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Everything you need to know before starting genealogy: types of research, periods, archives, and records to consult...
Genealogy is a personal activity. You alone decide your research goals.
- Archives of central institutions abolished by the Revolution
- Archives of ecclesiastical institutions of the Paris diocese
- Archives seized from emigrants or convicted persons
Most records are available for online consultation.
Consult archives by department, perform a search by municipality, type of record, and dates.
Also use our departmental checklists to find useful leads for your research.
Except for large cities, the archives of municipalities are deposited and available online on departmental archives websites.
Consult our list of online accessible municipal archives.
Note that to protect individuals' privacy, archives have a specific consultation delay. This can be an obstacle for beginners, as you might search for a 'too recent' document. That's why we recommend first researching your family archives (family book, family photos...).
Birth, marriage, death records (NMD) – after the revolution or baptism, marriage, burial records (BMS) – before the revolution
What information do they provide?
Dates, places, ages, parents' names, professions, witnesses...
Where to find them?
Online (departmental or municipal archives websites), by searching by municipality and date or by requesting them at the town hall for free (for recent acts).
Note
The marriage certificate is often the key! It provides a lot of useful information about the parents of the spouses, ideal for tracing your branch.
It is important to read the acts in their entirety. For example: the date of the act is sometimes different from the date of the event...
Decennial tables : Alphabetical lists of all events (NMD) within the same municipality over 10 years.
> Useful for identifying all dates and acts that may concern ancestors before consulting the corresponding records (NMD).
Population censuses : Nominative lists of inhabitants by household in the same municipality.
> Useful for knowing the evolution of a family and provide names, first names, professions, and roles of individuals in the household.
Military records : Nominative records, by canton, of all men who had a military career (most men were called up at 20 years old between 1867 and 1949).
> Useful for knowing a man's civil status, physical description, level of education, recent places of residence, and details of various services and transfers.
• Electoral lists
• Notarial archives
• Hospital archives
• Judicial archives
• Naturalization files
• Minutes of the Municipal Council meetings
• Napoleonic cadastre
• Iconographic collections on AD websites
• Gregorian and Republican calendars : It is recommended to bookmark a site to convert Republican dates.
• Surname changes : Be careful, the spelling of our ancestors' surnames has changed a lot. Note the different spellings encountered and do not stop at the first orthographic version; read the acts!
• First name changes : Be careful, the given name in civil status is not always the usual name, the one given at baptism. It is not uncommon for the same names to be given from generation to generation or even within the same siblings (if a child dies young).
• Homonyms : Homonyms within the same family or municipality are common. Be careful not to confuse ancestry! Search, read, and verify information in the acts!
A GEDCOM file (or .ged) is the text file necessary for exchanging genealogical information. All genealogy software and sites automatically create .ged files and allow you to read, import, or export them.
This file contains the links between individuals in your genealogy, families, and all their events.
With a GEDCOM file you can :
• Save your genealogy on your computer
• Transfer your genealogy to other sites or software
• Share and transmit your genealogy
There are different formats of .ged files: ANSEL, ANSI, ASCII, UTF-8...
We recommend working with UTF-8 as much as possible (the most common format).
Geneafinder is a free and private site for beginner or experienced genealogists.
• You can create your tree or import an existing tree in GEDCOM format
• Visualize your tree and analyze at a glance where to continue (color code)
• Speed up your research with our direct links to departmental archives websites
• Find leads thanks to our nominative search tool
• Use our missing date estimator (birth, marriage, death)
• Add sources and notes to better organize yourself
On Geneafinder, no other user than you has access to your tree data.