What I love about Belgium’s military documents, is their State Archives provides earlier military-service records from several provinces as far back as 1796, and up to 1890. The Archivists label these as militia records. They are documented, digitized, and uploaded for viewing. France department archives does not offer years past the Napoleonic era of 1814-1816, until 1867.
You might have been searching for Belgian military records but kept running into brick walls. It might give way to thoughts that Belgium doesn’t have any. It is bit of a struggle to find them. At least for me, it was. However, Belgium does have digitized military records available at some of their provinces online! Sad news is not all Provinces have their military documents and it’s information presented in this way I will show you.. And, unfortunately, not all towns have any of those militia records available. There are only two provinces of the Wallonia region of Belgium that I know of that do:, Hainaut & Wallon-Brabrant. You can find a simple register of military service sandwiched in between civil marriage records as ‘extraits‘ in other Provinces.
So let’s begin:
Step 1
Start your search from the front page of the FamilySearch Catalog webpage. Notice the search filters at the top right side of this image example. There are filters by place, by keywords, titles, authors, subjects, and surnames to chose from. In this example, I am using the ‘place filter’. Now, In the search field, type in Belgium, Hainaut and click search.
Step 2
You have arrived on province of Hainaut’s category page. Below, you can see all available categories of genealogical purpose listed. I wasn’t able to show the whole page, but on this particular page, I can tell you, the military category is not listed, Which is astonishing since, they’re numerous towns that do possess uploaded digitized military records available for viewing. This can lead one to think there are no military records at all. Now, notice at the very top right a link that says “See Places within Hainaut” (of course, click on it)
Step 3
A pop-up page appears showing all the alphabetically ordered towns in the Province of Hainaut. First, click the municipality you’re interested in. I’ve selected the town of Jemappes for the next example.
Step 4
Stay with with this hop-hop navigational tutorial. After you click on the town of your choosing, that municipal’s page of all available records under the listed categories are shown. Scroll down until you see ‘military records’, click on that, and the “Listes Alphabetical de la Milice nationale 1817-1870”. will show. To understand what this is, this American’s translation is ‘Alphabetical list of the National Militia’
Step 5
You’re almost there! That link lands you on the town of Jemappes military records page with all the years that are available. What’s great about the town of Jemappes I selected, is these documents do indeed go far as back 1817. Remember, there are no online availability of French military records for the most part below 1867 down to the Napoleonic Wars 1814-1816. For this exercise, I have selected the militia records of years 1841-1850.
Voilà! This is the reel where all the digitized military documents for the years of 1841-1850 are available for viewing. I imagine some time in the future, all of Belgium’s military records will be indexed, and searchable. I am so very grateful to the State Archives of Belgium, and to Family Search to have these important genealogical records available!
