Citing French Civil Registers

By History-Hunter on Thu, 12/30/2021 - 17:15

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Actes de Mariages, Department d’Ill-et-Vilaine, Commune de Fougères

I am starting to research my French ancestors and am having a little difficulty with citing the French civil registers. The site I am using has digitized the entire bound register. Would the following work?

(Note: I originally posted this as a followup to another post, but realized that you be unlikely to see it.)

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Source List Entry

France. Ill-et-Vilaine. Fougères. “Actes de Mariages, Department d’Ill-et-Vilaine, Commune de Fougères,” 1884. Digital Images. Archives et patrimoine d'ille-et-Vilaine. https://archives-en-ligne.ille-et-vilaine.fr/thot_internet/ark:/49933/thtrfj6q6g17/49333/1 : 2021.

First Reference Note

“Actes de Mariages, Department d’Ill-et-Vilaine, Commune de Fougères,” 1884. Digital Images. Archives et patrimoine d'ille-et-Vilaine (https://archives-en-ligne.ille-et-vilaine.fr/thot_internet/ark:/49933/thtrfj6q6g17/49333/1 : accessed 27 December 2021), image 54, acte no. 97, Henri Victor Marie Morel & Victorine Louise Tison, married 7 October 1884, Fougères; archival ref. “10 NUM 35115 313 – FOUGERES – 1884 – 1884 – Marriages – GREFFE.” Website homepage is https://archives.ille-et-vilaine.fr.

Subsequent Note

“Actes de Mariages, Department d’Ill-et-Vilaine, Commune de Fougères,” 1884, acte no. 97, Henri Victor Marie Morel & Victorine Louise Tison, married 7 October 1884, Fougères.

Submitted byEEon Thu, 12/30/2021 - 19:03

History-Hunter, have you seen EE 9.46 and 9.49, which covers état-civil records for Canada and France?  These two sections discuss and demonstrate the basics for citing an original or a microfilm of the original. When you consult them at a website you simply do a layered citation, in which a second layer cites the website, as with other online records we've discussed. 

But also note, in a reference note, a layered citation to a single source does not have internal periods. A period is a "full stop." In a reference note, a period says "This is the end of the details for the source I've just named; what follows is a different source." 

In the case at hand, the original book is not one source while the website is another. What your citation needs to say, "This original book is imaged at this website," refers to a single source published at a specific website. As a parallel, if you were citing that original book at an archive, you would not cite the original register in one sentence and then cite the archive in a different sentence.