French Genealogy: Free Etat Civil and Departmental Archives

France quietly built one of the best free genealogy systems in the world and never told anyone. Nearly every one of France's departmental archives has scanned its civil registers and parish books and put them online free, with no account, no subscription and no credits — and the collections routinely run from the 1600s to the privacy cut-off. There is no single national site, which is why people miss it: you go to the archives of the department your family came from, and the records are simply there. The other thing worth knowing before you start is that a French marriage record is the richest vital record in Europe, naming both sets of parents with occupations, addresses and who is already dead. When those parents turn into a wide family, the cousin calculator makes sense of it.

How French records are organized

The commune is the record-keeping unit and the department is the archive. France has roughly 35,000 communes grouped into around 100 departments. Civil registers were kept by the mairie of each commune; after a period, older volumes were deposited with that department's archives.

So the first question is not "which website" but "which department". Once you know the commune, a quick lookup gives you the department, and the department gives you the archive site.

There is no national name index that covers everything. FranceArchives aggregates catalogs, and commercial sites like Filae and Geneanet index parts of the collection, but the free departmental scans remain the primary source and the most complete.

Each archive site looks different. Some have full name indexes, some let you filter by commune and year and hand you a scanned volume to page through. This variation is the main practical difficulty in French research — not the language.

Departments changed shape rarely, but communes merged often. A tiny commune may have been absorbed into a neighbor, and its registers traveled with the merger. If a commune name yields nothing, search for it as a hamlet of a larger one.

État civil: civil registration from 1792

Civil registration began on 20 September 1792. From that date, the mayor of each commune registered births, marriages and deaths, replacing the priest's parish register as the legal record.

A birth act (acte de naissance) gives the child's names, the date and hour of birth, the father with his age, occupation and address, the mother with her maiden name and age, and two witnesses with their ages and occupations.

A marriage act (acte de mariage) is the best record in French genealogy. It gives both parties' full names, ages, birthplaces, occupations and residences; both sets of parents with occupations, residences and whether each is living or deceased; the dates of any deceased parent's death; the publication of banns; and four witnesses, whose stated relationship to the couple is often "brother of the groom" or "uncle of the bride".

A death act (acte de décès) names the deceased, gives age, occupation, address, place of death, the names of the parents where known, and the surviving spouse. The two declarants are often relatives or neighbors.

Marginal notes turn a birth record into a biography. Since 1897, French registrars have added notes to the margin of a birth act recording the person's marriage, divorce and death, with dates and places. Later reforms extended what gets noted. Finding a birth act from 1900 can hand you the marriage and the death without another search.

The Revolutionary calendar catches people out. Between 1793 and 1805, dates were written in the Republican calendar — "12 Vendémiaire an XI" rather than 4 October 1802. Free converters handle it; do not skip records because the date looks like nonsense.

The tables décennales: how to search unindexed scans

Every commune compiled a ten-year index of its civil registers, alphabetical by surname, listing births, marriages and deaths separately with the date of each act.

These are the workaround for archive sites with no name search. Rather than reading ten years of registers, you open the table for 1853–1862, find your surname, note the exact date, then open the register at that date.

They are scanned alongside the registers on the departmental sites, usually as a separate series in the same browse tree.

Read every entry under the surname, not just the one you want. The table is a family census in disguise — all the births under a surname in a decade in one commune are usually one or two households.

For pre-1792 parish registers, look for a "table" or "répertoire" too; many parishes produced their own indexes, and volunteer associations have transcribed a great deal more.

Before 1792: the parish registers

The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539 required parish priests to record baptisms, later extended to marriages and burials. In practice, surviving registers usually begin in the 1600s, with better runs from about 1670 after a further royal ordinance tightened the rules.

They were kept in duplicate from 1736. One copy stayed with the parish and one went to the local court registry, which improves survival substantially — a lost parish copy may have a surviving greffe copy.

The entries are in French, sometimes with Latin phrases, and they name the parents and the godparents. As elsewhere in Catholic Europe, godparents were normally relatives, so tracking them maps the extended family. Our general church records guide covers the approach.

They sit on the same departmental archive sites as the civil registers, usually under "registres paroissiaux" or grouped with état civil as "BMS" (baptêmes, mariages, sépultures).

Protestant families are a special case. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Protestant worship was banned and Huguenot registers stop. Baptisms and marriages either happened secretly, were recorded by the Catholic parish, or took place abroad — in the Netherlands, Britain, Switzerland, Germany or the American colonies. If a family vanishes from the registers after 1685, consider that they were Protestant rather than that the records are lost.

The record sets worth knowing

The nominal censuses are underused. France took household censuses from 1836 (with earlier partial ones), listing everyone in a household by name, age, occupation and sometimes relationship. They are free on the departmental sites and are the fastest way to see a family together.

The registres matricules are a gift. From the 1860s each conscripted man got a file recording his birth date and commune, his parents' names, his address, his level of education, his height, hair and eye color, distinguishing marks, occupation, and his military service including campaigns and wounds. Our military records guide covers how service records generally work.

Notarial records go deepest. French civil law ran on notaries. A marriage contract lists the family members present and what each contributed; an inventaire après décès lists the heirs and everything in the house. Many series are cataloged and increasingly scanned.

The privacy rules and the recent records

Recent French records are closed, and the periods vary. As a general rule, birth and marriage acts become publicly consultable 75 years after the act, and death acts are open immediately; some series carry a 100-year or 120-year restriction, and rules have been adjusted over time.

That is why the online scans stop. A departmental archive that carries births to 1922 and nothing later is applying the rule, not missing volumes.

For newer records, write to the mairie. A direct descendant can request a copy of a recent birth, marriage or death act from the commune where it was registered, usually free, by post or through the government's online service. State your line of descent clearly.

Descent matters legally as well as genealogically. French nationality can pass by descent in some circumstances, and the paperwork depends on documenting an unbroken chain — our guide to citizenship by descent explains how these claims generally work, and the relationship calculator is a quick way to check you have described the chain correctly.

French surnames, names and the places they came from

Given names repeat relentlessly. Jean, Marie, Pierre, Jeanne and Joseph dominate, and a family may have three living children with Marie as a first name, distinguished by their second. Always read the full name, and expect the person to be known by the second or third element.

"Dit" names appear in France too, especially in the west and among soldiers, and they crossed to Quebec where they became a defining feature of French-Canadian research.

Particles are not always noble. De, du, de la and le in a surname usually indicate a place of origin rather than aristocracy, and indexes file them inconsistently — under D, under L, or under the main word. Search all three. Our list of French surnames and their meanings sets out the common patterns.

Alsace and Lorraine need a separate plan. Annexed by Germany from 1871 to 1918, and again during the Second World War, they kept records in German with German administrative forms during those periods. Expect German script and German-language civil registration for those years.

Newspapers and emigration fill the gaps. Regional French newspapers are digitized and searchable through the national library's portal — our old newspapers guide covers searching digitized papers generally. For families who left France for North America, the crossing method in our free immigration records guide applies.

FAQ

Are French genealogy records free online?

Largely, yes. Almost all of France's departmental archives publish scanned civil registers and parish registers on their own websites at no charge and without an account. There is no single national site, so you go to the archives of the department where the commune sits.

When did civil registration start in France?

On 20 September 1792, when the state took over registration of births, marriages and deaths from the Catholic Church. Before that date, parish registers are the record, and they survive widely from the 1600s, with duplicate copies kept from 1736.

What are the tables décennales?

Ten-year alphabetical indexes of a commune's civil registers, listing births, marriages and deaths with dates. They are the standard way to search departmental scans that have no name index: find the surname in the table, note the date, then open the register at that date.

What does a French marriage record contain?

Both parties' names, ages, birthplaces, occupations and addresses; both sets of parents with occupations, residences and whether each is living or dead; the banns; and four witnesses whose relationship to the couple is frequently stated. It is the single richest vital record in French genealogy.

Why do French records stop before the 1930s?

Privacy rules. Birth and marriage acts generally become publicly consultable 75 years after the event, with longer restrictions on some series, so archives cannot publish the recent volumes. For newer records, a direct descendant can request a copy from the commune's mairie.

What is a mention marginale?

A note added to the margin of a French birth act after the event, recording the person's marriage, divorce or death with dates and places. Required since 1897 and extended since, it means a single birth record can carry the outline of an entire life.

From a commune name to four centuries of records

French research rewards one piece of homework — finding the commune — and then hands you almost everything else free. Work out the department, open its archive site, use the tables décennales to convert a surname into an exact date, and read the marriage act before anything else, because it carries the previous generation whole. Push back past 1792 into the parish registers, watch for the Republican calendar, and remember that a family vanishing after 1685 was probably Protestant rather than unrecorded. Then go sideways into the conscription registers and the notaries for the details that make an ancestor a person. When the cousins accumulate on both sides of the Atlantic, the free CousinChart relationship calculator will name every connection for you.