French birth certificates

[Bazza43]

I have never seen a French civil registration record, but know that Napoléon Bonaparte introduced Civil registration throughout the empire: stories from people as far apart as Latvia and the Netherlands where people were told, "If you don't have a surname, you need to have one within a fortnight!" That people did not take this seriously led to ludicrous surnames such as "Naaktgeboren": Born naked!
However, I have downloaded Italian birth and marriage registrations (post Napoleonic) which display a distinct similarity to the registration of Clara Louise CADY's. The order of information is different, but shows their desire to know such details as the age of often unrelated people, in this case, the witnesses and the registrar. At least they give much more information than British, especially England and Wales certificates!

 

[peter]

I don't know what prompted other countries to introduce civil registration of births, but in England a key driver was the need to provide legal evidence of birth for all, irrespective of their religion or religious denomination. Consequently the information recorded follows on from that recorded in Church of England baptism registers, with the addition of the mother's maiden name and the child's gender and date of birth (information that was not consistently recorded in baptism registers).

In other words it was all about legal evidence, not genealogy (as might have been the case if Barrington and Dade registers had been used as the model). Similarly censuses were not designed for the benefit of genealogists, though we often find them very useful.

I suspect that when designing their systems Catholic countries took the lead from Catholic baptism registers, which - in England, at least - often included the names of witnesses.

 

[Bazza43]

Peter said "I suspect that when designing their systems Catholic countries took the lead from Catholic baptism registers" We need to remember that the events leading to Napoleon's empire were based on the French revolution, and I think I may be correct in saying that although France was and is essentially a Catholic country, the leading powers had largely turned their back on organized religion. That said, I suspect that Napoleon himself had possibly returned in that direction. I haven't had a lot of experience in looking up Italian church records (as I have with their civil records) but I seem to remember seeing some suggestions that may indicate some similarity between the two. For Italian civil registration birth records, it is usual to record the name of the father of the father of the child, including whether he was still alive ("di") or was deceased ("fu": formerly of), sometimes the same for the mother, and certainly if she was the father's legal wife. They record also the age, residence and occupation of each, in my experience the mother is nearly always "filatrice": spinster, in the sense of housekeeper/spinner of yarn, I think. Then there are the witnesses, for whom the age and residence are given. The date and time of both the birth, and also that of the application for registration are given as the hour and minute, generally with a precision of 10 minutes I think. The Italian records take around two lines to describe the officer to whom application is made (but not his age!) a bit more than the French record.
Italian records are in three series: Stato Civile Napoleonico (to 1815), Stato Civile della resauratione (to 1866) and Stato Civile italiano (from 1866.) I have mostly only viewed the last and don't know how the system developed in different regions, which, of course before 1866 or so were distinct countries, or parts thereof.
It's worth noting that if you apply for a certificate from Italy, you will not get anything like the above, but the records of the Stato Civile are being progressively digitised and indexed. They actually already have indexes, which are handwritten and not so easy to read. All this is available on the website "Antenati" : ancestors.

 

[Stuart]

Napoleon didn't have much to do with the style of the registration records in France (actes de l'état civil). That goes back to the medieval church registers, but secular registers start with Louis XIV, who in 1667 ordered copies of the church ones to be kept by the local lord. That law was widely ignored and it took a few more laws to create a national system, with professional record-keepers (greffiers), from 1736.

After the revolution the assembly took that system over pretty much as it was, and in 1792 mayors were made responsible for it in each commune. But the style was already established, and Napoleon's Code Civil just altered some of the procedures, such as those for parental approval of marriages. And he did make the French way of doing things compulsory over much of Europe. However, where there was already a comprehensive system of some kind, I'd guess the style of the records was not much altered (but who kept them might be).

The style of those records looks very wordy and formal to us, but I think that really England's system, in its brevity, is the outlier. The other thing that looks very different is that the records really do establish identity, by recording both parents and date and place of birth in every record, at death as well as birth and marriage. Scotland's system from 1855 was somewhere in between the two.

One of my mum's cousins had an aunt and a great-aunt who married a Frenchman (the same one!), so I have a few examples of 19th/20th records for them. You may recall seeing (e.g. in Who do you Think you Are?) full-page church register marriage entries, beautifully written, for high-status couples. Well, the marriage records of the état civil I have are full or half page ones, depending mostly on the size of handwriting, with births and deaths not much smaller. That's needed because these are florid legal declarations, with proper grammatical sentences and little abbreviation.

What I'm talking about (and the birth record Peter put in the newsletter too) are from the register, but did the French have certificates too? Yes they did, and I think there were several kinds, each with a form to fill in. if you are interested I can (I hope) show some of my examples.

 

[peter]

The other thing that looks very different is that the records really do establish identity, by recording both parents and date and place of birth in every record, at death as well as birth and marriage.

A birth certificate is not proof of identity. It doesn't matter how much information is given about someone's ancestors, it won't prove that the person in possession of the certificate is the child whose birth was registered.

Coincidentally the most famous real-life example is probably that of the French woman Jeanne Calment, who may or may not have lived to the age of 122 - there was a suggestion that her daughter assumed her mother's identity. The most famous fictional example is the Day of the Jackal. Other examples, both in fiction and in real life, include undercover police.

 

[Stuart]

A birth certificate is not proof of identity. It doesn't matter how much information is given about someone's ancestors, it won't prove that the person in possession of the certificate is the child whose birth was registered.

Coincidentally the most famous real-life example is probably that of the French woman Jeanne Calment, who may or may not have lived to the age of 122 - there was a suggestion that her daughter assumed her mother's identity. The most famous fictional example is the Day of the Jackal. Other examples, both in fiction and in real life, include undercover police.

I don't think any system of paper records can ever identify a physical object as a registered individual; a biometric or genetic process probably could. What I meant by identity was that the same person appears in two or more records. The English system can't even do that - though really it doesn't try.

And intentional falsification of records will inevitably, if done well enough, be able to falsify identities too. But the more thorough the records, and the more details have to be consistently falsified, the more difficult it is to succeed in that.

 

[peter]

I don't think any system of paper records can ever identify a physical object as a registered individual; a biometric or genetic process probably could. What I meant by identity was that the same person appears in two or more records.

Paper records can include photographs - passports are a good example - and/or they can also include physical descriptions, as in the case of army records, which generally give height, hair colour, and distinguishing features such as injuries, tattoos, and birthmarks. These are difficult to falsify, especially if you don't have access to the records (which an imposter typically wouldn't).

The English system can't even do that - though really it doesn't try.

Civil registration was never designed to do that, as I pointed out earlier. It was designed to provide a more level playing field for those of different denominations and different religions.

Understanding why records exist, and why they exist in a particular form, is important. Wishing that the system had been different doesn't get us anywhere. If the system hadn't fulfilled its purpose it would have been changed: indeed, there was some tinkering in the first 50 years of operation, but it didn't involve adding additional information, presumably because it wasn't necessary.