Notaries and Press

Official series : E.

Volume : arround 6 linear km

Start and end dates of the records : 1496-1946

Documentary release period : 75 years ou 25 years from the date of death of the person concerned.

Contents : The Departmental Archives of Seine-et-Marne hold 90% of the minute books of notaries in the department. Some minute books are incomplete, due to destruction during different periods. Indexes and tables were limited before the nineteenth century. A few samples of customer records were kept.

The deeds held in the notarial archive collections are highly varied: buying and selling, sharing, marriage contracts, wills, leases, transactions, rents, guardianship accounts, probate inventories. Some documents are specific to the Ancien Regime: declarations to terriers, records of surveying or boundary marking, certificates of learning.

All these are an invaluable, rich, key source for both genealogy and for economic and social history. The reading of a will or probate inventory can provide information on the religious beliefs of an individual, his or her wealth, lifestyle and even the contents of his or her library. A marriage contract, meanwhile, can provide certain information on the social status of families, based on the dowry or a list of the various witnesses, for example. However, analysis of the minutes of a notarial office study allows for both quantitative surveys and long-term statistics.

The inventories below are ordered by notarial office.

• To explore the offices and their documents, consult the dictionary of notarial offices.

Official series : PZ.

Volume : 1030 linear metres

Start and end dates of the records : 1813 to the present.

Documentary release period : 75 years ou 25 years from the date of death of the person concerned.

Contents : 350 local newspapers prioritise local information in different domains: elections, news items, sports events, cultural and social life, movements, opinions and debates. The collection includes sheets of advertisements and arrondissement newspapers linked to the administrative centre of the arrondissement, newspapers representing the most diverse political and religious sensitivities, professional journals. The Archives also receive and hold the six local or regional press titles currently published in the department : the different editions of the Republic de Seine-et-Marne, the Pays Briard, La Marne, both editions of the Parisien Nord et Sud, le Moniteur and l’ Éclaireur du Gâtinais.