- It is with great pride that we now offer a considerably enriched version of the PRDH-IGD website database. Indeed, in addition to the regular corrections made, our database has now been extended from 1849 to 1861, adding another twelve years of parish register data to our collection. Specifically, this addition represents an increase of nearly 740,000 baptism, marriage, and burial records, linked to the individuals and families to which they belong and representing approximately 30% more elements than contained in the period 1621-1849.
This leap forward is part of the successful collaboration between the Institut généalogique Drouin (IGD) and the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) of the Université de Montréal, which has been ongoing for over fifteen years. It is worth noting that within this framework, the IGD ensures the transcription of Catholic and Protestant baptismal, marriage, and burial records (including dates, places and names of individuals), while the PRDH uses its academic expertise to conduct the family reconstitution (construction of individual and family biographies) which is essential for academic research. The PRDH and the IGD are both collaborators in the creation of genealogical data as well as partners in the publication of genealogical data, with the IGD serving as the editor of the prdh-igd.com website. The PRDH and IGD have formally linked their respective websites, allowing users to view images of the original manuscript records on the Généalogie Québec website and, vice versa, to navigate directly from the transcriptions displayed on the Généalogie Québec website to the individuals and family records displayed on the prdh-igd website.
- In December 2020, the PRDH obtained new funding for the project Transcending borders: A historical demographic infrastructure for the study of French-Canadian families in motion. This project will pursue Quebec family reconstitution up to 1861, incorporating Protestant acts within Quebec and Catholic acts in cross-border Ontario parishes.
The Institut Généalogique Drouin has contributed to the project over 350,000 marriage acts from 1800 to 1861, drawn from its Connolly collection, as well as over 880,000 baptismal and burial acts from 1850 to 1861. Access to the IGD Connolly marriage acts, which carry no data usage restrictions, will facilitate data management as well as data legacy protection at the PRDH.
The IGD is also contributing to the project Catholic birth, marriage and burial acts from bordering communities in Ontario, namely the counties of Glengarry, Stormont, Prescott and Carleton (Ottawa). Linking Ontario Catholic records into the database will enable researchers to explore the lives of francophones who moved back and forth across the Quebec-Ontario border.
A renewed collaboration with FamilySearch as well as with Ancestry will enable the PRDH to integrate complete-count census observations into the longitudinal data, beginning with the 1831 and 1852 censuses and eventually incorporating the 1825, 1842 and 1861 censuses. The PRDH will then close the family reconstitution file with linkage to 19th-century nominal Canadian censuses. Integrating census observations into longitudinal data offers an unbiased way to establish which individuals were still present in the population as of the date of the enumeration and thereby maximize usage of the data (Gutmann & Alter, 1993).
The PRDH offers historical data files and access to the RPQA online repertoire free of charge to researchers and students; since 2015, the PRDH has responded to 70 requests from graduate students and Canadian and international researchers interested to use the PRDH data
Gutmann, M. P., & Alter, G. (1993). Family reconstitution as event history analysis. In D. S. Reher & R. S. Schofield (Eds.), Old and new methods in historical demography (pp. 159–177). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Alexander E. MacDonald, Map of Canada East and West (1855)
Référence R11981-27-4-E, Bibliothèque et Archives du Canada (BAC)
- We are pleased to announce that the family reconstructions from 1825 to 1849 have been added to the our website, which officially brings the 1800 – 1849 period to a close. These additions have been made possible due to our participation in the inter-university IMPQ project (see Update April 19 2018)
This massive update represents the addition of 787 675 individuals and 94 444 families to the database. In total, we are talking about 8 500 000 new family links to explore in the database!
To put this into perspective, the database contained a total of 870 763 individuals before this update. That number has now nearly doubled!
We remind researchers who are interested in using these historical data for academic research that they can also consult the historic and scientific portal IMPQ, developed by the Centre interuniversitaires d’études québécoises (CIEQ)
- Between 2013 and 2017, the PRDH participated in an inter-university project named Infrastructure intégrée des microdonnées historiques de la population du Québec (1621-1965) (IMPQ). This project was undertaken in collaboration with the BALSAC research group (UQAC) and the Centre Interuniversitaires d’études québécoises (CIEQ). It was financed by an Innovation fund infrastructure grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The lead investigators of this research collaboration are Hélène Vézina (BALSAC, leader), Lisa Dillon and Alain Gagnon (PRDH, Université de Montréal), Claude Bellavance (CIEQ-UQTR) and Marc St.-Hilaire (CIEQ-ULaval). Bertrand Desjardins (PRDH, UdeM) also participated in this project.
For its part, the IGD contributed to this project transcriptions of baptismal and burial acts from 1800-1849, and marriages from 1800-1824; BALSAC contributed transcriptions of marriage acts from 1800-1849 as well as inter-marriage links.
The contribution of the PRDH to this project was to conduct automatic and manual record linkage of the baptismal, marriage and burial acts, and to join this reconstitution with the BALSAC marriage links and with the Registre de la Population du Québec ancien (RPQA) from 1608-1799. The PRDH was able to conduct this work with important contributions of volunteer time from Bertrand Desjardins and Michel Dion, who undertook manual record linkage of the most difficult cases, including linking mixed Catholic-Protestant couples.
BALSAC undertook the integration of the 1621-1849 family reconstitution with their database of linked intergenerational marriage acts from Quebec from 1800 to 1971. On the basis of inter-university and inter-sectoral negotiations, supported by the CFI, the IMPQ group hope to make all of these data available to researchers in 2018. The IMPQ will offer access to historic data via the historic and scientific IMPQ portal, developed by Centre interuniversitaires d’études québécoises (CIEQ).
A Powerpoint presentation (SSHA 2012, Vézina & Dillon) available here presents the objectives of the IMPQ infrastructure project.
In parallel with this project, the IGD will make available transcriptions of the 1800-1849 baptisms and burials and 1800-1824 mariages, also available on the website https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/
- The PRDH website can now be reached at https://www.prdh-igd.com.
The old address, https://www.genealogie.umontreal.ca, now automatically redirects to PRDH-IGD.com.
Read more...
- Over the course of February 2017, an important update was applied to the PRDH database.
This update wraps up the 1800-1824 period as far as Family Reconstructions are concerned, something we began working on in 2013. (Read more)
- A year ago, the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) of the Université de Montréal proudly announced that the Institut généalogique Drouin (IGD) (http://www.drouininstitute.com/) was now the editor for the public use of the PRDH data put together for the needs of University research. We had then written that this new development, qualified as «a welcome marriage between genealogy and university research», would certainly lead to new initiatives, favourable for both researchers and the general public.
Here is a striking example of what we meant! We are adding 1 700 000 baptisms, marriages and burials for the 1800-1849 period, which were graciously made available to us by the Drouin Institut and the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi's Balsac project. Thus, the Repertory now contains nearly 2 400 000 acts, a 250% increase! Furthermore, the certificates now include a link to the original document on the Drouin Institute web site (http://www.quebecrecords.com/), allowing those with a Quebec Records subscription to access the original document directly. Plus, Quebec Records subscribers who wish to subscribe or renew their subscription to the PRDH website will be gifted an additional 10% hits on purchase.
And this is just a start: the PRDH is currently working on bringing its unique reconstitutions (Genealogical Dictionary and repertory of Couples) from 1799 to 1849, a major endeavour which should be completed in early 2017. Meanwhile, the Drouin Institute has undertaken the extraction of data for 1850-1861 period, among numerous other things. More than ever, the PRDH-IGD team is strengthening its status as the best resource for French-Canadian genealogy…
- This updated version of the database includes corrections or additions made between December 2012 and November 2014. They consist of corrections that we found or that were brought to our attention by our users; one must understand they concern but an infinitely small portion of the information in the data base, given it numbers millions of items. Also present are some records found by our researchers or by collaborators. Some adjustments have also been made to some name standardisations.
- Hubert Charbonneau has finished the identification of the place of origin in France of immigrants married under the French regime. Also, information from the Fichier Origine project up to its version 45 of October 15 2014 will be found in the data.
- This updating was the occasion to bring the navigation on our site up to the current standards on the internet, specifically with the introduction of pull-down (or drop-down) menus. We hope you will be patient while getting used to the new formats.
- This updated version of the database includes corrections or additions made between September 2010 and December 2012. They consist of corrections that we found or that were brought to our attention by our users; one must understand they concern but an infinitely small portion of the information in the data base, given it numbers millions of items. Also present are some records found by our researchers or by collaborators. Some adjustments have also been made to some name standardisations.
- Hubert Charbonneau has finished the identification of the place of origin in France of immigrants married under the French regime. Also, information from the
Fichier Origine
project up to its version 41 of October 15 2012 will be found in the data.
NEW Thanks to a
most fruitful collaboration between University research and genealogy,
a complete index of all marriages up to 1911 and of all baptisms and burials up to 1849, that is over 2 225 000 catholic acts of Quebec, are now or will soon be available in the LAFRANCE data base of the Institut Drouin genealogical site of French America (QuebecRecords.com)
of the Drouin Institute.
- This updated version of the database includes corrections or additions made between February 2008 and September 14 2010. They consist of corrections that we found or that were brought to our attention by our users; one must understand they concern but an infinitely small portion of the information in the data base, given it numbers millions of items. Also present are some records found by our researchers or by collaborators. Some adjustments have also been made to some name standardisations.
- THE MAIN ELEMENT OF THIS UPDATE IS THAT THE GENEALOGICAL DICTIONARY NOW COVERS THE PERIOD 1621-1799 instead of the period 1621-1779. This means that the nearly 160 000 children born between 1780 and 1799 have been linked to their parents and are thus listed in the parental family file. The events from 238 000 more records are now included in the individual and family files of the Dictionary.
- Hubert Charbonneau is patiently pursuing his identification of the place of origin in France of immigrants. His work now covers immigrants who married between the beginning of French colonisation and the year 1759. Also, information from the
Fichier Origine
project up to its version 36 of April 15 2010 will be found in the data.
- This updated version of the database includes corrections or additions made between February 2006 and February 2008. They consist of corrections that we found or that were brought to our attention by our users; one must understand they concern but an infinitely small portion of the information in the data base, given it numbers millions of items. Also present are some records found by our researchers or by collaborators. Some adjustments have also been made to some name standardisations.
- THE MAIN ELEMENT OF THIS UPDATE IS THAT THE GENEALOGICAL DICTIONARY NOW COVERS THE PERIOD 1621-1779 instead of the period 1621-1765. This means that the nearly 80 000 children born between 1766 and 1779 have been linked to their parents and are thus listed in the parental family file. The events from 135 000 more records are now included in the individual and family files of the Dictionary.
- Hubert Charbonneau is patiently pursuing his identification of the place of origin in France of immigrants. His work now covers immigrants who married between the beginning of French colonisation and the year 1748. Also, information from the
Fichier Origine
project up to its version 31 of October 15 2007 will be found in the data.
- On the technical side, research using the record number, the individual number or the family-couple number is now possible. This was asked for by many of our users to facilitatethe referencingof the PRDH data.
- This updated version of the database includes corrections or additions since October 2004. They consist of corrections brought to our attention by our users; one must understand they concern but an infinitely small portion of the information in the data base, given it numbers millions of items. Also present are some records found by our researchers or by collaborators. Some adjustments have also been made to some name standardisations.
- Hubert Charbonneau is patiently pursuing his identification of the place of origin in France of immigrants. His work now covers immigrants who married between the beginning of French colonisation and the year 1736. Also, information from the
Fichier Origine jusqu'à
project up to its version 27 will be found in the data.
- Couple files include death date and place of the spouses when they have been identified in the PRDH research data base, which includes all burials up to 1799 and a portion of those of the period 1800-1850, as described below. Most of burials have been assigned to the corresponding persons but a certain number of thosefor 1766-1799 are still to be linked.
- To better the death information on the people born during the first half of the XVIIIth century, the PRDH has extracted the catholic burial records for the period 1800-1850 relating to persons relatively aged. Specifically, have been processed records where the deceased:
-
is aged 50 or over in the record (1800-1824 period)
-
is aged 75 or over in the record (1825-1850 period)
-
has no age mentioned in the record but is linked to a spouse
More than 45 000 burial records to help genealogy search in Quebec and Canada (French Canada)
- Over 45 000 of these burials have been added to the database, from 269 parishes (see the list
of these parishes and the number of records from each).
- Couple files now give death information for the spouses when the record has been identified.
- The different displays now distinguish between birth and baptism dates, and death and burial dates. In the Family files, when the date is the baptism or burial date instead of the birth or death date, it is displayed in Italics. This new feature was strongly suggested to us by a variety of researchers.
- Up to now, the production of a list of references from a query in the different sections of the data base was counted as a hit. This was seen as unfair by some users because the same research could be performed in the free access zone. So with the present version, these actions will no longer be charged; only the display of a record, a family file or a couple file will count as a hit.
- We know these changes will be welcomed by everyone using our information for their research. We make it a point to take into account sensible suggestions that are made to us, when they are within our means : prdh@demo.umontreal.ca.
We thus remind you we welcome any comments or suggestions anyone may want to make.