Place:Allier, France

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Allier is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region that borders Cher to the west, Nièvre to the north, Saône-et-Loire and Loire to the east, Puy-de-Dôme to the south, and Creuse to the south-west. Named after the river Allier, it had a population of 335,975 in 2019. Moulins is the prefecture; Montluçon and Vichy are the subprefectures. Its INSEE and post code is 03.

Before 2018, the inhabitants of the department did not have a demonym. The inhabitants of the department have officially been known in French as Bourbonnais since 2018, a reference to the historic province of Bourbonnais. Until then, the unofficial term Elavérins had been used.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The history of Allier corresponds to the Duchy of Bourbon (Bourbonnais) with which it shares almost the entire territory.

Allier is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Auvergne and Bourbonnais.

In 1940, the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain chose the town of Vichy as its capital. Vichy also became the department's second sub-prefecture in 1940, since the department now found itself split by the demarcation line between the occupied and (relatively, at least initially) free zones of France.

Heraldry

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