French Archives Online

For the past few years France has been digitizing its archives (both Civil registers and Parish registers) and making them available online from a variety of Departmental links. In some cases, notarial records are included as part of the project.

Most Departments provide the record images free of charge whereas some ask for payment. There is no determining factor enabling the researcher to determine where the archives will be available for free or not. Only by visiting the sites will you know. This is a work in progress and not all Departments are online yet, nor complete.

Links to most if not all online French records can be found on the France GenWeb website.

The online records contain listings of all the towns, villages in that each Department has digitized, making the selection of records by date and location easier to find.

The online image are sequential by date, just as we see similar records on rolls of microfilm. Tools on the pages allow zooming in and out, rotating and saving or printing the original document.

Tips (Astuces) are given at the top of the page or you can return to the main list of digitized documents by clicking on "Retour à l'Inventaire" where you can choose other records to search through.