The French Genealogy Blog

Notarial Records - Follow the Trail to the End

Even though notarial records are not yet a heavy presence on the internet and so are not easy to research without visiting the Departmental Archives where they are physically located, they are simply too valuable to ignore. The key reason for this is that notaires, being government or royal employees, were not at the service of their clients alone and could not draw up whatever a client may have requested; they had to draw up a document that was legal, with the identities of those named provable, which is why the collective word for such documents is actes. In many cases, identity had to be proven with copies of birth, marriage and death documents, or by witnesses, all details of which a notaire would note in the acte. 

Too often, we research a particular generation of a family and do not branch out or continue up or down the line enough. This is understandable, for tracking all documentation of all in a line can be exhausting and, when the people are not closely related, suddenly and perhaps unfairly boring. (Though rare entertainment can be had from such discoveries as in the photo above, which surely lost someone his air of pomp for the day.) However, we cannot recommend enough the taking of a dose of whatever provides courage and carrying on with the hunt, and we give here a case in point as to why.

For some months, we have been researching a family from Normandy, the land of cows, camembert and calvados. Every member of every generation seemed to have produced large families. Finding out what happened to each of them called for a temperament both methodical and childishly optimistic. In the 18th century, they had acquired, a bit at a time, quite a lot of land. After the Revolution, none wrote wills, allowing the state to determine how to divide the property equally among all heirs. Some of these records survived and some did not; swathes were blown to bits during the Allied bombing of Le Havre in 1944. We doggedly have been paging through the indices to notarial records for the numerous towns and villages where the family lived, checking each document, however trivial it seemed, in which the surnames we sought occurred.

The document that proved a stunner of a bonanza was a sale of a patch of land by a great nephew of one of those we were researching. He was a hundred years later than the time we were researching. He was the only child of a second marriage and the sole heir. He was not a farmer and he did not want the land. His father had inherited a part of it and had added to what he had inherited. Apparently, included in the whole were parcels belonging to aunts and uncles that his father had farmed, paying them a share of the profits. In order to sell, he needed to have their permission. In order for their permission to be of value, he had to show that they were part owners and how that was so.

As we turned to page two of the acte de vente, the sale document, we fell upon the family's genealogy outlined for four generations. Given only to show land ownership and the right to sell were:

• the names of the seller's parents
• the names of his father's first wife and their deceased children
• the names of all of his father's siblings and their spouses
• where the sibling and spouses were deceased, the names of their children, who were the next heirs in line
• the names of his father's parents, from whom he and his siblings inherited
• the name of his father's grandparents, who had been the original purchasers

In all cases, dates and places of births, marriages and deaths were given, as were residences at the time of the document's writing. 

This is the kind of work that explains why notaires have acquired impressive genealogy collections and why probate research still dominates French genealogy. It is what make notarial records so wondrously treasured by family historians and so very worth the slog. 

©2011 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Notarial Records - An Inventory Examined

Inventories after death are a complete listing, in the presence of all heirs, of the belongings of the deceased. An inventory will include every item in the home and any other property, room by room, and its value. It will also include bonds, share certificates, letters of debt or credit, and deeds, with their values. The heirs are required to state at the end that, to the best of their knowledge, everything the deceased possessed has been included. The inventory can take days and the first page for each day must have recorded on it the names of those present. When the inventory is completed and the value of the estate determined, all must sign it.

An inventory after death can give an astonishingly detailed view on the life of an individual and his or her family -- a peek behind the net curtains, so to speak. While at times the listing of smalls can make The French Genealogy Blogger blush, the listings of the titles of the books in a library or the sheet music on the piano, of the furniture, kitchenware and jewellery give a historical image of great depth of the life lived. Our belongings tell much about us.

We have selected a small inventory to examine, only seven pages long. Some go on for forty pages or more, but we fear to faint dead away at attempting such a transcription and so here present the inventory made after the death of Marie Françoise Vasseur, wife of Nicolas.

The year ten of the French Republic, the fifteenth of prairial at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the request of Nicolas Tinancourt, professor of dance, living in Paris at no. 1284 rue du Vieux Marché.

Acting firstly in his being the spouse of Dame Marie Françoise Vasseur, deceased, his wife, whom he married without having made a marriage contract, in Bresle in the department of Somme, on the twentieth of January, one thousand seven hundred ninety-eight and, secondly, in the names of and as guardian of Geneviève Françoise Egalité Tinancourt, Victoire Elisabeth Tinancourt, and Jean Baptiste Tinancourt, his three minor children with the said Dame Marie Françoise Vassuer.

In the presence of Jean Baptiste Leclerc, saddler, living in Paris at number 1223 rue de la Ville l'Evesque, secondary guardian of the said minor Tinancourt children. 

The said Nicolas Tinancourt and Jean Baptiste Leclerc, named in their said qualities as guardian and secondary guardian, which they have accepted, by deliberation with the relatives and friends of the said minors, and as approved by the justice of the peace of the first arrondissement of Paris on the twenty-fifth of germinal, year ten, and as recorded on the first of floréal following, a certified copy of which the said Tinancourt has submitted.

The said Geneviève Françoise Egalité Tinancourt, Victoire Elisabeth Tinancourt, and Jean Baptiste Tinancourt, are the sole heirs, each to receive a third of the estate of Dame Marie Françoise Vasseur, their mother, deceased wife of Nicolas Tinancourt.

In their interest, Marc Thomas Colin, member of the College of Notaires in the department of the Seine, and now at the above given address wishes to proceed with a faithful and descriptive inventory of all of the furniture and effects, silver, jewellery, and papers that formed the community property that existed between the said Nicolas Tinancourt and the said Marie Françoise Vasseur at their home in Paris at no. 1284 rue du Vieux Marché, where the said Dame died on the thirteenth of brumaire, year ten.

The objects will be explained by the said Citizen Tinancourt, who swears that nothing has been taken from the home nor has anything been hidden, in any way by anyone. 

In a room on the 2nd floor:

Two candle holders of yellow copper, a frying pan, two bars for hanging laundry, one lock, thirty pieces of pottery and glassware, the total value being 12 francs

A wardrobe of oak, a buffet of oak with 14 drawers, a commode of walnut, a small, round dining table of wood, a small writing table, six chairs with woven seats, a night stand of walnut - all valued at 75 francs.

A bed with short legs, a cover in wool, a pillow of eiderdown, a mirror, a painting, a baby's bed with two mattresses, all valued at 140 francs

In the wardrobe of Monsieur Tinancourt:

One suit, three waistcoats, two pairs of trousers, all in different fabrics and colours; one tie in mousseline, two caps in cotton, ten shirts of different fabrics, three pairs of cotton stockings in different colours, six pocket handkerchiefs of different colours, two pairs of shoes, one hat, all valued at 110 francs.

In the wardrobe of the deceased:

Two dresses of mousseline and of different colours, one camisole of cotton, one apron of cotton, three corsets, two round bonnets with lace, two pairs of shoes, eight shirts of different fabrics and colours, small clothes of a value of no more than thirty francs, all valued at 130 francs.

Household linen:

Eight pairs of curtains of different fabrics, sizes, and colours; six pillow covers; six table cloths; four napkins of linen, four kitchen towels, all valued at 110 francs.

A watch in a box with a chain of steel and a key of copper valued at 102 francs. Monsieur Tinancourt declared that, while his wife was sick, he had to sell some jewllery, another watch and a ring to pay for her doctor.

He also declared that at the time of his wife's death he had been renting the apartment where they lived for 150 francs per year and that they had been there for fifteen months. He also had the following expenses:

1) to Monsieur Candat, wine merchant - 60 francs

2) to Madame Nautai, for looking after the children, 36 francs

3) to Madame Laurent, the nurse who took care of the deceased, 33 francs

4) to Citizen Vesque, butcher, for meat, 22 francs

5) to Citizen Berger, for milk for the deceased, 50 francs

6) to Citizen Terrie, fruitseller, 8 francs 50 centimes

7) to Citizen Dida, cobbler, 12 francs 50 centimes

8) to Citizen Regny, baker, 19 francs 20 centimes

9) to Dame Marvi, interest on borrowed money, 27 francs

Citizen Tinancourt declared that he took nothing else from the community property. Citizen Tinancourt declared that he owned a small house in Bresle that he had recently sold for 250 francs and that he had used the money to pay the debts from his wife's illness.

[Nicolas Tinancourt signed at this point]

There being nothing else found to include or declare in this present inventory, which has been conducted without interruption and in the presence of the said Leclerc, whom Monsieur Tinancourt confirms as the secondary guardian, the inventory has been concluded.

And all the parties have signed. [signatures]

Recorded in Paris the twenty-second of prairial year ten. Two francs twenty centimes. 

 

Shades of Jean Valjean! Yet, as a picture of a life, the inventory is very, very clear and tells the tale of the Tinancourt family and its woes in excruciating detail.

©2011 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Notarial Records - A Post-Revolutionary Will Examined

Archives and records in France are termed as being either of the Ancien Régime or moderne (post-Revolutionary, e.g. from 1792 onward) and as the post-Revolutionary governments radically changed how many things were done, documents from the two eras can be quite different. Wills were no exception. Under the Ancien Régime, most people wrote a will and it was common for spouses each to make the another his or her sole heir. Older wills will contain a long prelude as to faith, requests and payments for masses and burial instructions before getting down to the nitty-gritty. From the early nineteenth century expressions of faith become less common.

The greatest change was caused by what has been mentioned here before: the rigid requirement of the Napoleonic Code, also know as the Code Civil, that all children of a couple receive exactly equal amounts. Portions of an estate may be left to others  but primogeniture was abolished. No child can be disinherited; no child can receive more than another. If the child predeceases the parents and had children, his or her share is to be divided equally among those children. If a person had no children, then his or her estate must be divided equally among siblings, parents, and on to cousins. Hence the work of notaires in genealogy.

The will we examine here was written in Paris by the notaire Maître Jules-Victor Froger-Deschesnes, who owned the office, called an étude, number thirty-one (always expressed in Roman numerals, see the photo above) located at 47, rue de Richelieu, for twenty-two years. He had been in his étude for just a year and a half when he wrote this will for Dr. Pierre Delpeux on the 15th of January, 1822, which reads:

Before me, Maître Jules Victor Froger-Deschesnes and Joachim Cesar Perret, notaires in Paris, undersigned, and in the presence of Monsieur Cesar Joseph Jolinger, property owner living in Paris at no. 4 rue de Gramont, and of Monsieur Louis Mercey, hotel proprietor, living in Paris at no. 25, rue de Richelieu, both witnesses,

Appeared

Monsieur Pierre Delpeux, doctor, living ordinarily in Port-au-Prince on the island of St. Domingue, presently in Paris and lodged at the Hotel de Bretagne, no. 25 rue de Richelieu.

The said Mr. Delpeux being ill in body but well in mind has thus called the notaires and two witnesses undersigned and having been found by the said notaires and witnesses to be in a bed placed in an alcove facing a window in a room numbered ten, on the third floor, lighted by two casement windows looking onto a courtyard and being a part of the house in Paris at no. 25 rue de Richelieu called the Hotel de Bretagne, has dictated  to the two notaires, in the presence of the two witnesses, his will which follows:

I give and leave half of all of my goods, property and letters of credit, without exception or reserve, which will remain on the day of my death to François Auguste Delpeux, my natural son, whom I have named [acknowledged] in the presence of these witnesses as my son.

I give and leave to Monsieur Haudandine, merchant of Nantes [ Download A minor hero.jpg] in the department of la Loire Inférieure, the other half of all of my goods, property and letters of credit, without exception or reserve, which will remain on the day of my death.

I charge Monsieur Handandine to pay on the half which I leave him of my goods the sum of two thousand francs to Elisabeth Delpeux, my niece living in Angouleme.

I name as my executor Monsieur Lemesle, merchant of Nantes, and I beg of him to accept this charge as a proof of his friendship.

I wish that the sum of two thousand francs which I leave to the named Elisabeth Delpeux will be paid to her free of all taxes and charges and I wish that these taxes and charges will be paid by Monsieur Haudandine from the portion that I leave to him.

I declare that I understand the bequests that I have made above to my son François Auguste Delpeux and to Monsieur Haudandine of all my goods, property and letters of credit, without exception which comprise my estate on the day of my death whether these goods be situated in France, the island of St. Domingue or elsewhere, without exception or reserve.

This will has been made and dated in the presence of the two notaires undersigned and in the presence of the two witnesses undersigned in Paris in the room designated no. 10 of the Hotel de Bretagne, in the year one thousand eight hundred twenty-two, Tuesday the fifteenth of January at ten o'clock in the evening.

The testator signed before the witnesses and the notaires after the reading aloud of the will by Maître Froger-Deschesnes in the presence of Maître Perret his colleague and the two witnesses. [All signed]

The wording and structure are standard for the time. The names, professions and addresses of the notaires, witnesses and the testator or testatrix are always given. If not in the notaire's étude, a description of the place where the will was dictated will be given. A person could also write his or her will and post it to the notaire, who would then keep it on file until the person should die, when it would then be registered. A confirmation of the registration will be put in the file with the original will.

Wills are good for finding family members, but for a view on the person's life as he or she lived it, nothing tops the inventory after death. Stay tuned.

©2011 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Professional Genealogy in France - l'USGP

 

Hitherto, France's genealogists have been a secretive bunch. Each chambre (office or company) working steadily to build a massive collection of information, as in the Andriveau archives. The work was and still is competitive, the genealogist usually hired by a notaire to find heirs. When one chambre went under, the others fought to buy its precious archives. In addition to heir searching, traditional use of genealogists was centred around the discovery or creation of a noble pedigree with a collection of coats of arms. This was lucrative and much coveted work. Sharing information, openness about sources and research, cooperation, were all unknown concepts.

With the growing popularity of  a more simplified form of family genealogy -- a passion to discover the true place of oneself and one's family in history, as opposed to the need to find a relation for legal reasons or the need to justify one's existence through the aggrandisment of one's forebears -- professional genealogy in France is changing with the times.

The USGP is the Union des syndicats des généalogistes professionnels, the federation of four professional genealogists' associations:

• le Syndicat national des généalogistes (SNG)
• la Chambre des Généalogistes Professionnels (CGP) 
• la Chambre Syndicale des Généalogistes et Héraldistes de France (CSGHF)
• la Compagnie Européenne des Généalogistes Successoraux (CEGS)

The newly redesigned website of the USGP opens with a message from the president announcing a commitment to advancing the profession, increasing the public's awareness of professional genealogists, providing information to both professionals and the public and to openness and transparency.

There are some ninety-five companies as members. Approximately six hundred individuals are members, of whom four hundred and five hold professional qualifications. The statistics about cases handled is a good indication of the focus of the profession and of its fundamental function: about 5,000 cases per year concern family and historical genealogy, while more than twice the number of cases per year (12,000) concern the finding of heirs and establishing their rights.

The site has some information about the laws and access to records, but the USGP does not aim to help amateurs find their way; it aims to further the profession. To this end, it has created a page that is extremely useful to those seeking a professional: a directory of all members, l'annuaire. Here, one has a complete list of all registered members. Click on a name and a card image comes up giving the full name, business name and address, membership to one of the syndicats above, card number and date of first joining. Unfortunately, no telephone number or e-mail address is given; neither is there a link to the company website. Worse, there is no filter to allow a search by location, which is quite a bore.

Still and all, it is a good beginning. We are rather charmed by the naturalness of most of the photos.

 ©2011 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Notarial Records - A Guardianship Document Examined

It is incredibly cold and snowy in much of France just now. The document we plan to discuss reminds us of our early days  here, struggling with the language. During a similar cold snap, down in the countryside, a kindly neighbour asked how we were managing, for the old stone farmhouses are difficult to keep warm. "Ah,"  we said "Nous mettons une brouette dans le lit chaque soir," believing we were telling her we took  a hot water bottle to bed at night. The neighbour said nothing, being polite or perhaps amazed, but her expression gave away that we had said something unusual. We asked if we had said something untoward. She pointed out the window into the garden, where stood a wheelbarrow, which is what we had actually told her we took to bed, confusing bouillotte with brouette. With that, we sealed our reputation in the village.

Our guardianship document is about the Brouette family and their children and the arrangements made for their guardianship when Jacques Brouette died on his farm in 1760. He left two sons: Jean and François. His widow was Marie. His brother, Louis, was designated guardian, le tuteur,  for his two nephews. This was something agreed by the relatives of the deceased after his death;  it not being the norm for guardianship wishes to be expressed in life. (Bad luck, you see.) Louis was also to manage the deceased's property and goods for the children. (The widow being a woman, you see.) The agreement as to this guardianship, la tutelle, was drawn up by a notaire, signed by all concerned -- who had voluntarily gathered for the purpose.

A list of all of the deceased's possessions was then made and divided into three groups. Marie took one, for she inherited a third of her husband's estate. The relatives and guardian took another, for the same reason. The final lot was to be kept for the children until they should reach the age of majority (which was twenty-five at the time).

Attached to the above documents is one dated seven years later stating that both Jean and François were adults and now could receive their inheritance. Their third of the possessions was listed again and they signed for them. At the same time, their uncle had to submit accounts for all the years that he was their guardian, le compte de la tutelle. 

The entire document runs to thirty-eight pages and is a fund of genealogical information, for when the family gathered, it listed every person present, with place of residence and his or her relationship to the children. For the children, the widow, and the deceased, ages, dates of birth, places of birth and of residence are given.

As with other notarial records, they can be found either in the copy books of the notaire who wrote the document or among the court records where it was filed, both of which will be in the Departmental Archives.  Generally speaking, they exist from the sixteenth century to the present day. Among resources to discover the extended family of a person, the tutelle, if one exists, may well be the best. 

©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Defiance - the Acte de Respect

One thing we like about French law is that its approach seems always to have been to take all of the crazy things that humans do and make laws to deal with each type of behaviour. In this, some of their laws seem designed to bring people back into society after their little episodes of aberration, like roping wandering cattle back into the herd. Other countries prefer to deny that crazy behaviour is human or is normal, and try to stamp it out with severe punishment for each occurrence. This is comparable to shooting dead the stupid cow that wanders off. 

The last post on notarial records was about marriage contracts and showed how much parents dominate the negotiations and decision-making. We felt sorry for the young couple, but at least their parents allowed them to marry. This post is about what young people could do if their parents did not allow them to marry.

 

In short, they could each go to a notaire and have a Document of Respect, an Acte de Respect, drawn up. The acte de respect existed in the Ancien Régime (pre-Revolution) at least as far back as the 1700s, and continued into the nineteenth century as a part of the Code Civil (it no longer is).  If parents refused to one of their children the necessary permission to marry the person of their choice, it was not necessary to poison people. The willful child could start the process of gaining the right to marry without permission. To do this, he or she stated all the facts of relationship, address and age in the document, and then added that he or she was respectfully and submissively asking the parent to be so kind as to grant permission to marry. One had to wait a month for the written response.

It was hoped that the disapproving parent would say yes, but if the answer were to be no, the recourse was to issue a second acte de respect and wait another month. If the answer were still no, then a third and final acte de respect and month-long wait was required. Then, the child could marry whomever he or she pleased. If the child was of the age of majority (twenty-five for women, thirty for men) before the process began, then only one acte de respect and a month's wait were necessary. Had they been in France, Romeo and Juliet would have lived, married, to a ripe old age, their passion and defiance smothered with the indifferent acceptance that so permeates that short but all-encompassing phrase,  c'est la vie.

The Acte de Respect will be found in the notarial archives in the Archives Départementales. As it gives the names of parents and the intended, ages of those wishing to marry, sometimes the professions, and places of residence, sometimes with street address, it is a very good genealogical resource. It is priceless as a window on personalities and family politics.

©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Notarial Records - A Marriage Contract Examined

We have all ready touched a bit on the subject of the French marriage contract in the post about dowries, but thought it might not hurt to look at one in detail. Firstly, let us remind all that a French marriage contract, historically, has never been a pre-nup. A modern pre-nuptial agreement is a kind of insurance, meant to protect the assets of one or both parties should the marriage end in divorce. Marriage contracts have existed in France for hundreds of years. For most of that time, France has been a Catholic country, where marriages did not end in divorce. For the French, the marriage contract is closer to the British idea of articles of incorporation. Two individuals, members of different organisations, each with assets deriving from those organisations, are joining together to form a new corporate entity. Its success or failure was determined by its ability to produce and support and endow with assets new members. As we have written before: the French think of marriage the way Americans think of business.

Our example contract was written  in 1901, on the ninth of September. The couple were married in October. The contract always comes before the marriage. Sometimes, it may be the day before; we know of one that was written two years before.

The groom is aged twenty-six, a farmer, living with his parents. The bride is twenty-three and also lives with her parents. They are from neighbouring villages in Normandy. Both sets of parents are present at the drawing up of the contract. More, the groom's parents are "acting for him and in his name" and the bride's are "contracting the agreement for her and in her name, because of the donation they are going to make". The couple opt for the regime dotal, which groups together all that the wife is bringing to the marriage, either on her own or as gifts to her, into one category as her property.

The contract then goes on to list every conceivable type of possession the bride might have -- furniture, property, money, bank shares, railway shares --  current and future, and says that she will retain full rights over it all to do with as she wishes. She will also keep all of the income and her husband is not to touch it. The bride cannot touch the shares either, but only receive the income and she is to approve any expenditure of it the groom may wish to make. This absolute right extends to whatever she may inherit one day.

 The next point states that she be allowed to make a donation inter vivos of any of her own property to any of her future children or grandchildren, without having to ask her husband's permission. Then, that the marriage forms a company in terms of acquisitions, each owning half of all, and that, when one of the couple shall die, the other shall have the right to usage (l'usufruct) of the home and all its furnishings exactly as it was, until his or her death.

The couple's individual belongings are listed. The groom has two suits, some clothes, underclothes and jewellery valued at five hundred francs, and he has fifteen hundred francs in savings, dear boy. His father is giving him a sum of seven thousand francs, once the marriage actually takes place, of course. The bride's parents are giving her a stunning trousseau (seen in part above) : six sheets! thirty-six blouses! thirty-six pillow covers! twenty-four tea towels! forty-eight handkerchiefs!! A bed, mattresses, a mirror, pillows, nightstand, wardrobe, a parasol and an umbrella. The whole lot was valued at three thousand francs, and they gave her another five thousand in cash. (Note that the groom need not list in detail his clothing, but the bride's list details not only the house linen, but every one of her undergarments. Was this not embarrassing and humiliating, one wonders?)

People were modern in 1901 and there is a clause anticipating the possible dissolution of the company (not marriage) which states that the bride will keep all that she brought to and acquired personally during the marriage, especially her jewellery and any linens marked with her initials. However, should she wish, she may accept three thousand in cash if all has grown too tatty. The surviving spouse gets to choose from the communal property which bits will constitute his or her share. The bride gets to do the choosing if the company is dissolved. Should the company produce children, their inheritance comes from the community property, and the survivor's share is proportionately reduced, though he or she retains the use.

The notaire wrote that he read various and appropriate articles of the Code Civil to all present so that everyone knew the law. He gave the young folks a certificate confirming the contract, which they would then present to the officier d'état civil, who records the marriage. (He would note in the record that the marriage was under a contract, the contract type, date and the name of the notaire.) Everybody signed.

Although  the wording refers to the rights and decisions of the bride and groom, it is clear that they had no part in the decisions as to the contract. In truth, in this case, even the groom's parents seem invisible. Yet, all in all, this is a fairly ordinary marriage contract, with many of the paragraphs being standard, as is the listing of the trousseau and even its price seems to be standard, hovering at three thousand francs for a good century. Perhaps one would dread meeting the bride's parents in court and perhaps forty-eight handkerchiefs is a bit much, but otherwise this is a good representation of how most French marriages began.

Marriage contracts are invaluable sources of genealogical information and the detail of daily life. Where to look for a marriage contract :

• Parish records rarely state if the married couple had a contract. One would not have expected one for the poor; one would expect one for anyone with any money. Civil records will state in the registration of the marriage if there were a contract, giving the date of the contract and the name of the notaire.
• If it is over 125 years old, it should be in the departmental archives. Notaires are supposed to turn over to the archives all of their records of that age. Some do, some don't. Requesting an old contract from a notaire is costly and slow, because he or she will charge for their writing to the archives and requesting the copy of their old file. Spend a little time hunting in the departmental archives and you can have it more quickly and cheaply .
• If you know the date of the marriage, begin searching notarial archives just prior to that.
• If you do not have the name of the notaire, almost certainly it will be one in the town where the couple married or where one of them lived. One did not go to an out of town notaire for a marriage contract.

*Addendum : Gilles Dubois does the same with an 18th century marriage contract on his blog Carnet Web de Généalogie.

©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

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Help in Transcribing and Translating Old Documents

  

Truth to tell, we are indolent. Excuses come with a glibness that is itself speedy but in all honesty, we have the energy level of a hibernating bear. Thus, we lean weightily on that part of the economy referred to as its tertiary sector, i.e. the people who do your homework for you. 

As we have written before, paleography is not our strong point, so we were relieved when, not long ago, we were contacted by Linda Watson of Transcription Services Ltd. on the Isle of Man, the flag of which is too good to pass up:

 

TSL provide quite a range of services, including some genealogical research in the UK. Until recently, their transcription of old documents was limited to those in English. "We have done some work transcribing diaries from the American Civil War for Harvard University, and many, many wills for clients from as far afield as New Zealand," Linda writes.

Now, they also provide a service of interest to the French genealogist. "Within the last 12 months we have been able to add a service transcribing Latin and French documents, which has been particularly useful to a lady in Scotland who is researching for a book about a 16th century gentleman who was a frequent visitor to the French court." Ms. Watson has just begun a blog about her work on old documents, which she began after she took a course from Liverpool University entitled "Reading Old Manuscripts".  Her French documents specialist, Kristina, writes interestingly about her work:

"Working with old documents can be alternately fascinating and frustrating – it's often both at the same time, for the very same reasons – and their highs and lows are intensified when interpreting manuscripts penned in a foreign language. For me, as a native English-speaker, this means French as well as Latin, though neither would have seemed quite so foreign to, say, a high status English ancestor with a court appointment, since they were the international idioms for law, government, and diplomacy not only before the Reformation but beyond. This may be why researchers of 'capital H' History frequently have a much easier time of it than the family historian; such records tend to be neatly copied out before being entered into the public record – settle yourself with your arsenal of old language dictionaries, put the one listing abbreviations top of the pile, and you're away. Though the individual MS may be damaged, and you are constantly called on to decide which of several possible letters is staring opaquely up at you (to ensure the surrounding word is accurately expanded), at least the physical appearance of your cipher tends to be clear, the document having been stored with some care. But such high status ancestors are few, and early documents unearthed by inspired genealogists are generally local in scope and execution, requiring the idiosyncrasies of an individual shorthand – not included in any code-book – to be cracked and factored in. When researching one's own ancestry, background knowledge of names and places (notoriously the most difficult words to transcribe correctly) speeds up the task significantly, as does a general sense of the document's context. Working on assignment, one is limited to the information supplied on the parchment itself, which may be an incomplete working draft, with the writer intending to fill in details – as well as clean up his penmanship – at the fair-copy stage.

This was the case with the sample 16^th c. French text viewable on the TSL website. In life, the paper itself bears only minor damage (fraying, an internal tear, some discolouration), but the ink has faded to illegibility – the first low that I encountered. Fortunately, digital photography has not only made palæographic work more convenient and accessible, its use of ultra-violet light resurrects faded ink, is safe (without flash) for parchment, which is happily all the safer for not being handled during the process of transcription. First high, then, came on viewing the digital image, in which the ink appeared a crisp, dark sepia – easily legible, if not for the slap-dash, idiosyncratic, inconsistent penmanship, and the elliptical content, as its writer failed to spell out exactly what it was he was writing about. It is exactly the kind of working draft mentioned above, though Serjeant Boudet seems to have devoted some energy to signing his name with elaborate fair-copy flourish. Second and third lows, first smile. The highs which came with cracking each initially impenetrable abbreviated word and phrase were higher than if the job had been an easier one, giving the same satisfaction I expect cryptic crossword and sudoku solvers take in their respective puzzles. But my main enjoyment stemmed from travelling to a time and place I knew nothing about when I began my assignment, provincial France in 1585, the writer Pierre Boudet being a King's Sergeant, but "under (the) League", the extremist Catholic Union challenging Henri III's tolerance toward Protestants with an increasing violence that would soon result in the Huguenots' exodus to England. A gripping history lesson, then, courtesy of a low-level local official, paid one and one third ecu, who took pleasure in his signature, writing in haste to report the advertisement of a forced auction outside the church of Bazoges. If only he'd taken an extra moment to record what it was that he auctioned!"

The entire TSL service operates via the internet:

• send a digital photo of the document
• include a description of it, where it is from, any information relating to its contents.
• Terms agreed by e-mail
• Results returned as a PDF or Word file (or in the post, if preferred)

We have not yet used TSL, but we very much like the idea of those most difficult documents being made clear as day via the internet while we continue to snore in our cave. Should any of our dear readers have been so fortunate as to obtain family records from the Sixteenth Century and which they still cannot decipher, they may wish to consider the TSL. If so, please write to tell about it.

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Transcription Services Ltd.

3 Hilary Road

Douglas

Isle of Man  IM2 3EG

United Kingdom

telephone: (+44) 1624 671591

fax : (+44) 870 8381142

e-mail: tsl@TranscriptionServicesLtd.com

website: www.transcriptionservicesltd.com   

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©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy 

Technorati Profile

Finding Notarial Records

 

 Like many El Dorados, notarial documents are not always easy to find. To be quite honest, it is easier to pick a document and find the family to whom it once belonged than it is to start with the family and find their notarial records but then, that is the difference between the disciplines of history and genealogy, being the difference between the historian who can pick her subject and the family historian who cannot unpick Gramps. 

To find a family's notarial records, if any survive,  requires knowing the name of their notaire. This is because the documents are catalogued by the name of the notaire and the étude, in the Archives départementales, within series E. Normally, each archives will maintain a chronological list of the names of the notaires working in each area. If you know where your ancestors lived, you can then find which notaire was working in that area at that time. Then, it is just a matter of leafing through  that notaire's documents for that time period.

Notarial records had to be registered. There are numerous registres du Contrôle des actes is in the Archives départementales. Unfortunately, they are not all in the same series. If the notaire is not known, but the date, place and family involved are known, it may be possible to locate the reference to the document in the registre. It seems that, across the country for marriage contracts, the registre (in series Q) is better for some years than for others: 1793-1850 is pretty good; 1850-1865 is said to be useless, but at least having tables - chronological indices; 1865-1904, generally also useless, without even having indices. (One begins to have the impression that notaires are a recalcitrant bunch.)

If there was a marriage contract, it should  be mentioned, along with the notaire's name, in any acte de mariage after 1850. If the name of the notaire is not mentioned, it's off to those tricky registres. If it still cannot be found, it may be possible to find the dowry payment documents - les quittances de dot -  or a will later, with a copy of the marriage contract attached.

Finding a will is aided by the Bureau de Successions, an office where deaths were reported and logged. In many of the log books it will be stated whether the deceased left a will, along with the name of the notaire involved. 

Finding notarial records is not terribly difficult; finding all such records for a family can be exhausting, but well worth the effort.

2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy 

Notarial Records - Les actes notariés

The many interesting types of notarial records include marriage contracts, wills, guardianship arrangements, apprenticeship contracts, sales contracts, deeds, estate inventories, and records of payments linked to any of these. In them, individuals will be named, their appearances occasionally detailed, their relationships with others -- sometimes salaciously --  described, their disputes outlined, their accumulated belongings catalogued, their successes and failures clinically displayed. It cannot be denied; this is a bonanza.

The most genealogically useful of the standard notarial records are:

• Marriage Contracts, for they give a great deal of information about both families of the couple: full names of the couple, their ages (or at least a statement as to whether they had reached the age of majority), date and place of birth, current residence, whether either were widowed or divorced and the name of the previous spouse. There should also be the full names, professions and the residence of the parents and the witnesses. The dowry (see the recent post on dowries) will be detailed, along with precisely how and when it was to be paid.
• Wills, for they name children, spouses, and sometimes other relatives, and give an indication of wealth. Wills were very common at all levels of society before the Revolution. With the implementation of the Napoleonic Code, the number of wills written dropped dramatically. Probably, this is one of the biggest differences in documentation between French genealogy and others, for in the U.S. or Britain, wills continue to be left by most people, while in post-Revolutionary France, they are not. The reason for this is that Napoleon detailed and made law so precisely as to how estates were to be divided that writing a will became pointless. Only the tiniest changes have occurred in that law so it remains pretty close to what it was over 200 years ago. Essentially  (and this chills the hearts of all the British retirees in France, in spite of a recent modification) the entire estate had to be divided equally between the deceased's children. No child could be disinherited. No child could receive more or less than another. There are dozens of points which prevent any sneaking around this and there are dozens more which detail  -- to the sixth degree of relation -- who inherits what if there are no children or if they predecease. The point here is that the law was so clear that people just stopped leaving wills.
• Estate Inventories, or inventories after death, however, continued as before and became even more detailed after the Napoleonic Code.  Since each child had to receive an inheritance of exactly the same value, there was an enormous amount of bickering about the value of every little thing. It is not at all uncommon for a family to dispute so much that the notaires will divide all of the deceased's belongings, all the contents of the house or farm, into heaps of equal value and tell the heirs to draw lots. The inventory will contain the name of the deceased, age at the time of death, place and date of death, and marital status. It will give the names and ages of the surviving spouse and of all children, with their professions. It may also have attached to it all previous marriage contracts and payment documents to clarify the property ownership. The inventory itself is, of course, a fascinating insight into the possessions of long ago.

It requires doggedness to do so, but try to get the notarial records for each generation, for then it is possible to create  quite a detailed history of the experience of the family, its economic ups and downs, many of its traditions, its little prides and great tragedies.

©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy