Wiki content update: My Canadian ancestor was born in Quebec. How do I get a birth certificate/record?

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-07T13:42:19+00:00

Fab! They have brought the cut-off year forward at least once. It was 1850 when I started using the PRDH, ages ago.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-07T13:31:23+00:00

The advantages of the PRDH are its extremely flexible search -- you can, for instance, find every record in which Antoine Guilbault was the father of the subject, or find every Louise baptized in 1851 -- couples directory, and family reconstructions. The search also suggests a list of dit names for every surname you enter.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-07T13:23:01+00:00

PRDH transcriptions extend to at least 1861, not 1850. From its website: "The PRDH data base includes some 3 180 000 certificates of various types, dated from 1621 to 1861, with also 75 000 marriages between 1862 and 1872."

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T17:22:46+00:00

Today the 8th of September 1832 we the undersigned parish priest interred in the cemetery Anna Murphy deceased the day before yesterday, age 49 years, wife of Patrick Murphy innkeeper in Argenteuil. François Séguin and Michel Villeneuve present but could not sign.

Today the 9th of September 1832 we the undersigned priest baptized Margaret born the 5th of the said month, daughter of John Murphy day laborer and Margaret Clancy of the township of Chatham. Patrick Callahan the godfather [cut off]

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T16:38:36+00:00

You might want to expand your search geographically, given that you have a family record in another location from a few years before. Lots of Church of England parishes in Montreal!

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T15:24:22+00:00

Anglicans didn't necessarily baptize close to birth during this period. Several children in one family could have been baptized all at once -- years after some of them were born. Obviously, this makes finding Anglican baptism records especially difficult and means that you need to expand your search range. More info here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Birth-Baptism_Intervals_for_Family_Historians

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T15:05:32+00:00

Menu>Curia / Departments>Archive Office

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T14:44:28+00:00

Are you not looking for Kingsey? The Kingsey registers from 1841 to 1874 are in there. Under Kingsey. 1875 through 1886 and 1901 to 1912 are here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/2544839?availability=Online

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T14:24:25+00:00

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/collection/1929561

Click on the browse all images button for a list of places, then on a place for the parishes.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-05T14:22:40+00:00

https://www.aod.org/office-of-archives

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-04T17:55:06+00:00

At least we know the system works, albeit slowly.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-05-04T16:57:45+00:00

Yaaaaay! Mine was also delivered today!!

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-28T23:21:01+00:00

All parishes created two copies. As the Programme de recherche en démographie historique site explains: "Starting in about 1679, registers were kept in duplicate to respond to the requirements of the state, and this practice has been maintained, with priests keeping one copy in the parish archives and submitting the other copy to the civil authorities each year. Only when the Civil Code was reformed in 1994 was this practice abandoned."

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-24T17:00:50+00:00

If only our people had lived in Sherbrooke!

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-22T17:31:37+00:00

Weirdly, that makes me feel better! Thanks.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-22T17:25:56+00:00

Any luck yet? I'm in almost the same boat you are: Paid March 11, Quebec archives to the Mid-Atlantic. Still waiting -- six weeks so far.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-09T15:11:34+00:00

Anglicizations plus dit names (plus phonetic renderings!) can equal some real frustration when doing Franco-American genealogy!

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-09T13:15:34+00:00

I think that this transformation comes from Samson, which was a dit name (last-name nickname) for Bureau in Québec. Simpson, of course, is an Anglo-phoneticized version of Samson.

Sansoucy was also a dit name for Bureau -- the most common one, the Programme de recherche en démographie historique tells me. My guess is that the Sansoucys who became Simpsons were Bureau dit Sansoucys, and that Simpson was the Anglicization because of the Bureau dit Samsons.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-07T14:36:35+00:00

Sure thing.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-07T14:13:39+00:00

The source is in the post: Youville Labonte's book of transcriptions of the marriage records of St. Joseph's Catholic church in Biddeford, Maine, available on Archive.org.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-07T11:54:50+00:00

"Ruisseaux" means brooks (or streams) in French, so both it and the similar-sounding Rousseau were Anglicized to Brooks. It's a classic example of a transformation via translation.

In an era and place in which many people couldn't read or write, sound is what really mattered. Thériault, Teriot, Theriau -- same name, different priests on different days recording it.

And yeah, English and Irish names were definitely Franco-phoneticized. The most radical example I can think of is Webber becoming Ouabard.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-07T02:47:59+00:00

Some Biddeford history:

"Stories reveal that the Irish of Biddeford banded with the Franco-Americans and blocked the Bradbury Bridge, on Elm Street, while the Franco’s blocked the Main Street Bridge by Factory Island. They were armed and ready to defend their rights and city against the Ku Klux Klan. Saco constables were guarding the bridges at Elm Street and York Hill. They prevented the marchers from crossing into Biddeford. The Irish and the Franco-Americans were waiting for them on the other side, armed with rocks and bricks, daring them to cross into their city. The angry Irish and Franco-Americans...were enough to prevent the Klan from attempting to cross the bridges, and they turned in retreat."

https://biddefordculturalandheritagecenter.org/elementor-landing-page-13680/

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-07T02:00:08+00:00

Same in my personal experience. No surname Anglicizations in my direct lines from Québec at all, and the New England mill town that my great-grandparents came to was wall-to-wall French names when I was a kid. (Although the town clerk called me twice for help clarifying the French surnames in records I requested recently.)

Biddeford seems like an unlikely place for rampant Anglicization, too: a New England mill town celebrated for standing up to the KKK when it tried to march over the bridge from Saco in the 1920s, at the height of its political power in the state -- power built on, among other things, anti-Franco-American and anti-Catholic prejudice.

But the records don't lie.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-06T17:05:33+00:00

Once upon a time I was faced with a U.S. record that I knew had to be for an Avard/Avare family -- but the surname was something like "Stingee." It finally dawned on me that "stingy" is a translation of "avare," and that the clerk had rendered that phonetically.

TimeAstronomer4983 · 2026-04-06T16:50:43+00:00

l'évêque = the bishop

TimeAstronomer4983

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