What are the best ways to access French family history records?

Reader Question: I want to research my maternal ancestry in France, as my grandparents were from the Auch area. Are there old records I can consult?

Modern France has a strong tradition of record-keeping, which helps budding genealogists with their research. 

All departments have local records going back to 1792, through the registres d'état-civil (records of civil registration), including births, deaths, and marriages. 

Often, French records contain multiple pieces of information (ie, a record of the person’s marriage, birth, etc) allowing you to easily find other records in your search through this information.

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Census data in France

Alongside yearly updates, an alphabetical index of all people in the departments was made every 10 years from 1793 onwards. 

These indexes and civil registry records can be found at the local mairie for each commune.

However, for records more than 100 years old we recommend searching for them online (see below) and for more recent records less than 100 years old contacting the mairie where the person was born, lived, married, or died.

You can visit in person, or make an online request to view records from the mairie.

For more recent records, you may need to prove your relation to the person whose information you are looking up (such as descent via birth certificates) to be allowed access. 

There should not be a charge to view these records, but it may take the mairie some time to respond to your request (and they are not obliged to accept it). 

Other sources of research include military and notaire records, but these can be harder to track. 

Military records are confidential for 120 years – record keepers at the military archives do not always approve requests to view those still confidential – and notarial records are not indexed and arranged by notaire’s name, making it harder to find relevant information. 

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Other online search tools 

If you are looking for records from prior to 1792, these will most likely be found via parish registers (registres paroissiaux or registres de catholicité), as churches were responsible for keeping records prior to the French Revolution. 

If you know the commune your ancestors were from (through your previous research) it should be possible to find out the parish they belonged to. 

Both church parish records and civil registry information from 100 years ago or more may be available online through the Archives Départementales.

All departments have one of these (make an online search for the department in question plus ‘Archives Départementales’).

There is a move to make these records available online, but not all departments have fully digitised their records. Beware, however, some very old records can be difficult to read for non-specialists.

Similar to UK and US-based sites such as Ancestry.com there is FIlae, a one-stop shop for millions of digitised records in France.

The site requires a subscription, but allows you to search for multiple sources at once, and can also help you build a family tree, linking the information you have gathered. 

FIlae says it provides the best results when looking for information on people born prior to 1920 (when the French population was significantly lower).

International registry databases such as MyHeritage also contain French records