Archives department of Seine-Maritime 1.33

The Archives of Seine-Maritime is an archival repository in the department of Seine-Maritime, Normandy, France.HistoryThe law of the 5th brumaire an V imposed the gathering of archives in the capital city of each department and stands as the foundation act of the Department archives in France. In the department of Seine-Inférieure it took almost a century to create a unique repository.As late as 1825 public archives were scattered in different sites in Rouen. The acquisition of a building located near the Préfecture eventually made the task of reunification possible. Under the impulse of Charles de Beaurepaire, Head of archives from 1851 to 1905, the building was enlarged in 1856 and 1896.Charles de Robillard de Beaurepaire spent all his professional life as an archivist in the Seine-Inférieure Department until his retirement in 1905, so he had time to develop and enlarge the repository and the collections, time to process, arrange and describe a huge amount of archives. He was a great contributor to Norman history. Among others tasks, he also wrote and published the finding aids for the archives of secular clergy which took none less than 7 volumes, and which are still very useful and regularly used.Beaurepaire also took care of the judicial archives and by 1895 he had cleared the Palais de Justice, Rouen main courthouse, of all its ancient records prior to 1790 and transferred them to the departmental repository: cleaning and processing this bulk of ledgers and records from the Parlement, the Chambre des comptes, the Cour des aides and other jurisdictions, indeed represented a very heavy task for him and his staff. In 1903 1500 notarial volumes or registers prior to 1686 were transferred to the repository.