Ancestor Research [French]

[Tomb1302]

Apologies if I'm being pushy, please just let me know - I was hoping I could find a little bit more about all my ancestors.

 

Unfortunately, I know little about roles, but I wanted to know if anyone recognized any of these names, or could lead me in the direction of finding them, so I may uncover the stories of these people.

 

Thank you, and apologies - I'm very eager after having joined. Here is the information I have been provided by family.

 

Names:

Paul Dieras

Jean Dieras

Louis Massart

Auguste Massart

Joseph Menard

 

Thanks a million everybody!

[mva]

bonjour,

are these names of French soldiers in the French or in the British army ?????????

if French : look either :

here : http://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr/fr/article.php?larub=3&titre=premiere-guerre-mondiale

or ask a question here : https://forum.pages14-18.com/index.php

and : what ionfo have you apart from the names ?

kind regards from the Somme, martine

[Tomb1302]

Salut Martine,

 

These are soldiers strictly in the French army. 

 

The first source has already been recommeneded to me, but unless I’ve missed something, none of the names come up.

 

As for the second source, the French forum, I was going to try if this forum yielded little response. I’m sure there is some sort of French community here however.

 

Give me a second to pull up what I have from a passionate relative back home in France.

 

[Tomb1302]

Here it is @mva

 

- No Casualties

- Auguste Massart only fought in the early stages, before he was eligible for military retirement (age related I believe)

- Louis Massart was a soldier before the war, and ended the war as a Colonel.

- Paul Dieras was part of an artillery battalion, and was captured by the Germans in Octobre 1914, where he saw out the war as a POW. [I suppose he's the most likely find!]

- Joseph Menard took part in Verdun

 

 

That's all I was given. Is it any help?

[mva]

in "mémoire des hommes", you'll only find the DEAD soldiers

What do you know about these soldiers ? If only the names, then it will be more than hard.

In order to find out something, you MUST have : year of birth, place where they lived (département) - if you have that, you will find information like this :

[Tomb1302]

1 minute ago, mva said:

in "mémoire des hommes", you'll only find the DEAD soldiers

What do you know about these soldiers ? If only the names, then it will be more than hard.

In order to find out something, you MUST have : year of birth, place where they lived (département) - if you have that, you will find information like this :

That was the problem, as I'd imagined with "Mémoire des Hommes". Good to see I wasn't missing anything.

 

I know its tricky, but I'm quite young, and working off information given to me by an older relative. Currently, I do not have anything more I'm afraid. I will reach out to my relative and ask him tomorrow to see if he knows anything.

 

Will you be able to answer my questions in this thread tomorrow?

[mva]

5 minutes ago, Tomb1302 said:

Here it is @mva

- No Casualties

- Auguste Massart only fought in the early stages, before he was eligible for military retirement (age related I believe)

- Louis Massart was a soldier before the war, and ended the war as a Colonel.

- Paul Dieras was part of an artillery battalion, and was captured by the Germans in Octobre 1914, where he saw out the war as a POW. [I suppose he's the most likely find!]

- Joseph Menard took part in Verdun

 

for POW : https://grandeguerre.icrc.org/fr/  - but the search is not easy (strange alphabeticalk order)

for the other ones, a help could be : livre des pensions - but I am not used to that one : the only solution is the FORUM 14-18 !!!!!

[mva]

voir aussi (peut-être) : http://www.culture.fr/Genealogie/Grand-Memorial

[Madmeg]

Familysearch has a Jean Dieras born 1893 in the Dordogne, and a Pierre Dieras b 1874- maybe too old?

The Dieras name appears to be from the Dordogne (but may reflect the availability of records)

I can find an Auguste MassarD but no Louis on familysearch but ancestry has a lot to take your choice from.

There are several Joseph Menard's to pick from on both sites.

Those would give you some places and dates of birth to try to work with at least for elimination purposes

 

[mva]

1 hour ago, Madmeg said:

Familysearch has a Jean Dieras born 1893 in the Dordogne, and a Pierre Dieras b 1874- maybe too old?

The Dieras name appears to be from the Dordogne (but may reflect the availability of records)

I can find an Auguste MassarD but no Louis on familysearch but ancestry has a lot to take your choice from.

There are several Joseph Menard's to pick from on both sites.

Those would give you some places and dates of birth to try to work with at least for elimination purposes

 

On ancestry (I don't use Familysearch), there is a PAUL DIERAS born1891 leaving France for NY in 1936  (in the passengers lists )

& an Armand MASSARD, born 1885, who seems to have gone to the US many times before & after WW 2

If you know the names of the soldiers, you surely know if they had children & who these children were ....

[Tomb1302]

3 hours ago, Madmeg said:

Familysearch has a Jean Dieras born 1893 in the Dordogne, and a Pierre Dieras b 1874- maybe too old?

The Dieras name appears to be from the Dordogne (but may reflect the availability of records)

I can find an Auguste MassarD but no Louis on familysearch but ancestry has a lot to take your choice from.

There are several Joseph Menard's to pick from on both sites.

Those would give you some places and dates of birth to try to work with at least for elimination purposes

 

 

1 hour ago, mva said:

On ancestry (I don't use Familysearch), there is a PAUL DIERAS born1891 leaving France for NY in 1936  (in the passengers lists )

& an Armand MASSARD, born 1885, who seems to have gone to the US many times before & after WW 2

If you know the names of the soldiers, you surely know if they had children & who these children were ....

Thank you both for your time.

 

I will update you with any responses I get throughout the day regarding extra information.

[clk]

Hi,

 

This topic has some links that may help - see here

 

Regards

Chris

[mva]

2 minutes ago, clk said:

Hi,This topic has some links that may help - see here

Regards

Chris

yes, Chris, but the infos are from 2015, some things have changed

kind regards from Somme/France

[Tomb1302]

4 minutes ago, clk said:

Hi,

 

This topic has some links that may help - see here

 

Regards

Chris

Thank you Chris. I believe the next step is undoubtedly the French forum, where I am awaiting a response to join.

 

They should have a more profound and detailed idea into the French ancestry.

[Madmeg]

9 hours ago, mva said:

On ancestry (I don't use Familysearch), there is a PAUL DIERAS born1891 leaving France for NY in 1936  (in the passengers lists )

& an Armand MASSARD, born 1885, who seems to have gone to the US many times before & after WW 2

If you know the names of the soldiers, you surely know if they had children & who these children were ....

Family search has a record for Paul Dieras b France 1891 and emigrating to US as well - forgot to put him in. Family search has the advantage of letting you see the full index (and sometimes image) for free while ancestry restricts what you can see in the index if you are not a member :-)

 

As there was conscription in France pre ww some of those records might be worth a look?

Edited 21 December , 2018 by Madmeg

[MaureenE]

FamilySearch is free, but you do need to register   first by clicking on "Create a FREE account"

https://www.familysearch.org

 

It has an enormous database of records.

 

Cheers

Maureen

[mva]

6 hours ago, Madmeg said:

As there was conscription in France pre ww some of those records might be worth a look?

 

The problem is these records are not centralized, (see my post 6, with the picture of an example) - so you have to know WHERE, ie in which département the soldier was when enrolling. That can be difficult, as it is not alsways the place where he was born. The records can be seen in the website of the Archives in each département, fully free of charge.

[Madmeg]

3 hours ago, Maureene said:

FamilySearch is free, but you do need to register   first by clicking on "Create a FREE account"

https://www.familysearch.org

 

It has an enormous database of records.

 

Cheers

Maureen

And now it also runs searches on records held at Ancestry and FMP (it's a redirect to see the images though). I'd forgotten about registering- didn't used to have to but they don;t try to convert you or anything. :-).

 

 

[mva]

41 minutes ago, Madmeg said:

And now it also runs searches on records held at Ancestry and FMP (it's a redirect to see the images though). I'd forgotten about registering- didn't used to have to but they don;t try to convert you or anything. :-).

 

I just had a look (with French & German  people I know about) : of course, it is very American, I'm afraid you won't find many details about French persons. In the archives of each French département, you can find not only for the soldiers (=men), but for women as well : birth, death, census - but, of course not for recent times, because of privacy. And you don't need to give your name & mail address. BUT, of course, as I wrote before, the search is only possible for each département.

In one case (a German soldier buried here in France in 1918), the only information is : "find a grave" - and there is not always a picture of a grave ....

Edited 22 December , 2018 by mva
added one sentence

[Guest]

I'm pretty new to this but I found the records for a family member who served in the Regiment d'Infanterie via the archives of the 'department' he lived in.  I first went to the French National Archive site and used their interactive map to find the 'department' (https://francearchives.fr/en/map/b2b076144a3c4392a34b14bb5e364c95).  That took me straight to, in my case, Pas de Calais - where I was able to search the records (see http://www.archivespasdecalais.fr/Archives-en-ligne/Histoire-d-une-personne/Recrutement-militaire for the example).  My guy survived the war, having been captured at the infamous battle of Craonne where his regiment was all but wiped out.  Despite having been gassed and suffering ill health, he served again in WWII - and was captured again and sent to a stalag in Poland.

[mva]

just a little hint : to find out in which Département a place is, just use Wikip' : example here for a village (318 inhab.) : in French  https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouchoir   it is in English as well : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouchoir  . Another example in English : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainsat

[Tomb1302]

Everyone,

 

I have continued my search with the little information I possessed, and have found two of my ancestors (The Dieras brothers). I wanted to update you, and thank you for your help!

 

 

 

Edited 9 January , 2019 by Tomb1302

[Keith_history_buff]

It's only been in the past few days that I became aware of this site, which tries to concurrently run a query against every digitised <<matricule militaire>> database, and I have found a few men, including Leopold Carles, who was interviewed by the BBC in the 1960s and is the one Frenchman in the Peter Jackson film.

http://www.culture.fr/Genealogie/Grand-Memorial

The content is somewhat similar to that of the New York records of WW1 service available via Ancestry. There is such a card for the only American in the Peter Jackson film, John Figarovsky.

 

 

[Tomb1302]

9 minutes ago, Keith_history_buff said:

It's only been in the past few days that I became aware of this site, which tries to concurrently run a query against every digitised <<matricule militaire>> database, and I have found a few men, including Leopold Carles, who was interviewed by the BBC in the 1960s and is the one Frenchman in the Peter Jackson film.

http://www.culture.fr/Genealogie/Grand-Memorial

The content is somewhat similar to that of the New York records of WW1 service available via Ancestry. There is such a card for the only American in the Peter Jackson film, John Figarovsky.

 

 

Keith - I have, coincidentally, found both of them using the same website today.

 

I don't know how I missed the Frenchman in 'They Shall not Grow Old'. When does he appear?

[Keith_history_buff]

I can't recall exactly when in the film he spoke. I picked up on his French accent when speaking English. It seemed unusual that a Frenchman was featured.

When I looked at his <<matricule militaire>>, I was surprised to see he lived in the Faubourg St Honoré, but did not appear to be an aristocrat, but a commoner from Antibes.

It turned out he was an interpreter and messenger for the British Ambassador, hence the connection with Albion.

Unfortunately, in order to hear the interview, you would need to pay a visit to London, I guess. Whilst the IWM has put some of its audio in the public domain, this hasn't happened in this case, and I guess the BBC has some sort of veto against this.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004033

 

His service in the front line was brief. He served from 23 March to 31 May 1918, and was in captivity for the rest of the war.