the essential
The Lot departmental archives organize workshops to help apprentice genealogists. This is the third year they have existed. A way to respond to the enthusiasm of the Lotois.
“We feel that these are two subjects that interest a lot of people,” observes Damien Bouchée, head of the access and dissemination unit at the Lot departmental archives. These two subjects: genealogy and the history of houses. So, in 2022, the department set up research and methodology workshops to help the people of Lot. A success, which has not been denied since then.
“Interested but helpless”
The departmental archives had already observed this attraction in the number of people who came to do research within their walls or consult the documents they distribute on the web. However, if it is increasingly easier to access all these archives, this does not mean that it is easier to understand and use them.
“People are interested but helpless,” confirms Damien Bouchée. People who consult the documents online are alone in front of their screen and, for those who come to the building on rue des Cadourques, in Cahors, “if there are a lot of people in the room, it is not possible to help them. To tell the history of your house, the documents are not easy to understand and use.
162 workshop participants
This year, the eleven free workshops organized across the department brought together 162 people. On the scale of the Lot population, it might seem modest but since most of the sessions are limited to fifteen people, we can say that they were full. “There is a real wait,” comments the archivist who continues: “We feel that in an area like the Lot, it is hard to move.” So the workshops were organized in eleven different municipalities, from Biars-sur-Cère to Montcuq, from Souillac to Figeac, often in media libraries. Two heritage mediators lead these workshops and “it’s fun to do,” assures the archivist.
Step up to digitization
As for the public, it is made up of Lotois or people linked to Lot. If they are more likely to be retirees, the departmental archives have organized workshops in the evening or on Saturdays to reach the working population.
Now that the 2024 workshops are over, it is time to look at the programming for 2025, determine content, locations, number of workshops. All the more useful as the departmental archives will increase their digitization, particularly on the Napoleonic land register. So, until then, everyone can go and delve into the registers and documents of past centuries.
Two centuries
Five of the workshops organized in 2024 were entitled “I'm starting my genealogy”. On the menu: essential documents and research methods for beginners. The others (“I begin the history of my house”) focused on the two essential sources when tracing the life of a building: the Napoleonic land register and, more specifically, mortgages.
Cadastral matrices, Napoleonic cadastre, mortgage archives, land registration… so many terms that can be frightening when you begin the history of a house. But all this allows us to retrace the life of a building over the 19th and 20th centuries and find its successive owners during these two centuries. Before then, things got worse, admits Damien Bouchée: “The most complicated thing was before the Napoleonic land register”.
