It's a titanic project, which took more than a year: collecting, naming, indexing and digitizing hundreds and hundreds of postcards, dating mainly from the beginning of the 20th century. This work was carried out by the Gers departmental archives. Result, today they are 3,000 postcards from 212 municipalities (out of the 461 in the department) which can be consulted free of charge on their website.
A common search by municipality
On this site, you can do a search by municipality (Auch, Condom, Eauze, Miélan for example) and by keyword, then enlarge each map. Just digitizing these cards cost the teams six months.
You can buildings, rivers, landscapes, but also scenes of rural life. Most of the maps are the work of local photographers: Labouche Frères (whose archives are kept at Departmental archives of Haute-Garonne), Oscar Lafontan (Auch), Camille Fenestra (Condom), Philippe Lauzun (Valence-sur-Baïse). But there are also drawings, like this very pretty sketch of the Gimont bell tower.
The Departmental Archives are also working to put civil status registers online for the period 1913-1934. Soon there will be deliberations of the General Council of Gers to the period from the French Revolution to the decentralization laws of 1982 which will be accessible.
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