Indre, the Great War, and the Birth of a Calling

Indre, the Great War, and the Birth of a Calling

by Marine Vigneau, Professional Genealogist

About this Blog

Welcome to my space for research and transmission.
My name is Marine Vigneau, professional genealogist and family historian, driven by a passion for family memory, archives, and the destinies time has forgotten.

Through this blog, I share my research, discoveries, and historical analyses, nourished by years spent exploring archival collections. Here, you will find articles rooted in academic rigor yet open to human sensitivity — because behind every document lies a life, a story, a memory waiting to be revived.

My mission is twofold:
– To reveal the behind-the-scenes work of historical and genealogical research
– To inspire readers to embark on their own journey into the footsteps of their ancestors

The Birth of a Vocation

It was a silent room, its walls lined with shelves, the scent of old paper mingling with dust and polished wood. Archival boxes stood like guardians of time. It was there, at the Indre Departmental Archives, that my passion was born.

I was then an undergraduate history student. The year 2013 was approaching a symbolic milestone: the centenary of the First World War. Across France, cultural institutions were preparing to commemorate the event. In this context, the Archives of Indre launched an ambitious project to inventory their wartime collections.

I had the privilege of joining the effort. My task was to identify, describe, and classify documents related to the conflict — a technical endeavor, yet profoundly human.

Week after week, I came to understand that these dusty bundles were not mere administrative files, but fragments of real lives — echoes of upheaval and loss. What seemed like a simple internship became a turning point: it taught me that to retrace the past is to restore a voice to those who lived it.

From that experience, a vocation emerged — to become a professional genealogist, inheriting the historian’s methodology and placing it at the service of families.

Archives: Memory, Evidence, and History

Before exploring the work itself, we should clarify what archives are. The word sometimes evokes forgotten paperwork. In truth, archives are the written memory of a society.

They consist of documents produced or received by administrations, businesses, associations, and individuals in the course of their activities. They are preserved:

– To prove rights (a notarized deed, diploma, property title)
– To meet administrative or informational needs
– To safeguard collective or family memory

Their value does not depend on date or format. A medieval wax tablet and yesterday’s email are both archives. They may be text, maps, plans, photographs, sound recordings, or databases.

Created in 1790, departmental archives — “daughters of the Revolution” — collect, classify, preserve, and make accessible documents of public interest. In the 19ᵗʰ century, they became structured centers of knowledge and historical research.

My mission took place within this framework: contributing to the preservation and dissemination of a department’s memory — that of the Great War in Indre.

Mobilization: The Shock of Summer 1914 in Indre

My work focused on sixteen bundles from Series R, covering the First World War and the interwar period. These seemingly austere files hold an unsuspected richness: mobilization orders, prefectural circulars, municipal correspondence, official posters, even inventories of carrier pigeons.

I organized my research around three themes: mobilization, propaganda, and commemoration — three key phases revealing how a rural department confronted a global conflict.

The Call to Arms

The first shock came on 1 August 1914, when France declared general mobilization. In the villages of Berry, drums sounded, posters appeared on walls, and men were summoned to join their regiments. Telegrams preserved in bundle R 887 carry urgency:

“The government requests that the mobilization order be circulated immediately. Posters must be displayed today.”

Rural communities saw their world collapse in a day. As Marc Bloch later recalled in his Souvenirs de guerre:

“Most men were not cheerful; they were resolute, which is better.”

Bundles R 874-875 contain requisition orders for horses, carts, agricultural equipment, food and textiles, and instructions for civilian guards — a country suddenly mobilized.

Bundle R 894-1 documents the creation of a civilian guard. Men too old or unfit for the front patrolled towns and guarded public buildings. Article 7 of the founding decree states:

“Civilian guards shall be armed with a revolver, reimbursed upon mobilization upon request.”

Lists include ages, professions, even addresses — invaluable today for historians and genealogists.

Mobilization extended beyond men — to animals, tools, machines, even pigeons. Bundle R 1401-Bis contains a census of wartime pigeons, compiled between 1934 and 1935, recalling their vital role in military communication.

Bundle R 981 details fundraising days such as the “Day of the 75,” honoring the famed French field gun and supporting wounded soldiers and families:

“A patriotic demonstration of solidarity…”

These documents reveal a nation prepared to give everything, materially and emotionally.

To “do history,” I realized, is not only to establish facts, but to listen to silences and feel the tremor of time in the rustle of paper. These mobilization records show a rural society swept into global conflict — dignified, anxious, united.

Propaganda: A War of Minds

If mobilization moved bodies, propaganda mobilized minds.

Series R contains posters, pamphlets, bulletins, circulars, postcards, and lecture programs — the arsenal of a war of persuasion.

Bundle R 963 includes state posters distributed even to the smallest villages. They proclaim resolve, patriotism, and confidence in victory:

“France will stand firm, for she defends justice and civilization!”

Bundle R 894-2 concerns national war loans (1915-1918). Posters turned financial participation into patriotic duty — a farmer offering gold to France, a grieving mother clutching her soldier son:

“Subscribe — hasten his return!”

Bundles R 257-258 contain nearly 100 pamphlets (1879–1919). I discovered The Cry of the Heart of a German (1918), written by Hermann Rösemeier, declaring:

“People of France! You do not hate enough!”

Propaganda targeted every audience, including children, with illustrated narratives of heroism and sacrifice.

Three principles dominated messaging:
– The French army is superior
– Only the enemy suffers losses
– The enemy embodies evil

Posters became the voice of the nation, reaching remote villages. These documents reveal the dawn of mass communication — where emotion shaped public opinion and national memory.

Commemoration: Building Memory

When the war ended in 1918, France mourned nearly 1.5 million soldiers. Commemoration began.

Bundles R 909, R 982, R 994 and R 1401-Bis contain municipal-prefectural correspondence, architectural plans, invoices, death registers, and catalogs of war memorials.

By the early 1920s, every commune sought to honor the fallen. Some commissioned architects; others chose catalog models. Styles varied: obelisks, crosses, statues of infantrymen, simple stone plaques.

A mayor wrote to the prefect (R 909):

“Our bereaved families wish the monument to be completed before All Saints’ Day, so they may lay their flowers.”

War trophies — cannons, machine guns, shells — were requested and displayed publicly as symbols of victory:

“We wish to display a cannon taken from the enemy to remind our children of their fathers’ sacrifice.”

Diplomas of Mort pour la France in R 982 and R 994 bear names and dates, framed by the tricolor and the Gallic rooster — intimate fragments of family history.

The monument became both prayer and archive, preserving names against the erosion of time.

From Archives to Genealogy: A Continuous Mission

This internship shaped the way I perceive the past. Working with archives meant learning to listen to documents.

A prefect’s letter, a propaganda poster, a wartime diploma — each contains human truth beneath administrative ink.

Genealogy continues that work. It shares research tools with history, but focuses on individual destinies and family memory.

When I reconstruct an ancestor’s life today, I feel the same emotion as when turning pages of Series R: behind a birth record or military register lies a unique existence within a greater story.

The archives of Indre taught me that history often lives in details — a pencil mark, a trembling signature, a forgotten address. These fragments, connected and contextualized, become story.

To be a genealogist is to be a custodian of memory — giving meaning to traces, restoring voices, and reconnecting generations.

Conclusion

My internship at the Indre Departmental Archives was more than an academic experience: it was an initiation into memory.

Through mobilization, propaganda, and commemoration, I discovered how local history illuminates national history, how each modest document contributes to our shared identity.

Behind archival references lie men, women, and families. For them — and for those still searching — I continue my work today.

Archives are not remnants of the past.
They are living proof that memory never dies.

Author Bio

Marine Vigneau is a professional genealogist and family historian. Passionate about memory and archives, she assists individuals, institutions, and communities in researching, reconstructing, and preserving family and local histories.

Her work blends academic rigor with a dedication to transmission, grounded in the belief that each recovered name illuminates a piece of our shared human story.

© 2025 Marine Vigneau – Genealogist & Family Historian