The French Genealogy Blog

Finistère Departmental Archives - A Game of Wait and See

2012-02-24T11:26:00+01:00

At one time in the distant past, we had a beau who was a philosopher, a Japanese Wittgensteinian with strong leanings toward Quine. He was baffled by the expression "wait and see".

"Does it mean that you see while you wait?" the Philosopher asked.

"No, it means if you wait, you will see."

"Is that an ontological certainty?"

"Not any kind of certainty. That's why you have to wait....to see."

"So, really, it should be wait to see, not wait and see?"

'No, that sounds wrong. It's more iffy than that."

"Well, does it mean that, if you wait, you will see or only that you might see?"

"Agghh! It means that you will see, in the sense of understand, because either you will see or you won't see, but in either case you will understand that something has happened or it has not!"

"Understand?" the Philosopher said, pouncing. "You said nothing about understanding. Does this expression mean that seeing is understanding, empirically?"

Fed up with the wait for the Departmental Archives of Finistère to go online? So are a few others. A large number of folks from Finistère left France for the New World and their descendants are champing at the bit, as they say, to be able to do online research on those ancestors. The folks from Finistère who stayed put have descendants who have been a tad snooty about la numérisation -- digitizing images, in this case of parish and civil registrations -- and for long have refused to discuss the very idea of putting said registrations online. Now, they say they will. It was to have been in January. It is now predicted for March. Is this mere stonewalling or dare we hope that the delay is because it will be the Mother of all Departmental Archives Websites? We can only wait and see, or perhaps wait to see.

Two cities within the boundaries of Finistère that are not waiting any longer, having seen enough, have set up their own websites with parish and civil registrations online and free to view. Both are major ports, and both are boons to genealogists.

Brest has had the archives of the Mairie -- the town hall -- online for a while now. They have more than parish and civil registrations, in a somewhat haphazard list.
Quimper has just opened its website with parish and civil registrations, electoral lists and censuses.

Lastly:

Roscoff writes that it has its registrations online, but we cannot get the site to work for love or money.

Though that is it for the moment for online municipal and communal archives in Finistère, remember that you can check to see what other towns have websites with the regularly updated list of the Archives de France or with the map of same maintained by GénéInfos.

If these do not work for you then, sorry, but you have to wait.

French Genealogy

How France Has Changed

2012-02-19T19:27:00+01:00

Technology swamps our lives. Instead of marathon Monopoly sessions with the neighbourhood gang, our children played computer games. Instead of soberly reading Plato by the fireside of an evening, we find ourselves trawling iTunes for a good film, and there never is one. Yet there can be jolly aspects to all of this gadgetry, one being selecting a ditty for the phone. Ours is a rousing tune. When we are trudging from one archival facility to another, often via the Métro, the word most aptly applied to us might be biddy, or perhaps frump, but if our phone rings, the tune brings a surprised smile to those around us at first and then, when it is recognized, a frown, it being the Overture of 1812 and celebrating the Corsican's defeat at the gates of Moscow. (By way of compensation, we give above a ditty celebrating French victory, albeit of a different sort.)

Had he won, Napoleon would have extended the boundaries of France to a degree that would have disconcerted mapmakers for generations. As it is, the boundaries of France, particularly on the north and the east, have shifted with the speed and contortions of a sidewinder on scorching sand. For those tracing their ancestors who lived near the northern or eastern borders, it can be very tricky indeed, for it is difficult to know just when a certain region was part of France or not and so, whether to search in French records or perhaps Belgian or Italian archives.

To those of us who have never had the benefit of an education covering the entirety of French history comes a spot of relief from La Maison de l'histoire de France with two dandy animated maps. One shows the changing northern border of France through the past five hundred years; the other shows the changes along the border formed by the Alps. Technology the way it should be. Really simple. Really clear. Really useful.

French Genealogy

Hard Times in France

2012-02-14T17:59:00+01:00

We are all suffering here with unusually cold weather for which we are pretty much always unprepared. Thus, pipes have frozen and burst at our little abode in the countryside. The outrageously expensive heater is working overtime to burn fuel faster than Malcolm Lowry could knock 'em back, though it may have greater discernment. Roads are not cleared and have been covered with solidly packed ice for a week. The temperature has dropped to lows so evil that they can come only from the heart of Lucifer. It is, as they say here, a catastrophe.

Our kindly plumber tells us that there have been other years of such painfully icy froid, and he rattled off 1946-7 1956, 1974, 1985-6, 1993 and now. Of course, there have been other such catastrophes of cold, epidemic, and famine throughout history in France. Might as well list a few now, as this bit of history is useful for the genealogist to know, whether to guess a cause of death or a reason for emigration.

1620 Political instability and revolt of the nobles against the king
1626-31 - Constant political instability as Richelieu and Marie de Medici battle for power
1628 The city of La Rochelle surrenders to the French crown
1685 Edict of Nantes revoked and persecution of Protestants resumes
1693-1694 Famine killed 1.7 million French people
1720 The Great Plague of Marseille (where the Black Death first entered France in 1347)
1738 The grain harvests failed
1749 Such hardship that there were food riots and anti-tax riots in Paris
1779 Dysentery epidemic
1788 After a freakishly hot July, the winter brought extreme cold, -22 C in Paris; there were bread riots throughout the country
1789 Extreme cold in January; French Revolution begins in the summer
1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars
1815 Final defeat of Napoleon and a rather vengeful invasion of the conquerors
1830 Revolution in France
1832 cholera epidemic throughout France killed over 100,000 people
1836 Extreme cold
1838 Extreme cold
1847-8 “The hungry forties”, a time of severe economic depression
1848 Another revolution and another cholera epidemic
1849 Another cholera epidemic
1854 Yet another cholera epidemic, killing approximately 143,000
1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, with the loss of the regions of Alsace and Lorraine; there was also a smallpox outbreak
1873 Cholera epidemic
1886 the first appearance of the disease, phylloxera, that was to wipe out many vinyards and put thousands out of work

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list, but it does give some of the larger events. Perhaps one of the above touched the life of your ancestor.

French Genealogy

Many More Finding Aids to Military Archives Now Online!

2012-02-07T12:42:39+01:00

The Service Historique de la Défense has just put online more than one hundred finding aids to the military archives they hold, bringing the total to over three hundred. These finding aids are PDF documents that explain the contents of and give the codes to various files and cartons in the archives. All of them are of use to the genealogist as well as the historian for they cover not only policy but personnel and go as far back as 1740. They main archives categories included are:

Army
Ministerial, interministerial and inter-army
Navy
Air Force
Armaments

Within the above are also many personal archives donated by the individuals or their families. All are in French, of course. Most do not include lists of names, but some do, such as:

Well-known military people - Répertoire des célébrités
Geographical engineers - Répertoire des ingénieurs-géographes
General Officers of the Army - Officers généraux de l'Armée de Terre
Pension files of the officers of the colonial troops in North Africa - Dossiers de pensions des troupes coloniales et ressortissants de l'Afrique du Nord....1850-1950
Administrators, inspecters, commissariats - Commissaires des guerres, inspecteurs aux revues, intendants militaires 1791-1847
Army chaplains - Aumôniers 1791-1847
Veterinary surgeons - Vétérinaires 1791-1847
Female personnel - Femmes militaires 1791-1900
Canteen workers, sutlers, and laundresses - Cantinières, vivandières et blanchisseuses 1791-1900

Searching through these finding aids can help one to prepare for a more productive visit to the archives at the Chateau de Vincennes.

Bonne chance!

French Genealogy

Try Planète Généalogie

2012-02-04T17:48:38+01:00

Online family trees and genealogies are treacherous territory, genealogical quicksand at times. Their danger is that they are so often just plain fiction. They may include faulty research or no research at all. They may have few sources, no sources, disputed sources, silly sources, or the fraudulent sources of the likes of Gustave Anjou, whose name is cooler than his work. Their beauty is that sometimes they are very, very good, with superb documentation and sourcing and that they can put one in touch with others researching the same lines.

In France, many people put their genealogy trees online on geneanet.org or genealogie.com, the big guns of commercial genealogy in France. Planète Généalogie brings up the rear, but trees posted there are rarely duplicated on the others. It is run by the makers of the Heredis genealogy software, probably the most popular genealogy software in France, and certainly the most sophisticated. (Its users are not limited to France; for some reason, it is quite popular in New Zealand.) Those who purchase Heredis can choose to upload and share their trees on Planète Généalogie. Many thousands have done so, making it a fairly useful site.

A bit of vocabulary may be of use.

On the opening search page:

Nom = surname
Lieu = place
Prénom = first name
Conjoint = spouse
Année début = beginning year
Année fin = ending year

On the search results page:

Evt. = event, with some twee symbols indicating birth, marriage and death
Zone = the number of the department
Commune = city or town
Filiation = family members
Accès = click to access the relevant page of the person's tree

Planète Généalogie has knocked through brick walls for a couple of people we know, so give it a go and let us know how it works for you.

French Genealogy

French Immigrants to Mexico

2012-01-31T21:43:44+01:00

Two hundred years ago, Mexico won its independence from Spain and not long afterward, French immigrants started arriving. Whole villages of them swapped cold, damp winters and lovely if rank cheeses and butter for hot, damp summers and vine-ripened chilies.

While there were individuals who went before, most went in groups during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the beginning, they went primarily to four locations: Jicaltepec, San Rafael, Coatzocoalcos and Minatitlan, in groups organized by companies created for the purpose. The first hundred sailed on the Amérique in 1829, arriving the following year at Coatzocoalcos. More arrived. Dozens died in ghastly and primitive conditions, for the companies that sent them made little or no preparations for their arrival. Still, they continued to arrive, especially after the Franco-Prussian War.

There were Basques, Burgundians, Franc-Comtois, Savoyards and almost the entire village of Barcelonne (correction: Barcelonnette and thank you Monsieur S.*), the last group having been given the rather perky nickname of those who might have danced in a line in a Busby Berkeley film: "les Barcelonnettes". Most stayed, but many, especially of the earliest groups, decided to move on and the next port of choice was often New Orleans. (For those of you researching French ancestors who arrived in New Orleans from Mexico, take note.) Much has been written, in French and Spanish, about these immigrants. Some of the best works are:

Emigration française au Mexique by Jean-Christophe Demard. - Contains complete passenger lists. Hard to find.
Aventure extraordinaire d'un village franc-comtois au Mexique, also by Demard -- A complete study of those who went from the village of Champlitte to Mexico. Many biographies of settlers and interviews with their descendants.
Peregrination des Barcelonnettes au Mexique by Patricia Gouy
a series of four articles by Magdalena Le Prévost in Le Petit Journal

There are some fascinating stories here.

French Genealogy

* Monsieur S. sent this correction with these informative links:

Barcelonnette, France is known for it's Maisons Méxicaines, because not only did the people from the Barcelonnette Valley go to Mexico in large numbers many returned with vast fortunes and built huge houses in the valley. Thus prompting more youngsters to go "Amérique" et "Méxique" There is also a strong connection of Barcelonnettes in Louisiana. Much has been done to preserve this shared culture by La Sabença de la Valeia. So Barcelonnette is the name of the town, in the fact the whole valley and also the appellation of the residents. Lots of them went to Mexico City and there are about 5,000 french-speaking Mexicain Barcelonnettes there today. I learned this from a 2006 symposium held at LSU in Baton Rouge.

http://www.sabenca-valeia.org/pages/publications

http://www.sabenca-valeia.org/pages/publications/recherches-et-temoignages.html

http://www.sabenca-valeia.org/pages/publications/archives-de-la-vallee.html

Paris Guardianship Cases

2012-01-27T18:20:01+01:00

Try as we might, none of us can hold back the waters of Time. We all go one day, some having prepared in advance for those who remain and some not. Genealogical research through the court documents of the cases brought about because things were left in a mess, or perhaps tidy but disputed, can be very rewarding. In fact, the more a family bickered in court, the more joy for their genealogist descendant. Doesn't seem right, does it?

In any case, since Paris research using the parish and civil registrations before 1860 is so difficult, any newly online resource on Parisians is welcomed with joy, even where it is evidence of sour relations between relations. The Archives nationales would seem to have been working toward winning some sort of award not only for putting records and indices to them online for people to use at no charge, but for allowing genealogists -- in controlled situations -- to do so as well. (We have seen them filming in the reading room, in their spiffy white coats and gloves.)

Recently available on GeneaWiki are the guardianship records -- les tutelles -- for Paris from 1584 to 1791. Whenever a person died leaving minor (under aged twenty-five) children, a legal guardian had to be appointed. Normally, there was a family council to select an individual and the choice was reported to the court. The documents can name the deceased, the children, all of the members of the family council and their relationships to the children. Some of the files run to fifteen or twenty pages. These are incredibly valuable to the genealogist.

This is a collaborative project. Volunteers have filmed the documents and put them online in GeneaWiki's Paris section. Users are invited to index them. Also online is a partial index of some of the seventeenth century records, done in the nineteenth century. The documents themselves are in chronological groups, but for one, small section in alphabetical order. Thus, to be able to use this collection, you need to know when a person died in Paris to know where to begin the search. A few hints :

The names of the deceased, the supplicant and sometimes the notaire representing the family are usually in the upper left-hand corner of the first page.
Succ^on is an abbreviation for succession, French for inheritance. The identification of a case about the minor heirs of a Jean Martin would read: Succ^on Martin.
M^e is the abbreviation for Maître, the honourific used for notaires. If the notaire for the Martin case were Lenormand, his name would appear below as M^e Lenormand.

This is a truly fanfare-worthy resource.

Addendum : The images are uploaded by Projet Familles Parisiennes, on whose pages one can find the nascent index. The images are hosted by geneanet.org. About one image in every two hundred is hopelessly out of focus.

French Genealogy

All You Need Do Is Ask

2012-01-23T19:56:57+01:00

From time to time, we get a bee in our bonnet, as is wont with genealogists. This particular bee is one of those shared by the many people whose interest in the French settlers of Natchitoches, Louisiana, was -- like mine -- aroused by Elizabeth Shown Mills's fascinating historical novel: Isle of Canes. In it, one settler she names is Jean Baptiste Le Comte (or Lecomte).

Le Comte was a real person, a soldier from France who was sent to Louisiana and then stayed. He married Marguerite Le Roy, bought land, owned slaves. He had numerous children. He died in 1784, seemingly never having returned to France. Documentary evidence about his early life is scarce, to say the least. He is mentioned in Glenn R. Conrad's The First Families of Louisiana, as having been on the General Roll of Louisiana troops and as being among those discharged on the 15th of September, 1763 (about seven years after he married).

We were curious to know where in France he was born. As he was not an officer, there is no pension file on him in the military archives at the Service Historique de la Défense. Military records on rank and file soldiers are difficult to search if one does not know where the man enlisted or was conscripted. That avenue of research seemed closed for the time being.

In the mid-eighteenth century, Louisiana was French. Births, marriages and burials were recorded in parish registrations, registres paroissiaux, exactly as they were in France. Marriage registrations almost always give the date and place of birth of both parties, and the names of their parents. We thought that it could be simple to track down his place of birth via his marriage registration. Jean Baptiste Le Comte's marriage registration, however, is just about indecipherable, especially the part that relates to his origins:

It seems clear enough that his parents were Claude le Compte and Anne Combe. He seems to have been a "native of the parish of St. Martin de Vecin graingrouge in the diocese of St. glaude".

Thus began a long, frustrating and at times rather humourous search for that parish and diocese. Surely the diocese was Saint Claude, we presumed. Yet, when we checked the list of parishes for that diocese, there was no "St. Martin de Vecin graingrouge" or anything close to that. We wrote to the archivist of the diocese, who responded after a few weeks, telling us that there never had been any such parish.

Hours of manic googling brought Saint Martin de Cormeilles-en-Vexin, in Normandy. Could this be it? Not really. That parish was in the diocese of Pontoise. It would be stretching the truth of the bad handwriting too far to try to make "St. glaude" read as Pontoise and to assume that Le Comte forgot to say Cormeilles but did say "graingrouge". That is the very mistake many genealogists -- in France and elsewhere -- make when they are desperate for an answer, and it is interdit.

We attended a genealogy fair which had members of cercles from all over France present. We diligently wandered from one booth to another with Le Comte's marriage registration, asking paleographers to decipher it, asking if anyone knew of a Saint Glaude. Everyone wanted to help, but we reached no definitive answer. One of the best suggestions was that "graingrouge" was a corruption of grange rouge, or red barn, and that perhaps it was a name of a property and not part of the parish name. No one knew of a Saint Glaude.

We approached the table of the cercle for Franche-Comté in eastern France, where the diocese of Saint Claude is located. Again we showed our paper and asked if they knew such a saint or diocese. All enthusiasts, a small group rushed to read the registration, carefully reciting each word aloud. In unison, when they got to "Saint Glaude", they burst out laughing and slapped one another's backs, nodded, and passed around the regional wine they were offering. (Tasty.) "Saint Glaude" they kept repeating, causing them to collapse into hilarity all over again. The joke was that the local pronunciation of Claude sounds like Glaude to an outsider, a non-Comtoise, which that priest in Louisiana clearly was. Oh yes, they assured me, if anything confirmed that Le Comte was a Comtoise speaking, two hundred and fifty years ago, it was that pronunciation of their diocese.

So, it seemed likely that Le Comte was a Comtoise, but from which parish? A rush to the computers ensued, as everyone searched their lists of old and new parishes. No one had anything resembling "St. Martin de Vecin graingrouge". The laughter died away. One by one, people gave up and wandered off. The die-hards kept the wine close and pounded their keyboards but found nothing in their databases and grudgingly gave up as well.

We left the fair, satisfied that we had a diocese of origin at least, but we still desired to find the parish where Le Comte was born. We thought it unwise to return to the Saint Claude diocesan archivist and insist that he check again for "St. Martin de Vecin graingrouge". We embarked on another route. France-Comté includes the departments of Doubs, Jura, Haute-Saône and the Territory of Belfort. The diocese of Saint Claude is today in Jura but in the eighteenth century was larger and extended into Doubs and what is now Rhône. We decided to write to the archivists of the Departmental Archives of Doubs, Jura and Rhône, including a copy of the marriage registration and begging their assistance. Generally, though they will not do research for people, they will try to help and guide researchers in the right direction.

Only one archivist bothered to respond, but she provided gold. Writing that her entire staff had been baffled by the parish name "St. Martin de Vecin graingrouge" and all had been determined to solve the puzzle, making it an institution-wide hunt, she then wrote that they had found it. The word beginning with V was not Vecin or Vexin, nor was it a word on its own at all. It was part of the following word. The name of the parish is Saint Martin de Vaugrigneuse. It was an exceedingly tiny hamlet next to the village of Cornod in Jura.

Given the uniqueness of the parish name in all of France, we think we can say with reasonable certainty that Jean Baptiste Le Comte was from that hamlet of Saint Martin de Vaugrigneuse, that he grew up looking at the lovely chateau of Cornod, and that something made him prefer the sultry clime of Louisiana to the cold mountain weather of Jura. Our numerous and intensive research efforts did nothing to bring about this discovery. All we had to do was ask the right people, which we highly recommend to you all.

French Genealogy

French Military Archives

2012-01-19T17:16:51+01:00

We spend a lot of time in the military archives at the Chateau de Vincennes (reflected in the brass above). In fact, it is one of our favourite research locales, being a bit fusty and tacky, in spite of its recent tarting up, and retaining an air of the bygone days during which lived the soldiers and sailors we research. Much as we love it, we had to miss the genealogy conference held there last month, during which the archives and their use to genealogists were described and explained.

Discussed were Italians in the records of the Hôtel des Invalides, military administrative records, and the many different locations of the military archives. Fortunately, the slides for two of the presentations have been put on the website of the Service Historique de la Défence (SHD) and we point them out to you, our loyal Readers.

The first discusses the archives at Pau of the military's administrative archives, the Bureau central d'archives administratives militarires de Pau, or BCAAM. These include not only military censuses but some colonial administration files.

The second is a very nice overview of genealogical resources in the military records of the SHD, with an explanation of what is available online: les ressources généalogiques du Service historique de la Défense et les inventaires disponibles en ligne. Since our post on military pension files, much more has been added.

Both go into some discussion of the expected opening this year of the facility at Pau to the public for research. (Which would be good news, as they seem to be swamped and tetchy when it comes to responding to postal requests.)

Good reading for those hunting ancestors in French uniform.

French Genealogy

A Couple of Books on French Surnames

2012-01-15T21:38:55+01:00

We have received in our mailbox this week the suggestion that we read the article on the Ancestry.com Learning Center by Juliana Smith entitled "Searching for Common Surnames". We thought it contained rather good advice and suggestions and had the idea to see what comparable advice may exist on French surnames. We have touched on the subject, albeit obliquely, in our posts on Geopatronyme.com and on surnames that come from métiers. Now, we review two books on French surnames that have been out for a while.

"Les noms de famille et leurs secrets" by Jean-Louis Beaucarnot, was published in 1988, a hefty number of years ago in this age of internet genealogy. Yet, since what it discusses is historical and goes back many centuries, its value remains constant. Beaucarnot is a well-respected genealogist and has published a couple of dozen books on genealogy, all in French. The book begins with the grievously erroneous impression on the part of the author that Dale Carnegie was a psychologist but then races on authoritatatively on the subject of the history and categories of origin of French surnames. As to the latter, he gives the following:

Names that have Germanic origins (recall that Charlemagne was a Frank who spoke no French)
Names from the Bible
Names that are corruptions and derivations of Biblical names
Names that are combinations of forenames
Names that indicate a family relationship
Names that indicate a person's work
Names that indicate a person's appearance or character
Names that come from nature
Names that are anecdotal
Names that indicate a person's geographical origins
Names that stem from a local dialect

Each category is described and one or two examples given. A few paragraphs of lists follow, with little discussion of each name. The thrill of naming, of finding the right and most euphonious word for a creature's or person's identity, that Adam may have had seems not to have been held by M. Beaucarnot, for whom the subject seems a great bore. While he gives a bit of information about a few names, this is by no means a complete dictionary of names, nor is it a full history of French naming. Aimed at the amateur, it falls betwixt and between the two and is neither useful nor entertaining.

However, a few pages before the end, things pick up, with a spiffy little section on practical method. There is a list of the one hundred most common surnames in France, with Martin at the top. Then, there are a number of truly handy hints helping one to recognize the geographical origin of a name. For those with no idea of where in France their ancestors may have originated -- and whose ancestors did not bear the surname Martin -- this section can be of some use.

Marie-Odile Mergnac has also written a string of genealogy books, among them the fine "Ma Généalogie de siècle en siècle". Her book on the subject of surnames -- "Trouver l'origine de son nom de famille" -- is much shorter, more recent, more to the point, lifts about eighty per cent of its content from Beaucarnot, and is essentially a bibliography of recommended books. She, too gives the history of naming and the same categories for name origins. She, too, gives a list of the one hundred most common French surnames, still with Martin at the top. She adds a bit of discussion of changes wrought by the Revolution and the abolition of slavery, but her value is not in the discussion at all; for that Beaucarnot is much better. Mergnac's book is useful for its lists of other books on names of various regions.

Dense subject, surnames, so you may want to get both, and many more besides.

French Genealogy