The French Genealogy Blog: French Military Archives

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.
(12) Aveyron
Capital: Rodez. This page gives a description of services. Nothing is online yet, and the civil registers may not be online until 2012.
(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. 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. Work is under way to get the parish and civil registrations online, but no projected date is given.
(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. Online: Zilch. The records are in the process of being scanned and are expected to be online in 2011.
(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: some land records. A new website is planned, and the records are in the process of being scanned. No expected date for availability online. 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: No genealogy records are online. Some land records have been scanned but only for local use.
(21) Côte-d'Or
Capital: Dijon. Online: parish registers, ten-year indices, court and judicial records, administrative records, some military records.
(22) Côtes-d'Armor
Capital: Saint-Brieuc. Online: land records, parish and civil registers. Just up: census records, including those for 1906!
(23) Creuse
Capital: Guéret. Online: No genealogy records are online yet. The scanning of the civil registers is completed and they may be online by the end of 2011.
(24) Dordogne
Capital: Périgueux. Online: land records, ten-year indices.
(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. Just up: censuses right up to 1968 (is that wise?)
(28) Eure et Loir
Capital: Chartres. Online: Parish registers, civil registers, land records, censuses, church plans.
(29) Finistère
Capital: Quimper. Online: While all of the records have been scanned, they are available only at the archives and none are online. The rumour is that the parish and civil registrations will be online sometime in 2011.
(30) Gard
Capital: Nîmes. In February 2011, the new archives building will open. 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, civil registers. However, the site does not seem to be working very well.
(32) Gers
Capital: Auch. Online: No records are online yet, but a new site has just gone up, so we are optimistic.
(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.
(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. Online: no genealogical records are online as yet. Participation in the microfilm exchange programme: yes. This has to be one of the most helpful archives in the country. The staff will respond to reasonable letters and answer straightforward queries.
(40) Landes
Capital: Mont-de-Marsan. Online: at the testing phase of the search function for parish registers and civil registers.
(41) Loir et Cher
Capital: Blois. Online: No genealogical records are online as yet. A new site is announced for December 2011 with parish and civil registrations to be online.
(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.
(46) Lot
Capital: Cahors. NEW! Online now: Parish and civil registrations, census records, succession tables, military registers. One must agree not to use the images commercially, but the site is free.
(47) Lot-et-Garonne
Capital: Agen. Online: land records, maps, old post cards.
(48) Lozère
Capital: Mende. Online: the parish and civil registers, from the 17th century to 1902, have recently been put online. Also photographs, maps, post cards. 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 registers, land records, ten-year indices.
(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. And they just raised the bar with the addition of a new data base of prisoners.
(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: Being added incrementally as they are scanned: 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. New! Cahiers de doléances, pregnancy declarations, censuses, military conscriptions. Civil registrations are being added incrementally. Parish registrations are expected in 2012.
(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. NEW! Now online: ten-year indices, census records from 1820 to 1886, military recruitment records, land records.
(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.
(67) Bas-Rhin
Capital: Strasbourg. Online: parish and civil registrations and census records. 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. Online: no genealogical records are online. Since 2006, filming and indexing has been ongoing and a recent EU grant will help to get the records online. The archives have moved and just reopened at a new, purpose-built site at the Pôle culturel Grammont in Rouen.
(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: just up! Ten-year indices, civil and parish registrations dating back to 1590.
(83) Var
Capital: Toulon. Online: land records, censuses, ten-year indices, medieval notarial records.
(84) Vaucluse
Capital: Avignon. Online: No genealogical records are online.
(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, land records, census lists. NEW! 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.
(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. Recently updated and improved.
(92) Hauts-de-Seine
Capital: Nanterre. Online: just a beginning has brought the maps and the ten-year indices to the civil registrations. 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 and the site seems to have crashed anyway. The link given is to the geneawiki page about the archives.
(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.

19 January 2012

French Military Archives

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

| Permalink

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Judy,
So glad that the blog was a bit of help to you in your research.

Posted by: Anne | 20 January 2012 at 15:52

Thanks for posting the link for the Hotel des Invalides website. I had used this database before, but it moved and I couldn't find it again. I had my ancestor's record, but I searched for other soldiers in his company and figured out where they were stationed before they were at Fort Barraux in 1719. I found them in 1717 at Montelimar and was able to find a baptism in the registres parroissiaux (also online) of a previously unknown child. Still haven't found his marriage, but the search continues.

Posted by: Judy Riffel | 20 January 2012 at 13:45

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.