Courtesy of Wikipedia
Flag adopted 15 Feb 1794

This post is part of a series about genealogy in France. You can read the complete series HERE.

Following the defeat of France after the Franco-Prussian war 1870-1871, a fire broke out in two locations in Paris, that held copies of all civil records pertaining to events prior to 1861.

These locations were:

• Town Hall (Hotel de Ville)
• Law Court (Palais de justice)

Also there were other records that were destroyed such as financial and police records.

Civil records from 1860-1871 were kept at district town halls and as a result, these survive. It was possible to reconstruct records concerning families and descendants, sorted by date and surname and then subsequently digitised. These can be found at the website for the Paris Archives, and on FamilySearch under the term “Reconstitution Chronologique des Actes”

• Births 1860 – 1924
• Marriages 1860 – 1945
• Deaths 1860 – 1986

Parish is divided into 20 arrondissements and each has it’s own register. There is a database for each arrondissement for each record type and they are divided into 10 year periods – these are noted as tables decennales.

Between 1933 and 1954 only annual tables exists.

There are records for Paris on:

• Families Parisiennes which are sorted by surnames
• Geneanet
  • various index records most of which are photographed by volunteers.
  • some trees uploaded by others, which might provide clues for other researchers
• Filae access to index records 1860 – 1900 with some earlier that 1860
• City directories for 1932 – 2018 (not online) and at Paris archives.