The estate of Pablo Armando Lerena
A death certificate, a will, a liquidation account and a son's death notice — four documents that between them name this family's head, his wife and his three sons, and close the gap to David Defranceski's grandfather. He is buried in the Cape under the English form of his name.
Documented Estate of the late Robert Paul Lerena of Newlands, Cape, died 19 March 1950. Letters of Administration No. 1847/50 — the same file NAAIRS indexes as KAB MOOC 6/9/17017. Held in the family's papers; images preserved at sources/estate-robert-paul-lerena/.
The death certificate
Union of South Africa death certificate A 214036, registered in the district of Wynberg, Province of the Cape of Good Hope, entry W612/50:
| Name | Robert Paul LERINA — so spelled by the registrar; every other document in the file says Lerena |
|---|---|
| Age | 76 years |
| Birthplace | South America |
| Personal status | Widower |
| Occupation | Race Horse Owner |
| Date of death | Nineteenth March, 1950 |
| Place | 7 Forth Road, Newlands, Wynberg district |
| Cause | Coronary thrombosis; angina pectoris — 6 weeks, about 3 years |
| Doctor | J. R. E. Lee |
| Burial | Maitland Cemetery no 1 |
Race Horse Owner. The family said he brought horses; the state, recording his death, gave that as his trade. Taken with the 1931 municipal file for stables at Koeberg Road, the horses are now documented from three separate directions. The horses →
Mary Septima
Documented He was a widower because his wife had died fifteen years earlier. The Maitland Road Cemetery register of interments, page 3215, entry 163, November 1935:
Lerena, Mary Septima, female, 51, of Observatory, 34 Florence Road. Roman Catholic allotment, Cemetery no. 1, grave 7719 A, 6′9″ below surface. Father Graham officiating; undertaker L. Pitt.
She was about 44 when her youngest son was born and 51 when she died. The certifying doctor is J. R. E. Lee — the same man who signed her husband's certificate fifteen years later. One household, one family doctor.
Her maiden name is Taylor — documented, not merely charted: the 1911 baptism register records her as Mary Septima Lerena olim Taylor, "formerly Taylor". That is where the Taylor in the MyHeritage tree's title comes from. Septima, "seventh", is an English Victorian name for a seventh child.
The will, and the three sons
The will was dated 6 February 1942. The estate came to £15,527 15s gross, leaving £14,450 3s 7d for distribution in four equal shares of £3,612 5s 11d.
The £26 owed for carrots comes out at about £830 at the same rate. That is a great many carrots, and it is one of the plainer pieces of evidence that there were horses in the yard when he died.
- Louis Lerena, major son — half a share.
- Rose Lilian Theys, no relation — half a share. She was a spinster living at the same address, 7 Forth Road, and she was his executrix.
- The residue, £10,837 17s 8d, held on trust for Nuno Fernando Lerena and Richardo Juan Carlos Lerena, major sons — the capital payable only "when Nuno Fernando Lerena attains the age of thirty years".
The succession duty addendum then supplies exact birth dates: Ricardo Juan Carlos Lerena, born 6 January 1920, and Nuno Fernando Lerena, born 6 October 1924 — who would turn thirty on 6 October 1954.
That birth date is the join. Nuno Fernando Lerena, born 6 October 1924, is the man whose own death notice of 1971 names Cheryl Ann Lerena among his children. The line from Robert Paul Lerena to David Defranceski's mother is now continuous and documented at every step. The line →
One man, two names
Documented
Every civil document in this estate calls him Robert Paul Lerena, and the registrar wrote Lerina. The Corpus Christi baptism register of 1911 calls the father of the same son Pablo Armando Lerena. They are the same man — the Spanish form of his name in the Catholic register, the English form in the civil papers. He was born at Rosario de Santa Fe on 22 February 1882, which also means the 76 years on his death certificate is wrong: he was 68.
The document that links the names
The estate account gives the sons but never the father's own parentage or origin. What identifies him is a death notice filed twenty-three years later — that of Roque Luis Armando Lerena, the "Louis" of the 1950 account, who died at Johannesburg on 29 January 1973. Question 19 asks for the names of the deceased's parents:
Father: ROBERTO LERENA · Mother: MARY SEPTIMA LERENA — both deceased
Documented Roberto, not Robert — and not Pablo Armando either, because the form was signed by Rhena May Lerena, Roque's second wife, who married him in 1966 and never met his father. The form also gives Roque's birth as 6 December 1905 at Cape Town, his trade as retired railwayman, his first wife as Rosina Wilhelmina (predeceased) and his second as Rhena May, and his daughters as Juanita and Panola Maria — the "Juanita" and "Pam" of the family's own chart.
So the family was in Cape Town by 1905 at the latest, and had begun having children there.
A detail worth keeping
Among the claims paid out of the estate, between the garage bill and the insurance premium, is one for £26 to W. C. Blake — "claim for carrots".
A racehorse owner's last unpaid account. It is the smallest fact in this archive and one of the few that tells you what the yard smelled like.
What the estate does not say
Open Neither the estate nor Roque's death notice gives his own parents. His birth date and birthplace are now known from the passport, but his mother and father are not. The death notice from his own 1950 file — which the account shows was prepared, and charged for, by the attorneys Dichmont & Dichmont — would name them. It is not among the images held here. Open questions →