Have you ever experienced a miracle while conducting research into your Family History? I have experienced little ones, but amazing miracles have occurred by some in my family that urges me to keep hunting, so the work will open up for me as well. The following is my mother’s written account of a series of miracles she experienced:

My husband and I went to the Archives of Paris to see if we could find one of my father’s ancestors. We only had his name and the name of his son who was supposed to have been born somewhere around Paris. We had an approximate birth year but that was all. We had no idea where he was born or where he had come from.
We decided to stop first at the archives of the Department of Seine in the middle of Paris, where my father’s family had lived for at least two generations. At the Archives, when we explained what we were looking for, a young woman let us know that at the time of Napoleon III a mob had burned the whole building and most of the records had been destroyed.
As she was quickly telling us this, she opened the drawers and right away we could see the drawers were full of separators with just a few cards in between. We were very disappointed. Then she asked: “Do you have a more specific idea of where they could have lived in Paris?” I told her that my father very often talked about many of his family living in Neuilly. Suddenly, she smiled and said: “Well then you have to go to the Neuilly City Hall, and you may be pleasantly surprised!”
However, when we got there, we were again disappointed. In Neuilly, they did not deny that they probably had the information we wanted, but they stopped us cold. The lady at the counter, as soon as we asked for more information about the name, took the name and told us to come back in a week when we would be told what they had about that man. Telling her that in a week we would be across the Atlantic did not make a dent in that very cold woman. So we left.
Two years later, we returned to Paris. Remembering the fiasco we encountered when we went directly to the Paris archives, I decided to go to the Versailles archives that covered not only Paris but the whole area around Paris. The first person I met was a volunteer guiding and serving the visitors that morning. He was an older man, eager to help, and he knew a lot. He liked to talk, to help, and to teach, and I wanted to be taught. He made conversation, and then assured me that if the ancestor I looked for had actually lived in the area of Versailles, he would find him for me. He went back and forth from the front, where I was, to the back where he was probably checking drawers full of indexed cards. Going back and forth at least three times trying to find the right name, he finally brought out the right surname, Argault, but the first name was unfamiliar to me. I knew it was part of our line, and although the first name was wrong, the last name was absolutely correct. Besides, he was a roofer. So, I knew he was on my father’s line, and probably the one we had lost because I had often heard my father mention that all his ancestors built or repaired roofs.
It is often very difficult to recover a lost link. But in this case, my guide added, it would be very easy to check because this man was born in Chartres, a city quite close to Versailles. I was very surprised because nobody had ever suggested that anyone in our family would have come originally from Chartres. But before I could go to Chartres, I needed to return to Neuilly, because it was nearby, to see what I could find there. However, I was ambivalent because on our first trip we had learned that the Neuilly archive only answered one request at a time and only after one week. In passing, I mentioned this problem to this kind man.
From what I had told him, he was able to explain to me that during the revolution, the authorities required all mayors to send their records to Paris, where presumably they would be kept safe. However, the mayor of Neuilly was the only one who refused to follow the order. Mobs, revolting against the government, burned the government buildings where all the records were, so today we only have the records from that time period in Neuilly. He knew I would find my family there. Knowing I had been rebuffed before, he also showed me a booklet and read me a paragraph that said that all the civil records are open to all people born in France or their children interested in their genealogy.
The following day I went to the Neuilly city hall, showed the paragraph, and right away I was given a corner with a table and chair, and all the volumes full of records that I wanted. Two men brought me two large books full of handwritten certificates of birth, marriage, and death. I was authorized to come directly to my desk every day, during working hours. Considering that the day before I was not sure I could get anything from that office, I rejoiced and again thanked my Father in Heaven and my wonderful Versailles guide.
After a week of research, I was finally looking through what I had been told was the last book they had for me. This was when the director of the archives came by and asked if I was finding what I needed. I happily said I was successfully just finishing up. Glancing at the books, he announced that he had two more volumes I had not seen yet and invited me to come back to complete everything his office had. I did and, again, found several more families.
Then my husband and I were ready to take the train to Chartres to see if my friend from Versailles was right about the home of the Argault family being there!
Once we arrived in Chartres, we went directly to the archives and spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon asking for different books that covered different areas of the city and different dioceses. None of the books had been indexed, and we had found not one Argault. Around four, discouraged, we were talking about taking the train back to Paris to avoid the evening crowd going home.
One of the librarians, a young woman, came down the aisle where we were working and stopped by us, asking if we had found what we wanted. We explained that in Versailles, a volunteer had found an Argault who was born and baptized in Chartres. I explained that this man was the last of our line that we could find, and we could not go any farther unless we found his family here in Chartres. So, since we weren’t having any luck, we were thinking about going to Auxerre to gather names on my mother’s side.
For a while, she made conversation. She had been gone on vacation, and just returning, decided to check how the library was doing in her absence. Then she said: “I am really glad I decided to come by because I think I can find a book that will tell us for sure whether your family originated in Chartres or not. She came back shortly, carrying a heavy volume and she explained:
“This volume was the idea of a monk who decided on his own to create a list of all the couples who got married in Chartres before his time (the late 1800s) in alphabetical order. We never found one error in his book. This is why I can tell you that if you don’t find your family name there, nobody related to you has ever gotten married here!”
She dropped the volume on the table in front of me! I opened the book, turned a few pages to “Ar” for Argault, and there they were!  I had to believe that such a monk, who had spent years to complete such a book, written in ink by hand in perfect alphabetical order, correcting previous errors, and, according to the lady in charge, without a miss or an error, had been inspired and called to do that, by the Holy Spirit, our Lord Himself. When I expressed my wonder at such a book to the kind director, she proudly added: “We have never found one error in that book!” Lots of Argaults had been married in Chartres, and this re-opened not only the line that we wanted but also many lines of wives who were also born in Chartres.
We worked until the archive closed. The time went so fast that I don’t remember how long we stayed in Chartres, probably the rest of the week, getting as many entries as we could.

The work is so much easier to conduct these days, but there are still many miracles to be born and I plan on experiencing some of my own.