France, Tables of Successions and Absences, 1890-1970

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​I was excited to learn that France’s “Tables of Successions and Absences, 1890-1970” has been made available on MyHeritage. I have used these tables in a particular region but it is a time-intensive process. Let’s look at these records.

First, here is the description of these records from MyHeritage: “This collection contains an index of deceased or officially missing people from a variety of departments in France, between the years 1890 and 1970. Records typically include the name of the individual, the date and place of death, age at the time of death and the name of the spouse. Some records may include the date and place of birth, the place of residence and the names of the parents. If a person left an inheritance, the inheritance file reference is also indicated. The tables are organized by tax registration offices, which, within a department, cover territorial districts quite similar to French cantons. The deceased is registered in the office for the commune of residence and/or death. These archives, originally used for tax purposes, are used to control inheritance.”
 
France, Tables of Successions and Absences, 1890-1970, on MyHeritage, has the added benefit of being searchable. Those that are found in the regional archives are sorted by years but are not indexed or searchable by name. They are alphabetically arranged in a given year, but you can image how long it would take without knowing your ancestor’s death date. Back to the new offering on MyHeritage, thanks to the ability to search, you can enter your ancestor’s name or last name and can have the results served up.
 
Why are these successions and absences important? In some cases, these may be the only place that you can find information about the death of your ancestor that’s available to date. (For example, you can not view death records from 1970.) The amount of detail provided in the documents varies. Most include the full name, age, age at death, marital status, name of spouse (if married), address and recorded date. I have not seen too many that indicate the cause of death but some do. I haven’t found any that included inheritance information.
 
I had found most of my ancestor’s siblings and their spouses by researching in the area of France where they lived. However, I could not find one sister who likely died between 1936 and 1946. However, those death records and indexes are not available where she lived. One quick search on MyHeritage, resulted in her record. It even noted her ex-spouse’s name and that she was divorced. It also gave her address, but the records were recorded in a nearby town, not the place of her residence. It would have taken many hours to research surrounding villages by hand.
I was also able to find other relatives in the tables of successions and absences that I had collected death information from other records. So far, I have one mystery relative who has seemed to disappear. It would have been great if I had found her in those records but so far, no luck.
 
If you have French ancestors, I encourage you to check out these records. They are another tool in your genealogy search. They are a wonderful time saver if you aren’t sure where your ancestor was living. If you find them here, you could go to that specific archive to find more information. Happy researching!