What is indexing in the genealogy world? Very briefly, it is when people or computers read documents and make various elements of them searchable so that others can find those documents quickly. I’ll illustrate with an example from my recent research.

Pierre Quenet and Marie Barbe Moisand had seven children, all born in La Roquette, Eure, with the oldest born in 1767. However, a search of the records before 1767 turned up no marriage record for them (they were married, since the children were born legitimately). They must have gotten married somewhere other than La Roquette. Finding that marriage record is key for finding out who their parents are.

So where did they marry? Who were their parents? Unfortunately, there are a lot of options of places to look. Records in France are held in the Departmental Archives (there are 96 departments). Within those archives, the records for each village or parish are in separate books, so you have to know the place name or you may never find the people you are looking for. For example, in the department of Eure, there are over 800 places that have available documents!¹ Then there is the possibility that your people had moved to another department . . . .

A few years back, before there was much indexing done, I took at stab at this problem, and searched in neighboring towns. These were not well-to-do people, and it’s unlikely that they would have gone far to find a spouse. Tradition held that the marriage took place in the bride’s hometown. I paged through the record books from 1767 back to 1762 for Cuverville, Le Thuit, Heuqueville, and Muids, found nothing, and gave up.

Revisiting this “brick wall” a few weeks ago, I started with an “All Records” search on Geneneat. No online trees had this couple with parents, but there was a indexed record result for their marriage, with a handy link to the record book!²

The parents of both the bride and groom are named. Pierre was from La Roquette, which correlates with the couple living the rest of their lives there. Marie Barbe was from Bacqueville, but was working as a servant in Marcouville-en-Vexin, and that’s where they were married on 15 July 1766.

Perhaps she worked at the Chateau de Marcouville?³

Another win for indexing! Want to contribute to the cause? There are many volunteer opportunities, which take as much or as little time as you want to give, such as FamilySearch Indexing.