Canadian Ancestor Index: The Immigrant Generation

There are already many lists and indexes of the Canadian ancestors, that is, those French (or occasionally of some other nationality) men and women who immigrated to Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Canadian Immigrant Resources

GrandesFamilles has the goal of documenting the entire Canadian tree, descending from each ancestor, organized by surname. Information on French origins of immigrants is provided, but no ancestral data, except for the names of the parents.

Fichier Origine has a list of immigrants and their origins in France or elsewhere. An index is also available on Francogene's web site.

The PRDH, primarily known for its comprehensive work on Canadian genealogy to 1800, is also working on compiling a list of immigrants to Canada and their origins: The pioneers (in English) / Les pionniers (en français) Though a little off topic, since it deals with descendants, here is an online PRDH Index.

The more famous immigrants often have biographies in The Canadian Encyclopedia or The Dictionnary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire Biographique du Canada

Articles about many Canadian immigrants and their families, including their French origins, can be found in the Memoires de la Société Genealogique Canadienne-Française. Many of these were written by Fr. Archange Godbout. An index is available on-line at http://www.shcn.qc.ca/04sgcf.htm.

There is the 30-volume work Nos Ancestres / Our French-Canadian Ancestors of Laforest and Lebel, which has biographies of apparently 20-25% of the immigrants to Canada. The biographies usually include a synopsis of the research done in France as of the writing (mostly be Fr. Archange Godbout). They can be purchased from Quintin Publications.

Genealogie.org also has short biographies of many of the ancestors (probably also 20-25%) which can be found here. About half overlap with the biographies in Laforest. Several individual users have also posted their research on genealogie.org.

Finally, GenForum has forums for many French-Canadian surnames, and sometimes discussions take place there regarding certain Canadian ancestors, or useful information on them is posted.

Material on this Web Page / My Index

While the web sites above are all very good, they are somewhat limited with respect to the European history and ancestry of immigrants. However, many genealogists and other individuals have worked on the European origins of one or more surnames or immigrants. Rather than simply collect information, which is often presented in many different ways, and which may become outdated because the nature of the work is much more of the bleeding-edge type, the goal of this web page is simply to index web sites of serious researchers and documentors of immigrants or groups of immigrants by surname. It can laborious to maintain such links, but it is necessary to do so in some cases, since some of these sources have only been posted online, and not otherwise published. I will maintain the links according to their relative degree of importance.

I am starting with those Canadians and Acadians who are my ancestors. This is a hand-made merit-based index: I am only including resources I have personally reviewed and judged sufficiently worthwhile. Generally speaking, a page must have something more than Tanguay and perhaps Lebel / Laforest, in order to be included. Perhaps someone would be interested in finishing it for all immigrants to Canada and Acadia?

Guide


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Last updated Thursday 18 Nov 2004 16:32:44 EST.