Summary
If you are researching your French ancestry, birth, marriage and death records will quickly become your most important resources. In France, these documents are known as ‘actes d’état civil‘ and are the equivalent to civil registration records, also referred to as vital or BMD records.
The civil registration system came into effect in 1793 during the French Revolution. It replaced Catholic parish registers as the official means of recording vital events.
While many of these records have become available online via various family history platforms, a considerable number of records remain buried in unindexed digital collections or are stored in offline repositories.
Act determining the procedure for recording the civil registration of citizens. 20 September 1792.
Source: Méjanes Library, Aix-en-Provence (Ref. 1792.10.13)
This article explains where these records may be found, how to determine whether they are accessible, and the available options when they are not online. It covers:
- Which archives hold French birth, marriage and death records
- When these records become available to the public
- How to find an unindexed French birth, marriage or death record online
- How to obtain a French birth, marriage or death record when it is not available online
The history of civil registration in France spans more than two centuries and has been shaped by numerous laws and regulations. The system continues to be modernised to this day. While there are always legal or historical exceptions and local practices, gaining a clear understanding of the overarching principles is enormously helpful for successful research.
Beyond Births, Marriages and Deaths
Although French civil registration primarily records births, marriages and deaths, the physical registers also include other related events.
In Births Registers
Acknowledgment of parentage (reconnaissance)
Under civil law (derived from the Napoleonic Code of 1804), a child born outside of marriage had no legal filiation to a parent until they were formally recognised. In most cases, it was the mother who did so, and the child would bear her name (with the father listed as ‘unnamed’). Even after recognition, the child was still considered a ‘natural child’ (enfant naturel) and could not claim the same rights as a legitimate child, especially with regard to inheritance.
Foundlings (Enfants trouvés)
Occasionally birth registers record a foundling. The record describes the date, place and circumstances of discovery, the child’s apparent age and sex, and any clothing, objects or notes left with them. The registrar would usually give the child a name.
In Marriage registers
Marriage banns (publications de mariage)
Before a marriage could take place, the intention to marry had to be publicly announced. Marriage banns were usually made twice in the weeks before a couple planned to marry. The banns were published in the places where each future spouse lived. Records of marriage announcements may survive separately from the actual marriage registers.
Divorce (Divorce)
Divorce was legalised in France in 1792. It was then restricted under Napoleon, abolished in 1816 and reinstated in 1884, albeit under restrictive conditions. From the late 19th century onwards, some divorce judgements were transcribed in full in the marriage register for the location of the marriage.
In Death Registers
Stillborn children (Enfant sans vie)
Some death registers also contain records of stillbirths, which are births where it is unclear whether the child was born alive and viable. These children were not given names; their sex and the date and time of death were noted, along with the names of their parents.
Which Archive Holds French Birth, Marriage and Death Records?
French civil registration records are held by various institutions. The first question, therefore, is which institution holds the record you need.
The general pattern is as follows:
– Records are created at the town hall, and recent registers remain there.
– Older registers, are transferred to an archive service.
– Specialised national repositories hold records for specific populations or territories.
The Town Hall — The Starting Point
Civil registration records are created and entered into registers at the town hall of the commune where the event took place.
Records are entered consecutively in a register, with several records usually appearing on each page. Each record is assigned a sequential number.
Terminology
Etat civil
The French system of civil registration.
Registre
A register, i.e. the physical or digitised volume/book containing civil records.
Acte
A record or entry: an individual birth, marriage, death, or other civil record.
Mairie
The town hall.
Commune
The basic administrative unit in France roughly equivalent to a municipality, town, or village). There are over 34,000 communes, ranging from major cities like Paris or Lyon to tiny rural hamlets.
Département
A department i.e. an administrative division of France that is VERY roughly comparable to a county. Each department contains many communes.
Extract from a French death register, Corbeil, 1896. Entry 1226 and 1227 appear consecutively in the register.
Source: Departmental Archives of Essonnes.
Each event is recorded by the civil registrar (officier l’état civil). By law, the mayor (maire) and the deputy mayors (adjoints au maire) are both the civil registrars though they can delegate these duties (except for marriages).
When Records Move to the Archives
Civil registration records are traditionally created in duplicate, though the two copies follow separate paths and timelines.
The Townhall copy
The townhalls copy of the register remains under the care of the local registrar, who uses it to issue certified copies and record marginal annotations (such as subsequent marriages, divorces, or deaths). Once a register reaches 120 years of age, it is transferred to an archive service.
The court copy
Each year, a second copy of the register is sent to the local court. The court keeps this copy for 75 years before transferring it to a historical archive, namely the Departmental Archives discussed below.
One copy may therefore still be at the town hall while the other has already been archived.
The Departmental Archives – The Main Destination
The Departmental Archives receive the court copies of civil registration registers and often the townhall copies, after the applicable retention periods. However, their collections include much more than these records, such as parish registers, notarial records, census returns, military conscription lists, land and property records, newspapers, and many other local sources.
Before the French Revolution, France was divided into provinces. In 1789, the revolutionary government reorganised the country into administrative divisions called ‘départements’ (departments). THere are currently 101 departments in France.
Source: Nilstilar, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
For most family history research involving older records, the Departmental Archives is the main destination.
Municipal Archives — For Large Cities and Towns
Provided they maintain proper archival conditions, communes with a population of 2,000 or more are not required to transfer their old registers to the Departmental Archives. Some communes maintain a dedicated municipal archive service (Archives Municipales). Cities such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Rennes have extensive municipal archives that include historical civil registration records alongside many other local documents.
The façade of the Lyon Municipal Archives.
Source: Pemberlaid, via Wikimedia Commons.
However, bear in mind that even for these cities, the court copy of the registers still went to the departmental archives. Therefore, the two institutions may hold the same type of registers.
Specialised National Repositories
While most French civil registration records are organised geographically at the municipal or departmental level, several categories of record are held by specialised national repositories.
These repositories have their own access and publication policies. These include:
French citizens abroad
Former French territories
When can I access French Birth, Marriage and Death Records?
Once you have identified where a record is held, you need to establish whether you can consult it and, if so, in what form.
When it comes to public archives, it is important to distinguish between three stages of access.
The Three Dimensions of French Registration Record Access
Each stage is governed by different rules and concerns, primarily the protection of personal data.
- Legal accessibility refers to whether the record can be viewed in an archive reading room or a copy can be obtained. This is strictly governed by French law which establishes the statutory time limits for public access.
- Online publication indicates whether images of the register are available on the internet. This stage is subject to additional regulations regarding public administration and data protection. Archive services generally adhere to the historical guidelines set out by the French Data Protection Authority.
- Online name indexing determines whether an individual record can be retrieved by searching for a person’s name. This stage is also subject to its own data protection considerations. Archive services generally adhere to the historical guidelines set out by the French Data Protection Authority.
A record may be open for consultation before it appears online, and it may be published online long before it can be searched by name.
The following table brings the three timelines together. Periods are counted from the closure of the register (usually the end of the calendar year).
| Record type | Public consultation | Online publication | Name indexing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birth records | 75 years | – 75 years – 100 years if marginal notes are not redacted |
120 years |
| Marriage records | 75 years | 75 years | 100 years |
| Death records | Immediate | – 25 years | 75 years |
Bear in mind that public consultation, online publication and name indexing policies are subject to many exceptions and variations. You will need to check with each archive service individually to find out what they cover.
Marginal Notes (Mentions marginales)
In the French civil registration system, a marginal note (also known as a mention marginale) is an update added to the margin of an existing record (specifically birth and marriage records). When certain events occur, such as marriage or death, the commune that registers the event informs the commune holding the original record, provided they are not the same commune. The registrar then inscribes the update directly onto the margin of the record.
Some events, particularly those arising from court judgements,, must first be transcribed in full onto the civil registration register before a marginal note can be added. This is the case for divorces, for instance, which are recorded in the marriage register.
Extract from a French birth record. On the left are two marginal notes: one mentioning his marriage (including the name of his wife, and the date and place of the event), and the second providing information about the date and place of his death.
Source: Departmental Archives of Seine-et-Marne.
The use of marginal notes was introduced gradually over time. The absence of a note on an older document is often indicative of the laws in force at the time rather than suggesting that the event did not occur. Additionally, the system is far from infallible. Marginal notes may be missing for various reasons, so their absence should never be taken as conclusive evidence that an event did occur.
Is the record legally accessible?
Ultimately, all public archives are intended for public consultation. However, administrative laws and regulations strike a balance between this principle and other interests.
Restrictions mainly affect recent birth and marriage records, as well as records containing information about filiation or family status.
The periods commonly encountered are as follows:
| Record type | Public consultation |
|---|---|
| Birth records | 75 years |
| Marriage records | 75 years |
| Death records | Immediate |
Periods are counted from the closure of the register
Early access to restricted records
In certain circumstances, access to a record that is not yet freely accessible may be authorised before the applicable public access period has expired.
The following people are entitled to consult the record and to request a full copy (a complete reproduction of the original record) directly from the town hall:
- the person named in the record, if of legal age;
- their spouse or registered civil partner (partenaire de PACS);
- their direct descendants or ancestors (children, grandchildren, parents and grandparents);
- their legal representative;
- certain authorised professionals acting within their legal duties.
If you do not fall into these categories, however, you can apply for early access via a formal legal procedure known as a demande de dérogation (request for special exemption).
Anyone can apply for a dérogation, but approval is not automatic. The administration will consider your motivation, which must be justified and legitimate, such as for academic research, historical publication or establishing a legal right, against the privacy interests protected by law.
Has the record been published online?
Over the past two decades, a vast quantity of material has been made available online. Civil and parish registers are almost always among the first series made available because they are the records that genealogists request most often.
However, online publication does not equate to legal consultation. While a register may be legally accessible in the reading room, the archive service may still decide not to publish the images online. This is because online publication is subject to a different, more restrictive framework.
Online publication is subject to public data and data protection rules because publishing a register on the internet makes personal information easily accessible worldwide.
In practice, archive services generally adhere to the historical guidelines on this subject, as established by the French Data Protection Authority.
While these timeframes reflect current practices, significant differences between archive services are to be expected depending on technical constraints, local authorisations or other factors.
| Record type | Online publication |
|---|---|
| Birth records | – 75 years – 100 years if marginal notes are not redacted |
| Marriage records | 75 years |
| Death records | 25 years |
These periods are counted from the closure of the register.
This screenshot shows that the online birth registers for the commune of Erdeven on the Morbihan Departmental Archives website stop at 1925–1926, illustrating a publication limit that is still encountered on some archive websites.
Source: Morbihan Departmental Archives
Can I search for it by name?
This is treated separately from online publication because the exposure of personal data is far greater, and an additional protection period is applied before this level of facilitated searching is permitted.
When a register is not searchable by surname, you must browse it page by page, just as you would when consulting a physical register.
The commonly applied name-indexing periods are:
| Record type | Name indexing |
|---|---|
| Birth records | 120 years |
| Marriage records | 100 years |
| Death records | 75 years |
These periods are counted from the closure of the register.
Many archive websites offer a name-search form directly on their site. However, the mere presence of such a search box does not mean that every record has been indexed and coverage can vary enormously from one collection to another.
These name indexes may have been created in different ways: by archive staff, by associations, through collaborative indexing projects, or, through automated transcription projects.
How to Find an Unindexed French Birth, Marriage and Death Record?
An unindexed register is not necessarily unavailable online. You may be able to view every page as a digitised image, but you cannot retrieve an individual record by searching for a name. You must therefore browse through the register itself, much as you would with the original documents in an archive reading room.
Many online registers have not yet been indexed by name. When this is the case, there are two main finding aids that both allow you to locate an event without reading every page of the register: the annual index and the ten-year index.
The annual index
Once the register for a given year has been closed, an alphabetical list of all the records entered in that register is compiled. This is the annual index, known in French as the table annuelle. It is often found at the end of the register, though some archives present these tables online as a separate item. It provides the following information:
- the surname and given name;
- the date of the event;
- sometimes the entry number, and/or the page number.
Extract from the annual index at the end of the 1902 marriage register from Lorient.
Source: Morbihan Departmental Archives
The annual index is useful when you already know the year but not the exact date of the event you are looking for.
Once you have located the relevant entry in the index, you can use the date and entry number to find the corresponding record in the register. Look for the corresponding register for that year and locate the record itself. Please note that the entry number is the quickest way to find a record in a register.
The ten-year index
Also known as a table décennale, the ten-year index is an alphabetical index covering ten years of events in a single commune, created from the index tables. These tables are usually organised first by type of record, and then alphabetically by surname.
Extract from the birth ten-year index, 1873–1886, 1st arrondissement of Paris. One foundling (Enfant trouvé) and three acknowledgements of parentage (Reconnaissances) are visible.
Source: Paris Departmental Archives.
This is particularly useful when you do not know the exact year of the event you are seeking or only have a broad timeframe.
The procedure is the same as for the annual index: locate the surname, note the date and record number, and then turn to the corresponding record in the register.
How to Obtain a French Birth, Marriage or Death Record When It Is Not Online?
By this point, you should know the commune and the approximate period with which you are dealing. Even if the record is legally accessible but not available online, there are still several possible options.
Consult the Register in an Archive Reading Room
Public archives are generally free to consult on site. Most institutions require prior reader registration and presentation of an identity document.
Of course, this option requires you to be in France and to visit the relevant archive service in person.
Request a Reproduction from an Archive Service
If the record is held by an archive service and is legally accessible but you cannot consult it in person, you may be able to request a reproduction.
Most archive services accept written requests for reproductions of specific records, provided the reference (commune, type of act, year, and, if possible, the exact date) is precise enough to locate the record.
Depending on the institution the reproduction generally takes the form of a digital scan sent by email or a photocopy sent by post.
Fees vary from one service to another, and reproduction may be refused for conservation reasons when the register is fragile.
Request a Full Copy from a Town Hall
If the record is legally accessible but the register is still held by the town hall and is not available online, you may be able to request an official copy directly from the town hall.
These are official documents are issued by the town hall on the basis of the original register and have full administrative and legal value.
You can requesta copy by email, mail or in person. Official copies are free of charge from France.
Conclusion
Finding a French birth, marriage or death record does not yet only involve searching a single database for the correct name. Records may be held in departmental, municipal archives or at the townhall. They they may only be available as images. They may be hidden within unindexed registers or subject to access restrictions due to their date. Therefore, the useful distinction is not simply between records that are online and those that are not. It is between records that exist and can be located; records that exist, but require a different access route; and records whose location or survival still needs to be established.
This overview presents the essential framework for navigating French civil records. While a single article cannot cover every nuance of legal and administrative history, understanding these three core categories is the key to conducting a targeted, efficient search. These are the same questions a professional researcher considers automatically before looking at a record.
