Some time ago, we were contacted by the writer, Nina Fluornoy, about her efforts to trace her French ancestors who emigrated to Louisiana. Her family had shared stories of a noble ancestress who had been in the court off Marie-Antoinette.... Read more →
Lest you have come to believe, Dear Readers, that we despise the nobility and, had we been alive at the time, would have joined the rampaging sans culottes during the Revolution, permit us to assure that it is not so.... Read more →
It is a trial for us all, Dear Readers, making ends meet in this time of spiralling costs but were we to have just a centime for every time someone tells us that they have an ancestor who was a... Read more →
We have been extremely busy, Dear Readers, working with a wonderful set of passenger lists from the early nineteenth century. Though England and France were at war from 1803 to 1815 (with a small break for a tenuous victory), travel... Read more →
The royal general Farms, les fermes généraux, were the system of tax collection in France ( fermes in this usage means leases). From as early as the reign of Henri III, the collection of taxes and customs duties in France... Read more →
A couple of years ago, the brilliant archivists in the Archives nationales produced a superb advice note on how to research émigré ancestors in France's National Archives, entitled Rechercher un émigré de la Révolution (1789-1825).1 (Note that the word émigré... Read more →
Those of you who have been reading The French Genealogy Blog for a while may have discovered that we despise the principle of aristocracy, the premise that those born to privilege, power and vast swathes of property are somehow superior... Read more →