Drouin Collection - An outstanding source

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I would like to say first off that I don't write/read/speak french, but still the Drouin Collection has been an outstanding source for researching my wife's family in Quebec.   My initial tree for her side of the family only included at most up to her grandparents, with maybe a few just past that.

After not really doing any real research on this side of the family, and hitting many brickwalls on my sides I decided to give it another shot.  I started reading up on some of the Quebec genealogy bloggers and saw that some had images from Ancestry.com.  

I have access to Ancestry Library Edition from my work so I figured that maybe I would have access to the same databases that these folks were pulling information from.  I contacted some of them, and one was kind enough to respond on where they were getting the information from.

It was called the Drouin Collection and it was available at Ancestry.com:



The Drouin Collection is the most comprehensive collection of French-Canadian and Quebec historical records in existence, spanning 346 years from 1621 to 1967. The collection includes 17 million baptism, marriage and burial records and also a compilation of church records from all denominations in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and various New England states.

Well I was hooked after my first trial run of a family member.  I came up with a marriage certificate, and after getting the gist of the document I figured out were to look for the important information.  The date of the marriage, birth, or death and the family names.  I found out that all marriage certificated list the father's full name and mother full name with maiden name for both parties.  

After that it was easy to start tracing back the family lines for each of the families.  Now I have hit a few hiccups here and there as all these documents are hand written, old, smudged, or not great copies.  I have had to guess on a few names and do some more search but overall its been a great success.  

I can now go back at least 5 generation on majority of her family line, and the next step is to cross reference these names with the census from the right periods to find the brothers and sisters, ect to make a more full tree for my daughters.    

Some of the other issues that I had noticed is that almost all names are preceded with the Marie or Joseph, that took a little time to get used to to find the correct names that I wanted.  But I am pretty sure that I have found what I was looking for.  I need to have the wife talk to her grandmother and see if any names ring a bell or anything else that might help.  

Also the next step will be trying to find photo's for all these new family members.  If you have family in Quebec I highly suggest that you try out the Drouin collection or get in contact with someone who has access to check it out for you.



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