This project focuses on making unmarried women in early colonial Cape Town more visible. It shows how they navigated a society strongly shaped by the Dutch Reformed Church. While we already know a great deal about the role of this church in colonial communities, we still know little about how inclusion and exclusion worked in everyday life, especially for people on the margins of society.
This project addresses that gap by putting the stories of unmarried women at the center: free women, freed women, and enslaved women. They were in a vulnerable position, partly because they lacked a male guardian and their reputations could easily be damaged by relationships outside marriage. For enslaved women, the situation was even more difficult, as they were not allowed to marry.
The researcher examines how these women, despite their different legal statuses, found their place within the religious and social structures of the church community in Cape Town. How did they build trust? How did they care for themselves and their children? And how did they create support networks?
Using baptismal records and church council minutes, the project maps a rich network of relationships between women, their children, church officials, and other community members. It highlights how witnesses, testimonies, and godparents played an important role in securing support for the baptism of children.
By taking differences in background and status into account, the project shows that reality was far more complex than simple categories such as “free” and “unfree.” The stories of these women reveal their resilience, their strategies, and the ways they navigated the social dynamics and power structures of their time.
