The Departmental Archives of Ardèche (FR: Archives départementales de l’Ardèche) is the official archive for Department 07 in France.

France divides the country into numbered administrative regions, called departments. Department 07 is named after the Ardèche river. This site is free to search.

 
[su_heading size=”18″]Online Digital Collections[/su_heading]

Birth, Marriage, and Death Records

• Church records (by Catholic or Protestant parish), 1492-1789, varies by commune
• Civil Registration (vital records), 1789-unknown, varies by commune
• Decennial Tables, 1793-1902, varies by commune, 10-year lists/indexes of all births, marriages, and deaths

 
Residence Records

• Census records, years online include 1836-1911 (most of 1911 were destroyed, 1916 wasn’t taken due to war, 1921-1975 only on-site
• Mortgages, records of land transactions, select the link by the lightbulb for more explanation and instructions (if you don’t read French, copy and paste the instructions into Google Translate): “To perform a search you must know:

– the conservation office where the property is located (a map will allow you to choose it according to the municipality concerned);

-the name and first name of the person

– the date of the act is optional at the beginning of the search.”

• Cadastral maps & plans, “Cadastral documents are tax documents composed of plans and matrices. Only plans are available online. The establishment of so-called Napoleonic cadastral plans was ordered in 1807 during the reign of Napoleon I. These plans are established in Ardèche between 1808 and 1847. The cadastre was renovated from 1930. The digitized plans are usually the “minute plans” or plans of origin of the renovation. For some communes finally plans of consolidation complete this collection.”

 
Daily Life Records

• Government Records, 1790-1968 “The tables of death then tables of the estates and absences of the registration concern the estates opened by a death occurred in the spring of a registrar. They also note absences when the death has not been recorded. They begin in 1790 for the oldest and are available until 1968 for the most recent. Some offices were removed during this period.”
• History of Ardèche, The Mazon Collection, “Albin Mazon (Largentière, 1828-Privas, 1908), historian of Vivarais…author of many books including travel accounts in Ardeche published under the pseudonym of Dr. Francus…The records of the Encyclopedia…consist of notes, letters, clippings, original documents … collected by the author during of his research and classified alphabetically by locality, character or subject. For Albin Mazon, this collection of notes was to be used for a dictionary “historical, geographical, biographical, bibliographical, industrial and commercial” of the Ardèche that never saw the light of day.”
• Newspapers, historic papers online include:

– Le Courier de Francfort (1761)

– Le Courrier de la Drôme et de l’Ardèche (1832-1871)

– Le Journal d’Annonay (1865-1914)

– Le Journal de Tournon (1877-1939)

– Le Républicain des Cévennes (1884-1937)

– Le Journal d’Aubenas (1890-1944)

– La Croix de l’Ardèche (1891-1944)

– L’Ancien combattant de l’Ardèche  (1919-1932)

– Le Journal de Privas (1925-1944)

– La République du Vivarais (1932-1936)

– La République des Cévennes et du Rhône (1936-1940)

– Le Réveil du Vivarais (1944-1946) (jusqu’en 1989 en salle de lecture) “

“The search interface offers you the choice between several criteria that you can cross:

– selection of one or more press titles or all the available titles;

– date of publication (year, month or day);

– free entry.

This last field of free search is a textual field, it manages the approaching terms (masculine / feminine, singular / plural, conjugated verbs, etc …) and takes into account the accented letters or the apostrophes. If you are looking for words or a particular phrase, it is advisable to put it in quotation marks (“”). …The results are presented by date of publication. By clicking on a response, a viewer will open and allow you to view the images associated with the selected number. If you used the free search box, the number will open on the page where the first search term will be highlighted in yellow.”

• Photographs & Postcards, “The iconography kept in the Departmental Archives consists of photographs, postcards, engravings, prints, maps and plans. It allows to discover a figurative representation of the department.You can consult :- The Cellard postcard collection, Le fonds de cartes postales Cellard
  – The postcard collection Dürrenmatt, Le fonds de cartes postales Dürrenmatt
  – The collection of engravings and prints, La collection de gravures et estampes
  – Old Regime Roads and Bridges, Routes et ponts d’Ancien Régime
  – The Oisel Collection, Le fonds Oisel

 
Military

• Military registers, 1887-1921, Looking for the military registration for an ancestor? Add 20 years to the year of birth and you will have the appropriate class year.
• Military registry sheets and tables, 1867-1921, an alphabetical list of military registers as early as 1867 until 1921, listing everyone who registered
• Military cards of veterans, by conflict, “Former soldiers who belonged to a fighting unit for at least 90 days received this card. His possession granted material assistance to the person, the families, subsidized loans and other tax benefits, the retreat of the combatant, up to the aid for funeral expenses. Once the applicant obtained satisfaction, a file was opened at the ONAC (National Office for Veterans) and supplied with the necessary documents for the benefits: state of military service, records of medical visits, various requests, extracts from the role of taxation, social surveys, bank loan agreements, death notices, funeral bills, extracts from the family record book and the expired card that the beneficiary was required to return with each renewal. …here are the cards of the soldiers who returned to their homes and who had made at least one renewal between 1926 and their deaths. To these are added reproductions of maps provided by the families. …Their digitization took place in 2013 and the indexation was carried out in 2014 by members of the SAGA (Society of Amateurs of Genealogy of the Ardèche)” Info includes:

Type of conflict:
Name:
First name:
Year of birth :
Place of birth :

The Departmental Archives of Ardèche is part of the Rhône-Alps Region of France.
[su_heading size=”18″]Departments in the Rhône-Alps Region[/su_heading]

• Department 01 – Department Ain
• Department 07 – Department Ardèche
• Department 26 – Department Drôme
• Department 38 – Department Isère
• Department 42 – Department Loire
• Department 69 – Department Rhône
• Department 73 – Department Savoy
• Department 74 – Department Haute Savoie

 
[su_heading size=”18″]Towns in Ardèche[/su_heading]
 
[su_heading size=”18″]Hours of Operation and Cost[/su_heading]
Monday thru Thursday :
8:15 am – 12:00 pm
1:15 pm – 5 pm
Opening hours of the building:
Monday to Friday :
8:15 am – 12:00 pm
1:15 pm – 5:30 pm (5 pm on Fridays)

Cost: Free