Archive Nationale d'Outre Mer, Aix en Provence, France.

After 2 years I'm finally adding an update of my research to the Vietnamese and Chinese ancestors of my wife. Currently we are preparing for our next trip to Vietnam and China, but before I write about that, I need to write about a trip 1 year ago with my brother-in-law Hung. We visisted the Archives nationales d'outre mer in France:

To get there, we traveled 1,200 km by car:

The entrance was hidden quite well, so it was not sot easy to find.

 

But finally after registering with a quite unfriendly lady, we were allowed to enter.

They keep a lot of records about Vietnam, including Notary documents from the French colonial period until  1912. We were looking specifically for the will of mister Su Kai Zhen / Tô Nương Nươn. We found a lot of documents about Lý, Lâm, Trường, etc:

Some information about Chinese immigration in Indochine:

We even found the personal file of mr. Ruffier, notary in Bac Lieu and the same notary who wrote the will of mister Lý Minh Hiềng (as described earlier in this blog):

Unfortunately we did not find any information about the will of mister Tô Nương Ngươn. There is still a chance though, that his will exists in Archive no. 2 in Saigon:

National Archives II

2 Ter Lê Duân,

Ho Chi Minh City, District 1

Hopefully I can go there too this summer to investigate. I'll try.