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Church members now have free access to Filae, a French records site

Church members now have free access to a premium subscription with Filae, a genealogical website with French records. Credit: Screenshot Filae.com
Church members now have free access to a premium subscription with Filae, a genealogical website with French records. Credit: Screenshot Filae.com

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now have free access to a premium subscription with Filae, a genealogical website with historical records from France and a FamilySearch partner.

Filae, organized in 1994, contains more than 150 million indexed images and billions of French records — including collections of civil registrations (births, marriages and deaths) and census, church and military records — dating back to the year 1500. Filae’s website is available in French and English. 

An estimated 30 million people of French descent live worldwide, with almost 10 million each in the United States and Canada, according to census records. Linda Gulbrandsen, Europe partners manager at FamilySearch, said Filae will be a genealogical benefit for Church members with French ancestry. 

“Filae is one of the richest sources of digitized sources in France,” she said. “We hope our Church members will really benefit from having a subscription to explore their records.”

Toussaint Roze, founder and CEO of Filae.com, said the company is thrilled to be a FamilySearch partner. “For the first time, the gates of Filae’s large online resource of official French archives are open to Church members,” he said. “I hope it will be a source of numerous discoveries.”

Church members can create a free account with Filae by going to www.FamilySearch.org/partneraccess/

Filae is currently one of six organizations offering free accounts to Latter-day Saints through agreements with FamilySearch. Church membership access with FamilySearch partners began in 2014 with Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage and American Ancestors, Gulbrandsen said. 

“Since then we’ve added Geneanet, another French company with French records, and now Filae,” she said. 

A screenshot of the FamilySearch partner access page shows the six organizations offering free subscriptions to Church members.
A screenshot of the FamilySearch partner access page shows the six organizations offering free subscriptions to Church members. | Credit: Screenshot FamilySearch.org

Subscriptions to these sites can provide Church members additional opportunities to enhance their family history research, said FamilySearch marketing manager Mitch Wasden. “We encourage Church members to take advantage of all the different partners that are available.”

Wasden said future plans with Filae include a source-linking capability from Filae records to the FamilySearch Family Tree  — similar to what is offered on MyHeritage.com.

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