Tracing Your French-Canadian Ancestry
Even if you can’t read or speak French, searching for the records of your French-Canadian ancestors is almost easier than it seems.
The Roman Catholic Church was a guiding influence in the lives of our French-Canadian ancestors. The priests who cared for the spiritual needs of our ancestors and baptized, married, and buried our ancestors, carefully wrote the details of these events in their parish registers. Transcribed copies of these parish records were also sent to civil authorities. What we have today is an almost complete record of all baptisms, marriages, and burials for the entire province of Quebec. Many other documents have survived through the years, preserving personal details about the daily lives of our French-Canadian ancestors.
Can you expect to trace all your French-Canadian ancestral lines back to the immigrant ancestors? Yes! In fact, you may be able to trace some lines even further back into France. In most cases, you can actually learn quite a bit about the life of your immigrant ancestors, beyond the vital statistics.
Naming Practices
A basic knowledge of naming practices in French Canada is essential for successful family history research.
Women retained their maiden names for their entire life, using their birth names in all official church and government documents. This means that it is just as easy to trace male and female lineages in French-Canadian family history research.
One challenge for the researcher is dealing with dit names. Many of our ancestors were called by a second surname, an alias, known as a dit name. These dit names were often derived from places of origin, personal attributes, or professions. You need to be aware of dit names when searching for your ancestors in French-Canada who may have used either or both surnames on any particular record. Here are some examples of dit names from my ancestry:
Names may change dramatically with border crossings. When our ancestors moved from Quebec to the United States, their names were often anglicized. Divining the original surname from an American variation is sometimes easy, sometimes a challenge. Here are some examples from my Vermont ancestry:
You do not need to know how to read French to do family history research in French Canada. Knowledge of the language is helpful, but not essential. Most of the genealogy dictionaries and marriage indexes you will use to begin your research are very accessible to the English-speaking family historian. Even the parish registers are fairly straightforward to use, once you have gone through one baptism, one marriage, and one burial record in detail.Marriage records are the key to successful research in French Canada. Each marriage record usually contains so many details about the couple’s parents that you can find the marriages of the bride’s parents and the groom’s parents with ease.
Follow these five steps to complete your French-Canadian ancestral chart on all lines, back to your immigrant ancestors:
1. Identify a husband and wife in your ancestry who were married in French Canada.
2. Find their marriage in a marriage index. (These are described below.)
3. Record the names of the parents of the bride and groom.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each set of parents, back to the immigrant ancestors.
5. Verify the marriages using parish registers. (Remember that some indexes contain mistakes.)
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Your research may proceed quite smoothly for many ancestral lines. You will probably reach a point when it seems that a certain marriage does not appear in the marriage index you are searching. Remember to search for the marriage using dit names and other phonetic spellings of the bride’s and groom’s surnames.
The best sources to consult when beginning your F rench-Canadian family history are marriage indexes and genealogy dictionaries. Four outstanding compilations deserve special attention as you begin tracing your French-Canadian family history. These secondary sources–the Loiselle Marriage Index, the PRDH database, Jetté’s genealogy dictionary, and Tanguay’s genealogy dictionary–are comprehensive reference works available throughout the United States.
Loiselle Marriage Index
Father Antonin Loiselle (1908—86) extracted over 500,000 marriages from over 500 parish churches, recorded from 1621 into the 1900s. He noted the name of the bride and groom, their parents’ names, and the date and place of the marriage. Father Loiselle typed each marriage extract on two 3×5 cards, one for the bride and one for the groom. He alphabetized all one million cards by surname and given name.
The Quebec National Archives created another alphabetical card index to supplement Father Loiselle’s collection, adding entire Quebec parishes missing from the original index and extending the coverage for many parishes well into the twentieth century.
All 165 microfilms of the Loiselle Marriage Index, and all fifty-one microfilms of the supplement, are available at the Family History Library. Copies may be ordered at local Family History Centers.
When I first began researching my French-Canadian ancestry, I started with my own surname line. I found that my great-great-grandparents, Pierre Ouimet and Luce Laurin, were both born in Lower Canada (the name for French Canada in the early 1800s). I went to the Loiselle Marriage Index, located the film with the Ouimet marriages, and within minutes found the marriage of Pierre Ouimet to Luce Lorrain. The marriage card listed the names of the parents of the bride and groom; Pierre’s parents were Toussaint Ouimet and Céleste Guérin dite Lafontaine. Naturally, I scrolled down until I found Toussaint 46;s marriage to Céleste. Each generation took less than a minute to find.
PRDH Database
PRDH is an online database of baptisms, marriages, burials, census returns, and much more, covering essentially all of Quebec from its origins through 1799. In addition, most families have been reconstructed through 1765.
In 1966, the University of Montreal, under the direction of Professors Hubert Charbonneau and Jacques Légaré, undertook the enormous task of extracting and computerizing all French-Canadian parish registers and many other documents available from 1621—1799. This project, the Programme de recherche en démographie historique, or PRDH, created the most comprehensive single database of early French-Canadian family history in the world. The PRDH database contains 690,000 baptism, marriage, and burial certificates. Another 20,000 records were extracted from early censuses, marriage contracts, recantations, confirmations, hospital sick lists, lists of migrants, testimonies of freedom to marry, naturalizations, marriage rehabilitations, and marriage annulments.
The University of Montreal has published the PRDH collection in book form, on CD-ROM, and on the Internet. Visit the University of Montreal website to search the PRDH database online. Complete access is available for a nominal fee, although you can see limited results for free. The Internet version is the most comprehensive, up-to-date and readily available format of the PRDH collection.
Jetté’s Genealogy Dictionary
In 1983 René Jetté (1944— ) published a comprehensive genealogy dictionary of Quebec, through 1730, under the title Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec. No other single volume contains as much information about early French-Canadian ancestry as Jetté’s genealogy dictionary. Jetté discusses the European origin of each immigrant ancestor; provides details about occupation, age, military service, marriages, and places of residence; and offers vital statistics for each of the children. Each generation is enumerated by family group until the 1730 cutoff year. This marvelous book is available at many public and genealogy libraries across the United States. Tanguay’s Genealogy Dictionary
Reverend Cyprien Tanguay (1819-1902), a Catholic priest, compiled a seven-volume dictionary of French-Canadian genealogy entitled Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu’à nos jours. This monumental work, published from 1871—1890, was the first comprehensive genealogy dictionary in French Canada. The first volume lists each of the original immigrants and their families through the year 1700. The remaining six volumes document the succeeding generations until about 1765. The seventh volume also lists over one hundred pages of surname variations and dit names.
While the dictionary does contain many errors, it extends many family lines a generation or two beyond Jetté. A supplementary volume, edited by J. Arthur LeBoeuf and entitled Complement au Dictionnaire généalogique Tanguay, contains many additions and corrections to Tanguay’s pioneering work.
Tanguay’s dictionary may be ordered on microfiche at Family History Centers. Tanguay’s dictionary and LeBoeuf’s supplement are available in the reference section of many libraries. Tanguay’s dictionary is available online; you may view the online images for free. You may also purchase a copy of Tanguay’s dictionary on CD-ROM from Quintin Publications.
Church Records
Roman Catholic Ch urch records are by far the best single source for tracing French-Canadian ancestry.
Each baptismal record was written using a format prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church. The format of marriage records was also quite standardized, even down to the specific wording of most phrases. This makes your research easier to do. Only the dates, names, and locations change, for the most part. Handwriting, not the language, is actually the biggest challenge!
Baptism records generally provide the name of the person (usually an infant) being baptized, the date of birth, the date of baptism, the father’s name, the mother’s maiden name, the name of the godparents, and the signature of the priest and that of anyone else who could sign the parish register.
Marriage records usually provide the date of the marriage, the maiden name of the bride, the name of the groom, the names of the bride’s parents, the names of the groom’s parents, the occupation of the groom, the ages of the bride and groom (or a statement that they were of age), and the names of those in attendance at the wedding. The priest signed the record along with any others who could sign. If either the bride’s parents or the groom’s parents did not reside in the parish where the marriage ceremony was performed, their parish was also mentioned in the marriage entry.
Marriage records hold one more critical piece of information for immigrants to New France–they usually document the immigrant’s parish and province of origin in France. You can often trace your ancestry back another generation or two in France. Consult the LDS Family History Library Catalog online to see if the specific parish registers in France have been microfilmed. I have found a number of baptisms and marriages recorded in the 1500s and 1600s in France for my ancestors and their families before their immigration to New France.
Bu rial records provided the least information, usually recording the name and age of the deceased, the date of death, the date of burial, the occupation of the deceased, with a possible mention of parents or spouse. Witnesses may be named, as well as their relationships to the deceased.
In the 1970s, the LDS Church microfilmed the original parish registers for all of Quebec through the mid-1870s. Recently, some parish registers have been microfilmed to the year 1900. These microfilms are available at the Family History Library, and copies may be ordered at Family History Centers around the world.
Census Records
The first census of all of New France was taken under the direction of Intendant Jean Talon in 1666. This census lists the names, ages, relationships, and occupations of everyone in the household, with women mentioned by maiden name. The next census was enumerated in 1667 and contains the same details recorded the previous year, as well as the number of horned animals, sheep and pigs; land acreage in arpents; and the number of firearms owned. The 1681 census contains the same information as the 1667 census.
In 1825, 1831, and 1842 heads-of-household censuses were taken for all of Lower Canada. Beginning in 1851, censuses were enumerated every ten years. All decennial censuses from 1861—1901 named all members of the household, with age, occupation, birthplace, religion, marital status, gender, race, and other details listed for each person. These later censuses are very similar in format and content to the U.S. Federal censuses. Some indexes exist for portions of these later censuses.
The LDS Church has recently published a transcription of the entire 1881 Canadian census on CD-ROM. This four-CD set includes much information for each of the 4.3 million individuals listed on the 1881 Canadian census: name, age, gender, location at the time of the census, birthplace, ethnic origin, occupation, religious affiliation, marital st atus, and notations. This CD set costs $11 and is available for purchase online at FamilySearch.org.
Notarial Records
Notaries recorded the legal transactions between individuals, writing marriage contracts, estate inventories, apprenticeships, labor contracts, sales of property, farming leases, land grants, and much more. Approximately 5 million notarial records have been preserved, offering a multitude of personal details about our ancestors’ social, economic, and cultural dispositions. The most notable notarial records are marriage contracts and estate inventories.
Marriage contracts are sometimes the only official record of a marriage, as some of the early marriages were not written in the parish registers. These legal documents contain all of the information usually recorded in the parish marriage registers. Marriage contracts often contain other financial and social details, such as descriptions of the bride’s dowry, listing the value of her furniture, clothing, jewelry, and other personal possessions.
Estate inventories list the items left by a deceased spouse, enumerating houses, barns, stables, furnishings, articles of clothing, firearms, farm animals, stores of grain, farm implements, legal papers, cooking utensils, land holdings, firewood, animal skins, carts, chests, linens, and other possessions. These items are so carefully described that you can almost picture the daily life of your ancestors.
Tracing your French-Canadian ancestry has never been easier. With so many readily available genealogy dictionaries, marriage indexes, online resources, and original documents, your research will be fruitful and rewarding.
David Ouimette, senior product manager for Ancestry.com, is a genealogy researcher, writer, and lecturer with over twenty years experience in French-Canadian, New England, and Irish research.
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