Aike Martín Centlivre

Hello Judi!

Short answer is: yes to both questions. I'm both Spanish and French myself. Most of the resources I use are available online, but the grand majority are written in French or Spanish and a few have an interesting mix of Latin and French.

Long answer is, I'm not sure which sources are listed on each country's projects, so I'll just list them here in case you find any of them helpful!

For French genealogy, I mainly use departmental archives: https://www.archives-departementales.com/#google_vignette

This website displays a map of France, it allows you to click on the part of France you're interested in and then redirects you to its own website. I have only investigated the northern, western, and southwestern departments, though, so I can't say for sure that it works as well for other departments since I haven't checked them.

Asides form departmental archives, I often use LISA90: https://www.lisa90.org/lisa/pages/accueil.php This is another website that has indexed most archives from the historical region of Alsace. It makes it possible to look for specific names, surnames, places, periods of time, couples... And redirect you to their respective sources. It also has various entries about the history of the region and other very useful tools regarding genealogical research.

Another website I use for French genealogy is Filae. Even though it's not a completely free website and you need an account to log in, I find it very useful too. It specializes in French ancestry.

Then there’s Swiss cantonal documents, of which many actually are written in French: https://www.cgaeb-jura.ch/entraide/les-registres-paroissiaux-suisses-en-ligne/ This website is also equipped with a list of Swiss cantons so you can be redirected to their specific websites.

Another two useful websites are Mémoires des Hommes, which contains military archives: https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr/fr/

MatchID: https://deces.matchid.io/search

It’s a website that allows to search for 27 million death records since 1970 from INSEE's official records (French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies).

And finally, I recently stumbled across a website called Bibliothèque Nationale de France: https://www.bnf.fr/fr

It contains an immense variety of documents, among which you can find another website called Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/

Gallica contains genealogy related documents as well. You can find anything from lists of war prisoners at the start of the Second World War, to old press, scholarly journals or even photographs. I find it especially helpful since it provides Open Acces to the Bulletin du Cercle Généalogique d'Alsace up to 2015's publications.

Regarding Spanish sources, I must admit I personally find them quite scarce. MyHeritage barely has any, Filae doesn't suggest non-french documents (asides from Swiss ones, at least in my experience), and FamilySearch has huge gaps of information. There is no specific genealogy related Spanish website, at least not that I know of. Not all region's archives have been digitalized (up until now I’ve only seen the regions Barcelona, Gerona, Murcia, Salamanca, Ciudad Real and some of Jaén’s census) and the ones that have contain mostly parish records like baptisms, marriages, and burials.

It might be possible to look for information in academic papers on JStor and other websites of the sort, but I haven’t tried yet. It could also be the case that there are other Spanish resources I don't know of, of course.

Luckly for me, most of my Spanish ancestors barely moved from the region Ciudad Real. Along with Barcelona, Gerona, Murcia and Salamanca, this five regions do have digitalized archives accesible on FamilySearch that have an integrated index of the region's cities and villages: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-67KQ-Z36?i=42

There often are gaps or documents missing, though, but overall it does the trick.

I think some cities have documents available at the local library, so I will have to check this summer to see if there are any documents that are not available online.

I almost forgot to mention it, I think the two surnames part of Spanish genealogy is what makes it the most difficult to take advantage of other websites or resources. Since we have two surnames, one from each parent (and sometimes there even are compound family names) apps or websites don't typically predict correctly what our parent's surnames are. And most Spanish sources I've found only mention people's first surname. So, when reading a baptism record, for example, you must deduct the child's surnames by writing down the father's first one followed by the mother's first one. And unless they give you the grandparents’ first surname too (which thankfully they usually do) you can't know the second surname of the parents. I imagine how that could be confusing to those who only have one surname, haha.

I hope that answered your question and wasn't too long to read. Anything I can do, I’m happy to help! :)

I apologize if I caused any trouble, I do have the sources but I don't know why they don't add themselves with the rest of the GEDCOM file. I guess I'll have to add them myself one by one. I've been really busy with my studies but I'll try adding as much sources as I can for every unsourced profile I've added.

Once again, I apologize for the trouble. I'll be fixing it from now on :)

I hadn't realised, it's a personal sistem I use to distinguish maiden names and married names. Thanks for letting me know!

I'll correct that.

It'll take some time, though, there's too many people on my tree, haha

Thanks :)

There's a lot to learn! Many people have used all caps previously and did not know of the WT policy. We help each other and all is better!

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