Annuaire de Ville Marie - Montreal's Beginnings

The Annuaire de Ville Marie is a set of books that tell the history of Montreal, named Ville Marie at the time. You can go to the Index to see what the books are about. 

We will take a look at this 1872 Supplement to the 1874 edition, as it has helped me most in my recent research. This edition has names of streets at the time and a plan of Ville Marie.

Besides the lists of religious figures and students, there is also a list of all the Marguilliers of Montreal from 1657 to 1864. A Marguillier is a churchwarden, and part of his job is the maintenance of the church. The Marguillier was elected, and he had a special pew in the church, as befitted his important position. He kept an account of the parishioners, who paid their tithes (dîmes), who needed alms, etc. He may also have kept the registers. 

There is a section about the registers of Ville Marie with a list of the first baptisms and marriages. One of the families I am researching had a baby that was the fourth ever to be baptized in Montreal!

 Another section has the heading...

"Prémices du sang que Ville Marie a versé pour la colonisation et le salut du pays, durand les vingt premières années de sa fondation."

First spilling of blood that Ville Marie shed for the colonization and the salvation of the country in its first twenty years.

Names of people slain

The issue titled Premiere Annee 1863 is mostly about the religious people, the economy, the institutions and the societies, with names of officials, and is partly bilingual. See below for links to the different volumes, including one on Boucherville. Take a look at the indexes, and have a flip through to see what can help with your early Montreal anncestors. 





Relevant links

Annuaire de Ville Marie 

Annuaire de Ville Marie - Premiere Annee

Annuaire de Ville Marie - Supplement to 1864 edition, 1872 

Histoire de la paroisse de Boucherville

Histoire des paroisses de Diocèse de Montréal

Annuaire de Ville Marie: Hôtel-Dieu, Hôpital-Général – 4 volumes

Related Posts:

Montreal Official Book of Reference

Churchwarden's Accounts

Montreal Street Toponymy

Toponymy is the study of place names (toponyms), their origins, meanings, use, and typology.

One of my relatives lived on a street in Montreal called Campden Place.  Looking on Google street map it looked odd, tucked in behind the Cote-Ste-Catherine Metro, like it was on a back alley instead of a main street. So I wanted to know more about it.

What I found out is this IS the back alley.  The front of the houses open to a court yard accessed only by a foot path - no street.  

Photo by Maurice Amiel

It is apparently one of three streets in Côte des Neiges (with Beaminster Place and Bradford Place) making up what was then called Coxwold Village by the developer Terrace Construction in 1936. 

The City of Montreal Heritage section on their site has a portal titled La Toponymie for looking up the names of streets and how they got their name. You can even suggest a street name here. 

If your ancestors (or you) lived in Montreal you may want to check out this site... It is in French, and don't be fooled by the English link on the menu, as it takes you to a whole other place - but I found that a page translator works well (I open in Chrome and use Google Translator). This is what I learned about Campden Place.

Go to the Toponymy portal to search a street name, the page looks like this...

If you DO click on English in the menu it takes you to a page called: "Downtown moves Uptown - A Place Names Expedition".  From there you click on TÉLÉCHARGER to download the English PDF, which tells the who and how of some street and place names in Montreal.

Relevant Links


City of Montreal Topomyny

Submit a suggestion for a street name

Coxwold Village at Cultural Weekly



Related post:  Postcard Address Mystery

Montreal Official Book of Reference

There are several finds this week for the City of Montreal.

The extracts of the Official Book of Reference for the City of Montreal are several bilingual publications of 1869-1872. They are like a street directory but by block, listing the proprietor's name, the dimensions and square footage of the lot.

There are details at the bottom of some pages that reflect changes.

Relevant Links

Extract of the official book of reference of the parish of Montreal :including the incorporated villages of Hochelaga, la Côte de la Visitation, laCôte St. Louis, St. Jean-Baptiste, and la Côte des Neiges, 1872

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier Ste Anne, 1869

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier Centre, 1870

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier St Antoine, 1870

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier St Laurent, 1870

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier St Jacques, 1871

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier Ste Marie, 1871

Extrait du livre de renvoi officiel de la cité de Montreal: quartier St Louis, 1871

Montreal's Old English Burying Ground

The Old English Burying Ground of Montreal was once situated at the corner of Dorchester and St Urban Streets. 

Member of Parliament Walter Shanly had written down inscriptions on some of the tombstones there, and when the cemetery was destroyed in 1875 to make a park he thought it best to publish them and his letter was written up in the Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada of 1890.

There are 29 inscriptions. Looking  up their burial records on Ancestry most seem to have had their funeral service at the old Christ Church, with a few at St Gabriel. In some few cases surviving descendants, when notified of the impending destruction, removed their loved ones to the Mount Royal Cemetery. James McGill and his two brothers were buried here, and James' remains were removed to the McGill University Campus (does not mention his brothers).  The rest were plowed over. The site became a park named Dufferin Square.

Relevant Links

Inscriptions of tombstones in the Old English Burying Ground Page xv

Same as above, but at Internet Archive