ALSACE ANCESTORS 
Departement du Bas-Rhin Vital Records

Departement du Bas-Rhin vital records include: parish registers from the 16th century to 1792; 10-year indexes and civil registers of births, marriages and deaths from 1793 to 1912; and a register of family names chosen by Jews in 1808. Three million images are in the database, and access is free. This is one of the most user-friendly departmental archive sites currently online. You do not have to read French to use it because the graphics are so well-designed.

photo: QHGS member archives: “Alsace Ancestors in Schiltigheim”

Find your ancestors in Bas-Rhin by going to http://etat-civil.bas-rhin.fr/adeloch/index.php. Accept the conditions by checking the box by “J’accepte ces conditions,” and then, when two lines of type appear below, click on “Accéder à la version graphique.” A new window will open, and you will use a small keypad to click on the first letter of the town that you want to research. In a moment, all of the towns beginning with that letter will appear listed in alphabetical order. Click on the village you want, and the beautiful graphic interface will arrive on your screen.

You’re ready to begin! A sliding bar at the bottom of the screen lets you navigate the time line easily. Parish registers are on the far left; Catholics are first and Protestants are second. The “books” are color-coded; registers, both parish and civil, are green and indexes are red. White volumes are special. They may signify missing records, or they may direct you to other towns where the records you seek are located. Double-click on any volume and it will “open” to display its digitized images or its directions for researching additional records in other towns. A “bookmark” will let you know which volumes you have consulted.

Print individual pages by clicking “imprimer” at the top of the page. The document will appear positioned on a virtual sheet of paper. You can enlarge, reduce, or rotate it using buttons at the bottom of the page; and in the “Annoter votre document” area you can type information about the record itself. Click “Valider” in the lower right-hand corner, and your document will be printed with a light archival watermark that does not obscure the image. To return to the volume and pages you were looking at previously, click “Retour.”

RESEARCH TIP: All this and censuses too! Yes, census records exist for the years 1819–1885; and access is free at http://population.bas-rhin.fr/ellenbach/, another branch of the Bas-Rhin Archives. You will be dealing with two languages in Bas-Rhin; so, print the French and German Genealogical Word Lists available at FamilySearch in the WIKI to help you translate your documents [the October 1, 2015, blog post explains how to do this]. More information about the Alsace region and its genealogy resources is available at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fraalsac/alsaceaz/resources.htm.