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.