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Chantal Cosnay
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Notice: I travel about one week in every two so responses to your enquiries may be delayed by about a week. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.
Chantal - Photograph by Henry Ely - Aix en Provence
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Background:
My background was first in technical computing research. Then I did genealogical research for eighteen years, with a licence of History at the University of Aix en Provence.
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Services:
- Genealogical research, historical, biographical, or bibliographical research, in many sort or Archives in France. My speciality is the genealogical and biographical research from the XVIIIe to the XIXe century, in the french archives and the one of Outre Mer in Aix en Provence;
- Transcription of old french;
- Analyze research and advise on methods to go further; and
- Help others with advice on research and Archives sources.
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Geographic areas of research:
- Provence: Marseille, Avignon, Gap, Digne, Draguignan, Toulon, Nice
- Outre Mer
- Algérie, Afrique, Amériques, Antilles, Canada, Indes, Réunion, Maurice, Indochina
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Files and resources:
- A file of the genealogical sources I consulted during the last eighteen years for different research, including more than 20,000 references of records and archives documents that helps determine which documents are best for such research.
- A file of names, around 25,000 references of ancestors who use to live, most of them in Provence (south of France) between 1500 and 1888. This includes references made over the last eighteen years of research in the Archives of Outre Mer which are conserved here in Aix en Provence.
- A genealogical catalogue of ancestors who emigrated to another village, including those who are the more difficult to find during the research. It concerns specifically the "strangers" to the communities where I do genealogical research. It is a short index; it doesn't contains all answers; but it can help in the case the ancestors are difficult to find.
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Who is Chantal Cosnay in 1999?
ENTRUSTING ONE'S RESEARCH TO A PROFESSIONAL
Article in newspaper Le Provençal - August 1997
Chantal COSNAY is a "family" genealogist. An appellation which makes a distinction with succession genealogists, who search for potential heirs and are professionally more numerous. Chantal COSNAY is the only one in Aix en Provence, since 1980, to offer this service, to carry out for her clients biographic, historical and family research.
When asked about the cost of such research, she answers straight out: "I am like an architect. It depends whether you want me to build a castle or a cottage. Sometimes I just lend a hand to unfreeze a piece of research and it costs 500 F. But if the request concerns a whole family-tree, it may mean years of work, which means in terms of money several dozens of thousands of francs.."
Her clients are of a great variety. Certain families, which stem from the provençal aristocracy, want to regild their blazon. Other ones, disregarding etiquette, are simply looking for their origins. "There has been a great fancy for genealogy these past few years. I think that it is not merely a fad, but a social need as the end of the century is close now" she explains. "Since the fifties, people have migrated a lot, they have moved away from their places of birth. And the fact is that we all need to feel that we belong somewhere...
Moreover, relationships between grandparents and grandchildren are less developed than before. And the fact is that it is the grandparents who carry out what we call in the historical field the "transmission of the invisible", in other words the family past, but also the collective past of society are less and less passed on through these traditional channels. The search for ones family-tree is conducive to the knowledge of where we come from, and where we stand in a lineage".
Professionally trained as an electronician, Chantal COSNAY admits that it gave her a taste for rigour, orderliness, organization. Carried by her passion for genealogy, she added to her palette a degree in history, followed by a master's degree based on the history of the family in the XVIII th century.
"Sometimes you spend 8 hours seated, silently, looking for a birth certificate, a marriage certificate. It's an almost monastic occupation, made of rigour and method. But from time to time, you also need chance, to find one day something you've been looking for months..." And she adds : "Genealogy is like a recipe : 20 % method, 20 % documentation, 20 % experience and habit, 20% intuition, and 20 % chance !"
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Who was Chantal Cosnay in 1989?
A PASSIONATED GENEALOGIST : CHANTAL COSNAY
Article in magazine Marie Claire - March 1989
When children understand what an uncle, a cousin or a great-aunt mean, more often than not they tend to draw their own family-trees. The need to know one's origins is essential. The need to know where we come from, or the need to bond oneself emotionally with a country or a lost region. And this eagerness to delve into the past, coupled with the pleasure of finding the trace of an ancestor after many inquiries, is what Chantal COSNAY brought to her calling ; genealogy. "I was first a technician in electronics. But I could feel that industrial research was not enough for me. I wanted to fulfil a true passion, with a real independence of mind, something related to History, family, demanding a complete availability and a taste for organization. So I made a choice."
At the age of 24, in 1982, Chantal methodically began to gather information on the history of Provence, the organization of the archives, and for several years she made up her own set of tools. "Documentation is an essential element in the equation", found information / spent time and also to mark out the 2000 kilometers of documents of the french archives.
But what is the actual occupation of a genealogist? "There are two sorts of genealogists: the legacy investigators and the ancestry investigators. I belong to the second category. Our work consists not only in finding dates in the "Etat civil" (vital statistics, family status), but also in gathering information on jobs, religions, financial situations, the relationships of an individual with one's social environment. We are a bit like Sherlock Holmes of the past, gathering the necessary elements to confirm our intuition."
Nowadays, Chantal carries out around 50 researchs a year. But always one at a time, "because I involve myself thoroughly in family research. When I draw a family-tree, I am part of the family. And it is when I position myself in the context of the family tree that I understand where I have to search."
A history of passion? "It is an endless adventure, which claims a lot of time and psychological stamina. When you're in front of a difficulty, you can never say whether you're going to need 20 minutes or 20 years to solve it and you never know either what you are going to discover..." Now, Chantal would like to exhort us not to throw anything to the dustbin: "Each photograph or family letter which goes through our hands is meant to become an archive document in 20 years. Keeping the past of our descendants is a gift that we give them."
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How to ask your questions:
The method at the begining is always the same, the only one: try to gather all the informatin you can about children whose parents you want a research. In the records for the children, parents are usually mentioned. Some records to check include:
- The wills of children,
- The marriage certificates of children,
- The burial certificates of parents,
- The birth certificates of the first child, and subsequent children,
- The marriage certificates of the first child, and subsequent children,
- Notarial records for parents and children, and
- Notarial records for family members such as uncles, nephews etc.
The first point is to gather as much information as you can about the family you are researching. From this information I will tell you how we can proceed (if possible).
When you know exactly which generation came from France, you must know a place of origin - because in France we do research place by place. We have no general records concerning all of the country as they have in Canada or England. For this reason, to work in the archives of France, we absolutely need to know the name of a place.
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