The French Genealogy Blog: Louisiana Ancestors in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal

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Websites of the Departmental Archives

(01) Ain
Capital: Bourg-en-Bresse. Archives Numériques Départementales de l'Ain. Online: parish registers, civil registers, censuses. Wonderfully they also have put up the Tables de Succession, (lists of those who died and whether or not they left a will) and the Matricules, (military recruitment documents) for some communes. Excellent!
(02) Aisne
Capital: Laon. On a very nice site that works well: parish and civil registrations, land records and maps, and many images of historical and genealogical value. There is a nice section on genealogy to help one get started. Additionally, it is possible via a different search page to see all documentation relating to a particular commune.
(03) Allier
Capital : Moulins The parish and civil registrations for over 300 communes are now online and free. One must click an agreement form before access is allowed. Nice site.
(04) Alpes-de-Haute-Provence
Capital: Digne-les-Bains Online: parish and civil registers, annual indices, ten-year indices, censuses, land records.
(05) Hautes-Alpes
Capital: Gap. Online: parish and civil registers, marriage banns, ten-year indices.
(06) Alpes-Maritimes
Capital: Nice. Parish and civil registrations from the 16th century to 1914.
(07) Ardèche
Capital: Privas. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, land records. NEW!! Protestant registrations, military registers, and censuses.
(08) Ardennes
Capital: Charleville-Mézières. Online: the ten-year indices are now online, with a list of all communes, and land records. They do NOT participate in the microfilm exchange programme. NEW!!! Parish registers and civil registers from the 16th century to 1850 are now online. Civil registrations from 1851 to 1890 are due soon.
(09) Ariège
Capital: Foix. Currently not online.
(10) Aube
Capital: Troyes. Online: ten-year indices, post cards of various towns and villages, land records.
(11) Aude
Capital: Carcassonne. No records online yet. A website is planned for Autumn 2013.
(12) Aveyron
Capital: Rodez. New!!! Online: parish and civil registrations from the 16th to the end of the 19th century.
(13) Bouches-du-Rhône
Capital: Marseille. Online: parish and civil registers, land records, censuses from 1836-1931, old post cards. This site seems to be having some trouble at the moment, but it is normally one of the best.
(14) Calvados
Capital: Caen. DIRE! DIRE! DIRE news: all of the parish and civil records and the ten-year indices and annual indices have just been put online BUT there is a charge to see them. It is not much, but it still is there and we consider this to be very bad form. The site has left some interesting pictures of the Normandy invasion free to view.
(15) Cantal
Capital: Aurillac. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, censuses, alphabetic indices to military enlistments, photographs, AND notarial records and Holocaust records that relate to Cantal! In 2010, the website won a prize for the way it is possible for users to index collaboratively the civil registrations.
(16) Charente
Capital: Angoulême. Online: census records for 1842 to 1872, land records, teachers' notebooks, church inventories, old post cards of local towns, villages and sites. Bad news! Parish and civil registrations are due online this year, but there will be a charge to view them. France GenWeb has a petition online against this payment. Go sign it, if you want to keep French genealogy free.....ish. As of March 2013, battle lines are hardening, with the archives insisting they will charge and genealogists threatening to organise a boycott. The prestigious Fédération française de Généalogie is getting very aggressive with the archives of Charente.
(17) Charente-Maritime
Capital: La Rochelle. Online: parish, Protestant and civil registers; post cards; photographs of the Second World War; Notarial records of Jonzac. Getting better every day!
(18) Cher
Capital: Bourges. Now Online! As with many, but not all, you must create an account. This will gain you access to parish and civil registrations, censuses, maps, indices to military registrations.
(19) Corrèze
Capital: Tulle. Online: ongoing adding of parish and civil registers. The records of 51 more communes have just been added.
(2A) Corse-du-Sud
Capital: Ajaccio. Online: military conscription lists from 1859 to 1918, those of the Garde Mobile from 1865 to 1870, and some land records. There is also a very nice surname llist. The archives of the city of Bonifacio, dating from 1682, are now online at http://www.bonifacio-mairie.fr/corse-du-sud/bonifacio.php?menu=57
(2B) Haute-Corse
Capital: Bastia. Online: Maps, civil registrations to 1902.
(21) Côte-d'Or
Capital: Dijon. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, censuses 1800 to 1936, indices to the military recruitment lists, court and judicial records, administrative records,maps, and much more.
(22) Côtes-d'Armor
Capital: Saint-Brieuc. Online: land records, parish and civil registrations, census records to 1906, will indices, post cards, posters, photograph collections.
(23) Creuse
Capital: Guéret. New website! Online: Parish and civil registrations, maps, posters from the Second World War, census returns, military recruitment lists, and -- very nice -- alphabetic indices to inheritances.
(24) Dordogne
Capital: Périgueux. Online: land records, ten-year indices, and now, all parish and civil registrations.
(25) Doubs
Capital: Besançon. Online: Ten-year indices. To use the search facility, one must register, but there is no charge.
(26) Drôme
Capital: Valence. Online: parish registers, ten-year indices, civil registers up to 1852, notarial archives, land records.
(27) Eure
Capital: Évreux. Online: parish and civil registers, military recruitment lists, censuses, old postcards.
(28) Eure-et-Loir
Capital: Chartres. Online: Parish registers, civil registers, land records, censuses, church plans.
(29) Finistère
Capital: Quimper. Online: Maps, parish and civil registrations census returns, military recruitment lists, all a bit awkward to use.
(30) Gard
Capital: Nîmes. Difficulties abound. The archives are closed to the public from September, 2012 until some time in 2013, when the new location will open. A temporary Readers' Room has been set up. Online: No genealogical records are online as yet. However, the municipal archives of Nîmes have placed some indices online: http://www.nimes.fr/index.php?id=1012
(31) Haute-Garonne
Capital: Toulouse. Online: Land records, parish and civil registers, military recruitment lists, marriage contracts from Toulouse from 1501 to 1739, censuses, insinuations from 1693 to 1790. The site is maddening in that images cannot be adjusted; there is no possibility to zoom in or out.
(32) Gers
Capital: Auch. Online: Finding aids and maps, with more promised soon.
(33) Gironde
Capital: Bordeaux. Online: Transcriptions of parish registers, 182 registers of the Admiralty of Guyenne, a list of communes for which the records are being scanned. Expected date when the civil registers will be online: 2010. The ten-year indices are online now.
(34) Hérault
Capital: Montpellier. Online: Military recruitment registers, parish and civil registers, censuses, land records, notarial records.
(35) Ille-et-Vilaine
Capital: Rennes. Online: Land records, parish and civil registrations for most but not quite yet all locations. For Rennes see the Archives municipales de Rennes.
(36) Indre
Capital: Châteauroux. Online: Finding aids and maps are now online. Parish and civil registrations were up for a day or two but the system crashed. Now, it is back up, but slow, and contains: parish and civil registrations, ten-year indices, census returns.
(37) Indre-et-Loire
Capital: Tours. Online: Parish registers have just gone up! Also : Ten-year indices, land records, old post cards and records of wills filed (Tables de successions - very useful, these), military conscription lists.
(38) Isère
Capital: Grenoble. Online: Ten-year indices, and just up: parish and civil registrations.
(39) Jura
Capital: Lons-le-Saunier. This has to be one of the most helpful archives in the country. New website just up, with maps, postcards and historic photographs but not yet any parish or civil registrations.
(40) Landes
Capital: Mont-de-Marsan. Lots of problems with this site, and many efforts to repair them, finally leading to a new site. Online: Parish and civil registrations, military recruitment lists, maps, town meeting minute books.
(41) Loir-et-Cher
Capital: Blois. Online: parish and civil registrations, census returns, indices to military recruitment lists, maps.
(42) Loire
Capital: Saint-Étienne. Just put online: Ten-year indices, parish and civil registers.
(43) Haute-Loire
Capital: Le Puy-en-Velay. Online: Nice new website which has parish and civil registrations, ten-year indices to same, and the beautiful documents of the Chaise-Dieu Abbey.
(44) Loire-Atlantique
Capital: Nantes. Online: Parish registers, civil registers, censuses, land records, maps, old post cards, notarial records and more. Expected soon: the archives of the dukes of Bretagne. This is one of the best of the AD sites.
(45) Loiret
Capital: Orléans. Online: No genealogical records are online at this time. Some are promised to be put online by June, 2013. Some will never be online, for they were destroyed during the Second World War.
(46) Lot
Capital: Cahors. Online: Parish and civil registrations, census records, succession tables, military registers. This site has had some trouble but seems to be working properly as of November 2012.
(47) Lot-et-Garonne
Capital: Agen. Much improved! Online now: civil registrations of the 19th century, census returns, many maps and land records, photographs, old post cards, unique funds of local history and customs, and the recordings of the accounts of some Spanish refugees.
(48) Lozère
Capital: Mende. An all new website! Online: the parish and civil registers from the 17th century to 1902, photographs, maps, post cards, town histories, insinuations. Unusually, the municipal archives of the capitol city are at the same site. Nice little bit of cooperation, that.
(49) Maine-et-Loire
Capital: Angers. Online: Parish and civil registrations, land records, ten-year indices. NEW! Military recruitment lists, cahiers de doléances and more.
(50) Manche
Capital: Saint-Lô. Just up Online: Land records, parish and civil registrations and ten-year indices. Click on moteur de recherche, then on état civil. There is a nifty little video explaining how to use the search engine.
(51) Marne
Capital: Châlons-en-Champagne. New! Online: parish and civil registrations, maps, censuses, and land records.
(52) Haute-Marne
Capital: Chaumont. Online: finding aids and land records are online. Gradually being added are: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, and notarial records. Here, one can also read the interesting "Notes généalogiques du Baron de l'Horme".
(53) Mayenne
Capital: Laval. Online: parish and civil registers from the 16th century to 1882, ten-year indices, a data base created by volunteers of the details from the marriages of the 19th century, military registers, census lists from 1836 to 1906, land records, transcriptions of marginal notes from the parish registers. Mayenne is acknowledged as the gold standard of departmental archives online.
(54) Meurthe-et-Moselle
Capital: Nancy. Online: parish and civil registers up to 1882, land records. There is a warning that records for Toul are incomplete, owing to a fire there in 1939.
(55) Meuse
Capital: Bar-le-Duc. Online: The parish and civil registers are now online, as are military conscription lists and some censuses.
(56) Morbihan
Capital: Vannes. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices.
(57) Moselle
Capital: Metz. Online: an extensive site. The first phase of putting records online has begun with the parish registrations prior to 1793 for about 500 towns and villages.
(58) Nièvre
Capital: Nevers. Online: finding aids, list of communes, old post cards, cahiers de doléances, pregnancy declarations, censuses, military conscriptions, parish registrations and civil registrations are completed. Unusually organised that is very helpful to the genealogist.
(59) Nord
Capital: Lille. Online: Ten-year indices, parish and civil registrations, military recruitment lists, land records, 1906 census. The archives are relocating. Check the website before visiting the facility.
(60) Oise
Capital: Beauvais. Online: old post cards, parish maps, parish and civil registers, censuses, military registers. It is necessary to register with the site; this is free.
(61) Orne
Capital: Alençon. Online: parish and civil registers to 1902, ten-year indices.
(62) Pas-de-Calais
Capital: Arras. Online: Lots of advice, plus ten-year indices to parish and civil registrations up to 1912, census records from 1820 to 1886, military recruitment records, land records. After many problems, parish and civil registrations are due to go online on the 2nd of April 2013. AND THEY'RE UP!!!
(63) Puy-de-Dôme
Capital: Clermont-Ferrand. Online: All parish and civil records, a wonderful collection of notarial files, images of clerical seals and finding aids. Nicely done.
(64) Pyrénées-Atlantiques
Capital: Pau. Now online: land records, finding aids, parish and civil registrations, notarial records. One must complete a short registration form, but the site is free to use.
(65) Haute-Pyrénées
Capital: Tarbes. Online: no genealogical records are online. However, the city of Tarbes has put up its parish and civil registers from 1611 to 1909 on www.archives.tarbes.fr
(66) Pyrénées-Orientales
Capital: Perpignan. Online: finding aids only. Hints are that the registers will be online by 2012. Okay, 2013.
(67) Bas-Rhin
Capital: Strasbourg. Online: parish and civil registrations and census records, now up to 1912. Also a very interesting discussion of an early 19th century manuscript of a history of Jews in Alsace, by Jacob Meyer.
(68) Haut-Rhin
Capital: Colmar. Online: the heraldic devices for each commune, a list of those who died in the two World Wars, a list of all of the mairies (town halls). NEW! Civil registrations from 1798 are now up. Also, ten-year indices and lists of Jewish names. Serious teething problems abound; the site is incredibly slow and often does not work. We predict a crash.
(69) Rhône
Capital: Lyon. Online: Censuses from 1836, parish and civil registrations from 1527, military recruitment registers, maps, indices to notarial records, a very large collection on orphans. Bravo!
(70) Haute-Saône
Capital: Vesoul. Online: Land records and census records. Just up in May 2010: civil and parish registrations, conscription registers and bureaux de succession registers are all now online. Exceedingly helpful staff. Ten-year indices for many communes can be found on the website of the local genealogy group, Serv@nc'nautes : www.sevancnaute.fr
(71) Saône-et-Loire
Capital: Mâcon. Online: land records, ten-year indices, parish and civil registers to 1902, censuses from 1836 to 1901. Nice search facility. Just added: military conscription lists from 1867 to 1938.
(72) Sarthe
Capital: Le Mans. Online: land records, parish and civil records to 1850, military registers.
(73) Savoie
Capital: Chambéry. Online : maps, some ten-year indices, census records from the 16th to 20th centuries, parish and civil registers from 1501 to 1793 and from 1815 to 1860. Also: some old newspapers, indices to maps, posters, etc.
(74) Haute-Savoie
Capital: Annecy. Online: NEW! Parish and civil registrations, censuses and military conscriptions from 1860 to 1940, and maps.
(75) Paris
Online: the existing and reconstructed parish and civil registers are online, with the identical system to that used in the archives, which is not the easiest. New!: The military recruitment registers from 1875-1909 and the long, long lists of the first names of children accepted into care from 1742-1909.
(76) Seine-Maritime
Capital: Rouen. Glory! Glory! Glory! The parish and civil registrations of this large department have just gone online! Promised soon are maps. Fingers crossed for passenger lists of ships sailing from Le Havre!
(77) Seine-et-Marne
Capital: Melun. Online: Censuses, ten-year indices, notarial records, parish and civil registers. However, this is a clumsy site to use and seven searches all brought no result.
(78) Yvelines and the old Seine et Oise
Capital: Versailles. Online: ten-year indices, parish and civil registrations, military recruitment, censuses, land records, cahiers de doléances, community monographs (histories). A very nice site, but as of mid-2011, it does not work with Safari.
(79) Deux-Sèvres
Capital: Niort. Online: parish and civil registers, land records and census records. Nice, clean site. NEW: military conscription registers are now online.
(80) Somme
Capital: Amiens. Online: old post cards, seals. NEW! with a new website: parish and civil registrations, censuses, land records, local histories, seals, photographs of WWI, and.....(drum roll) a user's guide in English.
(81) Tarn
Capital: Albi. Online: some parish registers, civil registers, ten-year indices, land records. It is necessary to register to use the site.
(82) Tarn-et-Garonne
Capital: Montauban. Online: Ten-year indices, civil and parish registrations dating back to 1590. New! The local copies of parish registrations, giving an important supplement, filling many gaps in the central administration's sets of registrations. Excellent!!!
(83) Var
Capital: Toulon. Online: land records, censuses, ten-year indices, medieval notarial records.
(84) Vaucluse
Capital: Avignon. Online: parish and civil registrations for some towns and ten-year indices for all.
(85) Vendée
Capital: La-Roche-sur-Yon. Online: parish and civil registers, censuses, notarial records, land records, old post cards. New!: faire part, notarial minutes and délibérations municipales.
(86) Vienne
Capital: Poitiers. Online: parish and civil registers (now up to 1912), land records, census lists. Interesting: A collection of notes on cards made during the 1950s extracting further information on Protestants, abandoned children and more. ALSO, the military registrations from 1867-1908.
(87) Haute-Vienne
Capital: Limoges. Online: Land records and finding aids only. Latest word is that the parish and civil registrations could be on-line around the end of 2014. The story is that there seems to be a problem of damp and fungus on the records.
(88) Vosges
Capital: Épinal. Newly online: parish registers from 1526, civil registers to 1905, the ten-year indices, and recently the censuses for the years from 1886 to 1906. Very nicely done, with easy printing.
(89) Yonne
Capital: Auxerre. Online: parish and civil registers. NEW! Census records are up.
(90) Territoire de Belfort
Capital: Belfort. A very nice new site with plenty online: parish and civil registrations, censuses, military registrations, and land records. Additionally, local archivists have created an excellent site of indexed data from the parish and civil registrations. It is a bilingual site: http://lisa90.org
(91) Essonne
Capital: Évry. Online: Parish and civil registers, censuses, land records, and 184 village and town histories written for the 1900 Paris Expo. Just up: indices to notaires' minutes.
(92) Hauts-de-Seine
Capital: Nanterre. Online: maps and the ten-year indices to the civil registrations, and now the civil registrations from 1792 to 1882. Participation in the microfilm exchange programme : Yes, but only for those who can prove residence in the département. Grouchy staff.
(93) Seine-Saint-Denis
Capital: Bobigny. Online: no genealogical records are online.
(94) Val-de-Marne
Capital: Créteil. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, land records, finding aids. Nice, easy site to use. Wonderfully interested, knowledgeable and helpful staff. NEW: census records are now online, from 1795 (!) to 1906.
(95) Val-d'Oise
Capital: Cergy-Pontoise. Online: nothing now, and they write that it is too soon to consider. However, there is an online form for research requests that can be completed and sent, and they will do their best for you.
(971) Guadeloupe
Capital: Basse-Terre. Online: no genealogical records are online.
(972) Martinique
Capital: Fort-de-France. This is actually the website of BNPM - The Banque Numérique des Patrimoines Martiniquais. Online: the actes d'individualité of freed slaves, 1848-1851.
(973) Guyane
Capital: Cayenne. Online: finding aids only. Preparation to put parish and civil registrations online is under way. There is an excellent list of links to other research resources.
(974) La Réunion
Capital: Saint-Denis. Online: no records are online, but there is a nice new site for the archives.

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« Genealogy at the Arsenal library - la Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal | Main | The Police Archives »

09 August 2010

Louisiana Ancestors in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal

Above is our copying of a document found in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Dated 1728, it is a request for Monsieur Herault, lieutenant general of the police, to allow a captain of the King's regiment to visit the prisons of Paris (Bastille) and Bicêtre (an apparently ghastly place where the straitjacket and the guillotine were first used) to choose some men to serve the king.

Raiding prisons for men to puff up the ranks of soldiers or sailors was an old custom that lasted well into the nineteenth century. What is interesting about the small carton of documents in l'Arsenal where this paper was found is that many of the prisoners so selected were sent to regiments in la Louisiane. An earlier document, dated May 1719, names the following men as released with the permission of the Duc d'Orléans to go to Louisiana:

Louis Chinet
Antoine Lagasse
Gabriel Colpin
Claude Cassin
Louis Ranson
Antoine Noel
Adrien Masson
Jacques Clarir
Nicolas Caron
Estienne le Siure
Michel Dumas
François Pequeux
Jean Le Blastre
Pierre Soubout
Nicolas Fanereau
Antoine Le Roy
Louis Fouret

It does not name their crimes or the regiments or ships they joined, merely that they went. They may have completed a formulaire d'engagement, a form that gave the man's name, the names of his parents, the parish of his birth and his physical description. There are very few of these in the carton.

We receive regular requests from readers struggling to find more about the early French arrivals in Louisiana. Clearly, not all soldiers who went to les isles de la Louisiane will have had military records; some will have had criminal records, and the place to look for them will not be the Service Historique de la Défense at Vincennes, but the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.

French Genealogy

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