The French Genealogy Blog

French Jewish Genealogy - Online Guides

We have written a number of posts on French Jewish genealogy (to find them all, click on that category toward the end of the column on the left of this page) but in preparing for our recent talk on the subject, we discovered some very fine guides have been put online. 

Not yet the best source of all, that being "Les Familles juives en France, XVIe siècle - 1815 : Guide des Recherches biographiques et généalogiques" by Gildas Bernard. That superb work details all of the holdings in all of the archives and libraries in France relating to Jewish people. When you search on the websites of those various archives and libraries, you will find what is digitized easily. Possibly, what has not been digitized will be mentioned in the nether regions of a finding aid. With Bernard's book, you can have the full listing. It also contains superb essays by local archivists about the history and archives in the main regions of France of Jewish history:

• Alsace
• Lorraine
• Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin
• The Southwest

Unfortunately, this book has not yet been digitized. However, an updated version of his earlier work has been put online by the Archives nationales and can be downloaded as a PDF here. We plan to keep checking, in the hope that they will do the same with Les Familles juives soon.

In the mean time, here are links to a number of very good guides to researching Jewish genealogy in France:

• The Departmental Archives of Vaucluse have four very brief guides to their important holdings on the Jewish families of the Papal States:
  • Download Avignon PDF
  • Download Carpentras PDF
  • Download Cavaillon PDF
  • Download L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue PDF
• The Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin have produced two guides relating specifically to their resources on Jewish families in Alsace. They can be downloaded here.
• JewishGen has a very clear, if a bit outdated, summary of the basics of French Jewish research, in English, here.
• GenAmi - The Jewish Genealogical Association, has excellent guides by region, and in English.
• The Jewish Virtual Library probably has the best page on French Jewish history, which will help you with your genealogical research:
  • in Paris, here
  • in Alsace here,
  • in Lorraine here
  • in Avignon here
  • in Bordeaux here
  • check the blue banner on the left of their pages for other cities in France; note that the important city of Saint-Esprit is within the article on Bayonne.

We plan to write more posts on the subject, but the above will keep you going until we do.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Research Your Ancestor Through Archives on the Town

A nice tool is gradually being added to the websites of various Departmental Archives. It can be of great help to you in tracing your family if you know where they lived in France. The tool is usually within the section entitled Archives en ligne (Archives online) or Archives numérisés (digitized archives), and it is usually called something like Recherche par commune (Search by town).

Click on that, then enter your ancestor's town or village name and voilà, you are presented with, in the best versions, an array of information about the town and of what the archives hold concerning it and its people:

• A history of the town
• Its location and neighbouring towns
• Links to useful administrative websites
• Parish and civil registers
• Indices to them
• Census returns
• Military enlistment registers
• Maps
• Probate records
• Tax records
• Postcards

It is a wonderful way to know in an instant what is available and to target your research.

Not all of the Departmental Archives websites have this facility. One of the best we have found in on that of Pas-de-Calais. Saône-et-Loire has a less attractive but still useful version. Check the Departmental Archives websites you use to see if they have this option and give it a go. (You can also try searching these terms on Google: the department name and "recherche par commune" "archives départementales".) You may discover a resource missed when you were searching only by a family name.

Bonne chance!

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Pure Envy

Generally, Dear Readers, we are not the envious type but this week we fell prey to that character flaw.  We had the opportunity to join a private visit to one of those small, perfect chateaux that dot France like an abundance of wildflowers in a meadow.

For most people, a chateau is a very dear proposition and those who buy them now do not, as in the past, also acquire an army of unpaid labourers to work the land and fork over the crops for the owner to sell for a tidy sum. Nor are chateaux tax-free, as all life once was for the nobility who owned them. They require deep pockets indeed and most chatelains clearly do not have them. So many of the chateaux that we have visited are crumbling ruins exuding the rank odours of damp and rot, the stone walls long ago having lost all mortar, so that stones drop out of the walls and towers alarmingly. Most of these places were emptied of their treasures over two hundred years ago by rampaging, revolutionary peasants. What was not destroyed on the spot was sold off or, if of precious metal, melted down and then sold. Visiting a chateau is often a lesson in gloom.

The chateau in question, however, was a world away from those sad shells. Its residents claim to be direct descendants of the builder and that the family have lived there for over a thousand years. The rooms are cluttered with enough ancient riches and portraits to induce one to believe the claim. All is beautifully maintained, with not a hint of rot or mould to be smelt, the plaster not cracked, the drapery not moth-eaten. 

We assure you, Dear Readers, we were not swooning with longing for any of the shiny detritus of the ages, lovely though some of it was, until we were shown the room pictured above. At that point, envy, in all its intensity, swept over and enveloped us like the molten lava of Vesuvius swept over and enveloped the souls of Pompeii before they could kneel and say a prayer. We had come upon the family archive, a room, we were informed, that was filled with archive boxes containing over three thousand documents about the family and the chateau, dating back to the year 1055. "Oh please," our heart begged, "Let us see, let us read. Open just one carton..." Alas, no. The guide urged the group to move along and out into the extravagantly beautiful courtyard, never to see that wondrous family archive room again.

 

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy