The Online Archives of Territoire de Belfort

By Brian J. Smith - October, 2020

Return to The Communities of Alsace A-Z: Tips and Resources for Genealogists.

The Territoire de Belfort, the small region of Alsace southwest of Haut-Rhin, has made many records from its archives available on-line. Their home page is https://archives.territoiredebelfort.fr. The site is in French.

Instructions for Using the Parish and Civil Registers

1. Start on the home page for the Archives of Territoire de Belfort:
   • https://archives.territoiredebelfort.fr
   • This page has a logo at the top, which says, "Archives Départementales."
2. Click this link, which is in red near the bottom of the page:
   "Recherche thématique"
   ("Recherche thématique" also appears as a menu choice at the top of the page.)
   • This opens a page titled "Recherche thématique."
3. Click this link, which is in red near the bottom of the page:
   "Rechercher dans l'état civil"
   • This may open the license page. To accept the terms of the agreement and continue, click the button labeled "J'accepte les conditions".
   • This opens a page titled "Rechercher dans l'état civil."
     This is a search page.
   • To open this page directly, instead of following the steps above, click this link: https://archives.territoiredebelfort.fr/?id=etat_civil
4. Fill in the search page to specify the records you wish to view:
   • Lieu (location):
     • Type in the name of a community.
     • Example: Montbouton
     • A list of communities in Territoire de Belfort can be found here on the Communities of Alsace A-Z website.
   • Période entre, Date exacte, Type d'acte:
     • I usually leave these blank.
   • Avec document(s) numérisé(s) (With scanned documents):
     • Check-mark this box.
   • Click the RECHERCHER (SEARCH) button.
   • If you typed in a valid community name, this button will open a page with list of items available for that community.
     • For example, for the community Montbouton, 13 items are displayed.
     • If the community name is not valid, this message will appear below the button: Aucune réponse ("No answer")
5. In the list of responses, click an item to select it. Then click one of the volumes that will appear on the right.
   • For example, for Montbouton, the first of the 13 items is ETAT CIVIL 1803-1869.
   • Clicking this item displays two volumes on the right. The first is a volume containing 386 images, the second is a volume containing 432 images.
   • Clicking the volume with 386 images opens its first image in a viewer.
6. If the image view fails to open, in particular if the message "Adobe Flash Player is blocked" is displayed, see the instructions below for "Unblocking Adobe Flash Player."
7. The image viewer has various controls for scrolling through images, magnifying, downloading, etc.
   • On my computer, I discovered that the image number and number of pages (for example, "1 / 386"), which should appear at the bottom of the screen, was obscured.
     To fix this, I maximized the browser by clicking the maximize button at the top of the screen.
   • In the Mountbouton example I have been using, image of 30 of 386 is the first page of births ("Naissances") for the year 1813.
     

Census Records

Unblocking Adobe Flash Player

The web browser that I use, Google Chrome, would not at first dispaly the document images. Instead the web page displayed this message instead of an image: "Adobe Flash Player is blocked." (Adobe Flash Player is technology that websites use to present images and video, but its support is being discontinued at the end of 2020.) Here are the steps I took to configure my browser to fix this problem by unblocking Adobe Flash Player.

These instructions apply only to Google Chrome. The procedure will be different for any other web browser.

These instruction may fail altogether next year (2021) when Adobe Flash Player support is discontinued.

• In the image browser window (the window displaying the message "Adobe Flash Player is blocked"), click the "Extensions" button.
  • The "Extensions" button is at the top right corner of the window. It looks like this: or
• This opens a small box with this message:
  "Flash was blocked on this page."
• Click the "Manage" button.
• This opens a "Settings" page. On this page is this setting:
  "Block sites from running Flash"
  Click the toggle button to change it to
  "Ask first".
• Close the settings page. Return to the image page, which still displays the message "Adobe Flash Player is blocked". Press function key [F5] to refresh it.
• Click anywhere inside the page. This message should appear: "archives.territoiredebelfort.fr wants to Run Flash".
• Click "Allow".
• The image of the first page should now appear.