Understanding Quebec Catholic Records

Canada

Quebec

Catholic Records

The main source of genealogical information in Quebec is the Roman Catholic parish records. They typically record baptisms, marriage and burials, and in some cases, confirmations. They are not direct records of births and deaths, the Catholic priests were recording religious events, and births and deaths may or may not be mentioned in the records, but always indirectly. They contain precious information for genealogists like the parents of a child or the spouses, their origin, their age (but not always), and their relationships.

They are written in French, sometimes in Latin, but as they are written according to some rules and in a specific format, it becomes easy to recognize the main parts of each record and the information they contain. You can read this article about Quebec Languages to get started. They are also handwritten, and some priests were not much more educated than their parishioners; their handwriting and spelling may be difficult to read. You can usually get decipher them by reading other surrounding records written by the same hand.

Places

As for the events, the priests were referring to their own "territories" in the records, that is, parishes and dioceses. Unless another type of place is specifically mentioned, like a seigneurie or a city, it should be assumed that the places mentioned are parishes. Many parishes in Quebec have the same name, and it is important to consider the geographical location of each parish, and also the year of their coming into existence, before attributing the origin of a person to a specific parish. People did not travel far in those days, and certainly not forward in time.

Since parishes are communities of people, their size and location evolved, according to the movement, the growth and the density of the population. Parishes started as missions in remote areas, served by the priest of another parish, before becoming a parish of their own. As a parish becomes too large in population, or when the parishioners begin to find that the church is simply too far from where they live, other parishes are detached from the original one. Therefore, the name of the parish in the records does not necessarily reflect the geographical location we would assign to them nowadays.

Unlike the civil land organization, which has evolved through time, parishes have remained constant, with only their geographical and population sizes changed. Some parishes did change name, either following the will of their parishioners (example: Saint-Olivier becoming Saint-Mathias), or to identify them more precisely as one or more parishes had the same saint as patron.

Names

The spelling of both the first names and surnames of people mentioned in the records is very variable. It depends on the degree of literacy of the priests, some spelling according to the "sound" of the name, rather than using a more standard form. The spelling is also influenced by regional variations and by its evolution through time. Given that almost all the French Canadian people were illiterate, it is rarely possible to see how they themselves would spell their name. And the few who could write, were often just trying to copy, using very bad handwriting, what the priest had written in the record.

When building a family tree, it is therefore a good habit to adopt a standard spelling for the time, based on the frequency with which a certain spelling occurs in the records of the same period. Trying to note all the variations found can quickly become fastidious, and can hide relationships of people. This good practice also allows to reflect the evolution of certain names (like Magdeleine, in use in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century, closer to the Latin form Magdelena, which is written Madeleine nowadays).

French accents

Starting in the 18th century, the French language in Quebec started to be written with diacritical marks, or accents, on vowels. These are the "acute" accent (like é), the "grave" accent (like à, è or ù), the "circumflex" accent (like â, ê, î, and ô), the dieresis (like ë and ï). These indicate a different pronunciation for the vowels: the "acute" accent rendering a "closed" sound like "é" (hay), an "open sound like "è" (hell), or an elongated sound like "ê" (hair). The dieresis mark like "ë" served to indicate that the vowel need to be pronounced separately from the preceding one, as in "Noël" (no ell, and not, nwell, as o followed by e would normally be pronounced).

The letter "c" also started to be accompanied by a "cedilla", like ç, to indicate that the sound is sibilant like an "s", and not hard like a "k". Example: François is pronounced "fransswah" and not "frankwah".

Before that time, the letter "s" was used instead of the accents, appearing after the vowel, depending the following consonant. For example, the surname "Létourneau" used to be written "Lestourneau", "Lemaître" as "Lemaistre", and the first name "Étienne" as "Estienne" (again. closer to the Latin form "Stephanum").

Events

Baptisms

The following information can be found in baptism records, depending on the time period of the record, and also on the accuracy of the priest and how close he followed the rules.