What were the different places of life of your ancestors?
Whether your ancestors stayed all their lives in the same house (or in the same village) or they have seen the country, it is always moving to find their trace in the sandstone of their history.
Where to find the places of life of my ancestors in the archives?
Several archive sources can help you trace the place of life (s) of your ancestors:
• The population censuses: by searching these registers in search of your ancestors you can even know the name of the street or the place where they lived. The prerequisite? Know the city or village of residence of ancestors. Otherwise, the long hours spent peeling the censuses.
• Military registers: these registers are rather complete with regard to men of our genealogy from the middle of the 19th century. By browsing the ancestor's listings of an ancestor in the archives, you will find a list of its successive places of life.
• Civil status acts: indeed, the most recent acts are often the most complete. You can sometimes discover an address or in any case, a district or a place called.
In addition, knowing the local history and the profession of an ancestor can also help you reconstruct its environment. Indeed, farm ancestors could change places of exploitation (and not necessarily residential places), as are young adults could be sent to other families to work there.
How to find my ancestors if they left France?
Often in search of a better life, some of our ancestors may have led to leaving the country for abroad.
But how do you know if a family left the country? Difficult to say in the archives ... Family legends, on the other hand, can be good starting points.
Protestant emigrants
From 1538 to 1685, many Protestants leaned the persecution. Many settled in the British colonies.
The emigrants of the Revolution
Between 1789 and 1815, it is estimated that 140,000 French people have emigrated. Many of them were nobles, priests, soldiers, bourgeois, peasants or workers and traders. Mostly, they sought to escape the violence of terror.
The emigration areas are varied: United States, Canada (Quebec Province of Quebec or West of the country), England (London, Southampton, Jersey, Guernsey ...), Switzerland (Neuchâtel, Friborg, Berne, Basel ...), Germany (Hamburg, Cologne ...), Austria, Spain, Italy (Naples, Palermo, Turin ...) or Russia.
From 1793, the agreement listed Lists of emigrants by municipality.
Poverty emigrants
In the middle of the 19th century, many French people left France while it is going through an important economic crisis: demographic growth, industrial slowdown, poverty; But also a significant repression period with the coup d'etat of Napoleon III. There is a peak of French emigration in the United States between 1847 and 1851. They also settled in Canada, Mexico or even in Argentina and Uruguay.
Emigrants in French colonial prints
The convicts were prisons reserved, in theory, to the condemned who committed serious crimes and crimes. They were forced to work there.
The first prison was opened in 1748 in Toulon. However, from the 1840s, policies wished to keep criminals away from France.
The first convicts abroad, in Algeria and Tunisia, were military convicts. Then, the Maritime Bags (Toulon, Brest, Rochefort ..) were transferred to Cayenne in 1852, then to New Caledonia in 1864. There were many camps in French Guyana, Reunion, Indochina or Madagascar.
It was not until the decree-law of June 17, 1938 and its application in 1945 that detention in the convicts was abolished. The last convicts and their supervisors returned to France in 1953.
The registers of the convicts are Available online on the Overseas National Archives website.
Our international genealogy antisches
Finally, to travel to the sandstone of the archives in the countries where your ancestors take you, you can always consult our antispens. We bring together the most useful sites to find archives, associations, photos/videos or journals on the history of the country and its migrations.
Genealogy in the United States
Genealogy in the United Kingdom
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