The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) and the Société pour la Sauvegarde du Patrimoine de Pointe-Claire (SSPPC — Society for the Preservation of the Heritage of Pointe-Claire) have partnered together to make available online transcriptions of about 1,900 notarial actes — documents — about the province’s windmills and watermills.
The SSPPC is a heritage organization in the city of Pointe-Claire in the western part of the island of Montreal. The city’s symbol is a 16th-century windmill that still stands on the water’s edge.
The project to transcribe notarial actes was launched in 2005 after a feasibility study on the restoration of the Pointe-Claire windmill, built in 1709-1710, revealed that the expertise on how this type of French-style mill was built in New France had disappeared.
As part of the project, the SSPPC researched how mills were built and visited the 17 remaining windmills in Quebec. Some members of the heritage society also researched windmills in France, visiting 70 of them, and met with about 50 French specialists, including millers, owners, and builders.
The windmill in Pointe-Claire, Quebec is the oldest on the island of Montreal and one of 18 remaining windmills in the province. It was built in the early 1700s during the time of New France. Photo: Gilles Y. Hamel. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The research was conducted with the help of the BAnQ’s Montreal Archives Centre, the Archives Department of Cultural Universe of Saint Sulpice, and the Association des Moulins du Québec (Association of Quebec Mills).
The transcribed notarial actes are held by the BAnQ’s Montreal Archives Centre in the Parchemin database of notarial records. Some also come from the archives of various historical societies and the Sulpician archives at the Univers culturel de Saint-Sulpice, which is located next to the Notre-Dame Basilica in Old Montreal.
The notarial actes were transcribed by paleographer Jules Guérard, who earlier this month received the Medal of Recognition 2018 at the annual general meeting of the Quebec Federation of Genealogy Societies (Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie), in recognition of his exceptional work as a genealogist and his contribution to the development of genealogy, notably through the transcription of the notarial actes on Quebec mills.
Starting in 2006, Mr. Guérard volunteered his time to transcribe the actes on Quebec mills, as well as almost 4,000 actes related specifically to Pointe-Claire that are available on the SSPPC website.
The transcribed notarial actes about the mills can be accessed in an 8,056-page PDF document through BAnQ.
I was just reading today’s blog post. Is there any way to get the transcriptions translated to English.
I am not aware of any plans to translate the notarial documents. If there is a particular document you would like translated, you could ask someone on the Genealogy Translations group — https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogytranslation/ — or similar groups to help you.