A Gotcha When Searching the LAFRANCE Collection

Every second Tuesday afternoon the Ottawa Public Library and the Ottawa Branch of Ontario Ancestors hosts a one hour in-person Genealogy Drop-In session where we have folks popping by looking for help in their family history and genealogy research. Most of the times the questions are answered right then and there. However, in a few cases it can take a bit of time to actually figure out the right answer or solution to a genealogical mystery. Such was the case from a few weeks ago.

One benefit for genealogy and family history researchers who have an Ottawa Public Library card is that we have access to Généalogie Québec via the library site from the comfort of one's home. One of our patrons had been exploring the Généalogie Québec site but they were having problems locating records they thought should be there. They had already discovered the images they were seeking in the "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968" collection on Ancestry. However, they wanted to replicate finding those same records on Généalogie Québec as a test of that site.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search page from Généalogie Québec.

Going through the Ottawa Public Library portal and agreeing to the terms and condition of the Généalogie Québec site we are presented with "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search screen. There we can search by individual, couple, or parish. That is what the patron had been doing when trying to locate the baptism record for Nelson Deschamps from 1918. Yet no baptisms were appearing.

I knew we were missing something but there wasn't enough time to figure it out at that time.

Fast forward two weeks and it happens that both the patron and I were there early for the drop-in. So I asked for the details again. This time, without the pressure of doing real-time searching, I was taking my time and actually paying attention and reading to what is on the screen.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of "About the LAFRANCE" section from "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search page from Généalogie Québec.

That is when I noticed this very important line from the "About the LAFRANCE" section:

Every Catholic baptism and burial from Quebec between 1621 and 1861

Of course we couldn't find a baptism from 1918 since the collection for Catholic baptisms only goes to 1861 in LAFRANCE.

I had forgotten to do what I constantly remind others to do: learn what a collection actually covers. I felt so silly!

I knew I could browse the Drouin Collection records but that can be very time consuming, especially if you don't have an exact year or know the parish where the baptism took place. Also, even though many parish registers have a name index either at the front or back of the year's register, quite a few don't.

So I went to the "NBMDS (BMD Index)" page on Généalogie Québec. Of course, this time I checked the "About the NBMDS tool" section first. There we find that it is an index of about 1.2 million records of  Catholic and Protestant baptism, marriage and burial records, most of which are from the province of Quebec. It even states the years and regions covered.

In this specific research case, the record found on Ancestry stated the baptism place was "Thurso, Québec (Quebec), Canada". Thurso is in the Outaouais region of Quebec and is one of the regions that the NBMDS index covers. So in theory we should be good.

Screen capture from 3 Feb 2024 of item 2 returned of a search using the NBMDS tool on Généalogie Québec looking for Nelson Deschamps.

There he was, just like I had hoped. Even better, the transcribed information actually made sense.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the transcription for the baptism record for Joseph Alfred Nelson Deschamps from the "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968" on Ancestry.ca.

As you can see above, the transcriber of the entry for Nelson's baptism record on Ancestry has Nelson being baptized before he was born. That's not going to happen in the Catholic church.

Yet the NBMDS index entry for Nelson's baptism on Généalogie Québec doesn't link to the image. So we have to do a little bit more work.

We need to go to the Drouin Collection records on Généalogie Québec and browse the parish registers.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the Drouin Collection records landing page on Généalogie Québec.

In this specific case I drilled down the folders via Quebec > Fonds Drouin > T > Thurso > 1910 > 1918

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the Drouin Collection records browsing the folders to "Québec/Fonds Drouin/T/Thurso/1910/1918/" on Généalogie Québec.

Now all we have to do is look at the various images from 1918 to locate the baptism of Nelson Deschamps that, according the Généalogie Québec index entry, took place on 25 Apr 1918. Very quickly I came across the same image found in the Ancestry collection.

Genealogy Quebec, https://www-genealogiequebec-com.ezproxy.biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/tools/drouin-collection, Drouin Genealogical Institute, 2024, Drouin Collection - Québec/Fonds Drouin/T/Thurso/1910/1918/, d1p_00170648.jpg; image of page with baptism of Joseph Alfred Nelson Deschamps, B. 15.

 

So why would one want to use Généalogie Québec since it can take a bit more effort to see this sort of image when compared to the Drouin collections on Ancestry? 

The first reason is that the Drouin Institute keeps adding more records to their collections on Généalogie Québec. These new record may not make it on to Ancestry or any other genealogy site for quite some time. 

Additionally I've found the transcriptions of the records on Généalogie Québec are of higher quality than what I've come across on Ancestry. If I can't find a record I know should be in the various Drouin collections on Ancestry I will always come to Généalogie Québec to search through their collections. Quite often I will find that "missing" record there. Then when I look at the images on Ancestry for that specific parish and year I will find the name has been horribly transcribed in the Ancestry index.

Finally, although it didn't apply in this specific case, for those with deep roots in Quebec, the LAFRANCE collection is an amazing resource that can save you considerable time in your research.

Lessons Learned

The first lesson is always, always read the about section for any collection. That way you will know what should be covered in any collection. More importantly, you will also learn what isn't in the collection you are using.

The second lesson is to take the time to explore the various tools and collections on a site. If one collection doesn't have what you are seeking, quite possibly another collection will provide you will the answers.

An Anglophone's Tips for Searching Ancestry's The Drouin Collection: Quebec Vital & Church Records

Recently I spent a week delving into the "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within The Drouin Church and Vital Records collection on Ancestry. This collection was originally created by the Institut Généalogique Drouin and has been made available to Ancestry subscribers. It can also be found at GenealogyQuébec. Some archives and libraries may have free access to the GenealogyQuébec site. However, owning to the fact that I don't have a subscription to GenealogyQuébec¹ and since libraries frown upon you staying until the wee hours of the night I've been using the Ancestry collection since I already have a subscription with them.

This was part of a personal research project to learn more about my late uncle's life partner's family. This paternal branch of her family lines of the Shirlow and Rapple/Rappel/Rappell was my first real deep dive into these records and it has been quite a learning experience. As an Anglophone with just a barely passing knowledge of French it has been interesting, frustrating, and yes, fun. Here are some of the lessons I can pass on to you to hopefully make searching these records a bit less painful.

Screen capture from the image presented by Ancestry for Saint Edward Anglican Church (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1916 Parish Register,"  marriage of James Shirlow and Sarah Rappell, 22 Feb 1916; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

The Records

Keep in mind that these are church records. The majority of the records deal with recording church rites such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. In some cases they will also record the date of birth and death but there are no guarantees. In many of the records I've been looking at they also give the name of the parents, the father's occupation, and the mother's maiden surname. Burial records may also provide you with the spouse's name to help you figure out if this is the right person in your tree, and their age at death. Burial records for the women will often be recorded under their maiden surname along with their husband's name.

Language Challenges

Although the Shirlow and Rapple lines are of English speaking Irish descent some of the parish records were in French. As I was reading through some of the records the stuff I learned in my primary and high school French classes slowly came back to me. If your French language skills are as rust as mine (or worse) here are a few tips.

1. Google Translate is a helpful resource in figuring out some of the words. It is not perfect though and will have some challenges but it will often give you the gist of what is written.
2. Write down on a piece of paper the numbers 1 through to 31 with the words of their French equivalents. You will be seeing these words often. If possible, write it out in cursive so that you can see how they look.
3. Write down the names of the months. For me "avril" and "août" kept messing me up when I was looking at some of the writing due to the poor quality of some of the scanned documents.
4. Learn some of the key words and phrases (and approximate translations) found in the records. There will be other phrases and words that you will come across but this list is a starting point:
• née: born
• hier: yesterday
• la même: the same
• ce jour: this day
• courrant: current (often used like "instant" for the current month and year)
• veuve: widow (sometimes abbreviated as "vve" in the margin index)
• veuf: widower
• épouse: wife (sometimes abbreviated as "espe" the margin index)
• époux: husband
• fils: son
• fille: daughter
• décédés: died
• cimetière: cemetery
• cette Paroisse: this Parish
• mil neuf cent: 1900
• mil huit cent: 1800
• nous, Prêtre soussigné: we, the undersigned priest

Church Shopping

OK, this is my own phrase for it but your ancestors may not have stuck with the same church or even religion throughout their lives. If they were of the Presbyterian faith, don't discount the Church of England or Anglican churches in the area when looking for records. You might also find them in the Roman Catholic parish registers in that area.

In Canada we are fortunate in that our census records will indicate which religion the person was practising. If you see someone listed as Roman Catholic but their spouse is Church of England or other Protestant faith you might find the marriage in a Roman Catholic church with a comment along the lines of "...the law of the Church which forbids mixed marriages..."

Cathedrale St-Jacque-le-Mineur (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1915 Parish Register,"  marriage of Chester Robert Shirlow and (Dora) Margaret Elvert, 30 Aug 1915; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

Additionally, there may have only been a few cemeteries in the area so those records may be held in different church than the one your ancestors regularly attended. Since I was dealing with folks that lived in Montreal I would often find their burial register entry in the collection for "Basilique Notre Dame" if they were buried in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.

If you can find the family either in the Lovell's Montreal Directory or in the later census enumerations that included the street address where they lived then Google Maps might help you figure out what churches they may have attended. However, some churches in large communities like Montreal no longer exist today so you might not be able to find them with today's maps.

Parish Registers

Depending on the community the church served, some of the parish registers for a year may be hundreds of pages in size. Even a parish with a register of 20 pages, depending on the quality of the document and writing, can be a chore to look though. Fortunately, the parish priest also didn't want to have to read every page when looking for an entry in their own register. Often you will find an index of surnames at the end of the register along with the folio number in the register where the entry can be found.

Lost Children

I consider the lost children to be those that were born and died, or in the case of parish records, baptized and buried, between census enumerations. If I find a entry for a known child in the register of a church I will often look up to ten years before and after that date for any additional children of the family.

Document Quality

If you have had any dealing with the scanned images of census documents the same rules apply with these images. Keep in mind that some of the documents you are looking at may be over two hundred years old or even older. That they have survived to this day and you can look at them from the comfort of your home can't be taken for granted. That said, some of them are really hard to read for several reasons:

• The ink has faded over time
• The documents have been damaged due to water, fire, and creatures
• The handwriting may not be the greatest (almost as bad as my own...which is horrible²)
• Pour quality of the microfilming. The contrast may be great for some parts but not for the remainder.

Transcriptions and Indexes

I really do appreciate the time, effort, and in some cases, money spent by the various commercial companies, churches, and societies to transcribe and index records. However, as any researcher knows, these transcriptions and indexes can also be the bane of our existence. The "Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection is no different. In some cases, it is almost worse than some of the census transcriptions and indexes I've used to locate family members in the digitized records.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not faulting the transcribers and indexers for all of the issues. The quality of the documents and scans they are working from would challenge anyone. So make use of wildcards like "?" and "*" in your searching of last names. I thought "Shirlow" should be easy to find but I was wrong. I had to search using "sh?rl?w" and then just "sh*w" plus restricting the location to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in my search query. I could then quickly scan the list of 100 to 200 returned names for possible matches like "Sherlow", "Sherlaw", and even "Shilow" to help me locate the key baptism, marriage, and burial records.

However, coming across many index entries of burials for people with the forename of "Epse" might throw you for a loop. In these cases the indexers wrote exactly what was written without understanding the context. Here is an example taken from the margin of a record:

Basilique Notre-Dame (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1892 Parish Register,"  burial of Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Henry George Tibby, 5 Sep 1892; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 Jul 2019).

The indexer wrote: "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret Daniels" for the name. This loosely translates in the document to be "Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Tibby". Her forenames are not "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret". If you have the time, take a moment to correct a few of these index issues to help out other genealogy and family history researchers in their own journey of documenting their family tree.

Also, the indexers are using the margin index entries created by the parish priest. The spelling there might not be correct for your family name at that time. However, baptism and marriage records will often have the signature, if the people could sign their name, at the end of the register entry. That is how your ancestor thought their name was spelled. Don't be surprised if the spelling is not how you spell it now! Here is an example for Rapple/Rappel/Rappell family and the changes in spelling over time and by family members based on signatures in the registers:

 

I hope that this post helps you navigate "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within "The Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection on Ancestry. I'm next off to look at the Legér branch of this family and they are all French Roman Catholics in Québec so my French language skills will be pretty much stretched to the limit! Wish me luck!

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1. 24 hours access is $5 and allows you to look at 75 images. Monthly subscription is $13 and you can view 75 images per day. An annual subscription is $100 with access to 1050 images per week. See https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/subscription for the details.

2. No fault of my primary school teachers, especially Mrs. Currie.

Where Do I Find Ontario Birth Registration Records?

Periodically in some of the genealogy related Facebook groups I see questions about locating civil birth registrations for Ontario, Canada. The Archives of Ontario is the primary repository of the records that are publicly available and you can review their microfilms either by visiting them in Toronto or ordering the films via your library using the InterLibrary Loan system.

Yet what years are actually available? First of all civil birth registrations in Ontario didn't start until July 1, 1869 [see Statutes of the Province of Ontario 1868-1869 (1869), CAP. 30, p. 133]. Even then it took years and even decades before all areas of the province were in compliance with the law. If you are looking for birth registrations before that date then you may want to look at the church records for baptisms. Sometimes, although not all the time, the birth date is recorded as part of the baptism.

The Archives of Ontario "Tracing Your Family History: The Records" page provides the details of what birth, marriage, and death civil registrations are available. They have also made available a pathfinder called "Archives of Ontario Pathfinder to Birth Registrations" that can point you in the right direction to find the birth registration records.

As of today (January 16, 2015) the birth registrations from between July 1869 and December 1916 are available for public consultation. The 1917 indexes and registration are currently not available as they are undergoing digitization. According to the Archives of Ontario web site those microfilms should be available some time around February 20, 2015. For the birth registrations from 1918 to the present you need to contact the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario or submit a request via ServiceOntario. There are restrictions as to who can access those registrations still held by the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario.

There are also a number of other sources for helping you find the civil birth registrations in Ontario:

• Ancestry ($) presently has indexes and images of registrations in their "Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913" collection.
• The Ontario Vital Statistics Project (free) has abstracts of the birth registrations between 1869 and 1911 at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~births/index.htm
• FamilySearch.org (free) has indexes in their "Ontario Births, 1869-1912" collection at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1784212

If you live in Ontario often your local Latter Day Saints Family History Centre, genealogical society, public library, or archive will have the microfilms of the indexes and registrations for that area already on hand.

Finally, although they are not civil registrations don't forget about checking parish records and newspapers in the areas where your ancestors lived. For those born into the Roman Catholic faith the "Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967" collection on Ancestry may be of some help. Just note that not all of the parishes or time periods have been included in that collection. Same goes for the "Ontario, Births and Baptisms, 1779-1899" collection on FamilySearch.