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Wiki training papers

BEGINNING YOUR RESEARCH

First Step: Collecting Home Sources

The first rule of genealogy research is, “Start with yourself and work backward.” You will want to start in your own home. Compile the records you have on your own life, then move on to your parents’ lives. If your parents are still living, talk to them. See what records they have on their lives, and then keep going. Ask questions about their parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. Try to obtain as much information as possible. Find out if they have any old photo albums, scrapbooks, family Bibles, old letters, or newspaper clippings concerning family. Ask them to tell you some of the old stories passed down from their parents or grandparents. See if they might have any old vital records, deeds, or probate records lying around. Do not restrict yourself in this step to your direct ancestors. Also collect information on their siblings, spouses, in-laws, cousins, or any other family members. These collateral lines can help you greatly when you apply the techniques of cluster genealogy. Next, do the same thing with any other older relatives that may still be living. Siblings often have different memories and perspectives on the same events, and may have collected different materials involving shared parents, grandparents, and other family members.

Alex Haley discussed this aspect of research, in Roots:

The earliest memory I have is Grandma, Cousin Georgia, Aunt Plus, Aunt Liz and Aunt Till talking on our front porch in Henning, Tenn[essee]. At dusk, these wrinkled, graying old ladies would sit in rocking chairs and talk, about slaves and massas and plantation—pieces and patches of family history, passed down across the generations by word of mouth.

As you collect records, artifacts, and interviews (whether formal or informal), remember to accurately and completely record where each bit of information came from. These details are very important to collect, as it is the only way to evaluate the likely accuracy of information.

Organizing your information There are many different methods to organize genealogical information. Most genealogists try several different systems until they find one that they are comfortable using. You should consider whether you will keep every record and all of your notes on paper—in folders or notebooks—or electronically—as image files, word processor documents, and other types of electronic media. We also have the option of using genealogy database software to attach records directly to individual people. The most common ways to organize your files (both paper and electronic) are by surname, family line, or location. However you decide to organize your research, it is crucial that your system allows you to easily locate and consult any records or notes you may collect throughout the years.

Pedigree charts and family group sheets Part of organizing your information is compiling the conclusions that you have reached. In other words, you should take the conclusions that you reach and record them in a permanent form. One way to compile your information is through the use of pedigree charts and family group sheets. These are the most common charts used by genealogists. They also serve as the foundation of the most popular genealogy database programs. Pedigree charts are graphical representations of a person’s direct-line ancestors. Most often, individual paper pedigree charts show three or four generations completely. Using this form, you connect each person directly to their parents. There are also spaces to record each individual’s date and place of birth, marriage, and death. Family group sheets provide a means to record details—including birth, death, and marriage, as well as others—for a single family group, that is a husband, wife, and children. These serve as good ways to record details about family members who are not necessarily direct-line ancestors. Pedigree charts and family group sheets are an extremely important part of any organization system, whether paper or electronic. Since these forms allow you to record your findings, they often serve as guidelines to the information that has been collected thus far, and a way to identify the next problem to solve. These forms do have their own inherent weaknesses. Primarily, these two forms only record skeletal details about individuals’ vital events. While many genealogists tend to focus narrowly on discovering these names and dates, you will have far greater success by considering much more. In short, though the use of these forms is recommended, the use of these forms to the exclusion of other means of recording information is not.

Numbering system Use of a numbering system to assign each individual a unique number is another way to keep your research organized. The only internationally-accepted numbering system to use when researching a lineage is called the Ahnentafel system. The Ahnentafel numbering system has three basic rules:

• Identify the primary subject of your lineage research as number 1. If you are researching your own pedigree, this would be yourself.

• The number of each person’s father is double his or her own number. So if you are number 1 your father would be number 2 and his father would be number 4.

• The number of each person’s mother is the number of his or her father plus one. So again, if you are number 1, your mother would be number 3 (or 2 + 1), and your father’s mother would be 5 (or 4 + 1).

You can then create a list like the following:

1. You 2. Your father 3. Your mother 4. Your father’s father 5. Your father’s mother 6. Your mother’s father 7. Your mother’s mother 8. Your father’s father’s father 9. Your father’s father’s mother 10. Your father’s mother’s father 11. Your father’s mother’s mother. . . and so on. ..

This numbering system can also provide an easily-comprehensible framework for writing a narrative lineage, the story of your ancestors.

Family traditions and oral histories One of the first places to look for information, as mentioned previously, will be within your own family. Just as you probably remember stories told to you by your parents and grandparents, you will find that your parents and grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles also remember the stories told to them by the earlier generations. Talk to your oldest relatives—not just your own parents and grandparents, but older aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well. They are a wealth of information that may or may not exist elsewhere, and these stories will contain as many “whys” and “hows” as other records may contain “whos,” “whats,” and “wheres.” Unfortunately, these older relatives are also a fleeting resource. As the older generations pass on, they will take their stories with them, unless someone takes the time to listen to them and record them. One of the greatest tools that a genealogist can use is a digital voice recorder. These devices can be found at many office supply stores for a relatively low cost. If one is unavailable, though, you can also use one of the older mini-cassette or cassette recorders to record your interviews with older family members. In a pinch, though, even a pen and a pad of paper to record notes from the interview will allow you to record information that will prove invaluable in moving your research forward.

So, what sort of questions should you ask? You should always start with the basics, by asking about the life of the person whom you are interviewing. When were they born? Who were their parents? Where did they live and grow up? When did they move to a new area? The most important thing to keep in mind is that different people respond differently to being questioned. Some people will go on a two-hour storytelling spree with no prodding at all; others will answer every question with a single-word response or angrily deny even that. Your job as an interviewer (even for your own parents) is to determine what kind of interviewee each person is, and to adapt your questioning style to achieve the best results.

There are several additional resources online that provide tips on how to interview your family members. The following articles by Kimberly Powell on About.com provide a good overview of the subject for further reading.

• “Fifty Questions for Family History Interviews” &lt; http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/a/interview.htm&gt; • “Oral History Step-by-Step” &lt; http://genealogy.about.com/od/oral_history/ss/oral_history.htm&gt; • “How To Interview a Relative” &lt; http://genealogy.about.com/cs/oralhistory/ht/interview.htm&gt;

The most important point to remember is that you should treat an interview—even if it is just a simple, informal conversation with your parents—as a source of its own. Record the full names of those involved, the date on which it took place, and other details of the conversation. Report each fact reported accurately, and judge it by its own merits, using the same process as you would with any other source. Even our own family members may have faulty memories.

Second training papers

In Canada, research into French-Canadian ancestors is probably considered the easiest of all, thanks to several factors including:

• the meticulous record keeping, provided by the Catholic church • the concentration of immigrant settlements • the individuals and genealogical societies who took on indexing projects

Genealogical societies specializing in French-Canadian research are numerous. They serve the needs of researchers from so many areas of North America. The oldest and most well-known society is the Société généalogique canadienne-française founded in 1943.

Genealogical societies specializing in French-Canadian research, in both Canada and the United States, can be found online. It is recommended that you join a society even if you live far away. Many will help members by mail or will provide a question &amp; answer section in their publication. A fair amount of resource materials can be borrowed through interlibrary loans.

One of the most extensive collections of genealogical resources in researching French-Canadians is the public library in Montréal. In addition to books of most parish registers and large genealogical dictionaries, the public library has over 5,000 microfilms/fiches, census records, passenger lists, parish registers, newspapers, etc.

If you are in the Montréal area, this library is certainly well worth a visit.

Bibliothèque de Montréal, Salle Gagnon 1210, rue Sherbrooke est Montréal, Québec Telephone: 514-872-5923

If you are concerned about the language problem, you will find that for finding the factual information this should not be difficult. Usually Catholic records are in French, and non-Catholic records are in English.

Historical information may pose a more difficult problem since most historical information is in story or anecdote format. If you cannot read French, you may be unable to interpret the information.

Registers are easy to follow, even though you may not be able to read French. A simple French-English translation dictionary is probably a good tool to have.

Immigration Patterns

General knowledge about immigration patterns may help you. The number of immigrants from France was not very high. Today’s North Americans of French-Canadian descent are from no more than 10,000 immigrants who came to New France before 1763.

There was high emigration to the United States mainly from 1850 to 1930. This was predominantly to the New England states and the state of New York.

If you think certain ancestors may have lived in the United States, search the American census for Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont from 1850 to 1920. The first settlements arrived in the area around the St Lawrence River in the early 17th century:

Québec City 1608 Trois-Rivières 1634 Montréal 1642

By the end of the 18th century most people lived in the St Lawrence Valley. Settlements in the Laurentians and Ottawa Valley areas and the Appalachian region began in the 1820s and peaked at about 1860. A few good reference books regarding immigration and passenger lists are the following (titles in italic have been translated into English to help you understand what is discussed in these books):

 Vaillancourt, Émile, and Archange Godbout, La conquête du Canada par les Normands / The conquest of Canada by the Normands (Montréal: G. Ducharme, 1930).

 Auger, Roland, La grande recrue de 1653 / The large recruit of 1653 (Montreal: Société généalogique canadienne-française, 1955).

 Dumas, Silvio, Les filles du Roi en Nouvelle-France / The King’s daughters in New France (Québec: Société Historique de Québec, 1972).

 Montbarbut, Johnny, Les colons de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge au Canada Régime français 1608-1763 / The immigrants of the Aunis and Saintonge to the French regime in Canada 1608-1763 (France: s.n., 1985).

 Godbout, Archange, Les passagers du Saint-André: La Recrue de 1659 (Montréal: Société généalogique canadienne-française, 2009). This book is in French only, but gives names, origin, trades, marriages, deaths and locations where these French settlers landed and lived in New-France. These settlers made the crossing in 1659.

 Trudel, Marcel, Catalogue des immigrants 1632-1662 (Montreal: Hurtubise HMH, 1983). Another book in French only, but this is one of the “must have”. It lists French settlers from 1632 to 1662, their trades, where they settled, marriages and deaths.

 Godbout, Archange, Emigration Rochelaise en Nouvelle-France (Québec: Archives Nationales du Québec, 1970). Lists hundreds of French settlers who left the port of La Rochelle in the 17th century. As with other publications, it provides names, trades, where they settled, marriages, and deaths. His book is in French only.

 Projet Montcalm, Combattre pour la France en Amérique (Montréal: Société généalogique canadienne-française, 2009). A superb work which took several years to complete. This book lists thousands of soldiers who came to New-France between 1755 and 1760. France and England were involved in the Seven Years War and New-France would be the battlefield in North America. The War in New-France was effectively lost for France after the fall of Québec in 1759. Although the French made one last effort in 1760 to re-capture Québec, the War ended in 1763 and France lost New-France forever.

Acadian Research

Censuses that were taken in 1671, 1678, 1686, 1714 and 1752 are an important part of Acadian research.

Registers of birth, marriage and death records have been published. The following books are good resource materials for your Acadian research.

 Gaudet, Placide, Généalogie des familles acadiennes avec documents (Ottawa: Imp. du Roi, 1906).  Arsenault, Bona, Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens, 6 volumes (Montréal: Leméac, 1978).  Bergeron, Adrien, Le grand arrangement des Acadiens au Québec (Montréal: Editions Elysée, 1981).

 White, Stephen A., Hector-J. Hébert, and Patrice Gallant, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles acadiennes (Moncton, N.-B.: Centre d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, 1999).

Non-Catholic Research

Non-Catholic records are much more difficult to research.

Protestant church records were not as complete as Catholic records. Often the names of the parents of the bride and groom are not included.

Not as much effort has been made in transcribing and indexing the Protestant records. We are now starting to see many more research tools becoming available for research of non-Catholics.

Naturally, marriage contracts, land deeds and wills provide a lot of information.

Most Protestant churches have placed their records in the diocesan archives. You may want to search with the following appropriate archive for your particular research needs.

Anglican

Anglican Diocese of Montreal 1444 Union Avenue Montreal, Québec H3A 2B8 (514) 843-6577 synod.office@montreal.anglican.ca http://www.anglican.ca/

Anglican Diocese of Québec 31 rue des Jardins Québec, Québec G1R 4L6 (418) 692-3858 synodoffice@quebec.anglican.ca http://www.anglican.ca/

Baptist Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Québec 100-304 The East Mall Etobicoke, Ontario M9B 6E2 (416) 622-8600 http://baptist.ca/

Lutheran Lutheran Church Canada 3074 Portage Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3K 0Y2 (204) 895-3433 http://www.lutheranchurch-canada.ca/home.php

Presbyterian The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives and Records Office 50 Wynford Drive Toronto, Ontario M3C 1J7 (416) 441-1111 ext. 310 or 1-800-619-7301 (toll-free) karnold@presbyterian.ca http://www.presbyterianarchives.ca/ United Church of Canada St-Luke’s United Church 3480 Décarie Boulevard Montréal, Québec H4A 3J5

Jewish For Jewish information in Québec, contact the Jewish Genealogical Society in Montréal:

Jewish Genealogical Society of Montréal c/o Stanley M. Diamond 5599 Edgemore Avenue Montréal, Québec H4W 1V4 http://jgs-montreal.org/

Jewish Public Library Greenberg Conference Room (downstairs) 5151 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd. Montreal, Québec H3W 1M6 http://www.jewishpubliclibrary.org/en/

Tables
Footnotes

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References

Additional Information
https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/United_States_Court_Records

Legal Terms

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Genealogical_Dictionary_of_Legal_Terms

7C Court Records

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/United_States_Court_Records