Click here  for a photo of the plaque listing the French-Canadian pioneer settlers of Québec.
 

 

FRENCH CANADIAN PIONEERS

Historians tell us that there were altogether only about one thousand married women living in New France between 1608 and 1680; fifty years later these women had produced fifty thousand descendants. Today, these same one thousand women and their husbands supply approximately two-thirds of the genetic makeup of six million French Canadians. (Charbonneau et al, The First French Canadians: Pioneers in the St. Lawrence Valley, 205.)

Around the world, the vast majority of those who claim French Canadian ancestry can trace their family roots to one or more of these pioneer families.

Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH)
Click here.

This is a genealogical database compiled by the University of Montréal. It is an online database containing all the baptisms, marriages and burials in the parish records of the Roman Catholic Church in the province of Québec from 1621 to 1849, as well as the census records of 1666, 1667, and 1681. The PRDH has more than 1.5 million individuals in its database. The family reconstruction project links individuals to their spouse(s), parents and children. Family group charts are a couple of clicks away!  Reasonable subscription fee.

Québec Records (The Drouin Institute)
www.genealogieQuébec.com

Especially useful is the LaFrance collection, which offers digital images of Catholic baptisms, marriages, and deaths of the French settlers from 1621-1860 for baptisms and burials and 1621-1917 for marriages. If you are a subscriber to both the PRDH and to this site, you can search for your ancestor on the PRDH site. Church records (baptisms, marriages, and burials) are  linked to the Québec Records (Drouin Institute) site where you can immediately download a digital copy of the original church record. Reasonable subscription fee.

Fichier Origine
www.fichierorigine.com

The Fichier Origine links French-Canadian immigrants to their origins in France. There are currently more than 5,000 immigrants identified in the database. Information may include name of parents, spouse, and children; date of baptism and/or marriage; additional information on siblings and grandparents. This is a joint project of the Québec Federation of Genealogical Societies and the French Federation of Genealogy. Information is in French, but the website is fairly easy to navigate. No charge to search and download the information.

Ancestry.com
www.ancestry.com

This site has a large number of historical records in its Canadian collection: census records; birth, marriage, and death records (including the Drouin collection); notarial records, military records; immigration records, and more. Notarial records of Québec, 1625-1935, are found by going to the Card Catalogue, to Canada, and then to "Wills, Probates, Land, Tax and Criminal." A paid subscription which includes the international records is required.

Advitam Database (formerly Pistard)
Bibliothéque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ)
Click here.

The Advitam Database (formerly Pistard) on the BAnQ website contains a large number of notary records found in the civil archives of the province of Québec dating back to 1626. The database, in French only, is easily searchable and digitized copies of the original records are online, free, and available to download.  In addition, there is a short summary of the information contained in the specific notary record. Go to the BAnQ website and click on Search. Then check the Advitam Box. In the Search Box, type in the name of the person you are researching. Notary documents contained in the Parchemin Database are not yet available online.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography
www.biographi.ca

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography offers brief biographical sketches of the explorers, missionaries, and many of the first French immigrants to the New World. This is a research and publishing project of the University of Toronto and the Université Laval, initiated in 1959. Information is online, in French and in English. 

Family Search.org
www.familysearch.org

The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints has digitized all of the Catholic church records of the province of Québec and these scanned images are available in the Collections section at FamilySearch.org. (Note that they are not all indexed.) Free to search and to download images of the documents.

La Sociétè des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Inc.
King's Daughters and Soldiers of the Carignan Salières Regiment
www.fillesduroi.org

If you have French-Canadian ancestry, the chances are good that you are a descendant of one of the 770 Filles du Roi (King's Daughters) who immigrated to New France between 1663 and 1673. You may also be related to one of the men who came to the colony in 1665 as a soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment. Some 400 soldiers remained in New France, many of them marrying one of the filles du roi. Lists of the filles du roi and the soldiers may be found at the above website.

Database of Soldiers of 1759-1760
National Battlefields Commission-Plains of Abraham, Canada
Think you might have an ancestor who fought in Canada in the Seven Years War? (This was known as the French and Indian War in the United States.) This database of French and British army soldiers in Québec in 1759 and 1760 includes more than 11,000 entries: some 4,000 French soldiers and some 7,000 British soldiers. It was compiled by the Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), National Battlefields Commission-Plains of Abraham, Canada. Try various spellings of the name of your ancestor. For example: Jacques Agement was listed as Jacques Azema.

The Centre du patrimoine (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada)
Voyageur Database
Voyageur Database   
Do you think you might have a voyageur, or fur trader, among your French-Canadian ancestors?  The Centre du patrimoine has compiled information on over 36,000 fur trade contracts signed in front of Montréal notaries. . 

Acadian Ancestry
www.acadian-home.org
This site was developed by Lucie LeBlanc Consentino, noted Acadian genealogist and historian. It contains extensive resources for those who trace their ancestry back to the French who settled in Acadia in the seventeenth century.

Occupations in New France
The French-Canadian Genealogist
Descriptions of many of the occupations found among the pioneer settlers in New France. The list has been researched and compiled by the genealogist Kim Kujawski and published on her website.

 

French Canadian Genealogical Societies
Located in the U.S.

In the mid 1700s, French Canadian explorers colonized parts of North America that are now a part of the United States: Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Between 1840 and 1930, another 900,000 French Canadians immigrated to the United States. This group of immigrants settled mainly in the New England region: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. The genealogical societies listed below have a wealth of information on these immigrants and on their descendants.

American-Canadian Genealogical Society (New Hampshire)

American-French Genealogical Society (Rhode Island)

French-Canadian Genealogical Society of Connecticut

French-Canadian Heritage Society of California

French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan

La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Inc.

Northern New York American-Canadian Genealogical Society

 
 


 

JULY 2024