About
Avant Nous was born from a double passion: research and creation. It began as a personal project: exploring my own genealogy and developing methodological tools for presenting it.
This work quickly revealed something essential: presentation is not a secondary step. It is what gives research its value. It is what makes a story readable, transmissible and lasting.
We start from the sources, not from assumptions
We work from official archives, civil registers, parish records, military records and population censuses. Every piece of information is checked against the original sources. We keep you informed at every step of what we find, and of what we do not find.
Civil and parish registers
Birth, marriage and death records since 1792, and baptism, marriage and burial registers before 1792. Including the ten-year tables.
Military records
Military registration records, conscription lists and unit war diaries. A valuable source for identifying your ancestors and placing them in context.
Population censuses
Name-by-name lists that let us rebuild households, confirm family ties and follow movements from one generation to the next.
Old newspapers
Local and national newspapers digitized through Gallica (BnF). Death notices, family announcements, legal notices and honours.
Notarial deeds
Marriage contracts, wills, inventories after death. Rich sources on property and family ties.
Land registers
Napoleonic and Sardinian cadastres, to locate the properties, towns and living areas of your ancestors in the 19th century.
Electoral rolls
Available from 1848. Useful to confirm that an ancestor lived in a town at a given date.
Additional archives
Hospital and court archives and other occasional sources, consulted as each search requires.
* Our research mainly covers mainland France, the overseas departments and territories, and some neighbouring European countries.
What if the research is unsuccessful?
For some regions or periods, archives can be incomplete or
inaccessible. Some ancestors remain out of reach, because no records
survive, because the region is poorly documented, or because the
period predates civil registration.
In that case, we give you the results we obtained and explain
precisely why we were blocked.
Data protection
Your personal data and your family's are handled in the strictest confidence. They are never shared, resold or used for any purpose other than carrying out your project. Under the GDPR, you have the right to access, rectify and delete your data.
Trees drawn by hand in Paris
Every tree is drawn as vector art, by hand, on a graphics tablet, for sharp printing at any size.