How to Start Your Genealogy with No Family Information?

No family information? Discover how to start your genealogy from scratch with tips and online tools.

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Don't know anything about your family history? No names, no dates, no passed-down memories? Rest assured: starting genealogy without family information is challenging, but not necessarily impossible. With a methodical approach, the right tools, and some perseverance, you can trace your family tree, even without a specific starting point.

Start with Yourself: The Essential Starting Point

Even without family information, you have a solid reference point: yourself.

• Note your full name, place and date of birth, and any details you know about your legal parentage (birth certificate, family record book if you have one).
• Visit the town hall of your birthplace (or go to the service-public website to make a free request) to obtain a full copy of your birth certificate (if you are an adult). This document contains the names and surnames of your parents and often their dates and places of birth.

What About Unrecognized Children?

In some cases, particularly when a child was not recognized at birth, finding information can be particularly delicate.

In the absence of recognition by one or both parents, no legal parentage was established at birth, which limits the information available in civil records. However, the file kept by child welfare services (ASE) or by an authorized adoption agency (OAA) may contain contextual information about the circumstances of the child's placement, as well as non-identifying details left by the mother or maternity. In such situations, contacting the CNAOP is often the only way to search for a birth parent, obtain their consent to lift the secrecy, and, if applicable, initiate a process of meeting or exchange.

💡 Tip: Even incomplete or approximate information can open a door. A city, a profession, an assumed origin... everything is useful to take.

Consult Administrative Sources: Civil Records, Justice, Public Assistance

When family memory is lacking, archives take over. Here are some reliable sources:

1. Civil Records

• Birth, marriage, and death certificates are the pillars of any research. Marriage certificates are often the most complete and interesting as they provide information about both the paternal and maternal branches.
• For individuals who have been deceased for more than 75 years, these documents can be freely consulted online on departmental archives websites.

2. Public Assistance or Guardianship Files

• If your ancestors were wards of the state, abandoned, or placed, files exist in departmental archives or civil hospital archives.

3. Adoption Judgments, Paternity Acknowledgment, Divorces

• Judicial archives can reveal forgotten or unknown family ties.

Consult the Right Websites to Find Your Ancestors

Here is a selection of recognized websites to deepen your research if you only have limited information:

• The website deces.matchid.io is a free and open-source search engine that allows you to consult death records in France since 1970. It is based on public data from INSEE, available on data.gouv.fr, and provides quick access to over 25 million records containing names, dates, and places of birth and death of the individuals concerned.
• Death notice websites are a valuable resource for starting genealogical research, as they help quickly identify "recent ancestors," often difficult to find in traditional archives subject to consultation delays. By providing information such as date and place of death, age, and sometimes names of relatives (spouse, children, siblings), these notices can serve as a reliable starting point to trace generations, cross-check with civil records, and reconstruct family history more smoothly and thoroughly.

• Online genealogy websites like Geneanet, Filae, or Heredis Online are fantastic tools for anyone exploring their origins. They provide access to billions of data from archives, shared trees, or association records, making it easy to find information.
  
  In this context, Geneafinder's search engine stands out by offering a fast and centralized search across over 25 genealogical and heritage databases. It allows you to efficiently navigate through a variety of reliable sources, making it an ideal starting point to enrich your family tree or validate family hypotheses.

Other Useful Archive Sources

• Population censuses (available every 5 years between 1836 and 1936) allow you to identify a person, their profession, family, and neighborhood.
• Electoral rolls, on the other hand, can help identify an ancestor in a municipality, even if no civil record is registered.
• Military registration files cover all French men born between 1800 and 1940. These records contain cards with names, parentage, address, physical description, and military career of an individual.
• Naturalization or migration files are useful if you suspect foreign origins. You can consult the bulletins of laws for naturalizations, the National Archives for individual files, and the OFPRA archives for refugees. 

Adopt a Method and Keep Track of Everything

The key to genealogical success is rigor.

• Note all your sources, even those that yield no results.
• Organize your findings in an online tree on Geneafinder to avoid forgetting.
• Cross-reference data to avoid frequent homonyms.

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