As you visit an online France department archive page of parish, civil, military enlistment and census records, you’ll see there are other online topics to choose from. I didn’t understand them at the time. so I passed over those topics. Until now.
Depending on each department archives, you could find maritime records usually located in the western coastal departments (look up Nantes) French revolutionary deaths, passports (some with pictures) military death records, World War 1 -1914-1918 war veteran’s cards (some with pictures), civil and military pensioners, Legion of Honor recipients, death deeds and notary inheritance claims (for tax reasons, of course), and, yes, there’s more..
I’m out of breath just listing all the the possibilities
Now, a tad of bad news, as you dig deeper into the France departmental archives, you could find a treasure trove of additional records and documents or bare bones offerings. The departmental archives of Calvados, is one such example of limited online additional records beyond the basics. Those extended documents that are listed but are not digitized, would be available on microfilm or contained in large book covers laying on a self. In those cases, you will have to email the Archivist of that department and ask how to obtain copies of the information you want. I’ve contacted numerous archivists over the years, and ALL of them have been extremely helpful.
In the next few pages, I will explain the France Department Archives online collections available to us. Explore what the department archives might have available for additional documents and/or records, and give examples of those extra documents of what you could find in your archive of research.