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Geneanet
Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images.
Last checked 2026-09-22. Tell us if this has changed.
The ground it holds
Record regions whose registers are filed here, and for which years.
- 1552–1792 France — the Three Bishoprics and, from 1648, Alsace
- 1792–1871 France — civil registration
- 1918–1940 France — restored
- 1944–2026 France
- 1795–1815 French annexation — THE HINGE OF BELGIAN RESEARCH. France annexes the ground in 1795 and civil registration — the état civil, births, marriages and deaths recorded by the commune — begins in 1796. Before that date there is no state record of a birth anywhere in the country, only a baptism. After it there are two independent series for every person, which is why Belgian research is unusually tractable.
- 1830–1914 Kingdom of Belgium — THE TRAP IS THAT THERE IS NO CENTRAL ARCHIVE TO WRITE TO. The State Archives keep the registers in provincial repositories — Antwerp, Beveren, Bruges, Ghent, Hasselt, Kortrijk, Leuven, Liège, Mons, Namur, Tournai, Arlon, Eupen — and a request addressed to Brussels for a parish in Limburg goes to the wrong building. The population registers, kept by the commune from 1846, follow a household from address to address and are the other half of the work.
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