The PRDH website is celebrating its 20th anniversary! It was in the summer of 1999 that the Université de Montréal’s Programme de recherche en démographie historique  (PRDH) launched the website, with the goal of sharing the genealogical information compiled by the PRDH with the public.

Produced in collaboration with Maison Gaëtan Morin éditeur, and thanks to a grant from the  Fonds de l’autoroute de l’information, an initiative of the Government of Quebec aimed at increasing the presence of French-language content on the Internet, the website was the latest step in an already 20 year old process of making the PRDH data available outside of the academic fields.

The PRDH database takes the form of a computerized population register, composed of biographical files on all individuals of European ancestry who lived in the St. Lawrence Valley. The file for each individual gives the date and place of birth, marriage(s), and death, as well as family and conjugal ties with other individuals. This basic information is complemented by various socio-demographic characteristics drawn from documents: socio-professional status and occupation, ability to sign his or her name, place of residence, and, for immigrants, place of origin.

Over the years, the PRDH has become an evolutionary and multi-purpose database, available for queries regarding various human populations in general and that of Quebec in particular. It is a truly interdisciplinary information system.

The project relies on exhaustive gathering of data from the parish registers of old Quebec. By systematic attribution of baptism, marriage, and burial certificates to the respective individuals – a “family reconstruction” made on the basis of names and family ties – people are identified and their biographies established. Thus, the PRDH contains the personal history of the Quebec ancestors of all French-Canadians and is of interest to a broad public.

That is why the PRDH inaugurated, in 1980, a series of publications intended for the general public – directory of baptisms, marriages and burials in 47 volumes covering the French Regime, CD-ROM extending this directory to the whole of the XVIIIth century, Genealogical dictionary of families from the origin of the province to 1765 on Cd-Rom -, culminating with the opening of the website in 1999. The sale of these various products derived from its academic activities has provided the PRDH with revenues that have always been reinvested in the project.

Constantly corrected when necessary and enriched over time, the PRDH site quickly became the reference for 17th and 18th century genealogy in Quebec. Moreover, the PRDH established a fruitful collaboration with the Drouin Genealogical Institute about ten years ago to pool their resources and expertise to extend the coverage of the PRDH database to the 1840s. Assisted by a grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) obtained for the establishment of an integrated infrastructure of historical micro-data of the population of Quebec (IMPQ), the PRDH directory has now been extended to 1849, tripling the number of civil records in the database.

Today, PRDH-IGD.com contains more than 2.5 million records and offers researchers, as well as amateur and professional genealogists, one of the most comprehensive database of its kind.

You can start using this incredible database right now by subscribing here!

And for a more in depth explanation of the database’s structure, as well as tips on how to best use the website, you’ll want to read this article on the Drouin Institute blog.

Bertrand and François Desjadins

If you’ve ever done genealogical research in Quebec, chances are that you’ve encountered “dit names”, which are secondary family names associated with a primary name, sometimes even replacing it.

These abound in the nominative history of ancient Quebec. Their origins are multiple: military nicknames, nicknames related to a physical characteristic or to the place of origin, names of fiefs among nobles, mother’s name, father’s name, etc. Some go back to the early ancestors, others are introduced by descendants; some are transmitted, others not; some are specific to the entire family line, others only concern a subset.

The result of this is that an individual may be identified under a nickname or secondary surname at any time, with no way real way to predict when.

In the context of genealogical research, “dit names” can be seen as a second family name given to an individual.

To illustrate the phenomenon, we can use Roy dit Desjardins, a frequent “dit name” combination. If you come from the Roy dit Desjardins line, your ancestors may have been named Desjardins, Roy and Roy Desjardins over the generations, which can be confusing if you are not familiar with the concept of “dit names”. Your ancestors could have alternated between one or both of these names over the records, for seemingly no reason!

Which is why you will find, on PRDH-IGD.com and GenealogyQuebec.com‘s LAFRANCE, a window dedicated to “nickname / dit name” associations. This window is located directly in the search engine.

When you enter a surname in the search engine, you will see the “dit names” associated with this last name according to their frequency in the database. This tool is particularly useful since it can allow you to trace a line of individuals who have held different family names over the generations. For example, if you do not find the marriage of the parents of your ancestor Pierre Desjardins, you will know that it is possible for Pierre Desjardins’ father to be named Roy on his wedding record, allowing you to trace the record in question more easily.

“Dit names” in the context of genealogical research

“Dit names” can help you as well as hinder your genealogical research, hence the importance of being familiar with the concept.

On the one hand, “dit names” represent, in a record, an additional source of information to identify an individual. That is, an individual with a “dit name” will be easier to identify over the various records, as the combination of the two names should distinguish it from other individuals with more common names.

For example, if you are looking for an ancestor by the name of Pierre Tremblay, you may have difficulty distinguishing him from the dozens of other Pierre Tremblay who are his contemporaries. On the other hand, if your ancestor is named Pierre Tremblay dit Boucher, it should be much easier to identify him in the records as it is a more recognizable and unique name.

However, “dit names” can also be an obstacle in your search for your French-Canadian ancestors, especially if you do not take them into account when doing your research.

Let’s use Roy dit Desjardins as an example of a common “dit name”. If you descend from the Roy dit Desjardins line, your ancestors could have been named Desjardins, Roy, and Roy Desjardins over the generations.

If you are not familiar with the “dit name” concept and are looking for records pertaining to your ancestor Pierre Roy, your research may omit several records where he is identified as Pierre Desjardins. This is why it is important to search for the both surnames individually when your ancestor has a “dit name”.

The PRDH-IGD (subscribe to PRDH-IGD) and GenealogyQuebec’s LAFRANCE (subscribe to Genealogy Quebec) search engines give you the ability to search for two last names at a time for a single individual. You can either search for both or one of the 2 names entered. To do so, select either “AND” or “OR” in the drop down menu located between the two name fields.

The search engine will then find all the individuals with one or/and the other of the selected names, which ensures you do not miss any records pertaining to your ancestor.

Name-nickname associations in the LAFRANCE and on PRDH-IGD.com

Wondering what combinations of surnames and “dit names” were most common at the time of your ancestors?

You can find out thanks to this free tool made available to you by Genealogy Quebec:

Name-nickname associations in the LAFRANCE

Simply enter the name you are interested in to obtain a list of all the names associated with it in one of the 3.6 million records contained in the LAFRANCE. These are listed in alphabetical order, and the frequency of each combination of names in the database is also indicated.

François Desjardins

This article will go over various resources you can use to explore your Acadian genealogy.

The term Acadian is used to identify the descendants of the first French and European settlers established in Acadia during the New France era. Originally from west-central France, they settled starting in 1604 in an area comprising parts of the Maritime Provinces and Quebec, which is known today as Acadia.

As is the case with French Canadian genealogy, Acadian genealogy is largely based on the parish records of the Catholic Church. Due to their French roots, a majority of Acadians were Catholic.

It is predominantly through baptism, marriage and burial records that we are able to trace the family history of the Acadians.

Unfortunately, Acadian genealogy is not as well documented as that of surrounding regions, which can be attributed to the disappearance of a large number of records and documents during the Great Upheaval. Nonetheless, there are several tools and databases related to Acadian genealogy available online.

Acadian genealogy on Genealogy Quebec

GenealogyQuebec.com, the Drouin Instiute’s genealogical research website, offers two research tools dedicated to Acadian genealogy.

The Drouin collection Records

The Drouin Collection records are a collection of parish registers (baptisms, marriages and burials) from Quebec, Acadia, as well as parts of Ontario, New Brunswick and the United States. Here we are focusing on the Acadian records.

Here is the list of the Acadian parish registers available in the Drouin Collection:

The years covered differ according to the register. The collection also contains Acadian censuses from 1673 to 1784.

The Acadia – Families tool

This tool contains family files based on the Acadian parish records mentioned above. In total, the tool contains 158,832 family files from 1621 to the 20th century.

In addition, the original records are attached to the family files, allowing the information contained in them to be viewed and verified.

You will find more information about this tool at this address.

A subscription to Genealogy Quebec is required to view these 2 collections. You may subscribe here:

24h access –  7$
One month subscription – 14,95$
One year subscription – 129$

You will find more information about GenealogyQuebec.com in this article.

Free acadian research websites

Genealogie-Acadienne.net contains a database of more than 750,000 individuals and 300,000 Acadian families that can be searched for free. The database contains the dates and places of birth, marriage and death of hundreds of thousands of Acadian descendants, and sometimes even photos of the individuals and the original records themselves. It is an excellent resource for finding Acadian ancestors and cousins.

Acadian-Cajun.com, another great Acadian research website, offers a comprehensive list of resources pertaining to Acadian genealogy. It also contains Acadian censuses that can be consulted directly on the website. In addition, various family associations and websites dedicated to Acadian families, all classified by family name, are compiled here.

In the two previous articles of this series, “Quebec mortality rate under the French regime” and “The first French-Canadian centenarians in Quebec“, we successively mentioned the high mortality which afflicted our ancestors at all ages of life and the scarcity of people reaching extreme ages. Today, we will present some factors underlying these realities.

As a first step, we used the PRDH (What is the PRDH?) database to establish the list of native-born French-Canadians who reached the venerable age of 97 before 1850.

Deaths of Native-born French-Canadians at age 97 and older which occurred before 1850

Thirty-one people accomplished the feat, twenty-three women and eight men. Why such an imbalance in favor of women, when their life expectancy at age 25 is 2.5 years less than that of men?

It is that beyond the reproductive period, when mothers were at a significant risk of dying in childbirth, women have a survival advantage over their partners. We know that part of this benefit is biological because male mortality is higher than female mortality from the very beginning of life, including in-utero. This genetic difference is especially associated with a better resistance of women to biological aging, as well as an hormonal advantage.

Indeed, for example, estrogen facilitates the elimination of bad cholesterol and thus reduces the risk of heart problems; testosterone, on the other hand, is associated with violence and risk taking.

That said, regardless of sex, why do some individuals reach higher ages than their contemporaries? While we know that there is more to it than chance, no explanation of this reality is currently unanimous. The study of extreme cases of longevity does not really reveal much: the “little glasses of gin before dinner” and other recipes of the kind  have no serious basis.

It is tempting to believe, however, that some individuals initially have an advantage over others; Is it not said that the best chance of living old is to have parents and grandparents who have themselves reached an old age?

In this regard, I submit to you the extraordinary family of Nicolas Lizotte and Marie-Madeliene Miville-Deschênes, who married on May 3, 1724 in La Pocatière. Out of the 5 French Canadians who became centenarians before 1850, two of them were born of this couple, and one of their sisters is also part of our above-mentioned list, since she died at 98 years of age!

And it doesn’t stop there! The father, Nicolas Lizotte, died at 98 years old, making him the second oldest French Canadian male who died before 1850. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind being a Lizotte right now!

Bertrand Desjardins and François Desjardins

August 2018

Thanks to the systematic recording of baptisms, marriages and burials by the Catholic church, Quebec genealogists – novices and professionals alike – have access to a detailed outlook of their ancestors’ lives and family connections. Through these documents, researching your ancestry in Quebec is much easier than it is in other parts of the world. But how far back can you retrace your ancestors in Quebec?

In 1608, Samuel de Champlain establishes the city of Quebec along the shores of the St-Lawrence river. 8 years will pass until the city’s first vital events (baptisms, marriages and burials)  start being recorded.

Nowadays, the oldest surviving records are from the City of Quebec for the year 1621.

This register, as well as those from every Quebec parish between the years 1621 and 1940, is available in the Drouin Collection Records with a subscription to GenealogyQuebec.com.

First immigrants

In a previous article, we explored the lasting impact that first immigrants had in the frequency and variation of last names in Quebec. In this context, the “first immigrant” expression refers to the first member of a given family who settled in a region. When trying to research your ancestry in Quebec, your goal is to establish a direct link between generations spanning from yourself to the first immigrant in your family line. This guide, which describes the process of establishing your ancestry using GenealogyQuebec.com, is a must read for anyone interested in researching their ancestors in the province.

When it comes to women, many of these first immigrants are known as “King’s Daughters” (Filles du Roi). The King’s Daughters were single women recruited by the King between 1663 and 1673 in order to populate New France. You will find more information about these fascinating women in this article.

Fichier origine

To go back further than the Quebec parish records, the best resource available is the “Fichier Origine“. The “Fichier Origine” is a free-access directory of civil and notarized records pertaining to the family origins of  immigrants – mostly French – established in Quebec between the early 1600s and 1865.

It contains every individual whose birth or baptism record was traced back to their country of origin. As such, you can use the Fichier Origine to find information predating the arrival of your ancestors in the province.

In addition, you should know that the PRDH-IGD individual files often integrate information sourced from the Fichier Origine. For example, here is Antoine Roy dit Desjardins’ individual file, where the date and location of his baptism were taken from the Fichier Origine.

To conclude, it cannot be overstated how lucky we are in Quebec to have access to such a wealth of historical documentation and information, which makes it possible to research our ancestry all the way back to the early 17th century. This is particularly evident if your genealogical research takes you to another region or country, where the information is unlikely to be as accessible and detailed.

Good luck with your research!

On the 22nd of September 1663 arrive the first of some 1000 King’s Daughters who will eventually establish themselves in Quebec between 1663 and 1673.

Their arrival was timely considering that in 1666, the province counted 719 single males between the ages of 16 and 40, compared to only 45 single women of the same ages. This disproportion was partly due to the fact that New-France was, in its early days, a colony based on the fur trade. Thus, the majority of the population was male.

But what exactly is a King’s Daughter?

“King’s Daughters” is used to refer to the single women recruited to emigrate to New-France between 1663 and 1673. What distinguished these women was the fact that the King himself took them under his wing, paying for their travel and settlement in the colony as well as providing them with a dowry in expectation of their impending marriage.

Often orphans and of modest origins, and frequently raised in urban settings, these women were not adapted to the harsh living conditions present in New France.

King’s Daughters list

The Programme de recherche en démographie historique has identified and indexed all of the King’s Daughters who married in Quebec. The complete list can be viewed at this address.

Using PRDH-IGD to learn more about the King’s Daughters

The PRDH database, accessible to the public via subscription, contains every Catholic individual who has lived in Quebec between 1621 and 1849, including of course the King’s Daughters. Through the PRDH’s unique database structure, it is possible to explore these women’s lives in greater detail.

You will find a more detailed explanation of the structure of the PRDH’s database in another article, but in short, you have to know that it contains three types of files:

Record Certificate –  It is a transcription of the relevant information contained in a baptism, marriage or burial record.

Individual File – It is a file centralizing all the information available on the individual

Family File – It is a file centralizing all the information and all the individuals pertaining to a family unit (parents and children)

You can use this structure to your advantage in order to learn about the King’s Daughters and, perhaps even more importantly, find out if you’re descendent from one.

Is there a King’s Daughter in your family tree?

The PRDH-IGD database can be used to confirm – or disprove – the presence of a King’s daughter in one’s ancestry.

Since the PRDH’s data stops in 1849, it is necessary to begin by retracing an ancestor to a date prior to the year 1849.

To do so, you may want to use a genealogical research website such as GenealogyQuebec.com, which will provide you with all the tools and resources necessary to trace back your ancestry.

The process of using the PRDH to explore your ancestry and more specifically discover if you are descendant from a King’s Daughter is rather simple. To demonstrate it, we will use Joseph Valade and Marie Lafond Lagrenade, married in montreal on the 20th of November 1820.

We begin with a search for Joseph Valade in the PRDH database, using the built in search engine.

This search allows us to find Joseph and Marie’s marriage record.

From this record, we can access to the couple’s family file.

From this point, we will go up the family tree in an attempt to find a marriage in the 1660s. If such a marriage is found, chances are it will belong to a King’s Daughter. To go back a generation,  click on the word “Family” which can be found under the husband’s parents’ names in every PRDH family file.

We finally make it to a couple married in the 1660s. Thanks to the list compiled by the PRDH, we can confirm that the bride is indeed a King’s Daughter.

Looking at her individual file only provides further confirmation, as we learn that she originates from La Rochelle, which is a common place of origin among King’s daughters.

And so, are you descendant from a King’s Daughter?

Lifespan is a topic that undoubtedly fascinates us. Cases of extreme longevity are regularly featured in the media, where individuals with extreme lifespans sometimes become symbols of national pride for their fellow citizens.

French-Canadiens are no exception. The case of Pierre Joubert, born in 1701 and erroneously believed to have lived to the ripe old age of 113 years old – as was featured in the Guinness Book of Records – was cited by Joseph-Charles Taché, a senior official in charge of Canada’s 1871 census, as an exemple of how French-Canadians formed “a population that, more than any other, perhaps, offers numerous examples of high longevity“.

The problem is this topic, in an historical context, is prone to a lot of myths and exaggerations, so much so in fact that a majority of high longevity claims end up being proven false. The ages declared at the time of burial were particularly inaccurate, especially in the case of elderly individuals. Most people being illiterate, the documentation relative to a person’s birth wasn’t necessarily available or used, and the accuracy of the deceased’s age in the burial record was not considered important, being mostly an approximation.

Thankfully, the wonderful information compiled by the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH), publicly available on the PRDH-IGD.com website, allows us to mitigate the issue of inaccurate ages in burial records. By linking the birth and death dates available through baptism and burial records, it is possible to accurately determine an individual’s age at death.

Thanks to this compiled data, it is possible to establish clear trends in the shifting of the mortality rate over time, as well as track the apparition of the first centenarians in the province.

This table identifies the 10 individuals born in Quebec that have reached the age of 99 years old before 1850:

We can see that the first five French-Canadian centenarians were women. While Marie-Élisabeth Dechavigny, one of the very first inhabitants of the country, reached the age of 99 years old in 1748, it is only in 1825 that we see an individual reach the 100 year mark. Not only that, Marie-Louise Plante is believed to have lived to the very respectable age of 107 years old!

François Parent is the oldest French-Canadian male listed in the PRDH database(1621-1849), dying at the age of 99 years old in 1834; no French-Canadian man reached the age of 100 years old before 1850, and as such, the first male French-Canadian centenarian still remains to be identified!

Bertrand et François Desjardins

April 2018

In a previous article, we learned that the ethnic French Canadian population is descended from a surprisingly small amount of immigrants.

The influence of this small number of immigrants can still be seen in the frequency and variation of last names in Quebec to this day.

For example, here is the list of pioneers that have the most married descendants before 1800 (this list was compiled using the PRDH database):

This list does not contain some of the most common names used today, and also includes some names that are rarely seen nowadays. This is because while some of these ancestors had a lot of descendants, most of these descendants were female. Thus, their last names were not transmitted through the generations. We have compiled a second list limited to patronymic descendants of these pioneers, which in other words refers to descendants through the male side:

Let’s now compare this list with the most common last names used in Quebec in 2006:

(Source: http://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/population-demographie/caracteristiques/noms_famille_1000.htm)

We find half of our previous list among the top 25 most common names in Quebec today. The impact of these few pioneers is undeniable, even to this day!

And your pioneer ancestor?

The PRDH offers a free tool that lists all the pioneers for a given last name. If you have a French Canadian name, you can enter it here and obtain a list of pioneers for that name, assuming they arrived in Quebec before 1766.

How to determine which pioneer is your ancestor

Oftentimes, a last name can be linked to several pioneers. For example, two Desjardins living in Quebec today will not necessarily share the same pioneer ancestor; one may descend from Antoine Roy dit Desjardins, who arrived in Quebec in the 1660s, and the other from Pierre Desjardins, who only arrives in Quebec in the 18th century.

The only way to determine which pioneer is your direct ancestor is to do your ascending genealogy, starting with your parents all the way back to your first ancestor on Quebec soil.

Genealogical research websites such as Genealogy Quebec and the PRDH are great tools to go up your family tree and ultimately find out the history behind your name.

France under the Old Régime did not supply a great number of emigrants to its colonies across the Atlantic.

In fact, just 15 000 Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sailed for Canada in the seventeenth century, and two-thirds of them stayed in the colony for a short period and either returned to France or died in Canada without getting married. This was a very low number: the British Isles, with a population just over one-third of France’s, sent almost 380,000 immigrants to the New World over the same period.

In fact, France was at the time showing various symptoms of social discontent that should have justified a larger number of refugees fleeing to Canada, whose abundance of resources contrasted with the famine and unemployment among the poorest classes. Although France wasn’t really overpopulated, conditions there were favorable to emigration; these conditions, had they coincided with a real attraction of Canada, would have encouraged the departure of large contingents of settlers for the New World.

But few French people migrated, as Canada, a distant, wild, and dangerous country, had a poor reputation. On top of this, the authorities believed that the French population was not growing as quickly as it should be – and, in fact, that it was shrinking due to wars, plagues, and general misery.

In response to Intendant Talon, who had asked him to find the means to form a “grand and powerful state” in Canada, which would involve a massive wave of immigrants, Colbert said, in a sentence that was to mark the future of the country: “It would not be prudent [of the king] to depopulate his kingdom as he would have to do to populate Canada.”

And yet, even had departures been multiplied tenfold, the effects of emigration on the most populous country in Europe would have been imperceptible – and the fate of North America would probably have been quite different. Notwithstanding, reacting to the slow growth of the population, the King had women recruited between 1663 à 1673 to come to Canada. These women became known as «Les Filles du Roi» (the King’s daughters) and they can be found in virtually every family tree of French Canadians today.

In any case, the result of this small founding population was that the French-Canadian stock grew from a relatively small number of people, about 10,000 immigrants. If we consider the male immigrants, from whom family names were transmitted through the generations, the number is reduced to about 4,500 – the total number of immigrants who had at least one son who married.

These numbers were compiled from the PRDH database, which contains every single Catholic individual who lived in Quebec between 1621 and 1849. You will find more information on the PRDH in this article.

In our next article, we will explore the influence that this small number of immigrants had on the current French Canadian name diversity in Quebec.

In Quebec, the practice of sharing the passing of an individual on a public platform started with the publication of obituaries in newspapers. In the 1960s, obituaries were not only shared in paper media but also on the radio.
Today, Quebec obituaries are still shared in the papers but are more easily accessed on the internet.

Finding Quebec obituaries on the internet

Numerous websites exist for the purpose of aggregating and sharing obituaries. These websites are indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing, which makes it extremely easy to find an obituary on the internet.

In most cases, a simple search for the deceased name in your favorite search engine will bring you to their obituary. It may be necessary to add “obituary” or “death notice” to the research for more common names. If the obituary is present on one or many of these aggregating websites, you will usually find it within the first few results of your research.

It is possible for an obituary to be available on a website without having been indexed by the search engines. If the notice you are looking for belongs to a recently deceased person, it may be a good idea to search for it on the aggregating websites directly, as search engines may take a few days to index it.

Note that these websites are usually limited to obituaries that have been published within the last few years. For obituaries from before 2000, you will have to look into specialized genealogy websites such as Genealogy Quebec.

Quebec obituaries collections on Genealogy Quebec

Obituary section – Tombstones, obituaries, death cards (subscription required)

GenealogyQuebec.com, a subscription based genealogical research website, offers a section dedicated to documents and pictures pertaining to the deceased.

It contains 1,350,000 newspaper obituaries published in Quebec and Ontario between 1860 and today, 739,000 headstones from cemeteries in Quebec and Ontario, as well as 100,800 memorial cards. You will find more information about this section here.

Online obituaries

GenealogyQuebec.com also offers its subscribers a section containing more than 2,900,000 obituaries from everywhere in Canada. These obituaries are dated from 1999 to today.

This section is equipped with a search engine as well as navigation categories. The search engine allows for a first name, last name and date search as well as a search for words contained in the notice.

The obituaries are sorted by province, city and publication to provide a more fluid navigation experience. You can browse this section at this address. (Genealogy Quebec subscription required)