Archives départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne

The Departmental Archives were organised in France by the law of 5 brumaire an V (26 October 1796). Given the late creation of the department by Napoleon I in 1808, Tarn-et-Garonne did not have a departmental archive until 1810.

Over the following decades, this new service set about recovering and collecting the titles and papers from the administrations and religious institutions abolished by the Revolution. Since that time, too, the Departmental Archives have been controlling and collecting the archives of public administrations operating within the department for historical purposes. Where necessary, donations and deposits of private documents complete this vast and ever-growing deposit of documents.

The Departmental Archives have been housed since 1902 in a former teacher training college built between 1875 and 1877 on the initiative of the Departmental Council. However, from 1905 to 1927, part of the premises (the western wing) was reserved for the assisted children's service, and then, until 1978, for the tuberculosis clinic. At the end of the 1950s, a wave of work modernised the Archives by installing self-supporting structures and metal shelving. In 1978, the Archives moved into the last wing of the building, after the departure of the dispensary.

The department holds archives dating back to the 9th century. The Moissac abbey collection, preserved from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution, contains the oldest document in the repository (847) and is of interest to the history of the South-West, as are the papers of the powerful Armagnac family, including the "Saume" of Isle-Jourdain, an enormous register containing copies made in the 17th century of documents dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries.

The series of notarial archives (5E) begins in the 12th century and represents more than 1,700 linear metres of registers and bundles until the 19th century. There are thus numerous examples of very old collections covering a territory much larger than the limits of the department created in 1808.

Missions

The inventories of the collections and the library catalogue are available in paper or electronic form. The inventories of the archives of neighbouring departments are also available, as well as the bulletins of learned societies and some reference works.

Direct access is available to

• parish and civil status registers (until 1934),
• the plans (1808-1839) and plans of the Napoleonic cadastre (year XI-1807),
• the nominal census lists (beginning of the 19th century -1968),
• the registers of military incorporation (1865-1938),
• the tables of successions and absences of the registration (1808-1839),
• postcards.