Geneanet's Humour Collection

Somehow, one gets the feeling that the people running Geneanet are a bit more intelligent and a bit wittier than the other commercial genealogy websites. They seem actually to enjoy history and genealogy rather than to be solely interested in profiting from genealogists' research needs.

They have a delightfully quirky category entitled "Archives insolites" or "Unusual Archives", which is something of a misnomer. The images uploaded are not of a single archival collection; they are images of individual parish and civil register entries that have been submitted by users either because they are oddly humourous or because they are quite unusual.

Recall that French burial and death register entries almost never give a cause of death. In birth register entries, the only comment beyond the facts is as to legitimacy. So, to find an entry that gives something more, something out of the usual pattern is unusual and interesting. For example:

A sad account, of interest to medical historians of a cesarian section, followed by the death of the mother.

A humourous account of a bishop scolding an ecclesiastic for engaging in hunts.

Unusual weather, such as snow in June, may be noted.

Often, the examples are quite sad, exhibiting the great struggles of this life. Too often, they exhibit the prejudices of the time and, in the comments, of our own time. Still, they can be both educational and entertaining, so do have a read. Perfect for a rainy afternoon.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

The Departments

There are one hundred departments in France, grouped under eighteen (down from twenty-two) regions, and each has its own archives, where much genealogical research is done. Thus, knowing about the departments is a key first step for hunting ancestors in France.

The current departments are always listed alphabetically and always referred to with their number, e.g. Seine-Maritime (76) or Dordogne (24). When they were created, in 1790, the new system was supposed to be more rational and we are sure that, in terms of government, it was. This numbering is used in many aspects of administration. In post codes (the first two numbers are the department's number), in the old style car license plates (the last two numbers are the department's number), in each and every person's tax number (the third pair of numbers indicates the department). Children memorize the departments' names and numbers at school and use the list all of their lives. The numbering system, however, went the way of all simplistic systems meant to be the definitive, final, last, perfect, etc. version of something, and is getting messier and messier as time goes on. Even so, it is very convenient.

In the beginning, there were eighty-three departments, in an alphabetical list. Each was numbered, beginning with 1, and leaving no gaps. To look at a map, like the one above, is to see all of France with a disarray of numbers within it. Knowing the alphabet, one can sort of fumble around and guess at the name, but it is not easy. We have not studied it, but we suspect there was a political reason behind this and that the confusion was intentional. In the unstable years of the Revolution, there were many powerful families with a well-established network of government based in the old provinces. Such networks would have greatly helped any counter-revolutionary activities. The new system of departments effectively broke up those provinces and the power network of those families (of course, most of those people were guillotined as well and that really fixed them.)

Then, Napoleon conquered new territory and the number of departments went up to one hundred and thirty, but their names did not all begin with Z so, as they had to be given numbers, the alphabetic sequence was lost. Not to worry, as Napoleon was defeated and the number of departments went down to a more manageable eighty-six. A little more territory was acquired and the number went up to eighty-nine. There were reorganizations, some colonies became Overseas Departments, Paris kept growing. In an effort to keep a logical sequence, numbers were reassigned at times. Today's list of one hundred is still pretty much alphabetical until the last few. The departments, with links to the websites of the Departmental Archives, are listed in the left-hand column of this blog. The regions are as follows:

Thirteen in mainland France:

• Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
• Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
• Bretagne
• Centre-Val de Loire
• Corse
• Grand Est
• Hauts-de-France
• Île-de-France
• Normandie
• Nouvelle-Aquitaine
• Occitanie
• Pays de la Loire
• Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

Five in overseas France:

• Guadeloupe
• Martinique
• Guyane
• La Réunion
• Mayotte

For the genealogist, especially the foreign one, this is torture. To finally find the correct department of an ancestor and then find that it has disappeared is maddening. However, not that many departments disappeared and, in most cases, the archives are still somewhere. (For example, the departmental archives of Yvelines contain those of the ex-department of Seine et Oise.) It will just require a little more effort to find them.

For an extremely thorough discussion of the administrative structure and history of France's departments, see the excellent Wikipedia article on the subject. 

N.B. This post is updated from the original that appeared in 2009.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Acte de Rectification - Changing a French Birth Register Entry

We were contacted by a Loyal Reader and Supporter of this blog, Monsieur M., with the following about his ancestress: 

Have you ever heard of an "Acte de rectification"?

I have an 2x Great Aunt who's birth name was entered incorrectly in the village register. Salome Fix, born in Climbach, Bas-Rhin, in 1835. Her surname was entered incorrectly into the town register as Fuchs.

When she was 21, she sought to have a correction made, to her actual name. The actual name of FIX, and the error of FUCHS.

One would think this would be a simple matter, right? Correct a mistake? This happens all the time, no? But no.

My relative had to go to a tribunal in the nearby administrative town, and get a ruling from the tribunal, ordering that the register be altered to show her actual name. And she had to produce evidence to prove her own name, which included her father's marriage record, where the correct family name was used. So, the tribunal issued an "Acte de rectification," an Act of Rectification, and a note was duly added to her entry in the birth register.

Ever heard of this? Having never encountered it before (or the degree of legalese involved), it seems unusual to me. I googled it, and not much came up.

Thanks for your work and your blog,

 

He had also discussed this on Reddit, where the responses are, for the most part, quite well informed. One commenter explains the State's ownership of records of civil status; another gives this link to the Code de procedure civile, which explains how such a rectification must be made in France.

Having fought our own battle to change our name, we are most sympathetic with Salomé. It is difficult to do in any country, but the situation in France requires a bit more explanation for the genealogist than the fine folk of Reddit chose to give.

In 1804, the Code Civil was first published. It is a remarkable work. After the French Revolution, the laws and customs of King and Church, insofar as they governed civil society, were abolished. New civil laws, based upon reason, it was intended, were (and still are) the Code Civil, also known as the Napoleonic Code. Page twenty-eight clearly states that any alteration to a civil register entry must be authorized by a court.

It is preceded by the rules for birth, banns, marriage and death register entries. For the banns and marriage, each of the couple had to present a certified copy of their birth register entry. When a man reported for military service, he had to present such a copy. As did any child when registering for school. Thus, any mistake would be perpetuated; it could not, as in other countries, be altered by a customary use. Moreover, for a woman, as was Salomé, the name would not disappear when she married, as it does in other countries; as we explained here, a woman's birth surname is always her legal name in France. Thus, it is clear how important it is for a civil register entry to be correct.

Yet, while we have seen quite a few rectifications, we have seen only one case where a rectification was surely required but never made. In late December of 1877, Julien François Morin was born to an unmarried mother in Bourges. The midwife declared the birth and, the register states, presented the child, who was registered, (see image no. 421 here) as female, the word quite boldly written. A few months later, the child's parents married and recognized Julien as their son. (The marriage and recognition can be seen at image 145 here.) Was this a case of ambiguous genitalia? Of a midwife who mixed up some babies? Of a myopic or drunken civil registrar? Julien Mamet, as his name became after his parents' marriage, lived as a man, serving in the army, marrying and divorcing a woman, but his birth register entry was never corrected. The two marginal notes on it refer to his parents' marriage, which legitimated his birth, and to his own marriage. How did he manage the discrepancy each time he had to present the certified copy of his birth register entry? How was he entered in the Livret de famille? Should anyone of the mairie in Bourge read this, please let us know.

Many thanks to Monsieur M for inspiring this post.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

War and the Mad Rush to Marry - August 1914

It is late May, the time when, traditionally, many French couples were looking forward to Summer or Autumn weddings. The dress, the flowers, the long trestle tables in the garden, the organization of cooking for three days of feasting, the sleeping arrangements for the visiting relatives, all this occupied minds as the weather grew hotter and people grew more anticipatory.

The Summer of 1914 was different, of course. War was declared in August and the men in the reserves were called to serve. In the panic, thousands of couples rushed to the City Halls and Town Halls and married. Snooty French historians surmise that all were living in "concubinage" and merely wanted to regularize things, especially ensuring a wife could claim a pension (not that it was much) before the men went off to die.

We have noticed what seems to have been another impulse for these rushed marriages: citizenship. Pick the marriage register of any Parisian arrondissement in August of 1914 and look at the names. Many are Germanic. Looking at the places of birth, many people were from Alsace-Lorraine, which was then a part of Germany. For those people, their country of birth had just started a war with their country of residence. They could not know if Germans would be expelled from France, or rounded up and sent to camps, or if, should Germany invade, they would be seen as traitors. Marriage to a French national in France would guarantee some security; at least it is clear that many thought so.

This discovery came about because we were unable to find the marriage of a woman from Alsace in that region at all. She did not marry in her place of birth, her place of residence, or even the place given on her engagement announcement, printed in July of 1914. What she did, when war was declared, was rush to Paris, where her fiancé was living and where they married right away. Soon after, she applied for French citizenship and was able to remain in France for the rest of her life. 

Bear this in mind should you be researching a marriage at just that time. It could have been in a rush and in an unexpected place. Your search will be a bit complicated by the fact that not many of the marriage registers for that year have been digitized yet. You may have to guess a location (where did the wife live during the war? Where did the couple live after the war? If at least one person marrying was born in France, look at the marriage marginal note on the birth register entry) and request a copy of the marriage register entry the old-fashioned way, by post.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Read more about Alsace-Lorraine here.

 

A Snapshot of Post-War France - the 1946 Census

Dear Readers, thank you so much for your many messages of concern and support. We are well, recovering from yet another surgery and limping our way back to as normal a life as possible. As those of us who are passionate about genealogy tend to do, we have been spending much of our recuperation gazing at census returns from the past (so much more interesting than reality shows, don't you think?) We have been looking at page after page of peoples' lives, the details whispered not shouted, a community's interactions, liaisons, failures and successes revealed, but only to those who take the time to study and reflect upon the information in the returns.

The census of 1946 in France, just a few months after the end of the Second World War, we have discovered, is a wonder. There was no census in 1941, so the most recent was 1936. The difference in the ten years is, of course, dramatic. One can see which people returned from the war and which did not. Some towns, such as Villeneuve-Saint-Denis, listed the German prisoners of war who had been put to work there. (These prisoners were either in camps or put to work on farms or in mines. You can learn more about how to research them here.) 

Communities of foreigners, perhaps refugees, can also be seen. The village of Fublaines had a number of Belgians.  That of Jouy-le-Châtel had many Polish people.

Not all departmental archives have digitized the 1946 census yet and not all towns included in their enumerations the prisoners of war. Still and all, if you are researching someone in post-war France, this census can be very useful, indeed.

©2023 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

The Finistère Convicts Register - Was Your Ancestor an Escaped Convict or Prisoner of War in Napoleonic France?

Earlier this year, we went on a marvelous archives junket to Bretagne. One of the most important things on our list was to examine much more carefully and thoroughly this superb register of recaptured escapees of all sorts during the Napoleonic era.

To describe it properly, this register is an Alphabetical List of recaptured French and foreign prisoners who had been released or who had escaped and who subsequently were held in various prisons in the department of Finistère (Forçats français, étrangers : liste alphabetique des détenus, libérés, ou évadés de differentes prisons, Code 1Y88 in the Brest Annex of the Departmental Archives of Finistère) On the cover is written that it spans the years 1800 to 1815 but it seems to be more from the middle years of that period. It has about two hundred pages, with roughly twenty-five to thirty-five names per page. That makes for something between five and seven thousand names of convicts and escapees.

The presentation within is tidy enough. One finds the prisoner's surname and first names, their status and the prisons from which they escaped. There are many types of status or descriptions, but the most common are:

• forçat libéré - released convict
• forçat évadé - escaped convict
• condamné et évadé - convicted and escaped
• prisonnier de guerre évadé - escaped prisoner of war

Here is a sample page:

As you can see, the columns to the left of the names refer to lists and dossiers that should have provided more detail. Frustratingly, these would seem to have been lost.

Nevertheless, there is some interesting information to be found in this register. On just this one page, we find that:

• There seems to have been a mass break-out at Rham, in Luxembourg, with  many men recaptured.
• François Bureau escaped from prison at Brest
• Claude Breugnot was held on suspicion of the kidnapping of Charlotte Seure
• Ralph Billings was a prisoner of war escaped from the depot at Verdun, as were William Brown and Thomas Benninck

The book is filled with convicts who came to the west of France from all over the territory of the French Empire. It sometimes gives a small detail of their conviction, such as that a man was condemned to years in irons or that he had escaped during the march to a prison. Most of the entries, of course, are  escaped criminals and those suspected of every type of crime, including murder, rape, fraud, theft. Quite a few managed their escapes from hospitals. The escaped prisoners of war were of all nationalities: Spanish and English especially, but also Italian, Polish and Austrian. Many in the list were conscripts and deserters from Napoleon's army. There are a small number of women and a few runaway children. They had made their way to the coast, hoping to find a boat to make their escape from France. Each of them, somehow, in some way, was nabbed.

This register is a wonderful view on a particular part of French society at a very particular time in French history. Combined with other archival resources, it could help to enhance your research on an ancestor. As just a couple of examples:

• For those of you with a convict ancestor who escaped from the Bagne de Brest, you could compare his entries in the two registers. (The registers of the other port forced labour prisons of Rochefort, Toulon, Lorient and Cherbourg, from which there were many escapes,  are not online and would have to be examined in the archives.)
• For those of you with an ancestor whose military records show that he deserted, you might find evidence of his capture here.

***

The escaped prisoners of war form an interesting group. We are not informed as to the accounts and archives concerning the prisoners of war of Spanish, Italian, Polish, Austrian or other nationalities, but we do know a bit about some of the British prisoners of war in Napoleonic France. We have discussed the civilian British prisoners here and, briefly, the prisoners of war here. They are listed in Admiralty records digitized on FindMyPast. Additionally, those who were still being held in 1812 can be found listed in the "Report from the Committee for the Relief of the British Prisoners in France; with a list of the prisoners". After the wars, a number of British ex-prisoners published accounts of their experiences, including their "escapes".

We counted in this register just under 880 names of escaped British prisoners of war who were recaptured and held in Finistère, amongst them:

• Beaumont Dixie, escaped from Verdun
• Edward Boys, escaped from Valenciennes
• Joshua Done, escaped from Verdun
• Phillip Levesconte, escaped from Verdun
• Hugh Falconer Macfarland, escaped from Verdun
• Two Thomas Mains, father and son, escaped from Valenciennes
• Edward Montagu, escaped from Verdun
• John Moore, escaped from Bitche
• Denis OBrien, escaped from Bitche
• Sidney Smith, escaped from Verdun
• Charles Sturt, escaped from Meaux

In the accounts written by some of the above, there is no mention of recapture, which does call into question the rest of what they wrote. On the other hand, some of the above most certainly did escape France, most notably Charles Sturt, which could indicate that at least one prison guard was not above accepting a bribe, or that, after being returned to prison, they had to escape all over again. Indeed, a few of them did just that.

Recall our recent post about a trove of letters from British prisoners of war held at the harsher prisons of Bitche and Sarrelibre. Men usually were sent there from other prisons if they were troublesome or if they had attempted to escape. Comparing those letters with this register, we can see from the recaptures the probable reason for a man's having been sent to a "punishment prison".

• David Absalon appears in the Finistère Convicts register as having escaped from Verdun; a letter from him appears in the Bitche-Sarrelibre cache
• Thomas Nazeby, appears in the Finistère Convicts register as having escaped from Arras;; he had three letters in the Bitche-Sarrelibre cache
• James Ord appears in the Finistère Convicts register as having escaped from Auxonne; a letter from him appears in the Bitche-Sarrelibre cache
• William Tullidge or Tullage appears in the Finistère Convicts register as having escaped from Cambrai; one letter from him appears in the Bitche-Sarrelibre cache

This lone register is, we believe, a treasure of a find and we hope that it may be digitized soon, along with the registers of the other port bagnes, please.

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

French Jewish Genealogy - Ancien régime Geography Is Important

When researching Jewish genealogy before the French Revolution, the reach back into the past is long, well into the Medieval era. Borders were different then and France looked quite different, not at all like the "Hexagon" (above) of today. Prior to the final expulsion of 1394, Jewish people were permitted to live only in specific places. These might have been certain towns, within which they may have been limited to just a few streets for residence and work. They endured long years of persecution and previous expulsions, but lived throughout France. It is important to note that, in 1394, the country looked more like this:

 

Quite a bit less than modern France:

This makes the map below, claiming to show French Jewish communities at the time of the expulsion, quite misleading, as a significant few of those supposedly French Jewish communities were not within the France of that day.

 

The expulsion, in all its horror, was successful, in that no known Jewish families remained in what was then France. However, their communities just outside of France did survive, as can be seen in this map.

If you are working with only a modern map of France, you will have the impression that the three main areas of Jewish communities:

• The Southwest
• Alsace-Lorraine
• The Papal States and Provence

survived the expulsion within France. That would be wrong, because they were not within France at the time of the expulsion and so, if this is not putting too fine a point on it, were Jewish, of course, but not French. The areas in black in the map just above were controlled by other powers:

• By the English in the far northwest and the southwest region of Aquitaine
• A tiny bit in the south belonged to the Kingdom of Navarre
• The Holy Roman Empire held the northeast
• Free Burgundy, Savoy and the Papal States owned all the rest of what is now eastern France

Paris, as ever, was a special case. Though no Jewish people were supposed to be living there, most likely they were. Robert Anchell, in his fascinating article on "The Early History of the Jewish Quarters in Paris", maintains that it is unlikely that Jewish people were ever, at any time since the Medieval Era, absent from Paris. He points out that they certainly must have been very discrete, for there is almost no documentation of Jewish people in Paris for nearly 300 years after the expulsion.

For research purposes, in each of the three main regions of Jewish communities there were different laws, rules, languages, customs and attitudes, making for different search methodologies today. Firstly, the language differences:

• The Southwest received many refugees from the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497, so many of the surviving documents of the region are in Spanish
• Alsace was part of the Holy Roman Empire for eight hundred years, while Lorraine was an independent duchy that was then governed by Stanislas of Poland. In both regions, the documentation is as much in German and Latin as in French.
• The Papal States or Comtat Venaissin, did not become a part of France until 1791, but Provence was annexed in 1481. The documentation can be in French or Latin

In all locations Jewish documents may also be in Hebrew.

For each of these regions, some of the best research may be done at the relevant Departmental and Municipal Archives. Some of these have been uploading onto their websites some very interesting Jewish materials. These are the departmental and municipal archives relevant to the specific regions:

• Southwest:
  • Departmental Archives: Landes, Gironde, Pyrénées Atlantiques
  • Municipal Archives: Bayonne, Bordeaux
• Lorraine:
  • Departmental Archives: Moselle, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Vosges
  • Municipal Archives: Metz, Nancy
• Alsace:
  • Departmental Archives: Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin
  • Municipal Archives: Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Colmar
• Papal States / Comtat Venaissin:
  • Departmental Archives: Vaucluse
  • Municipal Archives: Nîmes

Do visit those websites and start exploring!

©2022 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

FGB Free Clinic - Case no. 9 - Marie Fouyol, Parisian wife of Thomas Mansell, part 7 - Name Study

So, Dear Readers, to date, we have had little luck in our search for the identity of Marie Fouyol prior to her marriage to Thomas Mansell, her place of origin, her parents' names, her supposed first husband, and so forth. Bearing in mind that two thirds of the burned Paris archives have never been replaced, we will sort through what does exist, examining occurrences of her far too changeable name. We found people living in Paris at the time as she with the following variations of the name:

1. Fouillolle
2. Fouillol
3. Fouyolle
4. Fouyol
5. Foulliol
6. Fouyeul
7. Fouieul
8. Fouilleul

There are slight differences in the pronunciation. Numbers one through four are all pronounced the same, with the last "o" similar to that in the word "no" in English. Numbers six through eight are pronounced the same, with the ending "eul" sounding, to an English speaker, pretty close to the way Peter Sellers says "bump" in this scene. Number five is in a class of its own but is more like the first four than the last three. Spoken in a crowded marketplace, they all would have sounded pretty much the same. 

Marie would seem to have pronounced her own name with more of an "o" sound in the second syllable, as the spelling versions used for her name in the baptisms of her children are numbers two, three and four. She was not the only person to spell the name in more than one way. Many of the individuals used two or three of the above spellings.

Looking at the website Géopatronyme, it can be seen that none of the first four spellings survived to the late nineteenth century; number seven also does not survive. There is only one case of number five and a few cases of number six. It is number eight, Fouilleul, that dominated. It is found predominantly in the west of France, in Mayenne, and less so in Manche. The name means, by the way, "leafy" or "shady", which could occur anywhere, including a spot in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

In Paris during the period of roughly 1770, when the parents of Marie might have married, through 1830, some ten years after she left, all but one of the above names is found on the Right Bank, clustered around Les Halles, the vast warren of shops and markets, in the parishes of Saint Eustache, Saint Merri and Saint Germain l'Auxerrois. The Foulliol family, number five, lived to the west, near Invalides, where they also worked. The Invalides Foulliols were studied to some extent, through baptism, marriage and death register entries, as well as through probate inventories until, eventually, it became clear that Marie could not have been a member of this family. The remaining couples of interest are:

• Michel Fouyeul, a widower from Saint Maurice du Désert in Orne, who married a second time in Saint Eustache in 1786.
• Michel Fouieul, of rue du Poirier, who married Marie Jeanne LeLièvre in Saint Merri in 1807. They had a son, Michel Victor, in 1808.
• A man named Baratte, whose wife was Françoise Fouillol. Their son, born in 1805, married in Saint Merri in 1831.
• Michel Fouilleul, who married Jeanne Ackermann in Saint Germain l'Auxerrois in 1780.

Recall that there could have been a dozen or more couples of equal interest of whom all trace was lost in the burnt archives. Nevertheless, working with what we have, Michel Fouieul and Françoise Fouillol Baratte may have been of an age to have been siblings of Marie Fouyol. The two remaining Michels each could have been the father of Marie Fouyol, the widower from his first marriage, in 1778, to Margueritte Pinson, and the Michel Fouilleul who married Jeanne Ackermann in 1780, two or three years before Marie was born.

There is also a lone man of interest, Michel Fouyol. His carte de sûreté, issued in Paris on the 23rd of May 1793, on which his surname was entered as "Fouyolle" but his signature was "Fouyol", gave his address as number 103, rue de la Tabletterie, near Les Halles. He was aged fifty-three, a cleaner of animal skins and furs, and had lived in Paris for twenty years. He had been born in Le Teilleul, Manche. Apparently, he was a keen revolutionary, perhaps a true sans-culotte, for the author Darlene Gay Levy, in her book Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, cites archival documentation showing that he denounced a neighbour who did not support the Revolution. It took little time to find the birth on the 25th of July 1740, in Le Teilleul, of a Michel Foüilleul, son of Julien and his wife, Jeanne Geffroy. Is this the same person? Did he go to Paris, marry and have children there? Could he be the same man who married Jeanne Ackermann in 1780 and could they have been Marie's parents? That would be tidy, indeed, but, Oh! Dear Readers! what a lot of work  and luck would be needed to prove all of that.

In our next post, we will look at further avenues of research Madame J can pursue and how to determine the most likely resources to use.

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

 

 

Alternative Avenues to Seek a French Birth or Baptism

The French equivalent for "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" is a phrase first written by Nicolas Boileau in 1674: "Hâtez-vous lentement et, sans perdre courage, vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage" ("Make haste slowly and, without becoming discouraged,  set to work on the job twenty times.") Finding a French birth or baptism register entry is generally quite straightforward if one has :

• The correct name
• The town of birth
• The decade of birth

A quick search in the ten-year indices for births in the town on the website of the Departmental Archives (links to them on the left) will give the full name and the precise date. One can then find the entry in the digitized birth register. Usually, that is, but not always. Bad things can happen to archives over the years. In France, as in most countries, some have burnt, some have been bombed, some have been flooded. Where to look when the birth or baptism registers concerning your ancestors have been lost? There are a few possibilities.

• If the ancestor married, the marriage register entry will have the date and place of birth, as well as the parents' names.
• If your ancestor married someone from a different town, check the marriage banns for that town that the couple should have posted. The marriage banns also contain the date and place of birth, as well as the parents' names.
• If the ancestral couple had a marriage contract and you know the name of the notaire in order to find it, that too, will give the date and place of birth, as well as the parents' names of the prospective bride and groom.
• If your ancestor served in the military, the conscription registers will have the birth details. In some large indices, such as that for the Resistance dossiers, or that for the naval officer personnel files, the date and place of birth are given.
• If your ancestor were a member of the Légion d'Honneur, the dossier on him or her may well contain a certified copy of the birth or baptism register entry. These are now best accessed through the search facility of the Archives nationales.

Try, try again, even twenty times!

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Looking More Closely at How to Use the Le Havre Passenger Lists

We have been working rather intensely with the Le Havre passenger lists of late. At the same time, we have received missives of bafflement caused by them. If you are reading this post with interest, we will assume that you have encountered difficulties accessing and understanding the Le Havre passenger lists. We will also assume that you have read our post about them with its update about the wonderful index to them, Désarmements havrais. However, many, many, many of you have written in frustration, having failed to find your ancestor or even the vessel, or even really, to understand how to use the two sites. So, let us try to clarify.

NAME OF THE COLLECTION - Inscription maritime du Havre, Index par bateaux des registres de désarmement, 1750-1876

ARCHIVES CODE OF THE COLLECTION - 6 P 6

WHERE THE COLLECTION CAN BE FOUND ONLINE - on the website of the Departmental Archives of Seine-Maritime (ADSM)

click on "Autre fonds numérisés"

click on "L'inscription maritime"

click on "Cliquez ici pour accéder à l’Inscription Maritime en ligne"

for Quartier, choose Le Havre

for Type de registre, choose Rôles des bâtiments de Commerce

click on Rechercher - That takes you to the collection

WHAT THE COLLECTION IS -  these passenger lists are within a collection of ships' papers, or sea letters, a notoriously messy kind of documentation, even today. Every ship has to carry papers of registration, the crew list, passenger list, insurance, details of every port visited, etc.. In France, in the 18th and 19th centuries, every time a French-registered ship returned from a voyage, all of the ship's papers, which form the administrative history of the voyage, were turned in to the port authority. That is what the surviving collection is : the papers that the vessel brought back. There were other collections. There were papers of ship registrations. There were lists made of the passengers on all outgoing and incoming vessels and these lists were held at the ports. The ports, especially Le Havre, Brest and Lorient, were bombed heavily by the Americans and British during World War II and all of these other collections of passenger lists and ships' papers were destroyed in the bombing. This single, partial, surviving collection was discovered long after the war in a part of a building that was not entirely destroyed. It is very little but it is all that we have.

WHAT THE COLLECTION IS NOT - these are not lists of all passengers who left from the port of Le Havre, only of those who left on French vessels that returned. The papers, including passenger lists, of any vessel that was not French that sailed from Le Havre whether Belgian or British or American or Dutch, etc., will not be included. The papers of any French vessel that did not return to Le Havre will not be included. (Thus, if the vessel were sold after the outward voyage, or if she returned to a different French port, such as Bordeaux or Nantes, she did not return to Le Havre.)

HOW THE COLLECTION IS ARRANGED - Chronologically, by the year and date when she returned. Thus, if your ancestor sailed from Le Havre in 1848, you will look for the ships' papers in the year of return, 1849 or 1850. They are not in alphabetical order, but in the order that they were decommissioned, or désarmé. There are hundreds for each year, each given a désarmement number for that year.

HOW TO FIND A PARTICULAR VESSEL'S PARTICULAR RETURN - carrying on from the above explanation as to where the collection can be found online.

after clicking on Rechercher and arriving at the collection

click on "Rôles des bâtiments de commerce"

click on "Ordinaire (long-cours, cabotage, pêche, plaisance, bornage)"

scroll down the list (it runs to many pages)  to find the year in which your vessel returned to Le Havre

read through the hundreds of pages to find your vessel's désarmement / decommissioning number

The minimum amount of information that you need is: the vessel's name, the year of return and the decommissioning number.

 

 

This is where Le Désarmement havrais becomes so very helpful. Not only have they listed:

• the names of the vessels
• the destination of the voyage
• the captain
• the crew
• the passengers

They also give, for each return from a voyage for each vessel, the date of return, the decommissioning number and, most preciously, the page number on the microfilm, so one need no longer scroll through those hundreds of pages. For the Mansard, above, that went to San Francisco in 1858, we can see that her decommissioning number is 178, that her papers can be found in the ADSM 6P6 series (which we already knew) register number 209.

Further down the same page, the wonderful volunteers of this index give the crew and one can click on "passagers" to get the list of passengers.

Here, you see there was only a captain, Auguste Abel Gravereau. Well, of course that cannot be, Dear Reader, and this is when we recall that this index, as marvelous as it may be, is a work in progress. There must have been a crew, we imagine, and there may have been passengers. So, we want to see the original ship's papers to see if there were not more to them or if they were partially destroyed.

Knowing that she returned to Le Havre in 1858, that her decommissioning number is 178, we can go back to the ADSM website, work our way to the year 1858,  and choose the 1858 item (the second one, it turns out, numbers 96 to 190) that will include that decommissioning number:

Click on the plus sign to see more and you will see that you are at 6P6-209, which is what you know you want from the information given by Désarmement havrais.

Click on "Cliquez ici pour consulter le document" to see the images. Then, go straight to page number 637.

There, you will see the entire crew list and, further along, on page 642, you can see that there were four passengers.

There can be mysteries, as in the case of the Amitié, which arrived in New Orleans in 1837, and for which Ancstry.com has the full arriving passenger list but for which Désarmements havrais and ADSM have no passengers departing. With such a mystery, read the other documents, especially the last page of the ship's papers, showing all ports visited, and giving some notes, or observations. The Amitié's las page shows that, on the return voyage, she stopped at Plymouth, in England. In the "Observations" column, the note is partially obscured in the binding but it says that she was carrying dispatches, which the captain delivered to the French consul at Plymouth, along with some of the ship's papers. The entry on the right at the top shows the arrival in New Orleans on the 6th of October 1837, with "diverse merchandise" and a crew of twenty and 166 passengers. So, it would seem that Ancestry's passenger list is correct and that the French consul at Plymouth kept the vessel's passenger list, which is why they do not appear here.

Now, you are experts!

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy