Researching the Protestants of Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Franche-Comté, Nivernais and Pays de Montbéliard of the 16th and 17th centuries

Researching your ancestors from this central region of France can be conducted online through the regional archives (Archives départementales). Online searches for the 16^th, 1 7^th and 18^th centuries must be carried out by the commune (village, town, township, city) where your ancestor resided. Once you have determined the commune you seek, click on its name.

A list will come up of all the Catholic parishes of that département as well as the Protestant temples (churches) if the acts of baptisms and marriages survived. There were very few records of deaths among Protestant families for this period.

For each Catholic parish and/or Protestant temple, you can select the time period, listed by years, months and days. These church registers are available online for free by simply clicking on the dossier of your choice. Downloads of documents are also free.

Two notes of caution: the penmanship of ancient Church Registers, both Protestant and Catholic, can be best described as scribbling, and these resources are only available in French. You can apply online translation tools such as Google Translate or DeepL.

 Côte d’or – Archives départementales  http://archives.cotedor.fr/v2/site/ad21/

 Doubs – Archives départementales  http://recherche-archives.doubs.fr/?id=recherche_guidee_etat_civil_numerisee

Haute-Saône – Archives départementales  http://archives.haute-saone.fr/

Jura – Archives départementales  https://www.archives-departementales.com/index.php?article41/archives-en-ligne-du-jura-numerisees

 Niévre – Archives départementales  http://archives.cg58.fr/

 Saône-et-Loire – Archives départementales  http://www.archives71.fr/

Territoire de Belfort – Archives départementales http://www.archives.territoiredebelfort.fr/

Yonne – Archives départementales  https://archives.yonne.fr/Archives-en-ligne

If you do not know the name of the commune in France of your ancestor lived, see:

Journal des femmes – Noms de familles. A listing of family names in France that tells you in which commune or département a family name is most common. http://www.journaldesfemmes.com/nom-de-famille/

If you are a North American family lineage researcher, you may have been researching online using FamilySearch.org or/and Ancestry.com. In my opinion, the best commercial research tool in France is Filae.com  https://www.filae.com/recherche  This research tool is NOT free of charge.

The attached 28-page research guide to finding the Protestants who lived in this area of France in the 16^th and 17^th centuries can be accessed here:  Protestants of Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, etc.