How do i find my french ancestry?

Question

Im mexican/french and my family came from france when the french took over mexico. They established a small hacienda in the durango region in mexico. I know we come from some poor nobility in France but i have no clue where to start. My grandfather tells me that alot of the knowledge of our lineage and land was lost in mexico when the Mexicans revolted. We have no clue of what exactly what nobility we have but we know we come from southern France. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Mexico and France are different than much of Europe and America. The problem that you have is a lack of centralized record-keeping and very little on the internet. As a result, you can only find local records at local town halls and archives. The real repository of information is the Catholic Church. You need to narrow down the town where they lived in order to find any records in either country. Once you do find the town, then you start by exhausting whatever local records exist (usually wills and property records) and whatever Catholic sacramental records exist. I traced the Betancourt family back to France for a woman from Mexico about 15 years ago. It took almost 2 years to find all of the records dating backwards from 1825 when the family left France, but we did do it. The hard part is having the patience to wait for the records on each generation so that you can get the names of the members of the previous generation and can then write away for those records.a

As for records being lost when the Mexicans revolted, that's not quite true. The lands were indeed stripped, but the records weren't destroyed. No one saw any merit in destroying the records, they just stole them away and re-registered them in their own names. And the records of the Church were sacrosanct and untouchable in the minds of the Mexicans. So those records are in very good order back to 1400 when the Church started mandating the keeping of baptismal, marriage, ordination and death/last rite records. The LDS hasn't been given permission by many of the bishops to film Catholic records in many dioceses in both countries, so it's hit and miss whether you can find films of the records through them.

Answer 2

I suggest using the standard search techniques:

You should start by asking all your living relatives about family history.  Then, armed with that information, you can go to your public library and check to see if it has a genealogy department.  Most do nowadays; also, don't forget to check at community colleges, universities, etc.  Our public library has both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com free for anyone to use (no library card required).

Another place to check out is any of the Mormon's Family History Centers.  They allow people to search for their family history (and, NO, they don't try to convert you).

A third option is one of the following websites:

http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

http://www.geni.com/

Cyndi's has the most links to genealogy websites, whether ship's passenger lists, ancestors from Africa, ancestors from the Philippines, where ever and whatever.

Of course, you may be successful by googling: "john doe, born 1620, plimouth, massachusetts" as an example.

Good luck and have fun!

Check out this article on five great free genealogy websites:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...

When everything else fails, opt for a DNA test; it will at least confirm you have French ancestors.  I used www.familytreedna.com the oldest and best. They also do DNA testing for the National Geographics Genotype Program (mapping human migration patterns).  Yours would fit right in there.