Fichier Origine: To Keep Coming Back Pays Off!

Have French-Canadian Ancestry? If you have climbed up your family tree up to the 17th or early 18th Century in New France, you probably have consulted the Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec – des origines à 1730 by René JETTÉ and found your ancestor with details of where he came from. Others are not so lucky, finding only the name without any clues about his/her parents and place of origin. An example, my 8G great-grandmother, Marguerite Drapeau (abt 1616-1683). Her name is mentioned in the Dictionnaire but the only clue was a marriage contract signed in La Rochelle.

Thanks to the database Fichier Origine, the work initiated by René Jetté was continued by Marcel Fournier, a well-renowned genealogist, as coordinator of the database, who was himself inspired by historian Yves Landry who had the idea in the first place. The project was first proposed to the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie and later approved by the Fédération française de généalogie.

Who will you find in this database? Your ancestor, if he was born in France and later emigrated to New France. If the baptismal act of your ancestor was not found, you may find the one of a sibling.

Marguerite Drapeau is in the database since November 2013. I have her parents’ names, I have the baptismal date of two of her siblings, I have her mother burial date and place and her village of origin: Mouzeuil-St-Martin, in Vendée.

The database is only in French but this will help you with the search criteria:

Nom de famille = Surname
Localité ou paroisse d'origine = Place or parish of origin
Département, état ou pays = Department, state or country
Lieu du mariage = Place of marriage
Rechercher (button) = Search
Effacer (button) = Reset

If you find your ancestor and there is a big bunch of text in French and you need the translation, just contact me, I will be happy to help! 🙂

As of April 15, 2014, the database had 5,809 entries. Good luck!

 

 

 

 

Monday, Monday… Week of January 27, 2014

Well, I must say, things were not too bad last week. The only thing on the agenda I could not do was going to the Archives. Remember, I said that I was easily distracted? Well, last week was a good example.

I published my article on Guillaume Hubou with a scan of a baptismal record from the parish of St-André of Mesnil-Durand, in France, dated 1622 and I was lucky to be helped by Hervé and Claire to decipher the priest’s writing. Thank you to both of them! 🙂 That almost distracted me from my other tasks but I stayed focused.

With my #4 article already published for the 52 Ancestors challenge, I will have a little time for research! 😀

  • On Monday night, I will gather articles to send to a new found cousin via my Website. I have a lot on her great-grandfather.
  • I will continue to work on my Vergennes-Ferrisburgh database. January 31st is coming fast and I still have a few items to check before finishing the letter “A”!
  • I subscribed to the Calvados Archives (France) Website, so I will be searching for the name Vauquanu/Vaucanu in that department.
  • I have some filing to do. 🙁
  • I already have an idea about post #5 for the 52 Ancestors Challenge so I might start writing about it.
  • On Saturday, I might go to the Archives nationales du Québec to work on my Vermont Project and get some documents.

That should be it. Have a great week everyone!

Monday, Monday… Week of January 20, 2014

All those New Year Resolutions have inspired me. 🙂

What do I like about genealogy? Researching! That is really my favorite. So I last year I made the resolution to get organized, to be organized. I have this bad habit of being distracted by anything that involves an exciting new research, like an email from someone, a surname I read in a book, a tweet on some new computer tool and so on. So what happens is that I go all over the place and in all the directions and forget what I have started in the first place.

I thought it would be a good idea to publish every Monday morning what I intend to work on during the week to come. Publish it at large should help me get motivated and be more focused. So here is what’s in store for me this week:

  • Mail back my DNA kit to Family Tree DNA 🙂
  • Finish my article on Guillaume Hubou for the 52 Ancestors Challenge and publish it on Monday night.
  • On Tuesday night, I am volunteering at the library of the Société généalogique canadienne-française.
  • I am working on building a database. I want to trace all (hopefully!) the French-Canadians who lived in Vergennes and Ferrisburgh, Addison County, in Vermont for the period 1840-1880. January is dedicated to surnames that begin with an “A”. So I’ll work a bit on this one.
  • Friday night is Genchat on Twitter at 10PM ET. I understand that I have homework to do so I hope to take care of that on Wednesday.
  • On Saturday, I might go to the Archives nationales du Québec to work on my Vermont Project and get some documents.

Well, wish me good luck and have a great week everyone!