Cette semaine : Nous allons en France !

Salut !

A few folks have asked lately about the basics of researching French records in France. 

I remembered that back when I was on ravelry, I'd done a post on there to help out a friend in the 'Knitting Genealogists' group (still highly recommend the group if you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't find new Ravelry too inaccessible. Unfortunately I can't use it anymore), so I've done my best to recreate it here. 

Each département (administrative area) in France has its own 'archivesenligne' (online archives) website. The rest of this section takes the Archives Moselle site as a 'for example'

There is a menu option for ‘rechercher’ - that is ‘to research’ …'chercher' is a good word to have. It means ‘to search’. Also 'trouver' is another great one - it means ‘find’.

On the Moselle first page there, the first options you have in boxes are:

Le département de la Moselle propose la consultation en ligne des archives numérisées :

REGISTRES PAROISSIAUX - Parish registers

PHOTOGRAPHIES DU DENKMALARCHIV - Photographs of Denmalarchiv who/whatever he is

TABLES DÉCENNALES DE L’ÉTAT CIVIL - Decennial tables of the Civil Service/State

CADASTRE - Cadastre survey map/chart

REGISTRES MATRICULES MILITAIRES - This ought to cover people’s military service completion

FONDS PRIVÉS - Private …funds - likely to cover ‘misc.’ Should be very interesting.

Couple tips for Parish records:

* Most of them seem to run Jan-Dec Janvier-Décembre in vital order: births, marriages, deaths, with corrections for the year after deaths. Though some are all births for the years covered with corrections at the end, then all marriages etc.

* For most places, you can pretty quickly work out roughly how many pages a year takes, which is handy as you can pretty much predict where to jump to to get in/around where you want to land.

* More recent stuff, since proper records started getting kept via the State, you should usually find entries have marginal notes on the birth registration for later vital events.

* If you can find a ‘livret de famille’ that’s an awesome resource to have, that confirms up to 3 generations
- It would be held by a relation though, and very unlikely found online. The French are very particular on what genealogy documents can/can’t be online by law. Each 'livret de famille' is given to the bride on her marriage and remains her property until her death, when it typically passes to her eldest child (or whoever else has an interest in old family documents).

* French privacy law extends 100-120 years from birth if I recall correctly.

Some handy terms:

naissance - birth
mort - death

décédé/e - is dead/has died. …deceased. Also décès - as in Acte de Décès - Death certificate

inhumé/e - buried. Alternatively enterré/e
testament - a will
livret de famille - family book - a VERY valuable book/document. Usually passes to eldest offspring after death.

vie à - lives at

de cette paroisse - of this parish
père - father
mère - mother
enfant - child. Especially in infancy.
grandpère/pépé - grandfather/grandad respectively
grandmère/mémé - grandmother/grandma respectively
arrière-grandpère/arrière-grandmère - great grandad/great grandma respectively
fils - son …fils de - son of
fille - daughter …fille de - daughter of
petit/s enfant/s - grandchild/ren
petit-fils - grandson
petite-fille - granddaughter
arrière-petits-enfants - great grandchildren
marraine - godmother
parrain - godfather
tante - aunt
oncle - uncle
époux/épouse - spouse male/female
les époux - the spouses
jeune fille - maiden / young woman/girl etc.
mariée - bride
mari - groom
la femme - the wife …sa femme - his wife
le mari - the husband …son mari - her husband
le gendre - son-in-law
la brue - daughter-in-law
ami/e - friend. Also copain/copine is a friend. A ‘compagnon’ relates to the guilds though

prêtre - priest. There is a circumflex accent on the first e typically

maire - mayor
Roi - king
Reine - queen
acte de - the act of …acte de naissance - birth registration
témoins - witnesses. Singular is témoin
signé - signed
travail - work
1er/ère - 1st

2ème 3ème - 2nd, 3rd etc
âge de - of the age of
moins - months
ans - years
jours - days
dans l'année... - in the year...

Months of the year:
Janvier
Février
Mars
Avril
Mai
Juin
Juillet

Août 

Septembre
Octobre
Novembre
Décembre

Some handy niceties:

S'il vous plaît - please

Merci - Thank you
Salut - Hi
Cher/Chère - Dear …as in for emails and letters.

est-ce que vous pouvez m’aider - could you help me.
Parlez-vous anglais - Do you speak/write/have English
Vous - you …polite form
Tu - you …friends/family that you’re close with, especially if younger.

6 Years Blog Anniversary, Looking back and Forward, Back to Early Medieval Europe & Forward Planning

 

Daffs on our mantlepiece this evening

Well, I'm customarily late in writing this. In fact, our first daffodils of this year are in flower before I got this out. Ah well, I've always loved tradition...

The last while has been a lot, hasn't it?

I confess, 2021 has not been my busiest year for genealogy. I had a couple of commissions in the background, and I'm still pursuing my German descendancy project, which is technically, I think, as finished as it's going to be, but there are just a couple of 'not found' individuals that I'm still pursuing in the hopes I can fill out the set for my lovely client.

At home though, on our side, things have been fairly quiet. Mostly because keeping working, and a family together in body and mind under C-19 while cocooning throughout (this is day 700 cocooning for our family - and we still managed to catch 'Omicron' while we've been here. I became symptomatic on Boxing Day and have been poorly ever since. Spouse felt a bit tired and 'under the weather' for a few days, but is doing much better since) is... well, a lot of things from the relatives who lived 100 years ago is beginning to make more and more sense.

In other 'at-home' and social/family history news, my spouse discovered in April last year that it turns out that he/she (his/her preferred pronoun) is non-binary. This has given us some fairly unique things to think about in the context of our family history and genealogy, not least, we had to work out how to express his/her life in a way that online and computer based genealogy 'understands'.
we also welcomed two new members to the family this year, with the babies of a first cousin, and our nibling (is anyone else always tempted to write 'nibbling' too? ...or is that just me?).

I did also very nearly finish my 4 gen study - twice! First time round, our computer died and took my project with it. When I recreated it, I found that, in my sleepy, late nights approach (when will I learn?!), I did, recreate the project, but completely forgot about the research log, so I'm currently about half way through just re-doing it over again, as guessing on the log feels like cheating, so I'm starting from scratch. I've also changed my focus person from my maternal Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother (yes, I have been on this assignment so long, that a whole new generation is eligible). With any luck, I will have that finished pretty soon (famous last words) and then it's just that licensing exam to sit. Perhaps this year. If our country ever becomes more realistic and less eugenicist in its outlook, so that it becomes safe to go out.

In recent activity though, we found another genetic cousin through one of the various facebook genealogy & DNA groups. It's looking like he and I are very probably 6th cousins once removed, but that depends on us tying my Catherine (only ever Catherine in her docs so far, and I'm not 100% settled on her parents yet), to his 'Kate', who is similarly always 'Kate' everywhere that he's found. It seems like a sound logical progression, but our DNA holds us closer (around the 4th cousin range), so there is an interesting thing to investigate there, because on our side at least, there's a possible sideways, double-related thing going on in this area of the tree, so that also requires some closer investigation.

There was also the very cool finding of all 4 of my grandparents (for the first possible time) in the 1921 census, and more information on their families (especially one GGF's extremely cool job!).

As with other years, my enthusiasm is high again. What remains to be seen is how much time there will be for genealogy & family history this year among other work. I still would rather be a slow and steady genealogist for the most part, than rush, because I know where that gets me (and we're not one of those families who can dash something off and it just works. Some of us, me especially, are cursed when it comes to anything administrative).

26th January was my 4 year blogiversary. Since I didn't do my customary look forward and back recently, I figured it's best to look cumulatively across the whole lifetime of the blog and see what's still outstanding, plus I have a couple ideas of directions I want to take the research this year if time allows.

Previous & New Targets (Oldest to Newest):	2022 and beyond...
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	Yeah, that's probably a never-never task, though I did at least design a frame I could keep it in, so that we could wall mount it and still have access to make updates, so that might be somewhere in the next couple years' projects.
Sit Licensing Exam	Still working at that. Fingers crossed!
The 'Bad Billy' Book Solve the Spencer-side mystery NEW: I want to aim for at least one post a month this year, but it's a compassionate goal, so I'm totally claiming this one for January (because who's to say we're not part Timelord anyhow?!). Push forward with the DNA side of things. Try and place some more relatives.	That second draft didn't work out either. I did, with the help of a lovely researcher in Australia, and a very helpful gentleman at 'Trove', plug one or two holes in the story, but really, what's needed at this point is: I either need to come up with an Edition 1 and just get it done, or I need to find some (legitimate!) way to access the Windsor Castle Archive and look over a particular document that exists only there. It feels like one of these is more achievable than the other, but in all honesty, I'm not sure which just now. Still no nearer on that one. Hopefully something gives somewhere soon. I've learnt that despite the best of intentions, I'm not great at follow through on the consistent blog challenges (not least because the platform shouts at me and makes threats at me periodically, and I don't have a clue how to placate it), so compassionate goals are going to have to be the order of business. That said, claiming this one, I have 1 out of 12, so that's 8.3% success, right? ...Ever an optimist! I also have a few ideas up my sleeve for future posts, but if anyone has some fabulous inspiration they want to share (with credit of course), I'd love to hear them! I've learnt over the lifetime of the blog so far, that coming up with something that would be interesting to anyone outside of our family (and in all honesty, sometimes only the fellow genealogy-nut relations) is the biggest challenge. I am currently working on a non-traditional version of the Leeds method to try to crack some of spouse's DNA matches, so perhaps there's a post in that, if it won't bore the pants off people? I currently have all 32 3rd-GGPs identified, so locating relatives up to 4th cousins is doable, and in most cases, there's a fair chance at placing a 5th cousin (though of course, our twin factor on certain lines does create some interesting effects). Out of 64 4th-GGPs though, I currently only have a firm handle on 40, plus 2 halves, so that makes the 6th cousin range a little more spotty, which is a shame when most of my matches coming up are smack-dab in that range. If we're talking 'faerie wand' type year, I'd love to firm up and figure out who the other 22 and 2 halves are.

So, that's about the shape of it at the moment.
How about you? How's your new calendar shaping up for this year's genealogy adventures?
x