luxroots.org - team working on genealogy

The luxroots project was launched by Georges EICHER in the years 2003-2005 to facilitate family research and team work thanks to the arrival of the Internet.
The idea of the luxroots software is based on a genealogy program created as a study project during the evening classes in computer science (dBase) in the years 1987/89 at the School of Business and Management given by Professor Lucien BERSCHEID.
Luxroots transactions have been constantly improved and expanded over the past 20 years.

Deciphering an isolated record at the time was always a challenge, and often led to the abandonment of family research. The digital camera appeared in 2003 with a resolution of 3 megapixels and made it possible to photograph documents without much cost and then to be able to enlarge them on one's computer and improve the contrast which led to a better reading of the details of the records.
After analyzing and entering the details of several consecutive records in a register, reading the handwriting of the records became more and more child's play for our volunteers from all walks of life.

The first registers were those of the Civil Registry of the former municipality of Hachiville, the birthplace of the initiator of the Luxroots project.
Gradually, other interested parties joined the project as volunteers, and today the project has almost 80 volunteers who present the strike force of the association coming from Germany, Belgium, the United States, France and of course Luxembourg.

The project thus developed quite quickly, after the recording of births from a certain region, the marriage registers followed and the connection of births relating to these marriages.
Thus, in the background, ancestry charts and descent lists were created.

The first online records of the Luxembourg Civil Registry appeared in 2010 on the Familysearch.org website. Before this year, the work of capturing luxroots was based on photos taken at the National Archives (from microfilm) and photos taken from registers in Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium.

Since June 2014, the luxroots project has been managed by luxroots.com asbl.

This year, our volunteers will complete the entry of all the records of the Civil Registry and the parish registers of Luxembourg (births, baptisms, marriages and deaths) for the period 1600-1923.
Since the beginning of the project, we have also been working in the regions bordering Luxembourg. The objective to be achieved by 2035 is the entering of all record of civil and parish registers of the former territories of the Duchy of Luxembourg before 1659.

In addition to entering civil records and parish registers, our volunteers have been entering the 1864 census of Luxembourg since September 2023 and connecting the head of the family to his file in luxroots.

The same connection could be envisaged when entering legal acts, inheritance, land registry, notarial deeds, etc. as soon as these documents are available online.
We are therefore eagerly awaiting the release of these new archival documents.

Today, our volunteering is an undeniable force in the field of culture in general and especially in the transcription of handwritten documents.

Finally, my wish is to further increase the number of volunteers transcribing handwritten documents to enable them to carry out instructive and useful work for the future and thus to help current and future generations in reading these handwritten documents.

Howald, February 2024

Georges EICHER,
President and Founder of Luxroots