The department of Vendée Archives in the region of Pays de la Loire in western France has digitized and uploaded 312,289 notarial records onto its website. These records, from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, include marriage contracts, wills, estate inventories, and parish meeting minutes.
Other notarial records, found by the Archives de la Vendée during the digitization process, include building contracts, notes taken during building inspections, and laws passed during parish meetings regarding leases, work, and taxes.
I learned about the Vendée collection in Anne Morddel’s blog, The French Genealogy Blog. She writes, “It is impossible to overemphasize the value of notarial records. The profession of the notaire is older than the country of France. For centuries, they have been documenting French lives.”
Ms. Morddel notes that the Archives de France has already uploaded thousands of Parisian notarial records, the department of Yvelines Archives digitized images of their notary lists, and the Familles Parisiennes website has a number of projects underway to post images online of Parisian notarial records.
Ms. Morddel wrote, “We predict that many more archives will follow suit.”
You can begin your search in the Vendée Archives’ notarial records here.
Read more about French notarial records in The French Genealogy Blog.
