France Emigration and Immigration

Online Resources

 * Immigrant Ancestors Project
 * 1673-1728 Burgers : 1673-1728 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only - refugees from France to the Netherlands
 * 1792-1800 Emigrés, dossiers individuels, 1792-1800 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only - Files on emigrants from Rhode, France
 * 1817-1866 Registres des émigrés, 1817-1866 Alsace emigration index
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of France
 * 1904-1914 Germany, Bremen Passenger Departure Lists, 1904-1914 at MyHeritage; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of France
 * 1921-1939 Reseñas de pasaportes de varios consulados, 1921-1939 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only - includes those in France
 * 1946 Israel, Jewish Immigrants of the "Biria", 1946 sailing from Sete France, Ancestry, ($)
 * 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
 * Free Access: USC Shoah Foundation, Holocaust – Jewish Survivor Interviews
 * Franske emigranter i Danmark (French Emigrants in Denmark)
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose France under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".

Le Havre Passenger Index
A French genealogical society has discovered a 100-year-old card file of 45,000 passengers, 25,000 sailors, and 5,000 retirees at Le Havre from 1780 to 1840. The source of the index is uncertain and it is difficult to determine how comprehensive it is. It does not correspond to the unindexed lists mentioned above. The passenger cards usually show name, maiden surname of the spouse (including cross references), birth date or age, birthplace, parents, date and place of embarkation and debarkation, and, for French ships, the vessel's name.

Researchers may send written inquiries to learn if a relative is indexed. The society can search only for passengers between 1780 and 1840, and they will search only for a specific name. They will not respond to vague requests to search for anyone with a certain surname.

Send the correctly spelled given name and surname of the passenger, a self-addressed, stamped envelope, stating your email address on the cover letter, to—

Liste de passagers Groupement Généalogique du Havre et de Seine-Maritime B.P. 80 76050 Le Havre Cedex FRANCE Email:gghsm@wanadoo.fr Telephone:02.35.44.94.40

Emigration and Immigration
Emigration and immigration records list the names of people leaving (emigration) or coming into (immigration) France. These lists are usually found as permissions to emigrate; records of passports issued, including passports for the interior; records of border crossings; and lists of prisoners deported. The information in these records may include the name of the emigrant, age, occupation; usually include the place of origin and destination; and sometimes include the reason for leaving. These sources can be very valuable in helping you determine where in France your ancestor came from. French emigration records are very incomplete and are not usually indexed.

In addition to their usefulness in determining where an emigrant lived in the nation before leaving, these records can help you construct family groups. If you don't find your ancestor, you may find emigration information about neighbors of your ancestor. People who lived near each other in France often settled together in the nation where they emigrated to.

Finding the Town of Origin in France
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in France, see France Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Emigration from France
Significant numbers of emigrants left France during the following periods: In the Western Hemisphere, the main communities of French ancestry are found in the United States, Canada and Argentina. Sizeable groups are also found in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and Australia.
 * 1538 to 1685 : Protestants (Huguenots) flee religious persecutions in France.
 * 1600s to 1700s French colonization, especially in the Americas, was prominent in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
 * 1632 to 1713 : French settle Quebec and Acadia (Canada).
 * 1722 : Alsatian colonies established in the Holy Roman Empire (Austria-Hungary).
 * 1764 to 1786 : Alsatians colonize Russia, Ukraine, and Banat.
 * 1785:  Some exiled Acadians shipped from France to Louisiana.
 * 1789 to 1791 : About 500,000 refugees flee the French Revolution for neighboring nations and the Americas. About half later returned.
 * 1804 to 1832 : Additional Alsatians emigrate to Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Banat.
 * 1815 to 1817 : Political turmoil after the fall of Napoleon leads to a wave of French emigration to neighboring countries and the Americas.
 * 1821-1920 Around 121,000 Basques and Bearnese people from Basses-Pyrénées emigrated to America—more than 108,000 from 1835 to 1901.
 * 1830 to 1962 : French colonize Algeria (Africa).
 * 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s : Agents go from town to town recruiting emigrants, mostly in Alsace-Lorraine. Some went to America, others to Russia.
 * 1871 : There is a wave of French emigrants, largely to North America.

French Colonial Records
It would be a massive undertaking to report the background of all the colonies France established. Countries with large percentages of French descendants are discussed in the balance of this article. However, French immigrated played a role in the following list of French colonies. '''Birth, marriage, and death records were kept by the French in their colonies since 1776. These may have information on home towns in France for first-generation immigrants''':
 * List of French possessions and colonies in Wikipedia
 * The nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM--France Overseas Archives), Instruments de recherche en ligne (Online Finding Aids) has records of births, marriages, and deaths of French citizens in the colonies of France and countries throughout the world''':
 * "Created in June 1776 by a royal edict, the Depot of public papers of the colonies, more commonly known as the DPPC, was responsible for keeping at the level of the central administration in the form of copies the most important documents drawn up in the colonies, which could guarantee the human rights and state security.
 * The civil status, kept on site in duplicate as in mainland France (the original for the municipality of birth, the copy for the tribunal de grande instance) was therefore also kept in the form of a third copy (triplicate) by this institution. It is this copy that the Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer keeps and puts online."

Records of French Emigrants in Their Destination Nations
Emigrants from France in the seventeenth and eighteenth century settled in Canada, Pennsylvania, Russia, the Banat, and other areas. Huguenot emigrants settled in the Antilles, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the British Isles, the United States, South Africa, Italy, and other areas. The French emigrants from Alsace-Lorraine province in the nineteenth century settled in the United States (Louisiana and Texas), Algeria, New Caledonia, Russia, South America, and other areas.

Acadia and Quebec (Canada)
In 1755, England drove French settlers in Acadia (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Maine) out of their settlements to France, England, and English colonies in America. In 1785, Spain transported seven shiploads of Acadian exiles to Louisiana where Acadians were called Cajuns. Several French Canadian sources mention the French home parish of an individual or his parents, for example:
 * Loiselle card index to many marriages of the province of Quebec and adjacent areas
 * Supplement to Loiselle card index to many marriages of the province of Quebec and adjacent areas
 * 1670-1964 - "Index to Marriages of Québec and Adjacent Areas 1670–1964"
 * Fichier Origine (Original File) Database, index and images.
 * Tanguay's Genealogical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Genealogique Des Familles Canadiennes), e-book. In French but easy to decipher. Also at Ancestry.com, index and images, ($)
 * Canada Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include French immigrants

Online Records

 * IREL French Overseas Civil Registration for Algeria, 1830-1915, index and images

Algeria Background
French Colonization of Algeria: Under the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded and captured Algiers in 1830. Historian Ben Kiernan wrote on the French conquest of Algeria: "By 1875, the French conquest was complete. The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830." French losses from 1831 to 1851 were 92,329 dead in the hospital and only 3,336 killed in action."
 * From 1848 until independence, France administered the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria as an integral part and département of the nation. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, who became known as colons and later, as Pied-Noirs. Between 1825 and 1847, 50,000 French people emigrated to Algeria. Many Europeans settled in Oran and Algiers, and by the early 20th century they formed a majority of the population in both cities.
 * During the late 19th and early 20th century, the European share was almost a fifth of the population. The French government aimed at making Algeria an assimilated part of France, and this included substantial educational investments, especially after 1900.
 * Gradually, dissatisfaction among the Muslim population, which lacked political and economic status under the colonial system, gave rise to demands for greater political autonomy and eventually independence from France. Tensions between the two population groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events of what was later called the Algerian War began. The war against French rule concluded in 1962, when Algeria gained complete independence.

Basque Diaspora

 * The Basques are a people who live between the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees Mountains. They are currently to be found in France, in the so called "North Basque Country" or Pays Basques, and in Spain in the so called "South Basque Country" or Pais Vascos. There is also a considerable Basque Diaspora, particularly in Latin America and the USA. The Basque diaspora is the name given to describe people of Basque origin living outside their traditional homeland on the borders between Spain and France. Many Basques have left the Basque Country for other parts of the globe for economic and political reasons, with substantial populations in Colombia, Argentina and Chile with those of Basque ancestry in the hundreds of thousands; Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala and Uruguay (an estimated 5,000 to 50,000 descendants), Canada, and the United States.
 * People of Basque descent make up 10% of Argentina's population, and it was a major destination for Basques emigrating from both Spain and France in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 * The Basques arrived in Chile in the 18th century as merchants, and due to their hard work and entrepreneurship, rose to the top of the social scale and intermarried into the Chilean elites of Castilian descent. This union is the basis of the Chilean elite of today. Thousands of Basque refugees fleeing Spanish Civil War in 1939 also settled and have many descendants in the country. Population estimates of Basque-Chileans range from 10% (1,600,000) to as high as 27% (4,500,000).
 * Colombia was one of early focus of Basque immigration; it is estimated that at least 40% of the Coffee Axis and Antioquia's population have Basque origin (2,800,000 persons). Between 1640 and 1859, 18.9% of the residents of Colombia were of Basque origin, making it possible for demographers to predict that nowadays more than half of the country has this ancestry (25,000,000 persons). The Colombian department of Antioquia has been considered a major route of the Basque-Navarre immigration, mainly during the colonial era, when hundreds of Basques migrated to be linked to the Spanish colonization companies.
 * A notable percentage of Peruvian people have at least one Basque surname, with more than 6 million or 18% of the national population. They trace back their presence to colonial times.
 * It is estimated that up to 10% of Uruguay's population has at least one parent with a Basque surname. The first wave of Basque immigrants to Uruguay came from the French side of the Basque country beginning about 1824.
 * The first wave of Basque immigration to Venezuela consisted in Conquerors and Missionaries, during the Colonization of Venezuela. The second wave of Basque immigration started on 1939, as a result of the Spanish Civil War.

Cuba Background

 * The first wave of French immigrants to arrive in Cuba were fleeing the Haitian Revolution and the new governmental administration of Haiti after independence was declared. This immigration reached its peak between 1800 and 1809, when more than twenty-seven thousand French of all social classes arrived in the eastern part of Cuba. Many of them emigrated to the city of Santiago de Cuba, which had neither sidewalks nor paved streets, and lacked drinking water, supplies and dwellings for the refugees.
 * The beginning of the Peninsular War (1807–1814) between France and Spain caused the Captaincy General of the island to expel Franco-Haitian and French residents, and only those French who were naturalized Spanish citizens and had assimilated into the Spanish culture were allowed to remain. The exact number of French persons expelled from Santiago de Cuba is unknown, most of them moved to the southern United States, especially Louisiana.
 * In 1814, when peace between France and Spain was restored, the French immigrants who had left Cuba were allowed to return to the island. They, together with new French immigrants, formed a second wave of French immigration to Santiago de Cuba.
 * Between 1818 and 1835, a third wave of immigration to Santiago de Cuba occurred, prompted by a royal order from the Spanish Crown intended to increase the proportion of whites in the Cuban population.
 * The fourth and final wave of French immigrants to Santiago de Cuba occurred between 1836 and 1868. In this period over 2200 French settlers emigrated, most of them coming from the Atlantic coast of France. The local economy was strengthened while the immigrants were absorbed into traditional occupations. In 1851, a French-owned steamship line was inaugurated to improve communications between Santiago de Cuba and New York City.

Mexico Background

 * French nationals make up the second largest European immigrant group in Mexico, after Spaniards.
 * The first wave of French immigration to Mexico occurred in the 1830s, following the country's recognition by France, with the foundation of a French colony on the Coatzacoalcos River, in the state of Veracruz. In total, 668 settlers were brought from France to populate the colony. Most of them went back to France as the project of colonization failed, but some permanently settled in Mexico. In 1833, another colony was founded in the state of Veracruz as well, under the name of Jicaltepec. In 1874, the community resettled on the other bank of the river, in San Rafael. From 1880 to 1900, the population of the colony grew from 800 to 1,000 inhabitants. There are now around 10,000 French Mexicans in the state of Veracruz.
 * Most French Mexicans descend from immigrants and soldiers that settled in Mexico during the Second Mexican Empire, headed by Maximilian I of Mexico and masterminded by Emperor Napoleon III of France in the 1860s to create a Latin empire in the New World.
 * The largest wave of immigration from France to Mexico came from the city of Barcelonnette, in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Between 1850 and 1950, 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants of the Ubaye Valley immigrated to Mexico. Today, there are '60,000 descendants of the "Barcelonnettes".
 * According to the 2010 Census, French people form the second largest European emigrant community in Mexico after Spaniards. There are around 9,500 French nationals registered in Mexico and about 6,000 to 7,000 Frenchmen unregistered. Two thirds of them are Mexicans of French ancestry holding double nationality. Many Mexicans of French descent live in cities and states such as Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes, Veracruz, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Puebla, Queretaro and Mexico City.

New Caledonia Online Records

 * New Caledonia Civil Registration and Parish Registers, 1823-1908, index and images.

New Caledonia Background

 * New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
 * On 24 September 1853, France took formal possession of New Caledonia.
 * A few dozen free settlers settled on the west coast in the following years.
 * New Caledonia became a penal colony in 1864, and from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897, France sent about 22,000 criminals and political prisoners to New Caledonia. Once the prisoners had completed their sentences, they were given land to settle. The Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons for 1888 indicates that 10,428 convicts, including 2,329 freed ones, were on the island as of 1 May 1888, by far the largest number of convicts detained in French overseas penitentiaries.
 * The convicts included many Communards, arrested after the failed Paris Commune of 1871.
 * Between 1873 and 1876, 4,200 political prisoners were "relegated" to New Caledonia. Only 40 of them settled in the colony; the rest returned to France after being granted amnesty in 1879 and 1880.
 * According to the 2014 census, of the 73,199 Europeans in New Caledonia 36,975 were born in Metropolitan France. The Metropolitan French-born migrants who come to New Caledonia are called Métros or Zoreilles, indicating their origins in metropolitan France.
 * There is also a community of about 2,000 "pieds noirs", descended from European settlers in France's former North African colonies;

Puerto Rico Online Records

 * 1795-1889 Pasaportes, 1795-1889, images
 * 1807-1880 Extranjeros (Foreigners in Puerto Rico), ca 1807-1880 Use the camera icon links in the Film/Digital Notes in addition to the red link at the top. That link only covers 1815-1845.
 * 1815-1845 at FamilySearch, images How to Use This Collection
 * 1816-1837 Emigrados, 1816-1837 Nineteenth-century Puerto Rican emigration records; documents in the "Gobernadores Españoles" collection of the Puerto Rico General Archive.

Puerto Rico Background

 * Today, the great number of Puerto Ricans of French ancestry are evident in the 19% of family surnames on the island that are of French origin. These are easily traceable to mainland France, French Louisiana émigrés, and other French colonies in the Caribbean.
 * Upon the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), between Great Britain and its American Colonies against France, many of the French settlers fearing the English-speaking intruders who were invading Louisiana fled to the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Puerto Rico.These islands welcomed and protected the French from their English and Protestant enemy.
 * When the British attempted to invade Puerto Rico in 1797, many of the French immigrants offered their services to the Spanish colonial government in Puerto Rico in defense of the Island that had taken them in when they fled from the Louisiana "Territory" of the United States.
 * The British attempted to land in San Juan harbor with a force of 400 French prisoners, who were forced to fight (against their will) the other French troops defending Puerto Rico. French Consul M. Paris, sent a letter addressed to the French soldiers being forced to fight for England, promising them a safe haven in San Juan. The French prisoners agreed to accept the offer and become settlers on the Island. The English retreated from the Island without their 400 French prisoners. The newly arrived 400 Frenchmen all stayed and thrived in Puerto Rico. They soon sent for their families who were living in France.
 * In 1796, the Spanish Crown ceded the western half of the island of Hispaniola to the French. The French named their part Saint-Domingue (which was later renamed Haiti). The French settlers dedicated themselves to the cultivation of the sugar cane and owned plantations, which required a huge amount of manpower. They enslaved and imported people from Africa to work in the fields. In 1791, the enslaved African people rebelled against the French in what is known as the Haitian Revolution. The French fled to Santo Domingo and made their way to Puerto Rico. Once there, they settled in the western region of the island in towns such as Mayagüez. With their expertise, they helped develop the island's sugar industry, converting Puerto Rico into a world leader in the exportation of sugar.
 * In 1815, the Spanish Crown had issued a Royal Decree with the intention of encouraging more trade between Puerto Rico and other countries who were friendly towards Spain. The decree also free land to any Spaniard (and eventually French) who would be willing to settle on the island. Thousands of French and Corsican families (the Corsicans were French citizens of Italian descent) settled in Puerto Rico. The Corsicans (who had Italian surnames) settled the mountainous region in and around the towns of Adjuntas, Lares, Utuado, Guayanilla, Ponce and Yauco, where they became successful coffee plantation owners. The French who immigrated with them from mainland France also settled in various places in the island, mostly in the unsettled interior regions of the Island, which up to that point were virtually uninhabited.

United States Online Sources

 * United States Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include French immigrants
 * 1720-1734 IREL French Overseas Civil Registration for Louisiana, 1720-1734
 * 1727-1776 Namen von Einwanderern in Pennsylvanien aus Deutschland, der Schweiz, Holland, Frankreich u. a. St. von 1727 bis 1776 (Names of immigrants in Pennsylvania from Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France and other countries from 1727 to 1776) Ancestry ($), index and images
 * Also free at FamilySearch Books, e-book

United States Background

 * Some Franco-Americans arrived prior to the founding of the United States, settling in places like the Midwest, Louisiana or Northern New England. Twenty-three of the Contiguous United States were colonized in part by French pioneers or French Canadians, including settlements such as Iowa (Des Moines), Missouri (St. Louis), Kentucky (Louisville) and Michigan (Detroit), among others. While found throughout the country, today Franco-Americans are most numerous in New England, northern New York, the Midwest and Louisiana. Often, Franco-Americans are identified more specifically as being of French Canadians, Cajuns or Louisiana Creole descent.
 * From the beginning of the 17th century, French Canadians explored and traveled to the region with their coureur de bois and explorers. The French Canadians set up a number of villages along the waterways, including Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin; La Baye, Wisconsin; Cahokia, Illinois; Kaskaskia, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan; Saint Ignace, Michigan; Vincennes, Indiana; St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; and Sainte Genevieve, Missouri.
 * In the 17th and early 18th centuries, there was an influx of a few thousand Huguenots, who were Calvinist refugees fleeing religious persecution following the issuance of the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau by Louis XIV of the Kingdom of France.
 * Louisiana Creole people refers to those who are descended from the colonial settlers in Louisiana, especially those of French and Spanish descent. Their ancestors settled Acadia, in what is now the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and part of Maine in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In 1755, the British Army forced the Acadians to either swear an oath of loyalty to the British Crown or face expulsion. Some four thousand managed to make the long trek to Louisiana, where they began a new life.

Russia Online Records

 * Registres de l'eglise réformée d'Chabag (Bessarabie), 1872-1893 Family books for the French Evangelical-Reformed church at Schabo-Possad (Chabag), Bessarabia, Russia.
 * Metrical books, 1828-1900, parish registers, in German--Many emigrants from Alsace-Lorraine spoke German.
 * Odessa3: Germans from Russia Some emigrants from Alsace-Lorraine are included in Germans from Russia records.

Russia Background

 * In 1763, Catherine the Great of Russia offered free land, no taxes for 30 years, freedom of religion, and other incentives to west Europeans to settle her vast, sparsely populated domain. Dozens of German and French (Alsatian) colonies were established and grew until World War I.
 * A French Protestant colony was established at Schabo in Bessarabia.
 * Since many Alsatians (people in Alsace-Lorraine, France) spoke more German than French, they were often called Germans when they emigrated to other nations. For example, some of the "Germans from Russia" were actually from Alsace-Lorraine, instead of from Germany. See the Germany Emigration and Immigration and the Germans from Russia Wiki articles for important emigration records that include German-speaking Alsatians of France.
 * Many Russian Alsatians moved to the United States, Canada, or South America, beginning in 1874.

Southeast Europe
Starting in 1722, the Holy Roman emperors and Austro-Hungarian monarchs encouraged German and Alsatian settlement in their lands, especially along the devastated border with the Turks. Colonies developed in what later became Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Following World War II many settlers moved to the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and other nations.

Vietnam Online Records

 * 1860-1917 IREL French Overseas Civil Registration for Vietnam, 1860-1917

Vietnam Background

 * The French colonial empire was heavily involved in Vietnam in the 19th century; often French intervention was undertaken in order to protect the work of the Paris Foreign Missions Society in the country.
 * Between 1862 and 1867, the southern third of French Indochina became the French colony of Cochinchina. In 1867, the provinces of An Giang, Hà Tiên and Vĩnh Long were added to French-controlled territory. All the territories in southern Vietnam were declared to be the new French colony of Cochinchina.
 * Most French settlers in Indochina were concentrated in Cochinchina, particularly in Saigon, and in Hanoi, the colony's capital.
 * French Indochina was dissolved under the Geneva Accords of 1954 into three countries—Vietnam, and the kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos.
 * Unlike Algeria, French settlement in Indochina did not occur at a grand scale. By 1940, only about 34,000 French civilians lived in French Indochina, along with a smaller number of French military personnel and government workers.

Published Emigration Records
Lists of emigrants are often published. These usually focus on the emigrants from one town, department, or region. An Dozens of other published emigrant lists from many areas of France can be identified in the Place search of the FamilySearch Catalog under the town, department, province, or region from which the emigrants came.