In Luxembourg: Tracing the history of their family is “their hobby”
Researching your ancestors to find out where you come from… Isabel Macedo presents genealogy as her “hobby”. The resident of Bascharage was able to trace the genealogical tree of her family over a period of 200 years. “My paternal family comes from Portugal. As far as my mother is concerned, her ancestors lived in Scandinavia”, says Isabel, who was able to make her passion her profession in a way, since she works at the Biergeramt (municipal administration at the service of the citizen) in Differdange.
But how to do your research? “I use a website (Editor’s note: Filae.com) which is certainly paying (Editor’s note: 79.99 euros for 1 year) but which is a really useful tool for organizing research, explains Loïc Domange. Then, I contact the municipalities by email, in order to obtain birth and/or death certificates (Editor’s note: the archives are public for documents dating back more than 100 years)”. “To go up it’s quite simple but very long and tedious,” notes Manon. Anyway, Loïc says he managed to identify ancestors born in 1789, coming from all walks of life, namely France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
At the Biergeramt in Differdange, Isabel Macedo sometimes receives requests from far away. For example, she was recently contacted by Jacques Girauld, a resident of… Normandy (France), who was looking for the trace of an aunt who had lived in the Grand Duchy. Genealogy also sometimes holds surprises. “I’ve been doing research for almost three years,” says Lisa Perlic. This allowed me to accidentally discover a family secret!