My name is Hans Lyth, I am retired and I live in Uppsala in Sweden. I am planning to go to France with my wife, Karin, to visit our grand-daughter, Solveig, who is studying for a year at the University of Bordeaux. It is a chance to visit her and also France.

There is another reason for the trip. My family has a French grandmother, Babette Harsant, who emigrated to Sweden in 1870. She fled from Paris during the revolutionary period of the Commune after her husband was shot by the police. Babette’s husband, and her nephew who also settled in Sweden, were originally from the mid-west of France, near to the Loire. I would like to find out about our family history, the various places where Babette and her family lived and then go there on a pilgrimage.

MICHAEL directed me towards various resources. Thanks to the genealogy portal Nomina, which allowed me to query several data bases, I discovered that the registers of several departments (Loiret, Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher etc) mention the Harsant name. With help from genealogists associations and the documents which several archive services had put online, I discovered branches of my family in several departments of France: Sarthe, Yvelines and the Aube.

Civil registers online on Michael-FR

Starting from the sites indicated by MICHAEL, it was possible for me to download and print out original documents and establish part of my family tree.

But I also discovered some French history about the period of the Commune and the people of Paris, the repression and famine by looking at the collection of paintings and documents on the website L'Histoire par l'image.

With my wife, we plan an itinerary for our trip which will take us through Paris, the Loire Valley and Bordeaux. My wife wishes to visit the Loire château. So before we leave, I browse MICHAEL to find out about the heritage of these areas and their landscapes: Centre region , Pays de la Loire and the Aquitaine region .

I had the pleasure of discovering old postcards of Touraine and Orléans, old engravings of Orléans and the Orléanaise, terracotta sculptures of Maine and the heritage of Baugé in Maine-et-Loire .

Off the beaten track, I visit this part of the extreme west of Europe on the Internet before travelling there to learn about the country of my ancesters.