Saint Pierre and Miquelon Emigration and Immigration

Online Sources

 * 1763-1907 French Overseas Saint Pierre and Miquelon Civil Registration and Parish Registers, 1763-1907, index and images.
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($)
 * 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Saint Pierre and Miquelon Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Saint Pierre and Miquelon

 * Saint Pierre and Miquelon, officially the Territorial Collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the only remaining vestige of French sovereignty in North America. Its residents are French citizens.
 * The islands were not permanently settled until the end of the 17th century. France ceded them to the British in 1713. The British renamed St Pierre to 'St Peter', and small numbers of British and American settlers began arriving.
 * In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years' War, France ceded all its North American possessions, but Britain granted fishing rights to France along the Newfoundland coast, and as part of that arrangement returned Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to France.
 * With France supporting the Americans during the American Revolutionary War, Britain invaded and razed the colony in 1778, sending the entire population of 2,000 back to France.
 * In 1793 the British landed in Saint-Pierre and, the following year, again expelled the French population, and tried to install British settlers. The British colony was in turn sacked by French troops in 1796. The Treaty of Amiens of 1802 returned the islands to France, but Britain reoccupied them the next year.
 * The Treaty of Paris (1814) gave the islands back to France, though Britain occupied them yet again during the Hundred Days War in 1815. France then reclaimed the now uninhabited islands, in which all structures and buildings had been destroyed or fallen into disrepair.
 * The islands were resettled in 1816. The settlers, mostly Basques, Bretons and Normans, were joined by various other peoples, particularly from the nearby island of Newfoundland. Only around the middle of the century did increased fishing bring a certain prosperity to the little colony.
 * The colony became a French Overseas Territory in 1946.
 * The total population of the islands at the January 2016 census was 6,008, of which 5,412 lived in Saint-Pierre and 596 in Miquelon-Langlade. At the time of the 1999 census 76% of the population was born on the archipelago, while 16.1% were born in metropolitan France, a sharp increase from the 10.2% in 1990. In the same census, less than 1% of the population reported being a foreign national.
 * The current population is the result of inflows of settlers from the French ports, mostly Normans, Basques, Bretons and Saintongeais, and also from the historic area of Acadia in Canada (Gaspé Peninsula, parts of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton) as well as Francophones who settled on the Port au Port Peninsula on Newfoundland.

Emigration From Saint Pierre and Miquelon

 * During the early 1910s the colony suffered severely as a result of unprofitable fisheries, and large numbers of its people emigrated to Nova Scotia and Quebec.
 * The archipelago has a high emigration rate, especially among young adults, who often leave for their studies without returning afterwards. Even at the time of the great prosperity of the cod fishery, the population growth had always been constrained by the geographic remoteness, harsh climate and infertile soils.