New Fichier Origine website launched

The Quebec federation of genealogy societies, the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie, announced its Fichier Origine website has a new look, and it certainly looks cleaner and easier to read than the old site.

Fichier Origine is a collection of records about immigrants from France and elsewhere who settled in New France and Quebec from 1865. (Most of the records are about French immigrants.) It is an excellent website for genealogists who want to learn about their first ancestor who settled in Quebec, including the filles du roi and the soldiers in the Carignan-Salières Regiment.

Using this free site is like looking at individual cards/files (fichiers). There are 6,000 fichiers in the collection.

Fichier Origine is a joint French-Quebec project, created in 1998 when the Fédération française de généalogie and the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie signed an agreement.

Includes English-speaking immigrants
It is important to note that this collection is not limited to French-speaking immigrants, although they are the vast majority. Search Smith and you will discover Smiths from New York and Connecticut. When I entered etats-unis for United States in the country field, I uncovered 91 fichiers, including several for people from Deerfield, Massachusetts. (For some reason, entering the name of an American state turned up zero results.)

How to search
While Fichier Origine is in French only, it is somewhat easy to navigate once you understand what each of the four search fields mean: Surname — Nom de famille; (French) department, state, or country — Département, état ou pays; Original location or parish — Localité ou paroisse d’origine; and Marriage location — Lieu de mariage.

Enter your search terms in one or more of the fields. By default, the program looks for the exact information you enter in a field.

Fortunately, you can look for variations by using the % sign. If you put % at the end of a word, the program will look for variations at the end.

Example: Loire% = Loire, Loiret, Loire-Atlantique

If you put % at the beginning of the word, it will look for varations at the beginning.

Example: %Loire = Loire, Maine-et-Loire, Indre-et-Loire.

Entering %Loire%  will look for all terms containing the word Loire.

The symbol _ can replace a character in your search term.

Names starting with Saint or Sainte must be entered as St or Ste followed by a hyphen.

Example: St-Pierre, St-Malo

Reading a fiche
The image below is an example of what you will find. Reading top to bottom, this is what you can learn about a settler.

Statut — Marital status
Date de naissance — Date of birth
Date de baptême — Date of baptism
Lieu d’origine — Place of origin
Parents — Parents
Première mention au pays — First mention in the country
Occupation à l’arrivée — Occupation upon arrival
Date de mariage — Date of marriage
Lieu de mariage — Location of marriage
Conjoint — Spouse
Décès ou inhumation — Death or burial
Remarques — Remarks (In the case of Louis Houde, the card says that he was a mason. A commemorative plaque was installed on Louis Houde street in Manou, Perche, France on June 25, 1994)
Indentification
Chercheur(s) — Researcher(s) who compiled the info
Référence — Reference (This line indicates the source of the info. See Références to learn more.)
Date de modification — Date of revision

Start your search on Fichier Origine here.

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