Genealogy of the French in North America

Description of the project

This database is displayed as a set of web pages so that it can be read on almost any recent computer.  Those pages are generated from a database made with a set of Excel files.

The database has three versions: the complete database on the author's computer, the CD-ROM version (limited to 1770) and the Internet version (limited to 1720).

The content of the complete database increases with the time.  The ultimate goal is to gather all the habitants of the part of North America settled by the French, their ancestors and their descendants.  This CD-ROM is a snapshot of the database at the time of the release.

The current release of the CD-ROM has mostly marriages in Quebec, Acadia, Western French Forts and Louisiana from 1621 to 1770, nearly all linked together when relevant data is available, i.e. if there is a link to parents or children (if the parents were married before 1771).

In some cases, a couple married in 1765 or before has children married after 1770.  If the linkage exists in the whole database, then those children will be displayed with their spouse but the marriage won't be clickable (in other words, you can't see their family page).  Also, you will get statistics about marriages of children born from that couple.  N.B. for the purposes of that project, a "link" is the relation from a child to his/her parents.

The project consists in covering all North America, at least the places settled by the French, and to link all known foreign couples as ancestors or  descendants from people of the target area.  This is a very long term project and new self-content releases will be published yearly.

Content of the current version

In the current version, the links to parents were studied in depth from 1600 to 1765 and are considered as complete as far as there is a marriage record or marriage contract in the target area, and enough information to find that link.

The following table shows the evolution of the number of couples in the complete database since 2004.  A couple may comprise two engaged or married persons, having a notary marriage contract even if not performed as a religious ceremony, or who had a child.  In some cases, a couple with no name was added to link a widower or widow to a previous marriage.

• 	Couples
  Period	April 2004	Nov. 2005	July 2006	January 2007	May 2007	Oct. 2007	Jan 2008	June 2008
  before 1000	365	44	57	58	60	60	60	60
  1000-1099		17	34	34	45	45	45	45
  1100-1199		51	75	75	101	103	103	103
  1200-1299		92	143	143	189	193	193	193
  1300-1399		205	288	288	365	366	366	368
  1400-1499	238	253	365	370	448	449	449	449
  1500-1599	440	509	627	645	684	686	686	687
  1600-1699	11,729	12,094	12,352	12,430	12,463	12,471	12,492	12,526
  1700-1799	86,387	85,097	86,325	86,379	86,492	87,906	87,980	88,283
  1800-1899	10,698	11,199	71,110	71,217	71,396	71,726	71,747	71,867
  1900-1999	20,665	20,806	20,839	20,878	20,942	20,971	20,991	21,043
  2000-2099	11	15	16	17	17	17	17	17
  Total	130,533	130,382	192,231	192,534	193,202	194,993	195,129	195,641

  
  

It seems the figures for 1700-1799 marriages decreased because of a computation mistake made in 2004.

The next table displays the approximate number of parents' links in the complete database.  In this table, the "other cases settled" column means usually this is a foreign record and it can't be found without searchng there or there is no more records overseas (for instances, the parents of an immigrant or a case studied but unsolved).  The "possible studies" are usually noble families with no descendant or Acadians.

Planned Content

For the needs of the full database (i.e. including data not on the CD-ROM), the regions were distributed as follows:

The top priority is to identify the couples living in the French colonies and to link each person to his/her parents.  The integration of foreign data (like sibling living foreign and all known ancestors) is at an early step only.  The ancestors from older generations, siblings and descendant living foreign will be added later.

At this time, the content is mostly based on marriages and couples.  Usually, birth and death records of a whole family are included because it was necessary to rebuild a family link, but families are rebuilt by group of years.

Planned Developments by priority

• Identification of German soldiers involved in the American Revolution and settling in the province of Québec
  
• Linking of Acadian families (letters A-B)
• Rebuilding the families, including the not-married children (letter A)
  
• Identification of the missing colonies' couples if formed before 1766, particularly those found in other publications
• Study of any doubtful information
• Linking burial records of immigrants
• Fully sourcing all the records
• Insertion of all data about immigrant families before the immigration
• Development of the medieval genealogies

Checking

A series of tests is run each time the database is rebuilt, including:

• Links must be valid.  The database and its index are completely rebuilt for each new working version.  Any link's mistake is corrected.  This includes:
• Links to parents;
• Links to previous marriages of widower or widow;
• Links to children;
• Circular links (a link from a couple to itself).
  
• The sequence of marriages of a child.  Once it is found someone was married many times, a link is made to the previous union and a sequence number is added.
  
• Only the year is used for checks.  It is defined as the first series of 4 digit in a date field (between 1700 and 1710 will be read as 1700).  3 digit are read before the year 1000 and the years before 100 are filled with zeroes (year 25 is typed are 0025).  There is no negative year.
  
• Except for special cases, there are 12 years between the marriage of a girl and that of her parents, and 16 years for a boy.  Usually, there should be no more than 80 years between the wedding of someone and the wedding of the parents.  Casual tests can be run with 60 years to find mistakes.
  
• Places' codes are checked.  A place has a name and eventually a code. 
  
• If the code begins with a number, it is checked.  It must have 6 digit (INSEE codes) or the 2 digit of a French departement and a suffix like:
• a) pasvu (place not found but searched for),
  
• b) prov (only the French province is known),
  
• c) rech (place to be searched for),
  
• d) reg (only the area is known),
  
• e) xxx (for later coding). 
  
• Otherwise, the code is rejected.  Those codes are used for indexes of foreigners and migrants.
• Casual check are made to complete the missing codes.
  
• Some names are checked, actually the name's particle of a noble or alike name.  So, de Beauregard is coded as Beauregard (de).  If the name is displayed as the first part of a name (head of family or spouse), the particle is kept; otherwise the particle is moved to the beginning of the name.  Beauregard (de), Jean is changed to Jean de Beauregard, but only as the spouse of a child.  The family name of a child is not displayed.  The particles are: d', de, de la, de l', des and du.  The source of a name data is not removed when displaying a name.
• The families with homonymous children are studied and modified to obtain
• the many marriages of a child or
• homonymous sibling (numbered to distinguish them, so François1, François2, etc.).
  
• The default order of children is the alphabetical order of first names and not the year of birth.  The order is that of birth only if the family was studied more deeply.