If you are researching Bas-Rhine folks, this is the source setup in 2009 by the Department
of Archives of the Bas-Rhin. I can't express enough thanks to them for developing this
wonderful site!
http://archives.bas-rhin.fr
You do not need to speak/read French, but have a good eye & patience...use translation
sites to help or a French/English dictionary. At last after lots of digging I found a
French "speaking" site holding the Bas-Rhine, Alsace records that are not
available on microfilm.
Below is the link to the various census records.
http://population.bas-rhin.fr/ellenbach/index.php
This link holds volumes of birth, death, marriage and declaration of marriage records for
decades.
http://etat-civil.bas-rhin.fr/adeloch/index.php
Even if you'd like to just take a look at the site, open the link, click on the box to
accept, "J'accepte ces conditions." Then click on Acceder a la version
graphique. You do have to know the name of the village to make your life easier. The
keyboard that you see lets you type in the name of the city - selection de le commune. The
site is sophisticated in that the names will be prompted in a list that appear on the
keyboard monitor. It's really user friendly & intuitive. I did not know the
village that my Joseph Wilhelm was born, but I did have his date of birth. After spending
five days immersed in these records, 625 villages/city birth volumes, I did find Joseph
and the entire Wilhelm family for "ages." If you are a Wilhelm researcher, I can
tell you that of all of these villages, there were only 16 that had one or more Wilhelm
living there in 1811. Leutenheim is the primary village for the Wilhelm Family in
Bas-Rhine.
One more thing - this site does not allow you to copy the records...these are actual scans
of the records. So I have to do screen grabs & save. The Civil Gov't expressly
forbids these records to be used for commercial reasons. This site is free to use, but not
commercially.
Bonne journée!
Pat in OKC