Searching and finding your French ancestors, as well as your French Belgian (Walloon) ones, used to be a herculean feat. Where to start, where to look, how to make sense of what you are reading, and how to navigate through the complicated archival websites. What is equally frustrating is finding

• You don’t know the language,
• You don’t know the town your ancestors came from
• What kind of online French genealogy records are out there
• Where can I find online French genealogical records, sources and information
• How to understand what you are seeing; i.e. Is it a birth or baptismal record?
• Deciphering sloppy handwritten old records and margin notes
• How to navigate through complicated repositories of records.
• Do I have to pay for all of this?

Good news is that you, as an English language person, can find answers to your questions here. You can research more easily with the help of my step-by-step how-to tutorials, articles, resources, & navigation tools.

And you can do it online for free or nearly free

How This Website Began

I started my journey researching my French ancestry in 1998, and a hard and long journey it was. Little was passed down, shared, known, or written down for the generations to come. My father, his mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts, were all dead. And the distant cousins I managed to find, had very little and incorrect information to add. I had few pictures, names and countries, but that was it.

At the time, Rootsweb was a growing collaborative genealogy website, Ancestry.com was a fledgling company, Genealogie.com was on it’s feet, and France’s department archives were not online, The only French genealogy website that was of value was Geneanet.

Here, in the USA, I searched and ordered every kind of record and information I could find in the USA on them; death, probate, marriage, birth, ships lists, schools, newspaper clippings hoping it would led me to the towns in France. Each piece took me a step further to finding them and what I needed. It wasn’t until I came across a naturalization record, and a death record in Québec, that I finally got the big break I needed.

What I finally found out was my NICOLLE and MORENIER ancestors was rife with tragedies, diseases, infant deaths, suicides, skeletons in the closet and what we now know as mental illnesses. Disappearing uncles of my father, voluntary left to be heard of no more. Until American censuses came along, that is..

Now, after this exhaustive journey, with continual perseverance, commitment, time, study and the help of others, I was able to find and acquire all important information I needed to find where my French ancestors came from, how they got to America, names of family members, vital info, completed most of my French family lines and family tree, some of the them go back to 13 generations.

I would like to spare my fellow sojourners researching their French ancestry as much headaches and frustration as possible, by sharing what I have learned and what has worked: How-to tutorials, how to equip yourself with the tools, resources, articles, and navigational guides through difficult documents and websites. You’ll find useful articles and tips in the hope it will help you succeed in your search for your elusive French (and Walloon) ancestors.

My website was originally created in 2010 as “a la French Genealogy”. It was too similar in name to another genealogy site, so I needed a website name that reflected what my site was all about. Thus “Making French Genealogy Easier” was born.

My sincerest thank-yous to Emmaunel Hamel, Guy Brunet, Didier Jourdan, Virginie Colboc, Hubert Barnich, Jean-Jacques Myette, Paulette Baudon, André Bodart and to the numerous people from the Cousins-14, Genea-Orne, Geneloiret45, GeneaBEL, wallonia-asbl genealogy groups who have helped me with ancestry charts, documents, translations, and research. To them, I’m forever grateful.