Customer Reviews

French Canadian Sources: A Guide for Genealogists

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A new guide to family history research in French Canada is automatically of interest to Louisiana genealogists (like me) not only because of the historical similarity between the French colonial systems in Quebec and Louisiana, but also because a large fraction of those expelled by the English from Acadia made their way to Quebec. To produce such a volume, the publication committee of the French-Canadian/Acadian Genealogists of Wisconsin first considered republishing a collection of articles from its Quarterly, but realized too many of them required major revision and that a number of other topics had not been addressed at all. This book became a six-year project and the quality of the results of their labors is generally quite high, and the researcher is likely to come back to it again and again, not only for instruction in wringing the most out of the key primary and secondary sources but for ready reference. The introductory section summarizes the history of French Canada, provides a detailed timeline, explains Quebecois naming patterns, and describes the seigneurial system under which New France operated. The section on primary materials gives details on obtaining and using French-Canadian church records, the place of civil registration in Quebec, and the use of notarial records (with which south Louisiana researchers should already be familiar). An extended discussion of the dozen or so most important secondary sources accounts for about one-third of the volume, and includes Tanguay's _Dictionnaire Genealogique_, Leboeuf's _Complement to Tanguay_, the _Loiselle Quebec Marriage Index_, Jette's _Dictionnaire Genealogique_ of families to 1730, the _Repetoire des actes_, and the _Programme de researche en demographie historique_ (the PRDH), among others. Each of these chapters moves from an overview to a detailed discussion of what information is included and how to make the best use of it. There are numerous examples and illustrations. A further section of specialized topics includes a very good article on the "filles du roi" and others on Canadian military records and the special problems of researching fur-trading ancestors. (A very brief outline of genealogy on the Internet, however, would have been better omitted.) A series of appendices provide relevant maps, essential French vocabulary, how dates are written in French, the details of Canadian census records and census substitutes, and a lengthy list of addresses of libraries, archives, and organizations in French Canada. The writing quality throughout is high and in an extended perusal I was able to detect no glaring errors or omissions. If you have any interest in French-Canadian family research, I can recommend this one for your primary reference shelf.

This is THE reference book for all French-Canadian researchers and for other researchers whose ancestors may have spent time in the French areas of Canada. The book is meticulously researched and well indexed for ease of use. It includes many, many sources not available in other reference material. Well done!

Written by members of the French-Canadian/Acadian Genealogists of Wisconsin. Covers the basic, readily available French-Canadian sources, most of which could be found looking through the FHL index for Québec. The sections are often sketchy. E.g. the "naming patterns" chapter touches on "dit" names and the Marie-/Joseph- issue, but ignores the significance of naming after godparents, grandparents, or other family members, especially for 19th-century first-borns.

There is also a lack of balance. A hundred pages are spent outlining secondary sources, while less than half that for primary sources. Given the equivalent ease of physical access to both from the FHL as well as the greater importance and validity of the primary sources, this is a distorted perspective. More space should have been spent upon the reading and interpreting the primary records. The exception to the sketchy treatment is the coverage of censuses in the appendices which seems to be a fairly thorough overview of the subject. The appendices also contain a nice French vocabulary. Overall, it's probably a good book for beginning/intermediate Québec genealogists, but nothing new or exciting for those who have working Québec for a few years.

The reason I originally got the book was to help me transcribe and translate some document images that I had. I don't speak French and the documents were written in older French script. The book provides sample documents with transcriptions and translations to help get the feeling of how to get information from French-Canadian documents. The book also has an appendix with translations for words with more than a straight translation, that is, some words have an expanded meaning for the genealogist and this appendix gives a clearer picture of document content.
I got a bonus from the book in that it provides timelines, history, and sources for other documents available.
This is an excellent reference for the French-Canadian researcher.

This book has been extremely useful in helping me pinpoint how to begin delving into the background of my French Canadian ancestry. Shipping was prompt and I would deal with this company again.