French Ancestors

Chooses sites that can help you take your first steps into French research

There are all sorts of online resources open to family historians with roots in France. Not only were our nearest neighbours excellent record-keepers, but a great deal of the bread-and-butter genealogical material is readily available online.

Records of civil registration (État civil) are of course crucial, and authorities in France began registering births, marriages and deaths in 1792. Church records (Registres ecclésiastiques) start from 1525.

A key question is where your ancestors lived. That will lead you to familiarise yourself with the French equivalent of countyand parish-level resources. Broadly speaking, France’s administrative divisions are known as regions, then departments, arrondissements and finally cantons.

Fortunately, you don’t need to worry too much if you don’t speak French. The websites of many department-level archives have a ‘translate’ or English-language option. If there isn’t one, you can paste the URL of any website into a box at translate.google.co.uk to produce an adequate translation of the text.

FAMILYSEARCH

w familysearch.org/wiki/en/France_Genealogy

It may be an obvious choice, but if you’re just beginning to delve into your French ancestry then there’s no better place to start. The wiki design means that you’re never overloaded with information. This URL gives you research strategies and lays out all of the most important records, from censuses and taxes, to electoral records and civil registration. There are all sorts of guides, as well as surveys of departmental archives across France. There are also links to digitised records that can be searched here for free, including the recent addition of five million records from northern France, and free video tutorials that will familiarise you with key words and phrases that identify names, dates, family relationships, events and locations in French records.

FILAE

w en.filae.com

This commercial France-focused newcomer first launched in 2016. The service was created by Toussaint Roze (his previous projects include notrefamille.com and genealogie.com), and an English-language version launched in autumn last year. The site hosts indexed collections and digitised records from the 18th and 19th centuries, including more than 150 million images of French census and vital records. There’s currently a one-month offer costing €9.90, while an annual subscription costs €63.90. Other collections include passenger lists, military records (covering the Napoleonic Wars as well as the world wars) and directories.

THE HUGUENOT SOCIETY

w huguenotsociety.org.uk

The Huguenots were Protestants who fled religious persecution in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. Huge numbers settled in Britain, and until 1754 Huguenot communities would often record marriages in both Huguenot and Church of England registers. This website is an excellent place to find out more about the community, as well as how to access the surviving Huguenot church registers that the society has transcribed and published. There’s also information about material in the Huguenot Library, alongside sections on Huguenot history, links, and free research guides. If you’re hunting for settlers in Ireland you should try huguenotsinireland.com.