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Start Here · The Complete Guide
How to Trace Your French Ancestry: The Complete Guide
New to French genealogy, or not sure where to begin? This is the map of the whole journey, from your attic to a village church register, linking to every detailed guide along the way. The one page to bookmark.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Your Quebec Line Reaches 1650. Now Find the French Parish
Drouin and the PRDH carry you to a marriage at Québec in the 1660s, and then the trail stops at a French place name written by ear. Why that name can lead nowhere, what the Fichier Origine can and cannot tell you, and what the French archives hold instead.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Parish or Commune? The 1792 Line That Decides Where Your Record Is
Three documents say parish and mean three different things: the unit that kept the registers until 1792, the Catholic parish of today, and the Louisiana civil parish. What separates them, and why a Québec-trained instinct is right at home and wrong in France.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Finding Your Ancestor's French Village from a Death Certificate
If your ancestor married before 22 September 1922, she probably has no naturalization file at all: the law gave a married woman her husband's nationality. The death certificate is the civil document that names both parents, and this is how to weigh what the informant told the registrar.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Where Drouin and the PRDH Stop, and What Replaces Them in France
Two official pages give different dates for what the PRDH covers, and neither explains why. What each tool actually is, what you are really being charged for, where each one stops, and what the French archives offer in their place.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
What an Acadian Surname Can and Cannot Tell You About Where Your Family Came From
Eighty-nine founding families make an Acadian surname strong evidence inside Acadia. In France the same name joins more than two hundred thousand others. Why the evidence inverts at the ocean, how dit names and spellings break a search, and how to use the French surname data to knock a bad attribution down rather than to prop one up.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Finding Your Ancestor's French Village from an American Church Marriage Record
The manifest gives you a place. The naturalization file gives you a place. Neither names the parents, and parents are what prove a match in a French register. The Catholic marriage record names both sets, including the mother's maiden name.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Which French Provinces the Acadians Actually Came From
Eighty-nine founding families are the first ancestors of some three hundred thousand Acadians, and twenty-four French provinces are represented among them. What is established about where they came from, what rests on a linguistic hypothesis, and what that changes in your own search.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Finding Your Ancestor's French Village from a Naturalization Record
Whether the file names a village turns on one date: 27 September 1906. What the forms recorded before and after it, the two fields that carry the village, why they never name the parents, and where the papers are kept.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
From Louisiana to Acadia to France: The Three Crossings
A Cajun line crosses the Atlantic three times, going backwards. Louisiana to the exile, the exile to Acadia, Acadia to France. Where each crossing breaks, and why the familiar answer about Poitou and the Loudunais is thinner than its confidence suggests.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Finding Your Ancestor's French Village from a Ship Manifest
The manifest is not the destination. Which columns each version of the form carries, why last residence is not the birthplace, the 1907 column that names the village, and what to do when the entry just says France.
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Research Guide · September 3, 2026
Le Grand Dérangement: Where the Families Went, and Which Records Follow Them
How many Acadians were really deported, and why three reputable sources give three answers. Where the families were scattered, the one deportation that can be counted almost person by person, and which records name them at each destination.
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Research Guide · August 18, 2026
Alsace-Lorraine: Was Your Ancestor French or German?
The border did not keep moving. It moved four times, in 1871, 1918, 1940 and 1945, on dates you can look up, and the village never moved at all. Which side your ancestor was born on, why the American records say Germany, and the list of 1872 optants that almost nobody opens.
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Research Guide · August 1, 2026
Huguenot Ancestry: How to Trace Your French Protestant Roots
Huguenot lines stop dead around 1690, and that wall is a real historical object: in 1685 the Revocation abolished the registers themselves. Where the clandestine registres du Désert survive, why the letters N.C. beside a name matter, and how to work back from the country of refuge to the French village.
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Research Guide · July 24, 2026
How to Read Old French Handwriting
You found the 1780 baptism record, and it looks like scribbles. It isn't: old French acts are formulas filled in by hand. The skeleton phrases, the thirty words that matter, the letters that fool everyone, and the month trap that has planted wrong dates in thousands of trees.
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Beginner's Guide · July 22, 2026
How to Find Your French Grandparents (or Great-Grandparents)
Never done genealogy before? This is the friendly, first-things-first path: what to gather at home, how to find a grandmother's maiden name, how to climb one generation at a time, and how to trace the family all the way back to France.
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Research Guide · July 21, 2026
The Filles du Roi: Are You Descended From One of the King's Daughters?
Between 1663 and 1673, roughly 770 young women crossed an ocean to build New France. Today millions descend from them. Who they really were, the myth to forget, where they came from, and how to find out if a King's Daughter sits in your family tree.
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Research Guide · July 21, 2026
Can You Get French Citizenship Through Your Ancestors? An Honest Guide
A French great-grandparent is not a passport. The honest, in-depth guide to French citizenship by descent: how bloodline nationality really works, the 50-year rule that quietly breaks the chain, who genuinely qualifies, and the civil records a nationality certificate demands.
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Research Guide · July 20, 2026
What Your French Last Name Reveals About Your Ancestors
Lefebvre means the smith. Dupont, the family by the bridge. Boudreaux was once Boudrot. The four families of French surnames, the regional accent hidden in yours, the dit names that trap every researcher, and how the spelling changed on the way to America.
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Research Guide · July 19, 2026
Why Your DNA Test Shows So Little French (Even If Your Family Is French)
Your name is Lefebvre, your grandmother spoke French, and AncestryDNA gave you 6% France. She didn't lie. France bans consumer DNA testing, the reference panels are thin, and your French DNA got relabeled. What's really going on, and what actually proves French ancestry.
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Research Guide · July 19, 2026
The French Pyramid: Régions, Départements and Communes Explained
Your ancestor's records live at the bottom of a pyramid Americans were never taught: région, département, arrondissement, canton, commune. The whole structure floor by floor, the old provinces and parishes underneath it, and the two levels that actually matter for research.
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An Idea · July 18, 2026
The Gift of Roots: For the One Who Always Wondered
Someone in your life has always wondered about their French roots: the grandmother from Alsace, the name nobody can explain. You can't wrap a question that's been open for forty years. But you can have it answered, and given.
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Research Guide · July 18, 2026
French Archives Online: The Free Goldmine Americans Don't Know About
France digitized centuries of parish registers, civil records, censuses and military rolls, and put them online for free. The map to the hundred departmental mines, the national treasures, the tables décennales shortcut, and the honest truth about which famous sites charge.
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Research Guide · July 18, 2026
French-Canadian Ancestry: Crossing from Québec Back to France
Québec's registers will carry you back to your pioneer with astonishing speed, until the Atlantic stops the escalator. The Fichier Origine, marriage contracts, the Perche migration, and how to carry a French-Canadian line back to its parish in Normandy, Poitou or Aunis.
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Research Guide · July 18, 2026
Finding Your Alsatian Ancestors: A Guide for American Families
The most misfiled ancestors in America: recorded as German, actually Alsatian. The 1871 identity trap, records that switch between French, German and Latin, the Castroville colony in Texas, and the free online archives of Strasbourg and Colmar that unlock it all.
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Research Guide · July 18, 2026
Tracing Your Cajun and Acadian Roots Back to France
Cajun genealogy crosses the Atlantic twice: Louisiana back to Acadia, Acadia back to the villages of Poitou and Aunis. The three legs of the journey, the scholarship that has charted the middle, and the forgotten French exile records most researchers never use.
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Research Guide · July 17, 2026
How to Find the French Village Your Ancestor Came From
French records are kept village by village, so the first step of French genealogy happens in American archives. Naturalization papers, ship manifests, church records, draft cards: where the name of your family's town is hiding, and how to confirm it once you find it.
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More guides and case studies are coming, including the story of the old mill that started it all.