The Online Belgium Census Update

March 1, 2024

The 1766 Census of the Province of Luxembourg and Namur have been restored.

Jan 24, 2024

Heartbreaking Update on the Belgium censuses located at FamilySearch.

If you visit FamilySearch’s website for available 1770-1910 Belgian’s census and populations registers of towns in Wallonia at FamilySearch, you’ll find those online images have been removed. Only the microfilm for these records are available to visit or order from Salt Lake City’ Family History Center.

However, not all is lost . You can still find partial indexes with registers of towns further down the lists of films. Unfortunately, not all of the towns have these online images available:

. Here’s an example of what is available at the commune of Biévène in the province of Hainaut

Search through these partial population listings from the towns in the Province of Hainaut. (Towns and years that are still available will have the camera image next to them)

From Belgian genealogy expert, Hubert Barnich, “……What happened late in 2023 was a gigantic blurp from FS: they made public all Etat Civil registers until 1950… including the births! They (*FamilySearch) had to promptly remove them as our Law forbids that”

So, because of Belgian law, the fall out has been the online images for Belgian censuses and population registers for all Walloon provinces have been removed. This is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s devastating for those of us who depend heavily on FamilySearch for Belgian Genealogy Research! (It’s puzzling to me as FamilySearch had all those images uploaded for years and years, before this happened.)

At time of this writing, these Hainaut online images are still available!

–Laura