Quebec Church Records
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Historical Background[edit | edit source]
- The largest religious group in Québec is the Roman Catholic Church. The first Catholic parish register was for Notre-Dame de Québec, founded in 1621.
- From 1679 to 1993, most vital records for Québec were copies of church records. The province required churches to send copies to government archives.
- On 1 January 1994, the government began to keep separate vital records.
- Vital records could be registered civilly without a church record as early as 1926. Beginning in the 1960s, many births and marriages were recorded only in civil registers.
Catholic Church Records[edit | edit source]
The Family History Library Collection The Family History Library has microfilm copies of the following:
- All Catholic registers from 1621 to 1877,
- Most of the civil copies of Catholic registers between 1878 and 1899,
- Catholic registers to 1910 from Québec parishes in the Diocese of Pembroke, Ontario, in the Ottawa River Valley.
The Drouin Collection The Drouin Collection 1621-1967 ($) (Ancestry) is available online. This French-Canadian collection has over 15 million genealogical and vital records entries microfilmed by the Institut Généalogique Drouin. The Drouin Collection is made up of six smaller collections. For more details see "The Drouin Collection: Six Databases"
National Archives[edit | edit source]
The original civil copies of most parish registers are held in the regional branches of the Archives Nationales du Québec. Extracts of the records before 1900 can be requested. Application forms are available at any regional branch. Send the completed form to the branch holding the records. See Quebec Archives and Libraries for more information and addresses of the regional branches. The civil copies of most parish records were microfilmed by the Institut Généalogique Drouin through about 1940. These microfilm have now been scanned and are available at www.ancestry.ca. They are arranged by parish, then by year or groups of years. Most records have an index at the end of each year or group of years. Ancestry has also indexed the records, but the indexes presently do not allow Soundex searches or searches for parents' names. It is possible to access the records by parish, then by year or groups of years, without using the indexes.
University of Montreal[edit | edit source]
For earlier records (1621 through 1799), the University of Montreal's Quebec and French Canadian Genealogy Database is a paid subscription service that allows users to instantly search all registers. The university (for research into demography) has each person numbered and all appearances of each individual (subject, witness, parent, child, etc.) are linked together. This is a database only. While it is based on parish and other original records, it does not have links to those original records. A number of burials for individuals dying after 1799 have been added to this database. Generally these are individuals born before about 1750.
RESTRICTED INFORMATION: Because of rights-of-privacy laws, the public does not have access to civil copies of parish registers from 1900 to the present. However, you may be able to get an extract from the original parish register. Send the request to the parish that created the record. Parish addresses are listed in: *Annuaire de l'Église Catholique au Canada = Canadian Catholic Church Directory. Montréal, Québec, Canada: Publicité B. M., annual. (Family History Library book 971 K24a.) Due to lack of staff and because of new policies, access to information from original church records may also be restricted.
REQUESTING INFORMATION
When requesting information by mail from Roman Catholic parishes in Québec, you are more likely to be successful if your letter is brief and very specific. See the French Letter-Writing Guide for details.
MISCELLANEOUS
Some of the parishes of Québec and the counties to which they belong are in Répertoire toponymique du Québec (see Quebec Gazetteers). Information about parishes, which includes dates they were founded and their locations, is in: Magnan, Hormisdas. Dictionnaire historique et géographique des paroisses, missions et municipalités de la Province de Québec (Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Parishes . . .). Arthabaska, Québec, Canada: Imprimerie d'Arthabaska, 1925. (Family History Library book 971.4 E5m; fiche 6016524–28.) Text in French. Indexes to civil copies of church records for the Island of Montréal and for the city of Québec are described in Quebec Civil Registration. Genealogical dictionaries based on Catholic church records are described in the "Genealogy" section. If an ancestor disappears from the parish registers, he may have gone into the fur trade. For information about fur trade records, see Quebec Business Records and Commerce.
Protestant Church Records[edit | edit source]
The earliest Protestant records are from 1766, when the Church of England (Anglican) parishes were founded in Montréal. Presbyterian records date from 1770 in the city of Québec and 1779 in Montréal. Other non-Catholic groups came later.
- An inventory of Catholic and Protestant church records is: Fortin, Francine. Guide des registres d'état civil du Québec = Guide to Quebec's Parishes and Civil Registers 1621–1993. [Lachine, Québec, Canada: F. Fortin], 1993. (Family History Library book 971.4 K22f; on 7 fiche 6075969.) Lists church records available on microfilm and in books.
Protestant church records are not as extensive as the Catholic records. Clergy of legally recognized Protestant groups were required to send duplicate copies of their church records to the civil archives. They did not always do it.
Also, baptisms and marriages performed by some non-Catholic clergy were not recognized by civil authorities until 1825 or later. Beginning in 1825, the registers of various denominations were "authenticated" (given legal authority) by the legislative assembly. Many Protestant registers contain less information than the Catholic records. For example, many marriage records do not list the parents of the bride or groom.
Information missing from church records may be found in censuses; in land records; or in marriage contracts, wills, and deeds included with notarial records. To find birth, marriage, and burial records of non-Catholic groups, look in:
- Broadhurst, R. Neil. A Checklist of Registers of Protestant and Jewish Congregations in Québec. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Kintracers, 1994.(Family History Library book 971.4 K23br.) It includes a brief history of non-Catholic groups in Québec. Civil copies of Protestant records before 1900 have been microfilmed. The microfilms are available at the Family History Library and at major archives and libraries in Canada and New England.
The civil copies of many Protestant records were microfilmed by the Institut généalogique Drouin through about 1940. These microfilm have now been scanned and are available at www.ancestry.ca. Ancestry has also indexed the records, but the indexes presently do not allow soundex searches or searches for parents' names. It is possible to access the records by parish, then by year or groups of years, without using the indexes.
The original civil copies are held in the regional branches of the Archives Nationales du Québec. Extracts of the records before 1900 can be requested. Application forms are available at any regional branch. Send the completed form to the branch holding the records.
Because of rights-of-privacy laws, the public does not have access to civil copies of church records from 1900 to the present. However, you may be able to get an extract from the original church record. A few of the large Protestant churches in Montréal, the city of Québec, and the Eastern Townships still retain some of their records, but most denominations have placed their records in the conventional, synodal, or diocesan archives. The following is a list of major record repositories or headquarters for the most prominent Protestant churches in Québec. To locate addresses of parishes, write to:
- Anglican Diocese of Montreal
1444 Union Avenue
Montréal QC
CANADA H3A 2B8
514-843-6577
- Diocese of Québec
31 rue des Jardins
Québec QC
CANADA G1R 4L5
418-692-3858
The Anglican Diocese of Québec has its archives at Bishop's University.
- Canadian Baptist Archives
McMaster Divinity College
Hamilton ON CANADA L8S 4K1
416-525-9140 ext 3511
- Lutheran Council in Canada
1512 St. James Street
Winnipeg MB CANADA R3H 0L2
204-786-6707
- Archives of the Presbyterian Church of Canada
11 Soho Street, Suite 104
Toronto ON CANADA M5T 1Z6
416-595-1277
- The Eastern Townships Research Centre at Bishop's University has some original Presbyterian church registers for parishes near Sherbrooke. The Québec-Sherbrooke Presbytery of the Montréal-Ottawa Conference of the United Church of Canada also has its archives at Bishop's University.
- United Church of Canada Archives
Montréal/Ottawa Conference
c/o Centre d'archives de Montréal, de Laval, de Lanaudiere, des Laurentides et de la Montérégie
1945 rue Mullins
Montréal QC CANADA H3K 1N9
Indexes to Protestant Records[edit | edit source]
Many English-speaking Protestant Canadians settled in the Eastern Townships section of Québec just north of the Vermont border. Major indexes include:
- Broadhurst, R. Neil. Protestant Marriages in the District of Bedford, Quebec, 1804–1879. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Kintracers, 1991. (Family History Library book 971.46 K2b.) For Brome, Missisquoi, and Shefford counties.
- Mariages, baptêmes et sépultures de Québec: district judiciaire de St-François (Index to Protestant Marriages, Baptisms, and Burials of the St. Francis Judicial District). Salt Lake City, Utah, USA: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1984. (On tenFamily History Library films beginning with film # 1381899, Item 2) Text is in French and is for Compton, Richmond, Stanstead, Wolfe, and Sherbrooke counties up to 1879.
- A major index to Protestants in another part of the Eastern Townships is: Vachon, Paul. Repertory of Births, Marriages, and Burials: The Anglo-Protestants of Megantic County 1826–1991. Thetford Mines, Québec, Canada: Société généalogique de la région de l'Amiante, 1992.(Family History Library book 971.4575 K2r or fiche # 6125775.)
Additional indexes to church records are listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under: QUEBEC, [COUNTY] - CHURCH RECORDS.
Lutheran Church Records[edit | edit source]
Church book from The Norwegian Seamen's Mission in Montreal - images, Digitalarkivet.no
(Many of these records are restricted for privacy, but are still listed on the Norway National Archive's website)
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Church book from The Norwegian Seamen's Mission in Quebec, Pensacola - images, Digitalarkivet.no
- Baptisms 1888-1920
- Stillborn 1887-1916
- Marriages 1888-1922
- Confirmations 1888-1920
- Deaths/burials 1887-1925
- Broadhurst, R. Neil. A Checklist of Registers of Protestant and Jewish Congregations in Québec. Includes a brief history of non-Catholic groups in Québec.