More Resources for Genealogical Research in the Pays de Vaud

For my own purposes, I have made rough indexes and in some cases partial transcripts of a number of interesting documents. Please let me know if you find something that is helpful for your own research. I may be able to send you images from the original documents. Check this page often, I will be adding more information as time permits. All catalogue numbers refer to the Archives Cantonales Vaudoises (ACV) unless otherwise specified. (AVL=Archives de la Ville de Lausanne, AEG=Archives d'Etat de Genève. AEF=Archives de l'Etat de Fribourg.)

The importance of the "terriers", volumes containing feudal tax records, for genealogical research can hardly be overstated. The terriers were compiled by "commissaires" appointed for this purpose. The commissaires were often appointed in pairs, and one of them was usually from outside the area for which the terrier was to be created, thereby minimizing conflicts of interest. As a result of the repeated division of properties over many centuries, the number of parcels that had to be described was enormous, with the result that many of the terriers are huge volumes, sometimes exceeding 1300 folios, written on both sides. The amount of work involved in producing such a volume was formidable, sometimes extending over a period of several years. There would have been many months of preparation as well, in gathering and reviewing all of the source documents, interviewing the current tenants of the various parcels, etc. See recent news about the terriers at the ACV!

In view of the complexity of the task, executed with only a quill pen, it is not surprising that the terriers contain errors, or at least inconsistencies. For purposes of genealogical research, the possible existence of errors means that it is necessary to cast a very wide net, examining as many terriers as possible for the districts of interest. It is also advisable, whenever possible, to check the terriers of other districts, since so many families held property in unexpected locations. The ACV has a series of volumes that help to locate the terriers that include property in each commune. Additional terriers might exist in the archives of neighboring cantons, as well as the archives of the various communes.

When research conditions are favorable, it may be possible to use the terriers to trace at least some families back through several centuries. In other cases, the information in the terriers could be combined with information in the registers of the notaries. In a few cases, the terriers mention the dates of testaments or marriage contracts that are now lost.

Most of the terriers have at least a rudimentary index of personal names, and some have an index of place names as well. The indexes are not always complete. A comparison of the index entries with the titles and text of the individual "reconnaissances" shows that the index entries often omit the names of other parties who share an interest in a particular property. Also, the index entries sometimes do not use the same spellings as those found in the body of the document.

Systematic research in the terriers can be exasperating. While most volumes have an index of some sort, we have found an occasional volume where the index apparently belongs to some other volume, having become detached over the centuries from wherever it started, and then being inserted into some different volume. At least a few terriers from the district of Nyon have indexes that turn out to reference not the original "reconnaissants" as expected, but rather the individuals who held the same properties one or more generations later, and who are mentioned in cryptic marginal notes in the main text. Some terriers were not compiled by the commissaires mentioned in the inventory of the ACV, or contain fragments from other terriers, or do not cover the dates or the areas listed in the inventory — and not all of the inconsistencies can be blamed on bad handwriting. There are also terriers that have suffered various indignities, such as sections apparently torn out, collation errors during binding, nibbling by mice, fading due to moisture, and in at least one case, corrosion due to excessively acidic ink. Having experienced these obstacles for myself, I realized that sustained genealogical research needs to be supported by more comprehensive indexes and abstracts.

The script is often difficult, as every scribe had his own notions of spelling, abbreviations, grammar, etc. Many of the ambiguities of the script can be overcome by carefully counting the seemingly identical strokes that make the letters i, j, n, m, u, and v indistinguishable in many words and in many names, but we found at least one example of a scribe who habitually lost count of those identical strokes, even in short words such as unum or cum, thus further disguising names, verb tenses, grammar, and meaning.

Because of the way the terriers were compiled—by human hands subject to distraction and boredom—it is necessary to evaluate them with the same care that would be used for any other source whose accuracy has not been verified. In effect, while some parts of the individual "reconnaissances" could be regarded as primary sources, attested by the parties who were present when the documents were written and speaking of matters about which they were likely well informed, other parts are secondary sources. That is, those sections that concern prior ownership of property are usually based on other, much earlier documents, and are therefore not primary sources. Among the ways that the terriers can be evaluated are the following:

Another oddity, or feature, of the terriers concerns the way they were prepared. At least some of the commissaires, or their clerks, seem to have used the prior terrier as a model for the description of individual properties. Ideally, each parcel should be described in a way that comports with the way it was described in the prior terrier, updating the names of the tenants of each of the adjoining properties so that everything reflects the current situation. However, we sometimes encounter descriptions where the adjoining tenants seem to be those from the prior terrier instead of the current tenants. Or, people who have actually died (perhaps mentioned as deceased in a reconnaissance made by their heirs) are still mentioned as the current tenants of adjoining properties. Some of these inconsistencies can be explained as scribal errors in interpreting abbreviations in a rought draft, others seem more likely to result from absent-minded copying from the prior terrier. It is necessary to compare many descriptions of adjoining properties, and in successive terriers if possible, to be sure exactly who has died and who has inherited from them.

One other dimension of the problem of interpreting the terriers needs to be mentioned, the distinction between the date when the text was compiled, and the date when the text was copied in its present form. When a terrier has original signatures (and those signatures are those of the notary who is actually mentioned as the commissaire in the text of the reconnaissances that bear his signature), it can be presumed we are looking at a document prepared by the notary himself. However, many terriers lack signatures and bear other signs that they are copies of earlier documents. When this situation is encountered, we would like to know both the date and authorship of the original text, as well as when and by whom it was copied into the form that we see today. It would be useful to include that information in archival inventories and catalogues, something that does not seem to be a part of current practice. Also, when it can be determined that the document that has come down to us is a copy, we need to consider what may have been omitted, rearranged, altered, or perhaps even added when the copy was made. The more we work with these ancient documents, the more questions we have.


  1. Indexes, summaries, and extracts from terriers ("Grosses de Reconnaissances", compilations of land records) and similar sources for various areas throughout the Pays de Vaud.
  2. The special "Taille" (tax) of 1550 for the area around Lausanne (excluding the city itself, which was exempt) and for the area around Moudon. For the areas that were taxed, this amounts to a census of heads of family. In addition to signaling the existence of individuals, the lists contain some additional genealogical information.
  3. Death records for the parish of Moudon, 1728-1764, from a register that the Family History Library forgot to film. The index was filmed, but not the original records. There is an enormous amount of information in this register that is not in the index!
  4. Death records for the parish of Bière 1728-1793. The microfilm from the Family History Library is so dark, it is almost entirely unreadable for this period. The microfilm at the ACV is almost perfectly legible, so we have transcribed the section of it that is unreable on the FHL microfilm. There are still a few pages that are too dark to read even on the ACV microfilm.
  5. Indexes from various volumes of testaments, especially for Lausanne and Moudon.
  6. Citizenship, habitants, bourgeoisie:
  7. Records of the notaries: Summaries, abstracts, extracts. The main emphasis is the earliest notaries from the districts of Payerne and Avenches, because that is where we hope to find more information on the Gachet family of Payerne. However, some registers from the district of Moudon have also been extracted and will be added here in due course.

ACV PP 921 Moreillon, RAR file (2.3 GB) containing photos and transcripts relating to the American branch of the Moreillon family.


Heretics, Criminals, Etc.

Scattered through the terriers, we sometimes find references to properties confiscated by the seigneur as a result of the tenant having been convicted by some judicial process of a crime, such as murder or heresy. We even found one passage reporting that the convicted heretic, a priest, had been burned. Most of these references seem to have escaped notice by the historians who have studied the history of heresy in the Pays de Vaud, so we list them here.

Why the interest in heresy and witchcraft in the so distant past? It is because we find it disturbing that it happened at all, and continued for centuries, under the guise of authority. What motivated the persecution? Perhaps individual avarice, jealousy, or envy? But how to explain that executing people who were unable to make sense of the religious norms of the time was ever acceptable? There are probably many more examples still to be discovered in the terriers, but they will not be uncovered except by a very close reading.


On the Numbering of Things

The numbering of pages and folios in the documents held by some archives has become problematic. For the terriers and the registers of the notaries, we find that many or even most of them were numbered in antiquity, but often with inconstistencies that make it difficult to communicate to other scholars exactly where to find a passage of interest. The traditional, and, I think, most widely followed method is described here.

A folio is a sheet of paper or parchment, having two sides. The "front" side, whose text logically precedes any text that may be found on the other side, is called the "recto". The other side of the folio, i.e., the "reverse" or "obverse" of the folio, is usually designated the "verso". If the folios are numbered, the front of folio 13 is referred to either as "13r" (to distinguish it from the verso of the same folio) or simply "13". The verso of folio 13 is referred to as "13v". In the great majority of cases, we can uniquely designate every side in a volume in this manner.

However, real manuscript volumes often contain errors in numbering. We may find a volume that has folios numbered, for example, 11, 12, 13, 13, 14, 15. How can we tell other scholars that a passage of interest occurs on the back of the second folio numbered 13? Exactly this situation has a long-standing solution, now widely regarded as the standard for designating "alternatives" (e.g., the United Nation uses it to identify alternative versions of proposed texts). The "alternatives"—that is, all of the different things that bear the same number, after the first of them—are to be suffixed with ordinal numbers from the series bis, ter, quater, quinquies or quinquiens, sexies or sexiens, septies or septiens, octies or octiens, novies or noviens, decies or deciens. Under this system, the second folio 13 is called 13bis, and, logically, the back of folio 13bis must be 13bis verso.

The ACV has historically used the bis, ter, quater nomenclature for separable sections of the terriers (for example, Ff 13 and Ff 13bis). However, when the need for formal numbering of all the pages of all the terriers arose, as a consequence of the "digitization" project, the ACV chose to use a new system, such that the second folio 13 did not have a unique folio number. Rather, the front of the second folio 13 was designated 13va, and the back of the second folio 13 became 13vb.

This system conflicted with our own shorthand system, which designated the first folio 13 as 13a, and the second as 13b, thus altering the reader to the fact that there was more than one folio labeled 13. The back of the first folio 13 becomes 13av, that of the second folio 13 becomes 13bv. We elected to use this system consistently in order to preserve as much as possible the original numbering system of each document. Further, we generally note the occurrence of irregularities in the numbering system in our abstracts, so that the researcher can more quickly locate the information in the original manuscript.


An Astonishing Survival: Two Centuries of Medieval Family History at Bursins

In the terrier Fj 70, commissaire Aymonetus Pollens refers back to a number of previous terriers for properties subject to the priory of Brussins (modern Bursins). With a little luck and detective work, and through the kind assistance of several colleagues, it has been possible to identify a remarkably long series of terriers that extend back all the way to the beginning of the 14th Century. It is possible to follow many of the families through every terrier in the series.

There may be even more terriers that belong in this series. Pollens refers to at a terrier compiled by Berniczoz, apparently from the period between Ad 24 and Fj 68, and there are several references to "old terriers" in the other volumes that do not match with any of the existing material.


Long Series of Terriers at Chavannes-sur-Moudon


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