In 1998, when I started my genealogical journey, Rootsweb genealogy website was free and flourishing, Ancestry.com and FranceGenWeb were in it’s infancy, FamilySearch launched, and the French genealogy website Geneanet was barely on it’s feet. There were other helpful French Genealogy websites from individuals, but the information was very limited. The France departmental Archives had not digitized their parish and civil vital records yet, but Belgium was on a fast track to digitized and published their records online. Viva la Belgique! Unfortunately for us, the only way to obtain these documents was to know the exact town (in a French department) and to write to that ‘town parish or town hall’ officials for them. In other words, you have to know the exact names, the exact towns and dates town in which your ancestors came for your request to be fulfilled. It was a tedious nightmare back then.
Sadly, Rootsweb of free information has been bought out by the of Ancestry.com. Seemingly, overnight, subscription-based Genealogy repository websites had become a very profitable business. These sites do offer an abundance of French and Belgian genealogical information and documents, but with a hefty price tag attached. Genealogy subscription websites are very helpful, I’ve used them myself, but the rising costs of membership fees, for most of them, makes it unaffordable.
You can skip that investment, by finding genealogical documents through Geneanet, a forever-growing freemium and ongoing collaborative searchable genealogy website that offers documents, family trees, a great forum, and additional sources to find your ancestors and their information. And every genealogist’s best friend: FamilySearch who keeps us forever happy with free searchable and browsable digital records of France and Belgium.
Today, France department archives and Belgium’s state archives , FamilySearch (of course), FranceGenWeb and Gallica digital library are all digitalized and online for free. These will guide you to find starting points, documents, indexes and other genealogical information for you to search and discover your ancestors. Sounds overwhelming, sounds time-consuming, my website provides numerous tutorials and genealogical information and resources that will help you over come that. You will be able to research, to understand, discover, navigate, and extract the vital genealogical information from parish and civil documents, military enlistments, censuses records and more. My passion is to help you succeed in your French and Belgium ancestry journey!