Winner of May's Archived Document Contest Announced

There were only a few submissions in May 2015 for the Archived Document Contest but these few entries provided wonderful lessons. Documents from the 1700s and the 1900s were located on microfilms available through the Family History Library. The documents on these microfilms containing important genealogical information were viewed in Salt Lake City and also at the Richland Family History Center. This proved to us that travel is not necessary when looking for un-digitized documents. Microfilms from the Family History Library can be brought to our neighborhood Family History Centers.

Ray Baalman is this month’s winner of the Archived Document Contest. He submitted two documents from 1700s France. More importantly he shared with us a very valuable lesson. “The important principle illustrated here is NEVER overlook the importance of witnesses at baptisms and marriages. They are often relatives and can give important clues about where to look next.” Ray illustrated this lesson by explaining that he found his seventh great grandmother recorded as the godmother of his fifth great grandmother on that grandmother’s marriage record.

Ray wins an annual subscription to Newspapers.com. With this subscription he will have access to over 3600 newspapers from the 1700s to the 2000s. There are currently 103,266,276 pages available for viewing through the every-word searchable databases. For more information about Newspapers.com go to www.newspapers.com or read their very entertaining blog titled Fishwrap at blog.newspapers.com

Below is Ray Baalman's submission including copies of the documents and a translation from French to English. 

Here is an entry for May's Archived Record Contest from Ray Baalman.

I am submitting two eighteenth-century documents I discovered on microfilms from the Family History Library and read at the Richland Family History Center. I am submitting both because they are related, and they point out an important principle of genealogical research. I am also appending a transcription and translation of the records since they are in French and a bit hard to read.

For many centuries, most of my French ancestors lived in or very nearby the town of Saint Avold in the east of France, not far from the German border. One of the more prominent members of the family, Christophe Margot, was a successful tanner, who lived and practiced his trade in the town of Saint Avold. I found his baptismal record in the parish register and nothing more until his first child was baptized when Christophe was 29 years old. I could not find Christophe’s marriage record.

After locating the baptismal records of all three of his children and studying them closely, I discovered that his second child (my fifth great-grandmother), who was baptized in 1721, had godparents who came from a different town (sarlouys on the record, now spelled Saarlouis) some 20 miles north of Saint Avold. I ordered the film for marriage records in Saarlouis (which was in France then, but is now in Germany) and found that the marriage had taken place there in 1717. The marriage record also proved that the godmother of my fifth great-grandmother was her grandmother, my seventh great.

The important principle illustrated here is NEVER overlook the importance of witnesses at baptisms and marriages. They are often relatives and can give important clues about where to look next.