It’s not a surprise that I have distant relatives in Paris, France. After all, I have French ancestry, primarily through my maternal grandmother (her pedigree here). They lived in Alsace-Lorraine, along France’s eastern border with Germany.

But I didn’t know about Parisian kin until this past week, when MyHeritage published a massive collection of digitized French records. Some of these records are hard to find anywhere else online, and they are fully indexed with links to digital images for more information.

Now I know — While I have ancestors from Alsace-Lorraine who chose to immigrate to the USA with the dreams of a better life, some of their relatives opted for another move, to the big city in France. Here’s how the new connections were made. I started by searching MyHeritage’s new collections of Birth, Marriage & Death records for an uncommon family name in my tree (note: to use these collections, you have to be subscribed to MyHeritage, and I am currently – you might attempt a Free Trial); I found individuals with the surname UEBELHOER who lived in Paris — this is the uncommon surname of my 3rd great-grandma Barbe UEBELHOER; and then I went to the original images & other records to link them to my family. It is likely I have many more distant relatives in Paris, but these are the ones I’ve confirmed so far.

The UEBELHOER Family

Georges-Michel UEBELHOER was born on 20 Oct 1838 in the village of Bremmelbach in Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France. He is a 1st cousin to my immigrant ancestor Nicolas UEBELHOER, born 21 Jun 1806 in Bremmelbach – their fathers, Georges-Michel & Chretien were brothers. The large gap between their birth years, despite being 1st cousins, is due to the fact Georges-Michel was the youngest child of Jean-Adam UEBELHOER & Sibille PFLEGHAAR, born in 1791, while Chretien was their oldest child, born in 1769.

It is sometimes difficult to trace relatives from small villages. While the records are extremely good in France, Georges-Michel born in 1838 “disappears” from Bremmelbach records, for the lack of a better word. And now I know why: He moves to Paris. The new French records that went online this past week show that he married Madeleine WOLFF on 21 Nov 1868 in Paris, they had 8 children, and he died in Paris on 15 Mar 1912. These records clearly state he was a native of Bremmelbach, confirming the link.

The records go further – he was a soldier in the French Army, which may have prompted his move. He likely fought in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) in some capacity. His 3rd child Georges-Michel was born in Chevreuse, just southwest of Paris, on 30 Aug 1870, only days before the Siege of Paris began on 19 Sept 1870. Paris fell to Prussian forces on 28 Jan 1871, and from there, the Commune of Paris existed, though it was short lived. The remainder of his children were born in the city of Paris itself.

Georges-Michel’s death record in 1912 even supplies an address. The UEBELHOER family lived at Rue Mademoiselle 10 in the Saint-Lambert district of Paris. Interestingly, they were right in the heart of life in Paris, just a 25-minute walk to the Eiffel Tower, which was completed on 31 Mar 1889, certainly in Georges-Michel’s lifetime & while he lived in Paris.

Georges-Michel UEBELHOER & Madeleine WOLFF had 8 children, 7 sons & 1 daughter: Madeleine (1867), Henri (1868), Georges-Michel (1870), Louis (1872), Joseph-Felicien (1875), Louis-Sebastien (1878), Isidore-Paul (1884) & Paul-Emile (1885). I don’t have too many details about them, but I found Henri married Julia Caroline THEVENOT, and they had at least 3 kids: Henriette-Josephine (1895), Lucien-Henri (1897) & Jeanne-Marcelle (1899). Lucien-Henri died in Paris on 7 Jun 1967, so the family remained until at least the 1960s, a full century after appearing in the 1860s.

Georges-Michel’s sister Catherine UEBELHOER (born 8 May 1836 in Bremmelbach) also moved to Paris, which makes me wonder if their mother Catherine FISCHER (born in 1796) also made the trip. Their father, another Georges-Michel UEBELHOER, died in the village of Bremmelbach on 30 Jul 1861, so he did not move to Paris, and perhaps that was part of why they left Bremmelbach in the first place. Catherine married Henri-Adolph GODARD de DONVILLE on 10 Sept 1863 in Paris, and she died in Sannois, Val-d’Oise, Île-de-France, not far from Paris, on 29 Aug 1891. All of this information is thanks to the new records on MyHeritage.

There’s a very good chance that there are descendants of my UEBELHOER family living in Paris today. Tracing the above families forward in time gets a bit trickier once you reach the 1900s, for various reasons including privacy restrictions for European records. If anyone reads this and knows of a connection to these families, please reach out & let me know – contact info below.

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