John,
Too back my heritage is not Canadian French Catholic. My ancestors were
French Protestants who fled France in 1685 to escape persecution by the
Catholic Church. They came to Maryland as indentured servants for 5 years
to pay for their passage.
I am glad to know you have access to such good records in Canada.
Happy hunting.
Lewis
--- Original Message -----
From: "John R. Bayle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 9:17 PM
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Why save copies of census records?
Lewis replied to my posting as follows:
I don't think the Catholic Church maintains Population Census records.
The
Federal government has done a pretty good job of maintaining these
records
for the past 200+ years. Death records are maintained by the states for
non-Catholics as well as Catholics. Same is true of marriage and birth
records.
You are correct, the Catholic Church does not maintain any Census records
that I'm aware of. But compared to the Québec marriage records, they are
fairly recent. First understand that until the British took over in 1763,
by French
law only Catholics could settle in Canada. Protestants captured in raids
on
the
British colonies were "converted" to Catholicisim. So until the the time
of
the
American revolution, French Canada was Catholic and the records from
1608 (before the Mayflower) until just before the American Revolutionary
War,
covered 95 to 100% of the population of Canada.
These records go back to the very early 1600's and go up until today.
The American Census doesn't even get started until 1790 and for 50
years only lists heads of households. American birth and death vital
records were not kept until the late 1800s at the earliest and varied
from state to state.
I have used both the American Census and vital records in addition to the
Quebec
records. The Quebec records are much more efficient for doing genealogy
than
the American Census. The French Canadian records were designed for
genealogy
so the priests could ensure that first cousins were not marrying each
other
and for
other purposes. The Census records were designed to track population.
With a good Québec Marriage Repertoire, it is typical to trace a line back
through
5 or 6 generations in 30 to 40 minutes covering 100 to 150 years. Yes the
lines can
end where records go missing or there is some inconsistency or inaccuracy
that needs
to be worked out. But the records are complete enough and accurate enough
that
that is the exception. It can take an hour just to find a single family
in
a Census.
I suppose with good indexes now available on line one could trace a line
back from
1930 to 1850, in a half hour or so, but that's not even 100 years, and one
would have
to be very lucky with the existence of the indexes.
Oh I should also point out that there are Canadian censi that parallel the
American
censi. Most French Canadian researchers I know rely on the church records
to do
their genealogy rather than the Censi. If ya hit a block in the church
records the
census records may help one to work through it, but they are thus of
secondary
importance in Québec genealogy.
jr
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