Cartulaires (or 'If only I had paid attention in school...') Have you ever thought “Oh, how I wish I’d paid more attention to that in school”? Three of the lads in our gang of friends in my teens couldn’t wait to leave school and celebrated crazily when they left to start apprenticeships in local garages, … Continue reading Tracing the history of our French home – Part 6
Google is your friend During the confinement, at the start of my search (and not really knowing what I was looking for!), I got a bit bored and started googling the name of the mill/ the river we’re on/ the name of the village in various permutations. Once I had got through several pages of … Continue reading Tracing the history of our French home – Part 5
Local historians, past and present You’ll have seen from my last post, Thank you Abbé Toublet, that one particular local historian has helped me to trace our mill back a thousand years. Yes, you read that right – A THOUSAND YEARS! Read about it here There’s no doubt about it. Local historians, past and present, … Continue reading Tracing the History of our French home – Part 4
Military service records - Les matricules militaires Yeah. I know. I didn't think it would be relevant either at first. I was well into my search for clues regarding the history of our watermill in France and had seen the link to Les matricules militaires, registers of military service, whenever I visited the website of … Continue reading Tracing the history of our French home – Part 3
Using the births, deaths and marriages registers If you read my last post about how I used the census returns in the online departmental archives to make a start on tracing the owners of our mill, you’ll know just how useful they are. But as a census is only conducted once every few years I … Continue reading Tracing the history of our french home – Part 2
