979, 2769/1979 | Divorce. Ricardo Paul Lerena versus Anne Margaret Lerena (born Corbett). |
| 1980 | TPD 1367/1980 | Divorce. Glynnis Margaret Lerena (born Bolton) versus Anton Armando Lerena. |
Depot TAB — National Archives Repository, former Transvaal. MHG is the Transvaal Master's deceased-estate series; TPD and WLD are the Transvaal Provincial and Witwatersrand Local Divisions of the Supreme Court.
Inferred The record shifts from the Cape to the Transvaal between Robert Paul's death in 1950 and Nuno Fernando's in 1971. That is the family moving to the Rand — which is where David Defranceski was later born. South Africa →
Two further deceased estates give three more names and two widows: Nuno Fernando Lerena (d. 1971), whose widow was Catherine Mary Sophia; and Roque Luis Armando Lerena (d. 1973), who had married twice — Rosina Wilhelmina, who predeceased him, and Rheena May, who survived him. Both estate files should name their children.
The given names settle something
Nuno Fernando. Roque Luis Armando. Ricardo Paul. Anton Armando.
Inferred These are Iberian and Latin American given names. Nuno is distinctly Portuguese; Roque, Luis, Armando and Ricardo are Spanish or Portuguese. They are being borne by men living in South Africa and marrying women named Corbett, Bolton and Catherine Mary Sophia.
A family that keeps giving its sons Iberian names two and three generations after arriving is a family that knows exactly where it came from. This is independent support for the River Plate origin the family remembers — arrived at from a government index, not from the family's own account.
Note also that Paul recurs across the two clusters — Robert Paul in the Cape, Ricardo Paul in the Transvaal — and Armando twice within the Transvaal group. Repeating names across generations is the ordinary evidence of descent, and it suggests these are one family. It does not yet prove the links, and no line is drawn here that a document has not drawn.
Two useful negatives
- LLERENA returns nothing at all in South Africa. The family spells the name with one L, consistently, across seventy years and two provinces. That does not by itself settle the Basque-or-Extremaduran question — any reduction would have happened long before South Africa — but it does mean there is no spelling variation to chase here.
- No Lerena gravestones are indexed in the South African Genealogical Society's database. Burial places will have to be found another way.
What this does to the archive
The line still has no proven link to David Defranceski, and nothing here has yet been tied to his mother's family. What has changed is that the archive has moved from having no names at all to having six, two deceased-estate files that should name parents and children, and a building file for a set of stables. Every one of them is orderable.
The pull list for the Transvaal archive
What to call up, in order, when someone is next in the building.
| rank | reference | person | what_it_would_answer | pages_that_matter | confidence | drop_order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TAB TPD 1367/1980 | GLYNNIS MARGARET LERENA (born BOLTON) versus ANTON ARMANDO LERENA - divorce | WHO ANTON ARMANDO IS. He is the one man this archive cannot place: an estate advertised 2013 for a death in 2003, a 1977 debt case, and no parents anywhere. A divorce summons states the DATE AND PLACE OF MARRIAGE and usually the parties' ages; the order deals with the children. Between them they should fix his generation. Now the best file on the list, because the two estates fell away. | The SUMMONS (particulars of claim) and the FINAL ORDER. Not the pleadings, not the discovery. | MEDIUM - no volume number in NAAIRS | keep |
| 2 | TAB TPD 1248/1979 | RICARDO PAUL LERENA versus ANNE MARGARET LERENA (born CORBETT) - divorce | WHO RICARDO PAUL IS - on the face of it a son of Ricardo Juan Carlos (b. 1920), carrying Juan Carlos into a third generation, which is this family's documented naming habit. Same two documents would date his marriage and name his children. | The SUMMONS and the ORDER only. | MEDIUM - no volume number in NAAIRS | drop 2nd |
| 3 | TAB MHG 1518/73 - THE REST OF THE FILE | LERENA, ROGUE LUIS ARMANDO | THE DEATH NOTICE IS ALREADY HELD - DO NOT PAY FOR IT AGAIN. What is left unseen is the WILL (the notice marks "a will"), the inventory and the liquidation and distribution account. An L&D account lists assets and heirs and would show what a retired railwayman left and to whom. Worth having, not worth a trip. | The WILL and the LIQUIDATION AND DISTRIBUTION ACCOUNT. Explicitly NOT the death notice. | HIGH on the reference; LOW on the value | drop 3rd |
| 4 | TAB MHG 6746/71 - THE REST OF THE FILE | LERENA, NUNO FERNANDO | THE DEATH NOTICE IS ALREADY HELD, AND IT NAMES NO PARENTS - item 19 says only "Deceased". The first version of this list promised it would name Pablo Armando and Mary Septima. It does not. What is left is the will and the L&D account for a salesman who died at 46 leaving four minor children. | The WILL and the L&D ACCOUNT. NOT the death notice. | HIGH on the reference; LOW on the value | drop 4th |
| 5 | TAB WLD 8043/77 | STADIUM TIMBER AND HARDWARE COMPANY LTD versus ANTON LERENA - claim for payment | An ADDRESS and a DATE for Anton in 1977, and perhaps a trade. That is all a debt summons carries - but Anton is now the ONLY open question at this depot, so a second sighting of him is worth more than it was this morning. | The summons only. | MEDIUM - WLD sits in Johannesburg; NAAIRS places the archived files at TAB, unverified here | DROP FIRST |
| - | TAB TPD M680/1979 and TAB TPD 2769/1979 | Opposed applications, ANNE MARGARET LERENA versus RICARDO PAUL LERENA | DO NOT ORDER. Both are interlocutory applications inside the SAME divorce as rank 2. Ordering them is paying three times for one dispute. Order them only if 1248/1979 turns out to be missing. | - | - | DROP 2nd - already excluded |
| - | CAVEAT ON THE COURT FILES | TPD and WLD - ranks 1, 2 and 5 | NAAIRS gives NO VOLUME NUMBER for any of the four court references - only a case number and a year. Estate files retrieve cleanly on MHG number; court files may need a volume traced at the depot. Tell her this before she goes. She would rather be told not to hunt than lose an hour, and if a volume is not obvious in ten minutes the file should be abandoned in favour of the estate files. | - | - | - |
| - | CAVEAT ON THE MODERN ESTATES | Ricardo Juan Carlos 19962/95; Doreen May 16409/00; Pierre Frederick 2000; Paul Raymond 2001; Anton Armando 15127/2013; Roberto Juan Roque 017515/2022 | DO NOT SEND HER AFTER ANY OF THESE. They are known from Government Gazette notices, not from NAAIRS, and the NAAIRS Lerena series stops in 1980. Estates of this vintage should still sit with the Master of the High Court rather than the National Archives. This archive has NOT verified where the TAB cut-off falls, and says so rather than guessing. | - | - | - |
| - | NOT AT PRETORIA, AND ALREADY IN HAND | KAB MOOC 6/9/17017 ref 1847/50 - LERENA, ROBERT PAUL (Pablo Armando himself) | The single most valuable file in this entire archive is his own death notice, because it asks for HIS parents - the one document that could name Juan Carlos Lerena. It is at KAB, Cape Town, and is therefore NOT for this trip. It has ALREADY been requested from the Western Cape Archives and that errand is open. Recorded here only so that nobody spends Pretoria money on it. | - | - | - |