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Regarding parish registers and civil status, these few historical milestones (the main ones) can guide you in your genealogical research.
This royal ordinance, decreed by Francis I, requires priests to keep baptism registers in all parishes of the kingdom. It also makes French the official language in France.
Henceforth, marriages and burials must also be recorded in parish registers by priests. This same ordinance establishes the requirement for parental consent for married couples and the celebration of marriage in front of four witnesses.
This ordinance promulgated by Louis XIV requires the keeping of parish registers in duplicate in case of destruction of a file. Each copy must be deposited at the court records of the seneschals. It also implies that godparents must sign baptism records, that married couples and their witnesses must sign their marriage record, and that the deceased's parents or friends must sign burial records.
This one prescribes the obligation to keep two original identical registers and no longer a simple copy as in 1667.
According to article 7 of title II of the Constitution of September 3, 1791: “The legislative power will establish for all inhabitants, without distinction, the method by which births, marriages, and deaths will be recorded; and it will designate the public officers who will receive and keep the records.” The BMS (baptism, marriage, and burial) registers are therefore replaced by NMD (birth, marriage, and death) registers. Town halls are also required to draft decennial tables.
Following the total destruction of the Parisian civil status in 1871, the circular of Jules Simon, addressed to all prefects, allows the creation of the family record book throughout the French territory. Distributed free of charge to couples upon the celebration of marriage, it will list all birth and death records of the nuclear family.
Marginal notes are notes added to the side of a person's birth, marriage, or death record. Those on the birth record concern the acknowledgment of a natural child since 1804, marriage since 1897, death since 1945, among others; on the marriage record, divorce since 1886 (also among others); and on the death record, the mention “died for France” since 1915 or “died in deportation” since 1985.