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Researches The
sources
The practice of this profession requires a deep knowledge of different
research sources, in France and abroad:
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The French record
of civil status, the spinal cord of every genealogical tree.
If the french record of civil status was created on September
20th, 1792, it had already existed for centuries, under the
control of the catholic church, in France and in central Europe.
In fact, the catholic church forbid the marriage of cousins
and members of a family up to the 8th degree so they needed
to keep record of all marriages, baptisms and deaths. Since
1736, an Order gives specific instructions to the Clergy to
keep registries in 2 copies, and to deposit one of the copies
at the local tribunal every year. This tradition has been kept
since 1792, and is still in use. So in a copy of the registry
is destructed or damaged, the second copy becomes essential.
In
order to gain access to the Civil status dating less than 100
years, every researcher has to obtain a formal authorization,
delivered by the State.
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The public archives, organized since 1790
and 1794, are represented by the national, departamental
and town archives. They are very rich and diversified:
- Civil status more than 100 year old,
- Mortgage and notarial archives,
- Population census registers,
- Election board registries,
- Military archives,
- Cemetery archives.
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Administrative archives:
- Foreign affairs ministry : naturalization files.
- Institut
National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques : National
registry of individuals.
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Private archives:
Created and mantained by passionate genealogists, the complete usefully the
public archives, and often help compensating their eventual destruction. For
example, in may, 1871, most of Paris ' administrative documents were destructed
in a fire. A meticulous rebuild of these documents has been patiently done using
marriage registries, is now available to researchers.
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Internet: A true revolution
in genealogical research. It gives access instantly to billions
of informations throughout the world. Its use needs therefore an extremely accurate
sense of criticizm, because of the huge amount of information available, and
the frequent lack of sources.
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National
archives, civil and religious, from foreign countries:
France has known Important migration flows from foreign
countries in the last 2 centuries: Therefore, we are constantly
going beyond our boundaries. More than 30% of our files
are concerned. In order to give appropriate answers to
these demands, a team of 5 people is exclusively dedicated
to international researches. A perfect mastering of many
different languages, the will to travel and the appreciation
of foreign cultures are essential to accomplish this task.
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Methods
L'The Office gives each researcher a training at the ending of their studies
(usually history or law), that allows them to discover all the different
tools available. We estimate that 3 years are needed to use the at their
full extent.
Four teams have been set up in Paris and in each one of our subsidiaries,
to simplify the researches. They usually put together the results
of their investigation on a paper document wich is, later on, saved
digitally, at the end of the inheritance process.
It is also important
to cross information coming from different sources, in order to verify the
accuracy of the first informations obtained. These infrmations help building
assumptions, linked to regional history and customs. These assumptions can
be completed with investigations in order to identify and localize the heirs.
The researcher becomes then a detective.
In order to be able to carry
on all these researches, we have set up an international network
of correspondents, in each continent : archivist, historians, journalists,
notaries, lawyers, help our researchers accomplish their tasks.
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