Tackling the Québec Drouin Collection for English Speakers - Part 2

This is a continuation of a series of "how-to" for English speakers to more easily decipher the Québec Drouin Collection records (although it may help you in other French records as well).  Part 1 of the series can be read here.

Through this series of posts, I will cover determining the type of event, the dates of the events recorded (baptism, marriage burial), the dates of birth and death for baptism and burial records, the individual's name, the individual's marital status, the individual's spouse or parents' names, and where the event occurred, among other facts.

If you have any questions (in general or specific to your research), corrections, additions, or anything else, please do not hesitate to leave a comment or email me directly!

Determining the Type of Record

There are three types of records in the Québec Drouin Collection -- baptisms, marriages, and burials.  From the baptism and burial records, you can usually determine the individuals' birth and death dates, but not always.  What type of other information is available in a record will also depend on the type of record it is.

The left-hand margin on a church record in the Drouin collection, or an underlined title,  will usually indicate the type of record you're looking at, abbreviated, followed by the individual's (or individuals') name(s).  B. indicates a baptism record, M. indicates a marriage record (also, the names of two people, the bride and groom, will be in the margin), and S. indicates a burial record.  "B. François Gosselin" tells you, for example, that you're looking at François Gosselin's baptism record.

The record itself will have some key words or phrases after the date that starts the record and before the name of the person whose record it is.  If, after the starting date, you read "a été baptisé" (meaning baptised) followed by a name, this is a baptism record for that named individual.  If you find "inhumé" (meaning buried) and "le corps de" (the body of) followed by a name, you are reading a burial record.

Marriage records tend to be much longer than baptism or burial records in length, sometimes taking up a full page.  I honestly don't know what most of the information immediately after the date says; in general there tend to be other dates on which the couple gave each of their marriage banns (a practice in the Catholic Church where an announcement of the upcoming marriage is published three times).  If you scan for key phrases or words and find "après la publication de trois bans de mariage," then later "entre" followed by a male's name, you're reading a marriage record.

New Year, New Genealogy

Happy New Year! (Better late than never?) The holidays afforded me a great opportunity to catch up on some genealogy work, think about the kinds of things I want to do this coming year, and find entirely new paths to explore.  So here is my genealogy "To Do" list for this winter:

• Visit the Connecticut State Archives (again).  I never got around to visiting them last fall, but I did just after the new year.  Unfortunately, it was incredibly busy, and I was fumbling around with the microfilm a bit.  The last time I ever used any was probably when I was about 10 years old.  Now I have a much better sense of what kinds of records are of present use to me in the library, how to find them, and how to best navigate (and print) them.  I'd very much like to go again, this time more prepared.
• Research Hurons and their records.  Growing up, I was told there is Huron ancestry on my Québec side.  Just a few weeks ago, I uncovered a source that I believe documents an ancestor's membership in the Huron community near Charlesbourg.  I'd like to look into this further so that I fully understand the meaning of the records and try to find more.
• Read more history books relevant to what my ancestors may have lived through. I'm still working on the book The American Invasion of Canada: The War of 1812's First Year, and after I finish it, I would like to continue on to Pierre Berton's other book, Flames Across the Border: 1813-1814.  I'm still hoping to find information on the battle of Fort George in particular, in which one of my ancestors fought for the British.
• Communicate with more people researching common ancestors.  I started reaching out to individuals lately who are researching common ancestors, particularly those who seem to reach different conclusions than me.  I think it's important to do this using family trees, and not just DNA.  It's really enlightening to exchange thought processes with others looking at the same information you have; sometimes someone has a great idea you didn't think of!  Also, it's a great way to get help in your research while hopefully helping others along the way.
• Trace one ancestor back in Europe.  I believe my third great-grandmother's marriage certificate for her second husband is on its way to me from England.  Also, I am talking to someone with a common (but unknown) ancestor in Ireland, and I have an extensive resource book from the New England Historic Genealogical Society called Tracing Your Irish Ancestors (4th Ed.) by John Grenham that should help me find at least one relative back in Ireland.  This will probably be my most difficult task for the spring, but I think it's doable.

Additionally, I plan to get back to blogging regularly now that the holidays are past.  Keep looking for updates on some of my "series" posts in particular!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday season!!

I know Santa brought my family some very wonderful genealogy gifts including Tracing Your Irish Ancestors by John Grenham (an incredible book of resources on Irish history and records for those of us with our research still stuck in America) and a gorgeous daggerreotype to complement the ambrotype I received last year.  I don't actually know the difference between the two yet, but I can sense a new "To Do" for 2013!

Let's not forget the true meaning of this season, though - family, friends, and giving.  No matter what holiday you celebrate, if any, reach out to someone you haven't talked to in a while.  Tell someone you appreciate them.  Or, to keep up with the theme of this blog, just help a stranger with their genealogy any way you can.  It'll only cost you a few minutes.

Tackling the Québec Drouin Collection for English Speakers - Part 1

Working with a large database of records written in a foreign language can be daunting, even if you have some prior experience with that language.  I took French throughout middle and high school, but I am by no means fluent, especially after years of not practicing.  So, at first I struggled to properly understand and use the records in the Québec Drouin Collection, which contains centuries of church baptism, marriage, and burial records.  Eventually I got the hang of it, but I know how difficult it can be.  I've prepared this series of "how-to" for English speakers to more easily decipher the Québec Drouin Collection records (although it may help you in other French records as well).

Through this series of posts, I will cover determining the type of event, the dates of the events recorded (baptism, marriage burial), the dates of birth and death for baptism and burial records, the individual's name, the individual's marital status, the individual's spouse or parents' names, and where the event occurred, among other facts.  I will try to go in the order the information appears in the records.

If you have any questions (in general or specific to your research), corrections, additions, or anything else, please do not hesitate to leave a comment or email me directly!

Records Start with Dates

The first and most important thing to remember is that the date at the very beginning of the record is NOT necessarily the one you want.  Almost every record starts off with a date.  Keep in mind that these include baptisms and burials, NOT births and deaths.  The starting date in a baptism or burial record may be the birth or death date, but oftentimes it is not.  You must keep reading the record for a hint of the actual birth or death date, which many times is noted separately.  In a later post you'll find some key words to look for to help you determine the birth or death date.  Simply copying the date at the start of the record is a common and easily fixable mistake in online family trees, so I thought I should note it upfront.  I used to make this mistake when I started using the Drouin Collection.

Every record starts with the date of the event - baptism, marriage, or burial - usually written out completely.  The order will be day, month, then year.

Numbers in French:

• One through ten, in order:
• un
• deux
• trois
• quatre
• cinq
• six
• sept
• huit
• neuf
• dix 
• Eleven through nineteen, in order:
• onze
• douze
• treize
• quatorze
• quinze
• seize
• dix-sept (notice this is just the words for ten and seven combined, as if you're adding)
• dix-huit
• dix-neuf
• Twenty through sixty-nine are written like "twenty and one" for 21, 31, 41, 51, and 61.  The rest are written like in English, "twenty-two," "twenty-three," and so on.  For example, "vingt" means "twenty" in French.  "Et" means "and."  To write "twenty-one," you would write "vingt-et-un."  Thirty-one would be "Trente-et-un."  Sometimes the "et" and/or the hyphens are left out in records.  Thirty-two would just be "trente-deux" - no "et."  Twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty, in order:
• vingt
• vingt-et-un
• vingt-deux
• vingt-trois
• etc.
• trente
• quarante
• cinquante
• soixante
• Seventy is written in French as "sixty ten" (kind of like you're doing some more math).  You follow the same procedures as the lower numbers but add eleven through nineteen to sixty in order to get seventy-one through seventy-nine.  Seventy through seventy-nine, in order:
• soixante-dix
• soixante-et-onze
• soixante-douze
• soixante-treize
• soixante-quatorze
• soixante-quinze
• soixante-seize
• soixante-dix-sept
• soixante-dix-huit
• soixante-dix-neuf
• Eighty is written in French as "four twenty" (since four multiplied by twenty equals eighty). Eighty through eighty-nine are treated just like the numbers twenty through sixty-nine.  For example, eighty-three is written in French as "quatre-vingt-trois."
• Ninety is written in French using the word for eighty, the same way seventy is written using the word for sixty.  Therefore, "ninety" is "quatre-vingt-dix," and ninety-one is "quatre-vingt-onze," and so on.
• "Hundred" is "cent."  If you see "cent" alone, it means "one hundred."  If there is a number below ten in front of it, it means it is that number of hundreds.  For example, "sept cent" means "seven hundred," "huit cent" means "eight hundred," etc.
• "Thousand" is "mil."  It works the same way as "cent."  In years, you will only encounter "mil" standing alone, since the records will be after the year 1000 A.D. but before the year 2000.

Months in French:

• janvier - January
• février - February
• mars - March
• avril - April
• mai - May
• juin - June
• juillet - July
• août - August
• septembre - September
• octobre - Octobre
• novembre - November
• décembre - December

Some key points to note:

• The date may often be written in the format of "The twentieth day of April..."  Therefore, the number day wouldn't be the exact French equivalent of "twenty."  Often, to express the "nd," "rd," or "th" (as in second, third, or fourth), the number, when written out, will end in "ieme," which is more or less the French equivalent.  For example, "Le trentieme" can appear in a record to indicate the day is thirty (or the thirtieth).  One exception is for the first of the month, in which case the record will read "The first day..."  In French this is written as "Le premier jour," with "jour" being the French word for "day."
• The year will almost always be written out in the Drouin Collection in words.  So, 1878 will be written out as "one thousand eight hundred seventy-eight."  This is where you will need to know how to read numbers in French higher than thirty-one.  In the Drouin Collection, you will see 1878 as (something very close to if not identical to) "mil huit cent soixante dix-huit."  Remember to break each piece apart to read the year.
• Twice I've seen "improper" French used when it comes to numbers.  It may have been a local dialect, but I had never before seen these words, and you probably won't either.  I give them to you just in case.  I once saw "septante," which I realized was being used for seventy instead of "soixante-dix."  Another time I saw "neuvante," which totally threw me for a loop until I figured out it was meant as ninety instead of "quatre-vingt-dix."
• At times, the writer may begin a record with something like "Ce jour" or "Le même jour" instead of writing out a date.  In that case, you must go up to the previous record to determine the date.  "Ce" means "this," and "Le même" means "the same."  The records are written top to bottom, left page to right, in order that they occur, so the previous entry should have the date if yours says it`s the same day.

As an example of a full baptism date, I will use my third great-grandmother, Angèle Corriveau (1807-1847).  The entry begins, "Le quatorze aout mil huit cent sept..."  Notice the French is imperfect and there are no breaks here.  We can ignore "Le," which means "the."  It's superfluous.  "Quatorze" means "fourteen," so this is the day Angèle was baptised (but NOT the day she was born). "Aout" is missing the accent mark but clearly is intended to mean August.  The actual text is a little unclear and can be mistaken for April, but the line through the last letter tells me it's a "t" not an "l" and therefore is August.  "Mil huit cent sept" means "one thousand, eight hundred, seven" (put the commas in mentally or physically if it helps you separate the parts), in other words 1807, the year of her baptism.

Tombstone Tuesday - A McTiernan Family

In October, I took a trip to Saint Bernard's Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.  It's a very old cemetery that contains, among other types, many late 19th century headstones for Irish families.  What's so special about these Irish headstones?  Many if not most of them include both the county and parish of birth back in Ireland of at least one of the family members.  Sadly, the cemetery is also suffering from severe vandalism, and this wealth of information may be lost in a matter of several more decades.

While at Saint Bernard's I took the following photographs of a McTiernan family from Drumreilly, county Leitrim, Ireland.  They are not my ancestors, but I do have McTiernan ancestry from either Leitrim or Roscommon that settled in New Haven.  Therefore, I may share common ancestry with this family.  Sometimes it's important to look at collateral relatives or potential cousins to connect the dots and find your own past.

My camera was malfunctioning, so I was unable to get a photograph of the bottom portion of the back side of the obelisk, which contains information on Margaret McTiernan, most likely the wife of Patrick Brady.

Main face of the McTiernan stone.
Photograph Copyright 2012.

Photograph Copyright 2012.

 In memory of

JOHN McTIERNAN

WHO DIED

Oct. 3, 1866.

AE 51.

He was born in 

Ballanaglaragh,

Parish of

Drumreilly,

Co. Leitrim, Ireland

May he rest in peace

amen.

ERECTED BY

his affectionate Sister

ROSE.

Right side of the stone. Presumably John's sister.
Photograph Copyright 2012.

Photograph Copyright 2012.

 IN MEMORY OF

ROSE McTIERNAN

WIFE OF

PATRICK DOLAN

DIED

NOV. 14, 1880[?].

AE. 72.

BORN IN THE PARISH

OF DRUMREILLY,

CO. LEITRIM, IRELAND

MAY SHE REST IN

PEACE.

IN MEMORY OF

MARK NEARY

Born Aug 10, 1865

Died April 20, 1889

May his soul rest in

peace, Amen.

Back side of the headstone.
Photograph Copyright 2012.

In Memory of

PATRICK E. BRADY

Born.

Jan. 13, 1844

Died.

March 29, 1882

MARGARET McTIERNAN

[...]

DNA Testing - Part 3

My father recently took and received the results back from his own AncestryDNA test.  We were really interested in seeing how our results differed and how our matches would compare after I took my own test a few months ago.  There were a few surprises!

While I won't go into detail about my father's results, I will say that he had no Scandinavian in his results.  This was a big surprise to me because of my mother's French Canadian background.  I've traced many of her lines back a few hundred years through Québec to France, with only a hint of English to be found.  Yet my results indicated that 25% of my DNA is Scandinavian.  Could half of the DNA my mother passed onto me really be Scandinavian?  Her side of my family not only genealogically, but also physically, favors French ancestry.  Perhaps the 25% was an overestimation on the part of AncestryDNA?

I've also been able to compare my father's DNA matches with my own.  I should have matches that he doesn't since half of my DNA is from my mother, but I was surprised that (not looking further than "moderate confidence" distant cousins) he has about 100 matches that I don't.  Three of those matches are in the 4th-6th cousin range with 95% or higher confidence.  I suppose I just didn't get the DNA that matches so closely with these individuals.

Comparing my and my father's results and matches is certainly interesting, and I look forward to taking a closer look at our matches.  I still haven't identified any of my matches as actual relatives; most with public trees don't have any individuals or even surnames in common with my family tree.

If you've taken the test, have you had troubles making relative matches?  Have you and a relative taken the test and compared results?  Please feel free to share your experiences with DNA testing for genealogy!

Motivation Monday - Genealogy Odds & Ends

Over the past few weeks I've been neglecting my blog in order to work on parts of my fall genealogy to-do list and then some.  I'm happy to say that my work in the often over-looked "little things" is progressing along nicely.

First off, I updated my main family tree.  In order to keep myself better organized, I separated branches of my ancestry into a series of smaller trees.  It is these smaller trees that I make public and work on.  By separating my tree, I can compartmentalize the families and surnames to better remember who is related to who.  The problem with this strategy, however, is that my all-encompassing tree can quickly become outdated.   I recently used Family Tree Maker 2012 to update it by first copying my smaller trees' files, then merging these copies into my large tree.  Because a lot of individuals don't have much detail, there were many duplicates I had to go through and delete, so the process took a number of hours.  It was worth it though, because I use my main tree to identify distant cousins through Ancestry DNA.

Secondly, I purchased a book for my Kindle by Pierre Berton called The American Invasion of Canada: The War of 1812's First Year.  Although I'm not too far into it yet, it's a funny and exciting read, and it's not at all like a history book.  I'm looking forward to reading about Fort George in particular, because I know an ancestor of mine who served in the British military there and then remained in Québec with his family.

Of course I've been furthering my genealogy research as well, delving into families I had not researched at all.  My family tree is growing quite nicely, and I'm getting to know more about my direct ancestors.  Once I have "enough" (realistically, that would mean when I hit all the brick walls I can find), I'll branch out to siblings and cousins in order to help better connect with other distant relatives and gain a broader picture of my ancestors' lives.  (This is part of a larger plan that's still in the works of looking more carefully at my DNA matches and cleaning out my "shoebox.")

Finally, I purchased my first smartphone and immediately downloaded the Ancestry app.  I'm able to view my family trees, individuals' events, and records connected to those events.  Recently there was an update to the app, but I haven't had the chance or need to explore it further.  I thought the app could help me if I venture to another cemetery or make it to the state archives.

With a lot of odds and ends out of the way, I should be back to regular blogging!