Hello Carolyn, to make a very long story short, notarial records basically contain marriage contracts, inventories after death and all kind of records, e.g. acquisition/transfer of a property, house or field renting, etc. The first two are very useful for genealogists, as they give a good idea of the goods of people. An inventory after death (there is probably a specific term in English) lists the goods of a deceased person and his/her heirs. In Alsace, notarial records are to consulted at the Archives Départementales (Strasbourg and Colmar). They are often very difficult to handle and to read (I'll send you privately the first page of such an inventory). For specific places, they have been exploited by modern genealogists into a book. The CDHF (http://www.cdhf.net ) sells several books of that kind. Best wishes, Etienne Le 24 févr. 13 à 17:31, Carolyn Beno a écrit : > Hi Etienne- > Could you elaborate on notarial records? What do they contain, > where are > they available, and how does one access them? > Thanks. > Carolyn > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Etienne Herrbach" <etienne.herrbach@wanadoo.fr> > Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 9:05 AM > Subject: Re: [A-L] Birth and Baptism Records Pre-1681 Lupstein > > (...) > Therefore, the parish registers will not be of great help to trace > this family back. Additionnal info could be found in notarial > records, provided they exist for Lupstein. However, they are not on > line. (...)