Finding an Ancestor in Belgium (Part 4): The French Republican Calendar

In my previous post on Belgium Research I told of finding a record for Emmanuel Blomme which began with a date. This date read

"on the 18th of Frimaire in the 8th year of the French Republic"

I did not know I'd wandered into the confusing world of the French Republican Calendar which was used in territories ruled by France from October 1793 to December 1805. Luckily we were researching in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and I was able to find a good guide to this calendar.

You will need a guide if you find yourself reading records based on this calendar.

MONTHS: The 12 months of the French Republican calendar do not correspond to our standard months January through to December. The months are based on natural events of the season. So there are 3 autumn months, 3 winter months, 3 spring months and 3 summer months. In French the months are

Autumn: Vendemiaire; Brumaire; Frimaire
Winter: Nivose; Pluviose; Ventose
Spring: Germinal; Floreal; Prairial
Summer: Messidor; Thermidor/Fervidor; Fructidor

Depending what country you are searching in, these months will be recorded in the language of that country (German, Dutch, Italian, Latin or French)

YEARS: Years are counted from the start of the French Republic (which learned was 22 September 1792) So I calculated that meant Wyant Emmanuel's record "....in the 8th year of the French Republic" should equate to 1792+8 or 1800.

But in the French Republic Calendar every year has 12 months and each month has 30 days exactly. Every 4 years (starting with the 3rd year of the Republic) an extra day was added. These extra days have their own special names.

There are only two leap years - 1796 and 1804. I found it very confusing!

Luckily the Family History Library Research Guide has a wonderful calculator. You must first find the day of the French month in one column then look across the page to the French month. There you find the standard month and day.

Then you return to the top of the calendar calculator and convert the French Republican year given in the record to a Calendar Number.

Then you turn to the correct Calendar (there are four in the guide) and convert the French Republican year to an actual date. It takes time but you can do it.

I was trying to convert "the 18th of Frimaire in the 8th year of the French Republic"

Using the Guide instructions, I looked up the  French Republican Year 8 in Calendar Three. The conversion was 1799.

Next I found FRIM. (abbreviation for Frimaire) and looking down the column under FRIM I stopped at 18. Remember I needed 18th of Frimaire. That converted to 9 December in our calendar.


Thus I could convert the record for Wyant Emmanuel from

"the 18th of Frimaire in the 8th year of the French Republic" to 9 December, 1799


In Part 5 of my series on Belgium Research we will delve into Church records recorded in Latin.

Finding an Ancestor in Belgium (Part 3): The French Records

In Part 1 of my series on Belgium Research, I talked about finding my husband's great-grandfather Archie De Meulenaere's birth registration in 1884 in Tielt. It was written in Flemish but it wasn't too difficult to pick out and translate the key points. Having found Archie's parents' names, approximate years of birth and places of birth, we moved on to Step 2 - finding their marriage record and birth records.

Many of the records we found up to this point were in Flemish. Luckily it is seemed similar to Dutch. Since I can read standard Dutch phrases found in Church Records we could figure out the main points of each record.

We were ready to move on to Step 3 - continuing to look for birth and marriage (or death) records of the new ancestors we were finding.

This is when we began to encounter church records written in French. I began to feel quite confident, after all reading basic French is pretty easy for me, so no worries.... It turns out I was a little too optimistic and overly confident but more on that later.

Each record we had found so far had given us much new detail - places of births, exact birth dates and so on. So continuing backwards was quite easy. The challenge was in the various languages used in different records!

A search in the Civil Records of Ooghem found the marriage registration of two of the new names we found in searching birth records - Jan Baptiste Veroughstraete and Victoire van den Bulcke. The text was in French but it was very lengthy and very faded. My translation skills were far too limited to understand (or even see!) more than the basic details.

27 August 1820. Jean Baptiste Veroughstraete & Victoire Van den Bulcke, [...] age 26 years, born in Ooghem 27 November 1794.

Other names in the document were Anne Marie Grinonprier (it was difficult to make out) and Collette van Brabant who I had learned was Jan Baptiste's first wife. Here is what the French document looked like.
















Another document we found written in French was a birth registration in the Civil Records of Kanegem for 1812.

Key facts from document:

* 4 March 1812
* Child Amelie Grootaert born at 4 o'clock in the afternoon
* Parents Colette Blomme, 28 years old, spouse of Joseph Grootaert, 31 years old. Joseph's occupation was given as journalier
*Witnesses Augustin Blomme, 22 years old and Ignace [...] 64 years old.

This 1812 document was very clear and legible, such a treat to be able to read it without resorting to magnifiers, pastel paper and other methods to enlarge or make the image more legible.
We found and translated a few more French documents, growing more confident with each one. Then came a puzzler. I found a record for another ancestor - Wyland Emmanuel Blomme.

It was in French and it started with the date, which I read and translated as

      "18th of Frimaire in the 8th year of the French Republic"

I sat back at the microfilm reader and I'm sure my mouth dropped open. I had no idea what "Frimaire" meant and no clue what was meant for the "8th year of the French Republic!" I had just entered the rather confusing realm of the French Republican Calendar, something i had never heard of before.

More on the French Republican Calendar and how it affects your research in Belgium records in my next post.

The Name Game

My husband's great grandfather Archie DeMeulenaere was born in Tielt Belgium. We didn't know much about him or his ancestors. One year we decided that a trip to Salt Lake City was in order and we planned to search for Archie and his ancestors in the Belgium records on micrfilm. At that time there were few, if any Belgium records online. Just recently Ancestry.com brought Wallonia, Belgium Births, 1580-1796 (in French); Wallonia, Belgium Marriages, 1580-1796 (in French) and Wallonia, Belgium Deaths, 1580-1796 (in French) online so searching is much easier.

Archie's surname DeMeulenaere can be pronounced and spelled in a dizzying variety of ways - De Millionaire, De Muelenar, and so on. So before heading off on our genealogy research trip we asked Archie's daughter (my husband's grandmother) to tell us everything she could remember about her dad - his date of birth, when he came to Canada, any middle names and so on. Nothing new was forthcoming, she knew only his first and last name (Archie DeMeulenaere), his date of birth (29 March 1884), born in Tielt, father Henry, mother's maiden name Blondell, brother Cyril (called Charles) born in September 1888.

We knew enough to know that Archie is not a Belgium name but we had no idea what the original name might be. We assumed (incorrectly as it turned out!) it would be something similar to "Archie" - perhaps Archibaldus or something like that.

On arriving at the Library in Salt Lake City we had to learn quite a bit about the Belgium records before we could begin. One important item was that Tielt is in West Flanders. It was a bit confusing for us at first, as we were not sure what language the church records would be in. Viewing the Belgium church records we realized we might be in trouble. The records were written in what I assume is Flemish - it was similiar to Dutch but it wasn't Dutch. That was okay though, as I can, with some struggling, read enough Dutch to figure out the basics of birth, marriage and death records.

We checked the birth records of the Catholic church in Tielt and rather quickly found Cyril aka Charles. He was baptised as Cyrillus with father Henri De Meulenaere and mother Maria Rosalia Blondeel. Next we began looking for other children of Henri and Rosalia, but in particular Archie born in 1884. We found 6 other siblings for Cyrillus, including one born in 1884, but Archie and no boy with a name that looked to us like it could possibly convert to Archie or Archibald in English.

Even though we did not think we had found Archie, we knew his father and mother thanks to finding Cyril's baptism record, so we continued our hunt backwards for Henri DeMeulenaere and Rosalie Blondeel's ancestry.

See The Name Game Part 2 for the rest of our story on searching the Beligium records pre 1850, including our encounter with the French Republican Calendar!

On our return back home we showed Archie's daughter our findings. The child we had found being baptised in March 1884 (on the same day as her father Archie's birthday) was called "Achillus Camillus". "Oh yes" exclaimed hubby's grandmother, "that was my father's real name." Turns out grandma knew his real name all along but didn't think to tell us....

To our N. American English ears the first name was pronounced "A-Kill-Us" so how on earth could it convert to Archie! When I told this story to my French sister-in-law, she laughed and explained that "Achillus" is pronounced "Aw-Shee". Wow, that sounds just like Archie!! And so the mystery of Archie=Achillus was solved. When Archie arrived at Ellis Island (New York) in 1900 he was recorded as "Achilles". Once he settled in Ontario Canada his new-found friends would have quickly converted his name to one they were familiar with. Thus "Aw-She" became "Archie"

Another mystery solved and over the next few days we did find quite a bit on Archie's Belgium ancestry. But it was not without a struggle and major headaches for me! You can read about that at The Name Game, Part 2