Geneanet’s rapprochement with Ancestry is bearing fruit: Ancestry has been supplying Geneanet with a number of European collections, available to Premium members. This week, let’s look at Ancestry’s French collections — you may be surprised!
It’s no secret, Geneanet is France’s #1 genealogy site and Europe’s biggest community of genealogists. Since November 2021, Geneanet has been part of the Ancestry group of companies. The goal? To bring to Geneanet members a multitude of European record collections and to connect Ancestry users with their European cousins who have built trees, all while keeping intact Geneanet’s founding principles: contributive, collaborative and freemium.
In the past few months, we have been adding many of Ancestry’s European collections to Geneanet — Geneanet Premium members are already finding ancestors through these collections at no additional cost through the end of this year. This week, spotlight on France, Geneanet’s original focus since its founding 27 years ago.
If you are new to French genealogy, look at our “Search Your French Ancestors” page for a helpful overview! If, on the other hand, you have some experience researching French ancestry, you already know about the tools and challenges in France: the importance of finding the département (county) and municipality, the parish records in the archives départementales, using name heatmaps for quick information, censuses, the INSEE deaths register, the tables décennales… Geneanet has a rich range of indexes contributed by members and local genealogy associations, and vital records (birth/marriage/death) and censuses are added every month — but the new Ancestry collections will help you go further and faster!
350 million individuals in over 80 collections throughout France!
These collections, which complement Geneanet’s already extensive collections, cover 23 départements of France from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. Ten collections are from Paris and its region!
Here are highlights from the new collections — there are others; database teams from Ancestry and Geneanet have worked together for months to bring these collections, nearly all with images, to you. Check your tree to see if new record matches have appeared for your missing ancestors!
Births, Marriages, Deaths: Aisne, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Ardennes, Aube (Troyes), Calvados, Charente, Doubs, Haut-Rhin, Haute-Saône, Ile-de-France (Paris + region: Yvelines, Seine-Saint-Denis), Indre, Rhône, Somme, Tarn-et-Garonne, Territoire de Belfort, Vienne
Census: Aisne, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Aube, Corrèze, Doubs, Haut-Rhin, Haute-Saône, Hautes-Alpes, Indre, Rhône, Saône-et-Loire, Somme, Tarn-et-Garonne, Territoire de Belfort, Vienne, Yvelines
Voter lists: Paris 1891
If reading French handwriting is a challenge, be sure to visit our forums where you may find helpers!
Accessing these collections
Don’t know where to start? Just search on your ancestor’s name in our main search engine. If you know the département of interest, you can browse the collections in the “Our collections” page.
Beyond these new collections which join Geneanet’s existing rich collections, we have other features of interest for researching French genealogy such as our free Postcards collection (nearly three quarters of a million images — visit your ancestor’s village!) and our Genealogy Library of books and newspapers, where over 3.7 billion individuals are indexed (Premium feature).
And don’t forget Geneanet’s collaborative projects such as Save our Graves and especially Napoléon’s Soldiers: 1.1 million young men (and two million parents!) indexed by the Geneanet community over the past decade – a collection you won’t find elsewhere.
Find your French ancestors today!
3/26/23
To research French names, start in the U.S. with Huguenot genealogy organizatiions. For example, The Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia has extensive Fontaine records. Huguent-manakin.org.
3/25/23
I have been searching information on emigration from France to Germany ,probably after 1652 . My last name is Bouillon and I know that they were living in Germany before further emigrating to to Saint Petersburg , Russia in the 1800’s where they stayed till 1917 or so . Can you please direct me of where to look . IBS
Answer from Geneanet: Check out our article, Resources for German Genealogy.
3/24/23
I have begun a one-name-study on the surname “fontaine” with variants: lafontaine, desfontaines, defontaines, fontanel, fonteneau, fontan, and the English variants Fountain and Fountaine.
I have already begun some research using https://forebears.io, and have discovered that they are a part of https://filia.com and requires subscription to access their databases of individuals with those particular surnames.
I look forward to attempt to access the advanced search engine on geneanet as I am a premium member and look forward to have more free access to these municipal and departmental archives of bmd databases.
Roger Fontaine, pranicroger
3/24/23
I think that this will be difficult but my surname appears to be French (or Dutch or Belgian). I have traced back to a Nicholas Fever b abt .1570 in West Sussex (possibly Rye). He has a very French name.(and his son and grandson were all Nicholas). I don’t suppose there are any records of emmigration/immegration from around that time.
3/24/23
I just have a question, and probably it is a naive one. But, how can I find out if anyone in France today is doing research on my family, descended from French citizens who settled in Louisiana, USA in the 1800’s. Are there family trees of Geneanet members that we can search to see if our surnames appear? Thank you very much, Mary Lou Surgi
Answer from Geneanet: This is a great question! The answer is yes, you can search Geneanet trees for your ancestors. Run a search under Search->All records, then to the left under Search Filters, tick the Family Trees box. This will restrict search to Geneanet’s 1.7 million family trees. You can also convert this search into an e-mail alert. In other words, whenever your ancestor’s corresponding name, place, and date range appear in a tree, you will be notified by e-mail with the link. If you put up a tree at Geneanet and become a Premium member, you will have the automatic matching feature which will provide hints from archival documents and trees. And finally, there is a United States section in our forums where you can ask for help from other genealogists. Good luck finding your people!