Vital records on your computer ?

Why not !

You want more data about your family ?  Data found on the net are not as reliable as your expected ?  Or not enough complete ?  Going to a remote library during winter is not your way for doing genealogy ?  Here is the solution !  Vital records on your computer !

How did we get those records ?

During the Second World War, the Drouin Genealogical Institute, the major company that produced so many genealogical trees for nearly a century, negociated a deal with the governement of that time and the bishops so as to put on microfilms a copy of vital records and some other records.  Actually, the big argument was to save the records because German submarines were detected in the St.Lawrence Gulfe.  By microfilming the records, it was possible to preserve them if the German begun to burn the villages aroung the St.Lawrence River.  The Institute invested over a million at that time by equipping a series of mobile photo laboratories and shipping them to churches, court houses and even some archive centers.  Remember that at this time, you had to be a priest or a lawyer to get some access to vital records.

Later, the Institute produced over 15,000 family genealogies, as well as a dictionary for research, what is called la Masculine and la Féminine, or the Blue Drouin.  After that, the Institut was in bankrupt and the genealogical assets were purchased by the amateur genealogist.Jean-Pierre Pepin, including the microfilms.  He later organized their scanning to get 3 millions of images that we are now offering for sale.

What is on those images ?

Vital records are usually baptisms, marriages or burials recorded by the priest during a religious ceremony.  In the province of Quebec, those religious records were used as vital records until 1993.  Outside the province, even if the vital recording was performed differently, the catholic churches had their own records, and our collection also include a few provincial vital records.

To do your genealogy, if you known in what area your ancestor was living, you can look at the records and find the births and deaths of your ancestors and sibilings, often up to the 1940s, even the 1960s in a few cases.  Here is one method you could use.

  1. Do some search on the web to find where your ancestors were living around 1920.  With the data you have, let's say you find your grand-fatehr was born in 1923.
  2. You can order the records of the parish where he was born.  So, you can find the baptisms, marriages and burials of your grand-father, uncles, aunts, cousins, and you can build the history of your family. 
  3. Remember there was no computer at that time.  Records were handwritten and the priest made an index only from time to time.

To ease your search, we also have a bookstore and you could buy some repertoires with forming an index of records of a parish or town (marriage, but sometimes births and deaths too).  Visit the genealogy bookstore of the Drouin Institute !

Language of the records

Usually, the records were written in the language of the parish.  For most Quebec parishes and older French colonies, this means the records were in French.  Most records are written with the same pattern and you can use some model to read them even if you don't speak French.  Here is an example:

Le vingt quatre avril mil huit cent soixante dix nous pretre soussigné avons baptisé Marie Hormildas née le vingt du courant du légitime mariage de Esdras Hélie journalier et de Hélène Houle de cette paroisse  Parrain Louis Desent lequel a déclaré ne savoir signer  Marraine Mélanie Laneuville, tous deux de cette paroisse.  La marraine a bien signé. le père signé avec nous

Translation

Le vingt quatre avril mil huit cent soixante dix

The 24th of April 1870

nous pretre soussigné avons baptisé

we, the undersigned priest, have baptized

Marie Hormildas

Marie Hormildas

née le vingt du courant

born the 20 of the current (month)

du légitime mariage de Esdras Hélie journalier et de Hélène Houle de cette paroisse

from legitimate marriage of Esdras Hélie daily worker and of Hélène Houle of this parish

Parrain Louis Desent lequel a déclaré ne savoir signer 

Godfather Louis Desent who declared he couldn't sign

Marraine Mélanie Laneuville,

Godmother Mélanie Laneuville,

tous deux de cette paroisse.

both from this parish

La marraine a bien signé. le père signé avec nous

Godmother has signed.  the father signed with us

Records available

Records are available as many collections sold on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or hard-disk.  Only a part of the collection is in the catalogue but works are done fast to add more and more titles to the catalogue.  Moreover, if you need a parish, ask for it and we will send you a price and will prepare a new CD-ROM in priority.  Some libraries have the collection locally if you prefer to go there.

The images already available on CD-ROM are displayed in the bookstore's catalogue of the Drouin Institute !

The images not yet available on CD-ROM are displayed in the list of original microfilms from the Drouin Institute.  All are available today on the hard disk version.

Town libraries, larger genealogical libraries, etc. can purchase the whole collection of a hard disk now, which is less expensive and need a smaller foot print than the whole CD-ROM collection including the current and future CD-ROMs.

The offers

You can get those records from many methods.