French genealogy is a gift to researchers who know where to look. The records are detailed, continuous, and, for the most part, digitized. This hub explains the main record sets, where each one lives online, and which platform fits which job, so you can move from a name in your family tree to a named ancestor in a French commune.
Start outside France: find the commune
Almost every French research project stalls at the same point: the family knows the ancestor was “from France” but not which commune. French records are organized by commune and département, so that detail is the key that opens everything else. You will usually find it in records created where the family settled:
- naturalization petitions and declarations of intention, which often name a birthplace;
- passenger and border-crossing records, and ship manifests that list a last residence;
- military draft registrations and service records;
- church baptism, marriage, and burial records, plus obituaries and cemetery listings;
- marriage records of the immigrant’s children, which sometimes name the parents’ origins;
- family letters, bibles, photographs, and passports passed down in the family.
Work backward one generation at a time, as set out in our starter kit, until a French place name appears.
The core French record sets
État civil (civil registration, 1792 onward)
Since 1792, French municipalities have recorded births, marriages, and deaths in annual registers, and copies are held by the departmental archives. Each commune’s registers are usually indexed by tables décennales (ten-year indexes), which makes a name easy to find once you know the commune. Later acts often carry marginal notes (mentions marginales) that point to other life events. Recent birth and marriage records are generally closed to the public for 75 years.
Parish registers (before 1792)
Before civil registration, the Catholic Church kept the registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials (BMS). Royal ordinances from the sixteenth century onward required parishes to keep them, and many series survive from the 1600s and 1700s. They are held by the departmental archives and are mostly online.
Census, military registers, and notarial acts
- Census (recensements): household lists taken periodically through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; many survive online by commune.
- Military registers (registres matricules): recruitment records for men that give physical descriptions, residences, and service details.
- Notarial acts (minutes notariales): marriage contracts, wills, sales, and inventories that reveal family relationships, property, and occupations.
Where to search, and which tool fits which job
No single website holds everything. Here is how the main options compare, starting with the one we recommend first for most people.
1. MyHeritage: our first choice for French records
MyHeritage owns Filae, one of France’s leading genealogy companies, and has published hundreds of millions of French civil and church records from it, with an index and images of the original documents. Searching is free; viewing record images requires a subscription. Because it also covers the rest of Europe and North America, a single MyHeritage account can follow a family from your hometown to its French commune, and it adds DNA matching on top. See our DNA guide for how the two work together.
2. The Archives départementales: free, authoritative, and best for original images
Each French département runs its own archive website, and most publish digitized civil and parish registers free of charge. They are the primary source, but every site is laid out differently and many registers are browsed page by page rather than searched by name, so they work best once you know the commune and approximate year. Many also publish name indexes for some record types.
3. FamilySearch: free and a useful complement
FamilySearch is a free, nonprofit service that has indexed civil registrations, church documents, and censuses from France, and its catalog and research wiki are valuable for learning what exists for a given place. We use it as a free companion to the paid tools.
4. Geneanet: strong for French-language trees and community
Geneanet is a large French genealogy platform with user-contributed family trees, indexed records, and a premium tier. It is especially useful for finding French-language trees and for contacting French researchers who share your lines, though the interface is primarily French.
5. Ancestry: strongest on the North American half of the job
Ancestry has some French collections, but its real strength is North American records, such as immigration, census, and military files. That makes it useful for the first half of the project, finding the commune, and less central for the French half.
Reading French records: a mini glossary
| French term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| acte de naissance | birth record |
| acte de mariage | marriage record |
| acte de décès | death record |
| baptême / sépulture | baptism / burial (parish registers) |
| commune | town or village; the basic unit of French record-keeping |
| département | administrative region whose archives hold the registers |
| table décennale | ten-year index to a commune’s civil registers |
You do not need to speak French to use these records. The acts follow predictable formulas, and a short vocabulary list goes a long way.
Next steps
- Begin with the French Ancestry Starter Kit if you do not yet have a commune.
- Read our complete guide to tracing your French ancestry.
- Compare DNA tests for French ancestry to find living cousins.
- If you may qualify for French nationality, see the citizenship guide.
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