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Archiver > ALSACE-LORRAINE > 2004-03 > 1080410056


From: "Lydia De Bortoli" <>
Subject: Re: [ALS-LOR] Village Records
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 19:01:40 +0100
References: <c0.8829fe6.2d9680a4@aol.com>


Hello there,

concerning the church records, one more detail may be of use : after the
French Revolution, the priests were forced to give their registers to the
Archives or town halls (that later transferred them to the Archives)...

which makes it totally useless to write to the priests !!!

I am going back to Alsace in April and may go to the CDHF... so it is
possible for me to do some research, but i need precise dates and locations
for that, else it will not be possible... and moreover the CDHF only
concerns the "Haut-Rhin" (68).

I hope this will help !

lydia
----- Original Message -----
From: <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 8:00 AM
Subject: Re: [ALS-LOR] Village Records


>
> In a message dated 3/26/04 6:21:24 PM, writes:
>
> << 1. What types of old village records might I search
> once getting beyond the absence of church type records?
>
> 2. Has anyone found a list of various church records and
> how far back are those records dated? If there is no such
> record, is there a source for addresses of churches found
> in each of the villages? Are the church leaders generally
> willing to do searches for family genealogists if we make
> a financial contribution? >>
>
> Ken,
>
> I'll address your second question first. Yes, there are
> inventories of the extant church records held at the
> Archives Départementales in each département. These
> are in the form of published books. In general the
> church records at the Archives Départementales are
> the ones that were filmed and are now available on
> microfilm from Salt Lake City. In some instances there
> are records available in the local churches that are not
> represented at the Archives Départementales and
> therefore not available on microfilm, but that is
> the rare exception. For Plaine, Bas-Rhin, the community
> you mentioned in an earlier message, the volume on
> Bas-Rhin (by Jean-Pierre Kintz) in the series Paroisses
> et communes de France indicates that the earliest Catholic
> records date from 1692.
>
> I would not recommend writing to individual churches.
> Here's my thinking:
>
> 1) for the period after 1792 the civil records are almost
> always going to contain fuller information, and those
> are available on microfilm through 1882 for Alsace,
> through 1892 for at least some parts of Lorraine (in
> France, because of the 100-year privacy law, you can
> get access to records through 1903 now, but those more
> recent records aren't available from Salt Lake City, at
> least not for Alsace and Lorraine)
> 2) for the period prior to 1792 the vast majority of extant
> Catholic and Protestant church records for Alsace and
> Lorraine are available on microfilm and can be borrowed
> from Salt Lake City
> 3) the priests/pastors have no special training in (and
> most of them probably no interest in) genealogical research
> or deciphering old handwriting; they also have their regular
> duties to attend to
> 4) the more people write to individual parish churches
> asking for records, the more likely the priests/pastors are
> to view genealogists as pests and the less likely they are
> to bother responding to anyone
> 5) if we genealogists treat the good will of the local guardians
> of old records (priests/pastors, town clerks, etc.) as a precious
> resource not to be squandered lightly, we make it more likely
> that the few among us who truly need their help will actually
> have requests answered
>
> I know that there are a lot of generalizations imbedded in that
> line of reasoning. Of course there are helpful priests/pastors
> and town clerks who will happily do what they can for those
> who write or visit in person (some of them are probably as
> passionate about genealogy as the rest of us), just as there are
> crabby ones who can't be bothered to lift a finger. But I do
> think it is up to each of us to do our part first by learning what
> records are readily available in books and journals, on microfilm
> or microfiche, and then exhausting those resources before
> making demands on the time and patience of the harried record
> keepers.
>
> Now your first question. The sorts of records available at the
> Archives Départementales, municipal archives and collections
> of individual notaries will vary by time period and locality, but
> they include: military conscription records; censuses; marriage
> contracts; property transactions such as mortgages; estate
> settlements; appointment of guardians for widows or minor
> children; tax records; citizenship records; election to local
> offices (mayor, town council, etc.). Because most of these records
> have not been filmed they have to be consulted in person, either
> by you or by a hired researcher. They can sometimes be much
> more difficult to read than the church or civil records of
> birth/baptism, marriage and death/burial that we are used to.
> The Archives Départementales are the principal repositories for
> such records and they deal with historians and genealogists day
> in and day out. The local archives, on the other hand, may be
> looked after only by volunteers with whom you have to make
> appointments in advance, or they may not be available at all.
>
> Robert Behra
>
>
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