The Drouin Genealogical Institute, author of the Généalogie Québec and PRDH websites, has issued the first of its bimonthly newsletters, announcing the addition of over 20,000 records to the LaFrance Collection for 1850-1861.
If you have Canadian ancestors (not only French), Généalogie Québec is the place to find them. If you are in another country and have relatives of your ancestors that immigrated to Canada at any time, you may find them here as the marriage and death records go from 1926 to 1997. Subscriptions to Généalogie Québec are very reasonable and payable through PayPal, making it easy to subscribe from any country.
Most people go straight to the Drouin Collection where the BMD civil records are, though that is not all that you will discover in this collection. Under the heading Divers (not like scuba divers, but French for Miscellaneous) you will find various documents including soldiers names who fought in the Battle of Ste Foy, Provost and justice records, register of notaries of Detroit, and it is here that I found the Genealogies of the families of Ile-d'Orleans. My husband's Nolin ancestor lived there from when he came from France and their genealogy is included.
You will see further down the menu are headings for Recensements (Census - since 1666) and for the Registres Paroissiaux (the parish copies of the records).
The next category is Great Collections. This collection is searchable by your ancestors family name. I typed in Nolin and results were links to 48 pages where this name was mentioned in books and records.
Next is
Obituaries, Death Cards and Tombstones. Here I found images of the tombstones of my great grandparents in the village of Waterville, and the death cards of many of the Guimont family. The up-to-date obituaries are free for anyone to search at
Obituary. Genealogie Quebec.
The marriage & death, 2 BMD indexes, Notarized records and censuses are searchable.
The heading LaFrance contains a BMD index by individual, couple or parish. You can choose birth, marriage or death, or leave that field open. I went to individual, typed in Nolin, Jacques and it gave me 237 instances where a Jacques Nolin was mentioned (subject, parent, godfather etc). Click on the date to go to that fiche and each includes a link to the actual record.
For one family I couldn't find two of their children after about age 15. I went to the LaFrance collection, typed in the fathers name, and here were noted the marriages of these 2 children. This helps when you are searching in Ancestry and the transcriber misspells the names. It is also a way to discover if you have found all the children in a family. Now with a date and place it will be easier to find the record on Ancestry.
This is what the Lafrance record will look like...
On the home page (you can click on English at the top right) scroll down to the bottom and you can download the User Guide, which explains the records you will find here and how to use them.
