Genealogy of the French in North America

Convention (families and individuals)

This CD-ROM contains information presented as family sheets with the following format.  The sheets are not sorted in alphabetical order.

• Typical family sheet
• Names of persons

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Typical family sheet

The head of this family is Philippe AMIOT.  The names of his parents are unknown, which is indicated like this:   " (..) ".

His spouse is Anne CONVENT.  She is the daughter of Guillaume CONVENT and Antoinette LONGUEVAL.  If you click on the name of that couple, you will see the family sheet of that family.  The family name of the father is not repeated when it is the same as the child's.

If the mouse is over the link to parents, after some seconds, the number of generations is displayed so that you know if the husband or wife has the deepest ancestry.  This is helpfull when browsing royal genealogies.  The same feature is available for children.

This family was formed in about 1625 in the diocese of Soisson, in France.  The exact place of the marriage is unknown as is the date.  Actually, in some cases, no marriage occured.  Generally, when there is no accurate date, the place is presumed, often because some immigrant claimed he was from that place after his/her departure or it is presumed the family lived at the same place previously.

The referenceshelp to identify accurately the source of the information.  They include usually a short code for the work, the volume number and the page number, as well as the name of the searcher who found the foreign record or the parents, etc.  The reference(s) for the birth or death record follow the individu's data while the couple's reference(s) are under the parents lines, both in a yellow box. The French original text follows in italics.   Those references are shown only on the CD-ROM version and not on the web site version.  There is a separate page with a list of all sources and their codes and a short bibliography is displayed under the family entry if you want to know immediately the works referred to.  The notes, shown with a yellow background, begins with "Couple:" if the couple is concerned, "Him" if it is about the husband and "Her" if it concerns the wife.

Among the married childen in that family (or children who had themselves at least one child), we have Charles and Mathieu.

Charles was married in Quebec on the May 2nd, 1660 to Marie Geneviève de CHAVIGNY.  If you click on the name of his spouse, you will get the family sheet of Charles and Marie Geneviève.

I studied this family more closely.  This is the reason why a never married child is shown with the baptism and burial places and dates of each child and why the children are sorted by date of birth and not alphabetical order.

Under the family's description, the bibliography allows identifying the full name of the quoted documents and repeats the name of searchers.  In the Internet version, this bibliography replaces the sources while on the CD-ROM, the sources are complete.

Under each family sheet, a chart gives some statistics about the number of marriages of ancestors and descendants.  Actually, it is the number of couples of ancestors or descendants in the database.  The counting is not synchronized with the data and can sometimes be inaccurate (usually the Internet version).  It is based on the whole dataset and not limited to what is on the web site or on the CD-ROM.  This chart helps to figure if a couple had many descendants, but this is computed only from a rather small set of data and not from the whole population.  The figures are not limited to the name holders and take into account the descendents by women.  Thus, a couple may have only daughters (the family name vanished) but descendants for ten generations.

The more common codes (i.e. "n" for born) were replaced by the whole word.  Most modifiers of date are translated when generating the English version.  The rules are shown in the next table.

Here is another typical sheet:

In this case, the accurate place and date of marriage of the couple is known: November 22nd in Quebec.  The marriage contract is also known.

The child named Étienne was married twice.  First to Jeanne DEROME, then to Marie Angélique HALLÉ.  Those two couples are on separate family sheets.

Names of persons

In this section, the male form is used for simplification.  Most cases would be the same for women too.

How the name is displayed depends on where that name appears.

• As the father or mother of a family, we have the family name then the given name.
• As the father of the head of family or his spouse, only the given name is displayed if the family name is the same as that of the child; otherwise, we see both names.  For instances, we may have: AMIOT de et dit VILLENEUVE, Mathieu (Philippe AMIOT & Anne CONVENT), which means that Philippe AMIOT was not using VILLENEUVE as second family name (or dit name).
• For the mother of the head of family or his spouse, the given name and the family name are displayed.
• For a child, only the first name is shown.
• For the spouse of a child (or child-in-law), the given name and the family name appear on the screen.
• If the given or family name is unknown, two dots are shown "..".

In some cases, two or even three family names can be used.  [To know more about family names.]  The following patterns are used depending on the case, and the English equivalent is shown after the example.  To avoid mistranslations, the original pattern is kept in the English version but some words were translated.

• AMIOT de VILLENEUVE [AMIOT of or from VILLENEUVE]: this pattern is for a standard "land name" (i.e. the said AMIOT had a land called VILLENEUVE, even if in many cases, that land is fictive).  In some cases, it is a noble or a bourgeois title (aristocrat), while often it is meaningless, or the place of origin, not a land owned. 
  
• AMIOT dit VILLENEUVE [AMIOT called or a.k.a. VILLENEUVE] : this pattern is for a standard "dit name" (i.e. that person could be named in a record either AMIOT, VILLENEUVE, AMIOT dit VILLENEUVE or even VILLENEUVE dit AMIOT).  It seems this pattern was made popular by the Carignan's Regiment and many Québec families have dit names.  To ease searches, the AMIOT dit VILLENEUVE are indexed as AMIOT and VILLENEUVE (i.e. twice in the alphabetical index).  These double names or dit names usually distinguish two homonymous families in a given area.
• JARRET dit BEAUREGARD et VINCENT [JARRET called BEAUREGARD and VINCENT] : for some reasons, there are families using three family names, even four.  This pattern is used when this occurs for one person.  In the original records, you may not see the names written that way (anyway, many names are written by the sound) but standardizing names makes the search easier.  It is possible that person is named as follows in the original records: JARRET, BEAUREGARD, VINCENT, JARRET dit BEAUREGARD, VINCENT dit JARRET, BEAUREGARD dit VINCENT or even JARRET dit BEAUREGARD et VINCENT or JARRET dit BEAUREGARD dit VINCENT.  Moreover, the sequence can be the opposite.  In the index, this entry would be at BEAUREGARD, VINCENT and JARRET.
• AMIOT de et dit VILLENEUVE [AMIOT from and called VILLENEUVE] : in a few cases, someone was named with both the "DE" and "DIT" element (i.e. with the land name and the dit name) in two or more documents.
• BROSSEAU puis BROUSSEAU [BROSSEAU then BROUSSEAU] : this pattern means that we have an individual who changed his family name during his life.  Actually, it is possible that this person had a different name in each record but usually, "puis" is used when a major source indicates a change or when the person is moving to a remote place.  This pattern is not common, however, and the next one is more frequent..
• BROSSEAU ou BROUSSEAU [BROSSEAU or BROUSSEAU] : either two spellings are commonly used (often by a migrant) or there is not enough data to standardize a name.  This pattern is useful in the Internet version to attract foreign searchers by displaying the name as used abroad.
  
• de FRANCE [of FRANCE] : kings and other lords may have no family name at all.  For this reason, their home land can be used to name them.
• SEIGNEUR and other titles.  The titles were not translated so you can see something like André JARRET, sieur de BEAUREGARD.  This was requested by some English-speaking users. 
  

The given names use similar patterns with following particularities:

• Marie puis Catherine [Marie then Catherine] : that person was first known as Marie, and later as Catherine.  There are many reasons for this name change.  In some cases, it seems to be after a second marriage, or after the death of parents (i.e. if the child was using a nickname his/her parents and just didn't know the official one).  Usually, you can guess the reason but it is not possible to prove it.
  
• Marie b : Abigail [Marie baptized : Abigail] : in some cases, there are enough hints to say that someone is baptized under one given name while living later with another name.  In this case, the child was baptized as Abigail and known later as Marie.  A similar pattern is: Marie n : Abigail usually because this is a protestant child (like many New England captives) later baptized as a catholic with another given name.  Avoid the systematic mistake of Jetté who presumed many times the name of a child was changed while this only meant the baptism couldn't be found.  That b: or n: pattern will probably be replaced later by the "puis" pattern.
  

Some major sources have conflicts in the contents.  For example, one person could use 2 or 3 names during his life.  Two genealogists can read the same record differently or one can misread the document.  This is why I tried to use the source closest to the document when available and not a third hand source.  To illustrate the variations between sources of similar credibility, there is a lowercase code near the data itself.  For example:

• Joseph, born about 1633 (parents), 1625 (m), 1630 (rec 1666), 1632 (rec 1667), 1625 (sép).  This means that according to the marriage of Joseph, the 1666 and 1667 censuses and his burial, Joseph was born about 1625, 1630, 1632 or 1625.  But his parents were married in 1633.  If we suppose a legitimate birth, he was born in 1633 or short thereafter.
• Joseph (nof) ou Jean (dncf).  This means that a person, usually the father or mother of an immigrant, was called Joseph in the source nof (ou NOF) and Jean in the source DNCF.