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The Communities of Alsace A-Z:
Tips and Resources for Genealogists

By Brian J. Smith - July, 2004

This page contains one person's advice about the best resources for researching our ancestors from Alsace. Much of the material is written from the point of view of researchers like me, whose ancestors immigrated from Alsace to the United States and Canada sometime during the 1800's.

Many records from Alsace are available, and for most communities they date back to the 1600's. For most of us, the most convenient source for these records are the Family History Library (FHL), as described below.

The biggest problem with these these fine detailed records is that almost all of them are organized by community. This means that before you can look up the records of your ancestor, you must know the name of the community in which he or she lived. Many of us don't know this information, when we are first beginning our family history research. Through verbal family tradition, we may know, or suspect, that an ancestor originated in Alsace. Unfortunately, there are over one thousand communities in Alsace. Which one is hiding your ancestor?

(Some people suspect that their ancestors came from Alsace, but are not sure. If you discover records such as the U.S. Census, stating that your ancestor is from France, while other records show him or her as being from Germany, this is a big hint that he or she originated in either Alsace or Lorraine. Alsace and Lorraine, often collectively referred to as Alsace-Lorraine, are the two regions of France that are traditionally German-speaking. During the 1800's these regions were part of France until 1870; after that, until 1919, they belonged to Germany. The shifting borders account for some of the "France or Germany" ambiguity that appears in the U.S. records of our Alsace-Lorraine ancestors.)

If you know that your ancestor originated in Alsace, here are several techniques for trying to learn the name of the community of your ancestor's origin:.

  1. Living Relatives -- Ask your living relatives. Perhaps the name of the community has been passed along, down through the generations, to another branch of your family tree.
  2. U.S. Records -- Assuming that your ancestor immigrated to the United States, perform a thorough search for the stateside records of his life. Marriage, death, and other records will occasionally name the town of birth. Be prepared for misspellings. Many of these records are available through the FHL.
  3. Surname Indexes -- There are a few large lists of Alsatian citizens, dating back to the 1800's, indexed by surname, although unfortunately they are far from comprehensive, and the two most useful lists are not available online. They are described under "Surname Indexes" below.
  4. Electronic Message Boards and e-Mail Lists -- These are online services, described below, where you can post a message for others of similar interests (in this case, Alsace genealogy), who might be able to help you with your search. Or, instead of posting your own query, you can search through the archive of past messages, to see if anyone else has been writing about your family.
  5. Google -- As you probably already know, Google (www.google.com) can be amazing. Maybe somebody out there already knows all about your ancestor, and has been good enough to post the information on a website. If so, Google can find it.

 

Microfilm Records of the Family History Library (FHL)

Copies of many records from Alsace, and from the rest of the world as well, are available from microfilm through the Family History Library (FHL). This includes the civil records -- births, marriages, and deaths -- from most if not every community in Alsace. Although the FHL microfilm records are not available for viewing on the internet, you can search the FHL catalog online, and locate a Family History Center (FHC), hopefully near your home, where you can view the microfilms.

How to Do a Community Search on the FHL Website

You can browse the FHL catalog online at their website, www.familysearch.org. For example, follow these steps to view the list microfilms available for the village of Soufflenheim:

Once you have found the list of microfilms for your community, a good one to look at first is the one named "Tables décennales," if it is available. The "tables décennales" are indexes, alphabetical by surname, of the births, marriages, and deaths, in a community, which were compiled every ten years -- 1793-1802, 1803-1812, 1813-1822, etc.

For more tips about how to use the FHL catalog for Alsace research, see the article at http://valoriez.blogspot.com/2004/03/make-family-history-library-catalog.html.

Canton Records

In some cases, the "tables décennales" for all of the communities in a canton are available together on a single set of microfilms. This can be convenient if you don't know the community where an ancestor lived, but are fairly sure of the region. For example, if you search the FHL online catalog for "Bischwiller", and follow the link for "France, Bas-Rhin, Bischwiller (Canton)," you will see that the the "tables décennales" for all twenty-one communities in Canton Bischwiller are available together, spanning seven microfilms.

How to Find a Family History Center Near You

The FHL microfilms are stored at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The FHL has branch facilities, the Family History Centers (FHC's), all over the world, where you can view the FHL microfilms. To locate a Family History Center near you:

 

Electronic Message Boards and e-Mail Lists

There are a number of message boards and mailing lists dedicated to Alsace genealogy. The two best in English, in quantity and quality of dialog, are:

The RootsWeb Alsace-Lorraine Mailing List

How to subscribe to the RootsWeb Alsace-Lorraine Mailing List ("ALSACE-LORRAINE-L"), or to search through its past messages:

  1. Open the RootsWeb Mailing Lists page, http://lists.rootsweb.com.
  2. Select France, then Alsace-Lorraine. This opens the Alsace-Lorraine Mailing List page.
  3. To subscribe, follow the instructions on "Subscribing." By subscribing, you will receive new messages in your e-mail inbox, as other people post them, and you can write your own e-mail messages to the list.
  4. To search past messages, follow the instructions under "Archives."

The Ancestry.com Alsace Message Board

How to view and post messages on the Ancestry.com Alsace Message Board:

  1. Open the Ancestry Message Board page, http://boards.ancestry.com.
  2. Select "browse all localities," then "Western Europe," then "France," then "Alsace." This opens the Alsace Message Board.
  3. To read a message, click the message title. Click "Next" and "Previous" to scroll through messages. Or type in a search in the "Search" box, click "Alsace Board," and click "GO!"
  4. To write a message, click "Post New Message."

This same message board is available through RootsWeb, with a slightly different look to it, if you begin at www.rootsweb.com and click "Localities" under "Message Boards."

 

Surname Indexes

These resources contain alphabetical surname lists of people in Alsace. They might help you to locate the community where your ancestor resided. Unfortunately, each has its shortcomings. The first two are not comprehensive; they list only a fraction of the population. The third does cover the entire population, but it does not list given names (a problem if you are dealing with a common surname like Schneider), and it goes back only to 1891 (so it won't pick up your ancestor if he or she was born prior to that year).

The Alsace Emigration Book, Volume I and II

The Alsace Emigration Book is actually two books: Volume I and Volume II. The author is Cornelia Schrader-Muggenthaler. The books were published in 1990 and 1991, respectively, by Closson Press.

Each book appears to be a computer-generated surname-sorted table of people who emigrated from Alsace, drawn from various emigration records. There are about 23,000 listings in the two volumes altogether. The principal information given is name, town, and date of emigration (or maybe date of application to emigrate). In many cases birth year is available.

The main value of the books is the possibility that they might identify the town of origin of an ancestor. I estimate that the books list perhaps 10% of the emigrants who left Alsace in the first half of the 1800. This may seem like a small number, but the books are nevertheless probably the best surname index available. (I don't know how many people emigrated from Alsace during the 1800's, but I'd guess it is a lot more than 23,000. The book says that 125,000 emigrated during the 1840's alone.)

The books can be purchased directly from the publisher:

Closson Press
1935 Sampson Drive
Apollo, PA 15613-9208
Phone: 724-337-4482
Fax: 724-337-9484
e-mail: clossonpress@comcast.net
website: http://www.clossonpress.com

Closson Press publishes other books that may helpful to your genealogical research.

As an alternative to purchasing the books, if you post a request to one of the mailing lists or message boards described above, giving as much information as you know about your emigrant ancestor, someone may do a lookup for you.

1836 Census

The 1836 census, available on CD. Currently available are

To purchase and for additional information, visit http://site.voila.fr/census1836/UK/main.html.

If you are considering purchasing this product for yourself, I recommend that you read this page (which is on a different website): "1836 Census Products - Warning to Prospective Buyers."

As an alternative to purchasing the CD's, if you post a request to one of the mailing lists or message boards described above, giving as much information as you know about your emigrant ancestor, someone may do a lookup for you.

La France de votre Nom de Famille 1891-1990
www.geopatronyme.com or www.cartedefrance.tm.fr

"La France de votre Nom de Famille 1891-1990" is an online database. It shows how surnames were distributed among communities in France. It is based on an analysis of birth records going back to 1891. For example, it reveals that the surname Staebell appears among the birth records of Stundwiller in Bas-Rhin (northern Alsace) more often than in any other community, during the period 1891-1915.

Since your emigrant ancestor was probably born before 1891, the value of this database might not at first be apparent. But since your ancestor may have left behind relatives with the same surname, and those relatives may have had children born after 1891, this database may be able to identify your ancestor's town of origin, unless they have a very common surname such as Schneider.

How to search for a surname on this website:

  1. Open the site's home page, www.geopatronyme.com.
  2. Type the surname into the "Votre Nom" box and click "Valider."
  3. In the table that appears, click the map of France that appears in the "Carte départementale" column, in the top row ("1891-1915").
  4. Along the right side of the next page, the departments are listed where this surname appears. Often, for an Alsatian name, departments such as Bas Rhin and Haut Rhin (in Alsace), and Moselle (in Lorraine) appear at or near the top of the list.
  5. Click a department name (such as Bas Rhin) to view the list of communities where the surname appears. The list is in order, with the top community being the one where the surname appears most frequently in the 1891-1915 birth records.

 

Maps and Photos

Maps of Alsace are available on the internet in a variety of styles. Here are the two map sites that I return to the most often, plus a photo site.

@lsabase
http://ddebus.free.fr

@lsabase provides maps of Alsace and its cantons and communities. In the past it was located at www.alsabase.net, and today it is at http://ddebus.free.fr. To find a community on the maps:

Mappy Road Guide
www.mappy.com

The Mappy Road Guide at is an online road map service, similar to the popular MapQuest in the U.S. You can use it to find communities in France (or elsewhere in Europe), or to calculate the distance (and driving directions) between two communities.

Photo-Alsace.com: Villes et villages d'Alsace
www.photo-alsace.com/2_photo/ville-village/index.html

Photographs of 148 communities within Alsace.

 

Other On-Line Resources

This is by no means a comprehensive set of links to Alsace genealogy sites -- there would be hundreds of them. Several of the sites below do attempt to provide links to "all" or "all the best" sites. I will leave that endeavor to them, and make no attempt to compete.

German Genealogy: ELSASS / ALSACE / ALSATIA
www.genealogienetz.de/reg/ELS-LOT/alsace.html

A good overview of what information is "out there," especially in print form. It provides a brief history of Alsace at www.genealogienetz.de/reg/ELS-LOT/als-hist.html.

FranceGenWeb
www.francegenweb.org

A large collection of web pages with various types of genealogical information about France. Part of the WorldGenWeb project. Of particular interest within it are


 

Cyndi's List
www.cyndislist.com

Excellent lists of on-line genealogy resources. Items specifically about Alsace are found on the "France" page: From the home page, www.cyndislist.com, scroll down to France.

@lsabase
www.alsabase.net or http://ddebus.free.fr

In addition to maps, this site offers various aides for Alsace genealogists, including lists of people who are researching specific surnames and communties. (If some of the pages don't load, try using the http://ddebus.free.fr entrypoint instead of
www.alsabase.net.)

Topliste Alsace
sdrescher.net/alsasites.htm

Links to other sites pertaining to Alsace Genealogy.

Alsace Gen Chat Cool Links
http://sdrescher.net/php/linkdex/index.php

More links, and links to other pages with links.

Alsace Gen Chat WikiWikiWeb
http://alsachat.net/wiki

"A WikiWikiWeb is a site where everyone can collaborate on the content."

Les Communes de Lorraine
http://gmarchal.free.fr/Repertoire.htm

An alphabetical listing of the communities of Lorraine.

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Last modified: 05-Jul-2004