2019 is drawing to a close, and it’s time to review what was a busy year for the Drouin genealogical Institute. Hundreds of thousands of new documents, many blog posts, not to mention a complete redesign of GenealogieQuebec.com and PRDH-IGD.com! Here is a detailed retrospective of the year.

Please note that you can consult the details of these numerous updates in this section of the Drouin Institute blog.

The LAFRANCE

2019 began in force, as we completed the addition of ALL of Quebec’s Catholic baptisms and burials the 1850-1861 period to the LAFRANCE.
This project, which began in 2015, represented the addition of some 652 502 baptism and burial records from 422 different parishes.

At that point, the LAFRANCE contained:

• ALL of Quebec’s Catholic marriages from 1621 to 1917
• ALL of Quebec’s Protestant marriages from 1760 to 1849
• ALL of Quebec’s Catholic baptisms from 1621 to 1861
• ALL of Quebec’s Catholic burials from 1621 to 1861
• 68 401 Quebec Catholic baptisms and burials from between 1862 and 2019

For a total of 3 755 659 parish records from Quebec.

Subsequently, all of Quebec’s Catholic marriages from 1918 were added, over 11 000 records.

Marriage record as presented in GenealogyQuebec’s LAFRANCE tool

But that’s not all!
Some 33 138 records from Catholic parishes in Ontario and Acadia as well as Protestant parishes in Quebec were added to the LAFRANCE in 2019, and this is only just the beginning!

More information on the LAFRANCE

Browse the LAFRANCE (subscription required)

PRDH-IGD.com

The 1741 Montreal census was added to the records and family files available on PRDH-IGD in 2019.

More information on PRDH-IGD

Subscribe to PRDH-IGD

The Obituary section

Some 30 000 memorial cards as well as 15 000 newspaper obituaries were added to the Obituary section in 2019.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of new obituaries are currently being scanned and are set to appear on Genealogy Quebec in 2020. These will join the 3.7 million obituaries, tombstones and memorial cards already available in the Obituary section.

More information on the Obituary section

Browse the Obituary section (subscription required)

The NBMDS tool

Close to 180 000 baptism, marriage and burial files were added to the NBMDS tool in 2019. These records come from the Mauricie region as well as New England and Ontario. The tool now contains more than 1.3 million files.

More information on the NBMDS tool

Use the NBMDS tool (subscription required)

Drouin Collection Records

Here are the new and redigitized images that were added to the Drouin Collection Records in the past year:

• 14 460 parish register images from the State of New York, under the Registres divers folder
• 1000 images from the Consulat général de France à Montréal et Québec, under the Registres divers folder
• New York State registers from the 1890 American census, under the Registres divers folder
• St-André parish (1945-1993), under the Registres paroissiaux du nord-ouest du Nouveau-Brunswick folder
• 30 424 redigitized images in the Drouin Collection Records

The Drouin Collection Records contain some 5,186,434 images of various registers from Quebec, Ontario, Acadia, New Brunswick and the Northeast of the United States.

More information on the Drouin Collection Records

Browse the Drouin Collection Records (subscription required)

BMD Cards

The BMD Cards tool contains close to 2.3 million baptism, marriage and burial files. In 2019, we added around 105,000 cards from Quebec and Ontario to the collection.

More information on the BMD Cards

Browse the BMD Cards (subscription required)

Connolly File

46,444 baptism, marriage and burial files were added to the Connolly File in 2019, bringing the total number of records in the collection to over 6.5 million.

More information on the Connolly File

Browse the Connolly File (subscription required)

Drouin Institute’s Miscellaneous Collections

Some 45 000 images were added to the Drouin Institute’s Miscellaneous Collections in 2019:

• 17 434 images from historical newspapers under the 23 – Journaux anciens folder
• 3 909 images of historical judicial documents under the 27 – Trois-Rivières (Juridiction) folder
• 2 673 images of notarized documents from the Cornwall region in Ontario, under the 26 – Contrats notariés de l’Ontario folder
• 2 000 images from notary Joseph Dionne’s archives, under the 18 – Autres documents folder
• 18 190 images of historical and genealogical significance under the 14 – Fonds d’archives folder

28 442 baptism, marriage and burial records have been added to the LAFRANCE, one of 15 tools available to GenealogyQuebec.com subscribers.

Now that the indexing of Quebec’s pre-1862 Catholic parish registers has been completed, the focus of our indexing efforts turns to the parish registers of Ontario and Acadia available in the Drouin Collection Records, as well as Quebec’s Protestant baptisms from 1760 to 1861.

Marriage record as presented on GenealogyQuebec.com‘s LAFRANCE.

Here is the list of parishes affected by this update and the number of records added for each.

b=baptism m=marriage d=burial

All these records may now be browsed in the LAFRANCE, which also contains ALL of Quebec’s Catholic marriages from 1621 to 1918, ALL of Quebec’s Catholic baptisms and burials from 1621 to 1861 as well as ALL of Quebec’s Protestant marriages from 1760 to 1849.
You will find more information about the LAFRANCE on the Drouin Institute’s blog.

To conclude, the Drouin team would like to wish a great holiday season to our fellow genealogy enthusiasts and designated family historians.
The holiday season is a great opportunity to share the results of your research with your loved ones and to ensure that your family history is preserved from generation to generation.

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

15,409 newspaper obituaries were added to Genealogy Quebec‘s obituary section this week. In addition to these new death notices, some 30,424 images from the Drouin Collection Records have been re-digitized to improve their readability.

Newspaper obituaries

15,409 obituaries, mainly from the Montreal and Quebec City regions, are now available in Genealogy Quebec’s Obituary section under the Newspaper obituaries category. Most of these death notices were published within the last 2 years.

The Newspaper obituaries section contains around 678,000 obituaries from various newspapers in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. The notices date from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

You may browse the Obituary section with a Genealogy Quebec subscription at this address, and you will find more information about this section on the Drouin Institute’s blog.

Drouin Collection re-digitization

In addition to our frequent content updates, the Drouin Institute is actively working on improving the quality of the collections already available on Genealogy Quebec.

With this in mind, we are currently re-digitizing many Drouin Collection parishes that were poorly digitized in the past. Some 30,424 images have been re-digitized in this update.

Old image

Re-digitzed image from the Drouin Collection

Here is a list of the parishes that have been re-digitized:

The Drouin Collection Records contain all of the parish registers (baptisms, marriages, burials) available on Genealogy Quebec, which represents over 5 million images.

Sherbrooke parish register image from the Drouin Collection Record available on GenealogyQuebec.com.

This collection is home to all of Quebec’s parish registers from 1621 to the 1940s, as well as numerous parish registers from Ontario, New Brunswick, the United States and Acadia.

You may browse the Drouin Collection Records with a subscription to Genealogy Quebec at this address.

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

A new archival fonds is now available in the Drouin Miscellaneous Collections, one of the 15 tools offered to GenealogyQuebec.com subscribers.

Roland-Maynard Fonds – Archives and historical photos

The Roland-Maynard Fonds is an archive containing some 8,190 photos and documents of historical and genealogical significance.

It can be browsed in the Drouin Institute’s Miscellaneous Collections tool at this address (subscription required), under the “14 – Fonds d’archives/” folder.

The Drouin Miscellaneous Collections tool is also home to a variety of historical documents and archives such as old newspapers, judicial and municipal archives, digitized photos, and more! A true goldmine for those with a passion for history.

Drouin Institute blog

In case you missed it, here is Marielle Côté-Gendreau’s most recent article, which deals with the the impact of the calendar on the first names of your ancestors: From Pascal to Noël: The impact of the calendar on your ancestors’ names

Genealogy and history fans should find plenty to read on the Drouin Institute’s blog. Here are some of our best articles:

• Understanding the linguistic variation in your ancestors’ names
• French-Canadian “dit names” and nicknames
• What your ancestors can tell you about your life expectancy
• The first French-Canadian centenarians in Quebec
• Quebec mortality rate under the French regime

The Drouin Institute’s blog is also home to many tutorials and guides pertaining to GenealogyQuebec.com and PRDH-IGD.com, which are must-reads if you are to make the most of the websites.

• What is Genealogy Quebec?
• Genealogy Quebec user guide
• Establishing your ancestry and finding your ancestors using Genealogy Quebec
• Detailed guides for every Genealogy Quebec section
• What is the PRDH-IGD?

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

New baptism, marriage and burial cards are now available under the “Fonds Fabien” folder in the BMD Cards collection, available to GenealogyQuebec.com subscribers.

This update adds some 102 000 cards from Ontario and the Outaouais region of Quebec to the collection.
They relate to baptism, marriage and burial records and generally include the name of the subject(s) and their parents as well as the date and the place of registration of the event.

The cards are sorted in a file tree structure under the surname of the subject (the baptized, the deceased, or the groom in the case of marriages).

In many cases, it is possible to find the original parish record on which a card is based using the Drouin Collection Records, also available on Genealogy Quebec.

To illustrate the process, let us find the original record related to this card, which pertains to Patrick Nagh and Albertine Ménard’s marriage :

In the Fonds Fabien cards, a lone “J.” is used in place of the name Joseph, as is the case here for Albertine’s father.

The Drouin Collection Records contain all of Quebec’s parish registers from 1621 to the 1940s as well as many parish registers from Ontario, with an emphasis on those near the border between Quebec and Ontario.

Patrick Nagh and Albertine Ménard’s marriage card indicates that the marriage was celebrated in St-François d’Assise Parish in Ottawa, which happens to be one of the Ontario parishes available in the Drouin Collection Records.

To browse this register, we must first make our way to the Drouin Collection Records (subscription required).

Once in the Drouin Collection Records, you will notice that the various registers are organized in a file tree structure. We begin by opening the Ontario folder, as the marriage we are interested in was recorded in that province. Following that, we must locate the St-François d’Assise parish.

Some parishes are listed under the name of the city they are located in, while others will be listed under the name of the parish itself. In the case of Ottawa’s parishes, they are listed under the city’s name.

St-François d’Assise is found under the Ottawa folder.

Once inside the correct folder, we must navigate to the right year, which will give us access to all the images associated with the register for that specific year. It is important to know that in general, the images are listed in chronological order.
This means that the first image in the folder will contain the first events recorded during that year, which are usually the ones from January. Similarly, the last few images in the folder will hold the records from the end of the year.

Since Patrick Nagh and Albertine Ménard’s marriage was celebrated on the 3rd of April, it’s likely that the marriage record will be found among the first few images.

And so, we were able to find the original document pertaining to a Fonds Fabien card using the tools available on GenealogyQuebec.com.

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

New records are now available on GenealogyQuebec.com! These new documents, from the State of New York and the province of New Brunswick, can be browsed in the Drouin Collection Records.

American records

New American records can now be found in the Drouin Collection Records, a collection that contains over 5 million images of various records and registers from Canada and the United States.

Civil War Veterans 1890

These records from the State of New York are part of the 1890 American census. More specifically, the records are from the Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties.

The images contain a list of civil war veterans and their widows and include various informations such as the rank, company and the date of enlistment.

Here are the 157 locations covered in this collection :

These documents can be viewed in the Drouin Collection Records under the Registres Divers / État de New York (State of New York) folder (subscription required).

More New York State records

3460 images covering the St. Lawrence and Clinton Counties (Canton, Hogansburg, Norfolk, Schuyler Falls and Postdam) in the State of New York are now available on Genealogy Quebec, under the “Registres Divers” folder in the Drouin Collection Records.

These documents, which contain vital records as well as military archives, add to the numerous New York State records already available on Genealogy Quebec :

You can browse these documents in the Drouin Collection Records, under the Registres Divers / État de New York folder (subscription required).

New Brunswick parish registers

The St-André parish records from the second half of the 20th century have been added to the New Brunswick parish records available on Genealogy Quebec.

This register spans from 1903 to 1993 and can be found in the Drouin Collection Records, among many other New Brunswick parish registers :

You can browse these registers in the Drouin Collection Records under the Registres paroissiaux du nord-ouest du Nouveau-Brunswick folder (subscription required).

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

23 historical newspapers have been digitized and made available on GenealogyQuebec.com!

You may browse these 12 738 new images in the Drouin Institute’s Miscellaneous Collections right now (subscription required).

Here are the newspapers that were added through this update.

The Quebec Gazette (1832 to 1836)
The Inquirer (Trois-Rivières) (1857 to 1863)
The Dominion Illustrated News (Montréal) (1888 to 1893)
The Canadian Jewish Review (1935 to 1939)
Paris-Canada (1884 to 1893)
Midi-Presse (Montréal) (1954)
L’Opinion Publique (Montréal) (1870 to 1874)
L’Obligation (Montréal) (1918 and 1919)
Le Semeur Canadien (Montréal) (1856 to 1861)
Le Trésor des Familles (Québec) (May 1883)
Le Progrès du Golfe (1948 to 1950)
Le National (Montréal) (1892)
Le Charivari (Québec) (1868)
Le Castor (Québec) (1879)
Le Carillon (Québec) (1879)
L’Action Canadienne (November 1915)
La Tribune Canadienne (Montréal)
La Vie Illustrée (Montréal) (1889)
La Semaine (Québec) (1895)
La Minerve (1868 and 1869)
La Chronique de la Vallée du St-Maurice (1929)
Daily Witness (Montréal) (1874 to 1879)
Commercial Gazette (Montréal) (1897)

To browse these papers, open the Drouin Institute Miscellaneous Collections and navigate to the “23 – Journaux anciens/” (23 – Historical newspapers/) folder.

Memorial cards

30 000 memorial cards were added to the Obituary section on GenealogyQuebec.com, adding to the 62 500 cards already available in the section.

Memorial cards search engine from GenealogyQuebec.com

Memorial cards can be searched by name, first name and date.

The Obituary section, one of 15 tools available to Genealogy Quebec subscribers, is home to most obituary, memorial card and headstone picture available on the website:

• 2.3 million Canadian obituaries from various online sources, spanning from 1999 to today
• 663 000 obituaries from Quebec newspapers published between 1860 and today
• 611 000 indexed headstone pictures from 830 cemeteries located in Quebec and Ontario
• 92 500 memorial cards from various locations in Quebec

The Obituary section can be browsed with a subscription to Genealogy Quebec at this address.

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team

New church records are now available in the LAFRANCE, one of 15 tools available to GenealogyQuebec.com subscribers.

Original church records for Quebec’s 1918 Catholic marriages now viewable in the LAFRANCE

In June 2019, all of Quebec’s Catholic marriages from 1918 were imported into the LAFRANCE. However, the link to the image of the parish document had yet to be added to the record certificates. Today’s update added this link, allowing you to view the original parish document with a single click.

Click on the link at the top right of the certificate to view the original parish document

Record certificate and original parish document from GenealogyQuebec.com‘s LAFRANCE

Ontario baptism, marriage and burial records in the LAFRANCE

We are happy to announce that we have begun indexing the parish registers of Ontario, more specifically the parishes that border the province of Quebec, as many French Canadian families settled in that region. These records will be added to the LAFRANCE gradually as they are indexed by our team.

The following parishes have been partially added as of now:

• Alexandria: 1835 to 1861, 3135 records, mostly baptisms
• Corkery: 1837 to 1861, 959 records, mostly baptisms
• Embrun: 1858 to 1861, 194 records, mostly baptisms
• LaPasse: 1851 to 1861, 408 records, baptisms, marriages and burials

What is the LAFRANCE?

The LAFRANCE, one of 15 tools available to GenealogyQuebec.com subscribers, is a detailed index with link to the original document of ALL Catholic marriages celebrated in Quebec between 1621 and 1918, ALL Catholic baptisms and burials recorded in Quebec between 1621 and 1861 as well as ALL Protestant marriages celebrated in Quebec between 1760 and 1849.

LAFRANCE search engine

You can learn more about the LAFRANCE in this blog article.

Genealogically yours,

The Drouin team