The French Genealogy Blog

Huguenot Hints

By Syryatsu - Own work modified from File:Blason_ville_fr_Lacoste_(Vaucluse) .svg by User:Spedona, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5132345, modified by Morddel 27/06/2021

 

In the dozen years that we have been writing this chipper blog, the archivists in charge of the Departmental Archives websites (listed in our column to the left), in general, have gone from a curmudgeonly and sneering behaviour toward genealogists and family historians to one of beaming and open-armed welcome. They would appear to have discovered, Dear Readers, that we are the proverbial cash cow. Though the websites are free to use, the contractual agreements with commercial genealogy websites to index and link to them must be bringing in a pretty centime or two. Their statistics as to users, once probably dismal when counting only those bodies that crossed the archives thresholds, have soared when counting website hits, bringing job security and an attendant joy to all archives staff.

To keep things bounding along, all of the Departmental Archives, to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon their finances, have continued to film and digitize more of their collections, including documents relating to Protestants. Those where Protestantism forms a large part of the department's history (especially those in which can be found the four initial Protestant "strongholds" of La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac and La Charité-sur-Loire) have had exhibitions on the topic, such as that of Charente-Maritime, which highlighted important documents. (Read this page to know of other stronghold cities.) As ever, terminology and website design vary slightly from one department to the next, so we offer a couple of small hints to aid you in your online research:

• Generally, when searching for any pre-Revolutionary, e.g. ancien régime, baptism, marriage or burial record on a Departmental Archives website, one selects a town, or commune, first, then looks for the type of register. The Protestant registers have different names and might be called any of the following:
  • Le registre pastoral, or les registres pastoraux
  • Le registre protestant
  • Les registres au desert (or simply au desert, referring to the period after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, when Protestantism was banned)
  • Les registres des Consistoires
  • Les registres paroissiaux protestants
  • RPR (Religion Prétendue Réformée) or registres de l'église réformé. This will refer to Calvinist registers only, as differentiated from those of other Christian cultes, such as Lutherans (luthériens) or Mennonites (anabaptistes)
• The interminable death throes of Flash, dragging on with as much noise and flame as ever was made by the dragon speared by Saint George, appear to have made access to some Departmental Archives websites difficult for those whose computers are not in France. The obvious solution is to use a VPN, such as Express VPN or Nord. Failing that, if you cannot access a website when you stoutly believe that you should be able to do so, try a different browser. We are not told which is the best but the worst is said to be Firefox.

Of course, you might try our booklet on the subject, for further research guidance.

As always, we wish you the best of luck. Bonne chance!

©2021 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Researching a Ship's Doctor in France

Inexplicably, we have received a number of e-missives from certain Dear Readers who all have an ancestor who claimed to be a "surgeon in the French navy" or a "naval doctor" or a "surgeon on a French frigate at Trafalgar". It is most unusual, we believe, to have a spate of surgeon's descendants surface. Yet, we are grateful for, in our attempts to give helpful replies, we have discovered some very interesting new research paths, supplemented by two well-timed talks. 

When researching French surgeons at sea, making the differentiation between the Navy and the Merchant Marine is as important as it is when researching sailors or seamen. The documentation and archival storage are in some way quite separate and the researcher has to bear that in mind. If you are researching a man who was a doctor, surgeon or pharmacist/chemist in the French Navy, your work has been done for you by the excellent team of archivist/authors at the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) who produced the weighty tome, Dictionnaire des médecins, chirurgiens et pharmaciens de la Marine . The work is so thorough that, if your ancestor does not appear within, he almost certainly was not a surgeon inthe French Navy.

Thus, you must look in the scattered, incomplete, rarely online but wondrous records of the French Merchant Marine (Marine de commerce et de pêche). Recall that we wrote on a recent post about the French naval conscription:

The French Naval Class System, Le système de classes

It is clear that many outside of France are completely unaware of a key element of the French Navy, La Marine, and that is the fact that, since 1668, the Marine has had its own system of drafting men into service. As with other military draft systems, it was compulsory. Censuses were taken of all men aged eighteen or over who worked on any type of vessel or who worked with vessels or in ports in any capacity. (From this it can be seen that most of the men came from coastal areas, few were from inland regions.) Lists, called matricules, were made for each region each time the census was taken. All men listed during a particular census were in the same classe, which could be called up to serve at any time during war. The class system was devised to prevent (and is considered by the French to be infinitely superior to and more humane than) something like the British practice of impressing (or pressing) men into service in the Royal Navy. During times of peace, classes were not called up, but during times of war, many classes could be called up at the same time and the men possibly could be made to serve longer than the mandated year. In 1795, the classe system was renamed the maritime enrollment, inscription maritime, but functioned in much the same way throughout the nineteenth century.

When young men had to register, they did so within their Quartier Maritime, an administrative division under the Ministry of the Marine. Prior to the Revolution, the registration was handled by the Admiralty headquarters, les sièges d'Amirauté. These divisions or headquarters were usually in port cities such as Le Havre, Rouen, Lorient, Cherbourg, Bordeaux, Toulon, and many, many more. They handled the registration of merchant vessels and personnel, including surgeons.

Surgeons, to serve on a vessel, had to pass tests and receive certificates. Many of the register books showing this have survived and some are online. Those for Bordeaux, on the website of the Departmental Archives of Gironde include:

• Registrations of Captains, surgeons and other officers, from 1699 to 1792 (Réceptions de capitaines de vaisseaux, chirurgiens, maîtres de barque, pilotes hauturiers, etc...)
• Certificates delivered by approved Admiralty surgeons to new candidates, from 1711-1728 (Certificats délivrés par les chirurgiens de l'Amirauté de Guienne aux candidats chirurgiens de mer.)

Here is a screen print of one of the former, showing the entry for Pierre Lafargue, whose father trained him (a not uncommon occurrence).

For Le Havre and Rouen, the digitized registers are on the website of the Departmental Archives of Seine-Maritime. They have so much and the search is complicated. The easiest way to get to the register and to other interesting possibilities is to go to the "Recherche simple" search box and type in "chirurgiens" and you will see this wonderful book:

One can have a bit more fun and, on the AD Gironde website, see a register of the contents of the surgeons' chests as they were in 1786 (code 6 B 546): 

 

 So, now you know not to despair if your "naval surgeon" ancestor is not in the Dictionnaire des mèdecins. If he lived near Le Havre or Bordeaux, you might find him registered as a "surgeon of the sea" with the merchant marine.

A small tip: Huguenots were not permitted to be surgeons during the Ancien régime (David Garrioch, The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685-1789, p. 159.) . So, if you find your man among surgeons, he was almost certainly a Catholic. Conversely, your Huguenot ancestor may have been a doctor but almost certainly could not practice in France.

Santé!

©2020 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

Protestant and Huguenot Research - The TT Series

Those sly pixies at the Archives nationales have been working diligently and without fanfare. Archivists above the fray, perhaps holding the cult of celebrity in contempt and scorning the celebrity's unseemly lust for self proclamation (a sign of a flawed personality) disguised as self promotion (a sign of a brain that spent its developmental years absorbing televised used car adverts), may have taken their modesty too far. No one noticed when they quietly slipped onto the Salle des Inventaires virtuelles, the finding aids for the TT Series, accompanied by some of their wonderfully explanatory essays. Even more excitingly, some of the original archives have been digitized and can be seen online (at no charge) on the website of the Archives nationales.

We have mentioned the TT Series before, in our post on Huguenot Genealogy. How things have progressed since we penned that essay! A large number of Departmental Archives  have digitized their Protestant registers and now have them available on their websites. 

The TT Series is the collection of records concerning the Protestants and the property confiscated from them after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when persecution of the Protestants, after nearly one hundred years of tolerance, began again. Specifically, the sub-series are:

• TT//1 to TT//83 - Records concerning the management of Protestant property from 1686 to 1751. Arranged alphabetically by location.
• TT//84 to TT//229, plus TT459 and TT460 - Queries, investigations and statements concerning Protestant property, much of which had been confiscated. Arranged alphabetically by the property owner.
• TT//230 to TT//276B - Archives des Consistoires. All of the records and registers confiscated from the suppressed Protestant churches, (consistoires or temples,) these are thought to be "the most important part of the series concerning the history of Protestantism, both before and after the Edict of Nantes". They are fully explained in the section entitled "Description" here. There is also a complete index here. Joy of joys, some of these may be seen online. The diligent and expert people at Geneawiki have created the easiest pages of links:
  • Selected folders from TT//264 through TT//275A linking to the Archives nationales films of the documents. Keep checking the main page of Consistoires listings for new films as they are added.
  • Selected folders from TT//230 through TT//276, linking to digital photos on Geneanet taken by volunteers. Unfortunately, many are very blurred and almost impossible to read.
• TT//277 to TT//429, plus TT//461 and TT//462 - Records concerning the management of Protestant property from 1686 to 1789. Arranged by subject, this section is a bit less clearly structured. An extremely detailed listing of TT//376 to TT//429 can be read here.
• TT//430 to TT//464 - Miscellaneous - A few of these may also be seen as digital photos on Geneanet taken by volunteers here.

The complete and detailed listing of the above can be seen here.

The availability of these archives on the Internet will enhance Protestant and Huguenot research significantly. Really quite exciting.

©2019 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Five Hundred Years of Protestantism - A Guest Post

 

Our good friend, the genealogist, Isabelle Haemmerle, sends this from Geneva:

 

The exhibition "Côté chaire côté rue" presented at the Archives of the State of Geneva is to be extended until March 2018. Held in the context of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation (1517), it presents the effects of the religious activity and the spread of Protestant ideas on the daily life of Geneva. The presentation of a digitalisation project and the restoration of the archives of the Protestant Church complete this exhibition and highlight the historical work linked to the archives.

 

 

In the XVI century, the Churches and States made concerted efforts throughout Europe to systematically register births, marriages and deaths, thereby providing the embryo of what would later become the civil state. In Geneva the series of civil registers is continuous as of the time in 1550 when cupboards were integrated in the pulpits for the pastors to keep these precious books.

These registers must not be seen as merely an administrative activity. While they effectively provided knowledge of the state of the population – in Geneva they were used very early to establish statistics on plague deaths – and if private citizens had an interest as these documents allowed them to identify their legitimate heirs – their use was primarily religious. It was not individuals who were registered as so many constituents, as the believers called upon to follow a Christian path in the community of Salvation formed by the parish. In Geneva, before the last quarter of the XVI century, it was not the date of birth that the ministers entered in these registers, but that of baptism, which marked the new-borns’ entry into the community of the parish where they would thereafter be required to attend services.

The civil register, as it was seen at the time, therefore made up a sort of collective accounting and consequently it is not surprising to read other things that our contemporaries did not expect to find: the ministers were not satisfied to just enter the names of the faithful whose lives make up the warp of this accounting, but entered many other things such as important events for the parish or instructions for their successors.

To implement the exhibition, historians have studied the sources, here the Council registers, the Church archives, criminal trials, parish registers and the ancient works in the AEG library.

This display presents the Council registers and the archives of the Protestant Church of Geneva.


1- The Council registers: they form the main source for anyone interested in the history of Geneva. They comprise the registers containing the decisions, and their annexes, from the executive and legislative authorities of the Community of Citizens and Bourgeois, then City and Republic, then Republic and Canton of Geneva. Today these would be the minutes of the Council of State. This series has been preserved constantly since 1409 up to the present day, which is quite unique in Europe, with an interruption during the French period (1798-1813).
The registers from the years 1409 to 1541 have been edited, meaning that they have been transcribed, annotated and published.

2- The Church archives: In order to prepare an exhibition on Geneva at the time of the reformation, it is obviously essential to study the archives produced by the Church itself. Since 1937 these documents have been preserved in the State Archives.

On November 20th, 1541, the General Council (the assembly of citizens) adopted the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. These Ordinances organized Church life by instituting four functions or ministries: the Pastors, Doctors, Elders and Deacons. It created two new organs: the Company of Pastors and the Consistory which were to produce documents and hence archives.

The Church archives consist of two principal collections:

1. The Consistory archives (1542-1929)

The Elders formed the Consistory: it was a chamber composed of twelve pastors and twelve members of the government, presided by one of the supreme magistrates. There was a secretary who was responsible for taking the minutes of the meetings. The Elders, according to Article 37 of the Ordinances, must be divided amongst the various neighbourhoods of the city at a rate of one Elder per thousand inhabitants, “to keep an eye on everything”. The Consistory is charged with the surveillance of the behaviour of individuals, to admonish deviant practices and beliefs, to arbitrate conflicts between individuals and to obtain their amendment in cases of indiscipline. This sort of moral and matrimonial court could only pronounce ecclesiastical sentences, meaning the denial of communion. In cases requiring criminal sanctions, the guilty party was deferred to the Small Council. The Consistory met every Thursday.

The Consistory registers provided a very rich source for studying the numerous aspects of Geneva’s history. While Consistories have been introduced in all the Reformed Churches, it is rare to find a collection with registers of this scope and continuity for the entirety of the Old Regime (more than 90 registers). Numerous affairs are to be found in them concerning beliefs and religious practices, sexuality and marriage and all matters related to them: promises of marriage, fornication, adultery and divorce; but other subjects are also to be found such as drunkenness, blasphemy, usury, begging, dance and song, healers and seers, gambling, etc. It is through these minutes that little by little a certain image of popular culture may be perceived: the Genevan social fabric and the morality of the Geneva at this time.

2. The archives of the Company of Pastors (1546-1944)

The Company of Pastors comprised all the ministers in Geneva, not only those in the city but also those in the countryside. The principle competences of the Company of Pastors were the doctrine and instruction. It keeps watch on the orthodoxy of its members, regulates worship, presents future ministers and teachers to the authorities, organizes charity, controls printed materials and maintains relations with other Reformed Churches. The Company of Pastors meets on Fridays; its deliberations and decisions are consigned in writing by a secretary. The minutes of the Company of Pastors’ meetings provide study material of great diversity, that sheds light on religious history and also on the social history of Geneva, more specifically on the elaboration of ecclesiastical discipline in the new Church, the difficulties encountered in its organisation, education and exchanges with other countries. The questions debated by the Company of Pastors were of a more international character than those discussed in the Consistory; it was there that the questions posed by the Churches of France and elsewhere were discussed and where it was decided what response should be returned to them.

The Archives of the State of Geneva maintain, restore and digitalise the documents that historians use in their work.

When digitalising old series, the original documents are of course retained. The State Archives have a digitalisation workshop. The protestant Church of Geneva deposited a first part of its historical archives with AEG in 1937. These documents, the oldest dating from 1542 and much consulted, were no longer in a condition that met with the rules governing preservation and consultation.
To address the problem, ARRCC, the Association for the restoration and digitalisation of the Consistory and the Company was created in 2012 with the goal of raising the funds necessary for the preservation of the Church’s archives. In this way, through this project led by AEG, the 182 registers of the Consistory and the Company of Pastors’ minutes are in the process of being restored and have been digitalised (XVI-XIX centuries). They can be accessed on-line at Adhemar, the AEG database.

Exhibition at The Archives of the State of Geneva(AEG)

Côté chaire, côté rue. La Réforme à Genève 1517-1617 - The Reformation in Geneva 1517-1617

Extension of the exhibition to March 1 2018
AEG - rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville 1

archives@etat.ge.ch

Tel: + 41 022 327 93 20

 

Thank you, Isabelle!

Those who wish to contact Isabelle to know more about genealogy in Geneva may do so by writing to her at: genhaemm (AT) gmail (DOT) com 

 

 

 

For Researchers of Huguenots - FamilySearch Adds Scans From the SHPF

Things are in a bit of a tizzy today as all of France goes to the polls for the first round in electing a new president. Here, there is still sanity in the procedures. There are two rounds of voting. In the first one, all candidates have their name on the ballot; there are eleven this year. When the votes are counted, the winner would be whoever were to receive more than fifty per cent of the votes. As it is rare for that to happen, the two candidates with the most votes then go to the second round or run off  and the winner of that will be France's new president. 

As to publicity and marketing, that too is quite civilised. There are debates on television. The candidates tour the country and make speeches. One of them this year got quite a lot of publicity -- but no increase in support -- by giving one speech in a number of places at the same time via hologram transmission à la Princess Leia. As to posters and advertising, each town puts up a board on which each candidate's supporters may put up one, just one, poster. They are all the same size. Currently, they all have the same amount of defacing. A few days before the election, each registered voter receives an envelope that contains campaign material: for each candidate there is one, just one, A3 size sheet, folded to make two pages, printed on both sides with their slogans, claims and manifestos. No one is allowed more, all decidedly equal and fair. Such a sedate affair compared to the madness in our homeland.

Now, to genealogy. We have been asked lately and repeatedly by readers to visit for them the Bibliothèque de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme français in Paris. We do adore the place, which we have described here, and we would never turn down an excuse to go there, where the staff are so kind and helpful. However, it seems that many of you, Dear Readers, are unaware that large numbers of their manuscript holdings are now online, free of charge, on FamilySearch, in a jumbled and irrationally made list. These are available digitally only and not on Family History Centre microfilms. For the large part, these are Protestant baptisms, marriages and burials from registers found all over France, including Paris.

We would never deter anyone from visiting the City of Light but it is now no longer necessary to do so to see these registers. Have at them!

©2017 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

The Future Mennonite Archives of France

Further to our research on the Swiss Mennonites in the Pays de Montbéliard, we visited the small and sweetly anachronistic La Prairie Mennonite Church of Montbéliard. The excellent Madame Boilaux had arranged for us to be met by Monsieur and Madame N, who were most generous with their time. They gave us a tour of the church and explained its history.

The first Mennonites arrived in the region in 1710 and they seem to have had their first meeting house and cemetery by 1751, at nearby Mont-Chevis. In 1775, the church was moved to a farm called Les Gouttes, then again in 1832 to Le Canal Chapel. The Franco-Prussian War and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine resulted in the arrival of many Mennonite refugees from those regions. The congregation quickly outgrew its space and, in 1927, yet another church was built (that shown above) on the La Prairie Farm. Now, it is surrounded by large, modern administrative buildings, a busy road, a massive automobile factory not far and a doomed green field at the back. It is so countrified in comparison with its rather brutal surroundings that one recalls the dread-inducing sight of a young hedgehog attempting to traverse a motorway. 

Plans are afoot and donations are solicited for an expansion to the church, allowing not only for the ever-growing congregation, but also for office space for other activities such as publishing the church newsletter, temporary housing for people in need and, of great interest to genealogists, the creation of a centre for the Mennonite archives of France.

Madame N. had arrived with a large book under her arm. "Notre trésor", she had called it, "Our treasure". It was indeed. It was the original register of the church, its earliest entry dated 1750, its spine in tatters.

We were quite thrilled to have been permitted to peruse the register, though we thought it really did deserve its new home with better protection so that it might last another two hundred sixty years. Its extracted contents may be viewed on the website of the Municipal Archives of Montbéliard.

For those who wish to contribute to the fund for the archives (pots of money are called for), read more here or contact Pierre Schott at pierre.schott@estvideo.fr

For those who wish to be given a tour of the Mennonite Church, its buildings and other historic sites in the area, write to egliseprairie@yahoo.fr

©2017 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy

 

Summer Reading - The Short Chronicle

We are a bit late with this post and apologize, but we have been enthralled by a first-hand account of the takeover of Geneva by the Huguenots, beginning in 1529, "The Short Chronicle : a Poor Clare's Account of the Reformation in Geneva". It is told by a Catholic nun, Jeanne de Jussie, writing from within the not very secure walls of the Convent of Saint Clare in Geneva.

Many of our readers write to tell us that they are descended from Huguenots and tell a tale of their ancestors' persecution and suffering. This account shows that the viciousness could be on the other side as well. Brutal killings, mutilations, rapes, beheading children, destruction of religious artifacts, burnings of homes, churches, livestock and crops - all these crimes and worse were perpetrated by the Huguenots against the Catholics of Geneva. Jeanne and other women in religious communities lived in terror of their convent walls being smashed, their bodies violated, their lives cruelly and abruptly ended.

In spite of being terrified, Jeanne never becomes hysterical. Her writing is clear-headed throughout. She is an intelligent observer of the destruction of her world and reports not only on the acts of terrorism but on the political negotiations and machinations of those in power on both sides. She does, however, allow herself the luxury of some quite creative insulting of the enemy. Not only do "scoundrels", "profaners", "sinners" and "vile bodies" fill the ranks of the Huguenots, but the Swiss Germans are "disloyal, heretical dogs", and Martin Luther is  "the pestiferous dragon with the venomous tail".

The editor and translator, Carrie F. Klaus, has provided informative but unobtrusive notes. Though many people of Geneva and the surrounding towns are named, this is not a book on genealogy. As a contemporary account of the Protestant Reformation in Geneva, it may be of interest to anyone researching Huguenot ancestors and wishing to understand better what they may have experienced. To students of history, whether of the sixteenth or the twenty-first century, it will prove yet again, that there are never any good guys in religious wars.

©2015 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy