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Records Extraction Guide              

About the Guide

If you are interested in learning how to read old French handwriting for the purpose of extracting parish records, you may consult the French Records Extraction Guide. This resource provides basic principles, examples, and practice exercises which will enable you to identify specific parts and characteristics of christening and marriage record entries. The French Records Extraction Guide was first published in 1981 by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and is now available for download on this website in PDF format.

To download the French Records Extraction Guide in its entirety (65MB), click here.

To download individual chapters, click on the links below.

	French Records
	Chapter 1: Old Records Old French Records
	Chapter 2: Christening, Marriage, and Other Entries Parish Christening And Civil Birth Entries
	Chapter 3: Marriage Marriage Entries
	Chapter 4: Other Entries Other Entries
	Chapter 5: French Handwriting and Spelling Alphabet
	Chapter 6: Name Identification Introduction and Techniques
	Chapter 7: Gender  Sex Determiners
	Chapter 8: Dates Months, Days, Years And variation in Dates
	Chapter 9: Putting it all in practice   Practice
	Appendices Appendix A - French occupation list Appendix B - Common Abbreviations Appendix C - Answers to self evaluation exercises

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