I am trying to find living relatives in France of the Etienne Gandiol family who were tailors.Their son Jules Gandiol born 1863 May 14 emigrated from France to Australia. We think Etienne had three children the names of the other two I do not know.
Etiennes wife's name was Virginnia Dussaigues.

Hi

Unfortunately France did not have a centralised registration system. You will need to find out where your village is + then write in French to the Town Hall enclosing a stamped addressed envelope (there is a template on the internet for this if you put in a search). When friends go to France on vacation they bring me back French stamps so I can do this. Or you can find a French group on rootsweb or yahoo - there are heaps of them. It seems a bit daunting but with no centralisation of registration + not many departements (counties) on line it's not an easy job. Make a friend on a French site!

Suzanne

Hi Belinda:

There is a city named La Grand-Combe in the Gard department (30) in Southern France in the Region of Languedoc-Roussillon. See this site http://www.geopatronyme.com/ for the distribution of the patronyme GANDIOL from 1891 to 1990 - most of the families named GANDIOL lived in the Gard Department. Have you also searched http://familysearch.org and http://search.geneanet.org

If you want to find some families in the Gard department (30) and wish to write to them (most preferably in French) go to http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/trouverunnom/RecherchePagesBlanche...
Type GANDIOL in the frame “Nom” and the number 30 in the frame “Departement ou Region”
Click on TROUVER - you’ll get 7 addresses.

Good luck!

Lucie

Hello,
the village of La Grande Combe is being studied and written down by volunteer genealogists and on the following site Jules Gandiol's birth is listed as well as the name of his parents.
http://genea30.free.fr
the direct page :
http://genea30.free.fr/Releves/La%20Grand%20Combe%20N/tablea...

The following link is for a yahoo group for this area (Gard) join the group - I'm in it as I live in the area and I can help you writing questions and you could very possibly find "cousins"
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/lgw30/
Rita Pujolas