"Search the archives" — advice given to every beginning genealogist. It sounds simple. In practice, each country built its own system over centuries: different institutions, different records, different access rules. Understanding that logic saves months of random searching.
The universal principle: records are held where they were created. A baptism register from a Bavarian village is in a Bavarian diocesan archive. A birth certificate from New York State is in a New York database. A census return from rural France is in that region's departmental archive. Once you know this, the system becomes navigable.
Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths arrived at different times: France 1792, England and Wales 1837, Germany 1876, Spain 1870, Portugal 1878, the United States patchwork through the early 20th century. Before those dates you rely on church records. After them, both systems often coexist in the transitional period.
Access rules vary but records are generally accessible to descendants. In France, civil records over 100 years old are digitised and free online through each department's portal. Germany's Standesämter hold records from 1876 — requests go to the office for the town where the event occurred. In the UK, the GRO index is searchable free on FreeBMD.org.uk. Many US states have put older vital records online via FamilySearch or state databases.
Church registers of baptisms, marriages and burials are the primary source before civil registration. Coverage varies, but most of Europe has records from the 16th or 17th century. England and Wales: registers from 1538, mostly digitised on Ancestry and FindMyPast. Germany: Kirchenbücher on Archion.de (Protestant) and Matricula-online.eu (Catholic). France: pre-1792 registers in departmental archives, largely digitised for free. Spain and Portugal: FamilySearch holds millions of scanned pages. For Jewish genealogy across Eastern Europe: JewishGen.org and JRI-Poland.org are essential.
United Kingdom. The National Archives at Kew: military service, wills before 1858, census returns 1841–1911. County record offices hold local records. ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk covers Scottish civil registration and parish registers. Irish Genealogy portal (irishgenealogy.ie) covers civil registration and Catholic parish registers.
United States. No national archive for vital records — each state controls its own. FamilySearch.org (free) is the largest repository of digitised American records. NARA holds military files, passenger lists and naturalisations. Ancestry holds census returns and state vital records.
Germany. Before 1876: church archives by diocese or regional church. After 1876: Standesämter. Main portals: Archion.de and Matricula-online.eu. Landesarchive hold older administrative records.
France. Archives départementales are the main repository. Civil records from 1792 and parish registers before that date are largely digitised and free. The Archives nationales in Paris holds central government records.
Spain and Portugal. Parish records in diocesan archives or digitised by FamilySearch. The Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo in Lisbon has a large online database for Portugal.
Israel and Jewish diaspora. Yad Vashem (yadvashem.org) for Holocaust-era research. JewishGen.org for Eastern European Jewish genealogy. The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem holds community records from across the diaspora.
FamilySearch.org is free and covers dozens of countries — the logical first stop. Ancestry is the largest paid platform, strongest for English-speaking countries and Germany. Findmypast is strong for the British Isles. MyHeritage has good coverage of Southern and Eastern Europe. Geneanet is strong for France. Matricula-online.eu and Archion.de are essential for German-speaking areas. Check whether records are already digitised before writing to an archive — the proportion online has grown enormously in the past decade.
Include: your full name and contact details; the name of the person you are researching with approximate dates and places; the specific documents you are looking for; the purpose of the request. The more precise, the better. "Find all the Millers from Hamburg" is not productive. "I am looking for the baptism record of Johann Miller, born approximately 1847, parish of St. Nikolai, Hamburg, Lutheran" has a real chance of success.
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