French Genealogy: Filae.com launches English language site

Filae’s French collection opens the door for non-French-speaking people to discover their family stories online.

40 million people in the world (excluding France) claim French descent. Here’s the latest press release from Filae:

French Genealogy opening the door

Paris, France – September, 18, 2019 – Filae.com, the world’s largest online resource for accessing French official records, today announced the launch of its first foreign language international sister-site: https://en.filae.com

With more than 40 million people in the world claiming French heritage, the launch of an English language version of Filae.com gives all of them an unprecedented and exclusive access to more than 150 million images of French Census and Vital records (birth, marriage, death) which have been indexed by Filae.com.

As Elvis Presley, Alec Baldwin, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Kurt Cobain, Warren Buffett, and many other celebrities, 4% of the US population, 17% of Argentinians and 14% of Canadians have French roots!

“The launch of Filae.com is just the beginning of a more global strategy whose aim is to facilitate access to the largest resource of French records and to help people with French descent tracing back their ancestry whatever their language is and wherever they live! We are thrilled to share information we digitized and indexed with family history fans all over the world.” said Toussaint Roze, CEO and founder of Filae.com.

Starting as early as 1500, Filae’s French historical collection features records such as:

  • Parish registers,
  • Civil records,
  • Census and vital records,
  • Passenger lists,
  • Military records (Napoleonic wars, WWI, WWII),
  • Indexes provided by French societies,
  • Directories
  • and many other historical records (French revolution, etc.)

Filae.com also provides its users with easy-to-use tools to build their own trees or import their gedcom files, upload photos and documents and share them with other members.

Here’s a look at the Filae website:

French Genealogy website Filae

About Filae.com
Launched in December 2016, Filae.com is the first and largest resource for French digitized and indexed records online.

The service was created by Toussaint Roze, a French serial- entrepreneur dedicated to genealogy who previously created successful online services like notrefamille.com, genealogie.com and gedlink.

Filae.com hosts and indexes more than 150 million digitisations of French original records for the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.

File Search Trick, and Prepping for an Archive Visit

Podcast Listener Joan wrote me recently:  “I get to spend a day at the National Archives. What should I do to prepare to take full advantage of the visit? I checked their website, but it was not as helpful as I hoped. Any suggestions?”

While this first resource is from the National Archives in the UK, it’s applicable to archives in other countries as well.  Check out their video series called Quick Animated Guide.

Another good approach is to search for presentations on archive visits using Google.  By conducting a ‘file type search’ in Google you can uncover presentations posted on the Web that are geared to doing research at the National Archives.

I conducted the following search in Google: .ppt national archives research and came up with a Powerpoint presentation called Beginning Your Genealogical Research at the National Archives which comes from the US National Archives website. When you click the link above you’ll be prompted to RUN the presentation, and I found that it detected Powerpoint on my computer and opened the presentation in my Powerpoint program.

This little genealogy search gem can come in quite handy. Sometimes you know exactly what kind of file or document you are looking for online. By searching for the keywords of the subject and then adding .ppt (the file extension for Powerpoint presentations) Google will pull up only Powerpoint presentations that include those keywords.

You may not be able to get out to genealogy conferences very often, but some creative searching may bring up presentations that cover topics that interest you right from your home computer. That’s a little gem you need to add to your search toolbox for sure!  For more search gems check out my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. 
 
The Genealogist's Google Toolbox Third edition Lisa Louise Cooke

Available in the Genealogy Gems Store

 
And finally, when it comes to preparing for and making a trip to an archive or library Margery Bell of the Family History Centers offered some great ideas for preparing for a research trip, regardless of whether it is to the National Archives or the Family History Library. The interviews are episode 17, 18 & 19 in the Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast.

Great question Joan and have a wonderful time! Happy hunting everyone!

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