Family History Research in France
For the past 20 years, we’ve carried out extensive research on hundreds of families at places like the Archives Nationales de France, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Family History Library in Salt Lake City, USA. The fascinating and diverse cultural heritage of France has enabled us to gain a wealth of expertise in a wide variety of subject areas relating to French genealogy and family history, and many of the families we've worked on are available for review on this site. If you’re looking for assistance with your project, we have extensive research experience in all parts of France, as well as countries that your ancestors may have emigrated to like the United States, Canada, Argentina, and elsewhere. Please click the link below if you’d like to hire our team to assist you with a custom-made genealogy project in any of these places.
Humans have lived in France for the past 1.5 million years, as can be seen by the physical evidence of bones, tools, and other artifacts left behind there. The geographic area of France has been mentioned in historical sources since ancient times, with cities like Marseilles (600 BCE), Bordeaux (300 BCE), and Paris (250 BCE) being some of the oldest in Europe. After the the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, the country was ruled by various barbarian tribes, including the Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths. The northern part of France was also later conquered by the Normans, who were originally descendants of the Vikings. Modern Europe was born in the crucible of cities like Paris, which played important roles in the development of art, commerce, and the humanities. Perhaps your ancestors played a part in this fascinating history, and left behind important documentation that connects to your present-day genealogy? To help get you started on this exciting voyage of discovery, we’ve assembled an expert team of genealogists to help you uncover the unique story of your family's journey through time.
Records for most parts of France can be found in Paris at the Archives Nationales de France and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, as well as the many regional archives and repositories located throughout the country. These records include property deeds, court records, newspapers, local histories, military records, family wills, tax lists, biographies, and other types of records. However, many records relating to various regions of France are kept separately at the local level at civil registration offices, church parishes, regional archives, and local libraries. The most important records for French genealogy research, though, would be civil registration and church records, which would be the primary record types for family history research in France. Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths officially began in France in 1792, and these records would generally be the best place to start with your French genealogy search. After exploring the civil registration records in depth, you would probably get into church parish records, which are sometimes available back to the 1500s or even earlier in France.
If you'd like to continue research on your own, please click on the following links for additional resources relating to your French history and genealogy. To get the best results with your research, we'd recommend subscriptions to the following sites, as well as autosomal and Y-DNA testing to help with any longstanding brick walls you may have encountered your tree.
If you’d like to learn more about your family history and are interested in building a high-quality and well-documented tree in France and elsewhere with the help of a professional research team, we're here to help! We're passionate about genealogy and would welcome the opportunity to assist you with creating an exciting record of your ancestors that can be enjoyed for many generations to come. Our professional genealogists can gather records for you in all parts of France, as well as many of the countries your ancestors might have emigrated to. The surnames listed below belong to some of the most noteworthy in France, whose families have been thoroughly documented on our site. Please click on the links below to visit some of the pages we've created on these families, which might give you some idea about what we could also achieve for you during a typical genealogy project in France or elsewhere. Our on-the-ground team of researchers, who live in places like Paris, Bordeaux, and Nice, can help you find your ancestors in France, as well as places like the United States, Canada, Argentina, and elsewhere. Merci d'avoir visité notre site (thanks for visiting our site) and good luck with your research!
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