The Monastère des Augustines in Quebec City launched in July a web portal that provides public access to its archives. The archival collection dates back to the beginning of New France.
A total of 32,000 pages of documents from the almost 400-year-old Augustinian monastery’s archives are already on the portal with additional photos and documents to be digitized.
The monastery’s history goes back to August 1, 1639 when three nuns from the Augustinian Order in France arrived in Quebec. They eventually established North America’s first hospital north of Mexico to care for the Indigenous population and colonists. The religious community continued to operate the hospital until 1962. In all, the sisters founded 12 hospitals that today are part of Quebec’s public healthcare system.
The Augustinian archives tell the story of a religious community of healing sisters, the history of medicine and medications from the early days of the French colony, social development, and the local histories of several Quebec City neighbourhoods. They also shed new light on the history of Quebec art and architecture from New France to the present.
Archives, old books, and some 40,000 artifacts from the 12 monastery/hospitals are stored at the monastery’s museum and are being added to the portal. Among the artifacts are medical and pharmaceutical instruments, furniture, works of art, liturgical ornaments, and everyday objects.
A group of orphans attend a weaving class at the Monastery of the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Vallier de Chicoutimi’s school. June 1915. Source: Monastère des Augustines Archives, Quebec City, Quebec.
Documents being digitized include association agreements, governing records, annals of the religious community’s history, sisters’ letters, records of admissions into the monastery, and patients’ records.
The creation of the web portal was made possible with a $200,000 donation from Québecor, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications, entertainment, news media and culture companies.
Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Québecor, said, “As a business that is deeply attached to its Québec roots, we have a duty to preserve the memory of all that the Augustinian sisters accomplished for our society. When we look at their history, we cannot help but be impressed by their courage and humanity. This is a magnificent project that will share their legacy with the public and with future generations.”
In 2017, the Monastère des Augustines received a $57,990 grant from Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program to digitize photographs.
Abandoned children
The Augustinian sisters not only took care of the sick at the hospital, they also took in about 1,400 abandoned children from about 1800 to 1850.
By the end of this year, the monastery’s archival centre intends to digitize the notes that were left with some of these children. Since the sisters did not operate an orphanage, the children were given to families as quickly as possible.
French-only portal
While much of the French-only portal is about the history of the Augustinians, it also contains records and images of Quebec society.
Researchers who do not understand French can enter the home page URL in Google Translate to translate the portal into English, but you will have to translate page by page. An easy way to translate the entire portal into English is to upload the free Google Chrome to use as a browser. You can easily translate by right clicking on your mouse. You can continue to use your regular browser for everyday use and save Chrome for when you want to translate a website or online article into English. Google Translate and Google Chrome cannot, however, translate the digitized images of the documents written in French.
One of the digitized documents is the official copy of a letter, given by Louis XIII, about the founding of the Hôtel-Dieu-de-Québec, stating that the Institute of New France will have to follow the same rules as those governing the House of Dieppe. The letter indicates the hospital will aim to help Indigenous people convert to Christianity and help them converse in French.
Limited genealogical information
A search of surnames is unlikely to uncover much genealogical information, but it is worth a try.
Descendants of Louis Tremblay, a farmer, may be interested in one particular document, dated January 1758, that is a request from the nuns to seize grain and cattle from Monsieur Tremblay, who refused to pay his annual rent to the nuns of the Mission de la Sainte-Famille.
The Monastère des Augustines’ pedestrian entrance at 32 rue Charlevoix, Quebec City, Quebec. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Museum
The Monastère des Augustines occupies the historic wings of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec monastery where they operate a museum and gives tours. They also have a boutique and restaurant and provide accommodations.
Photos taken at the launch of the web portal were published in the Journal de Québec. If interested in reading the text, enter the URL of the article into Google Translate to translate into English.
Thanks to Lori F. for telling me about the abandoned children and the notes that were left with some of them.
I want to investigate the abandoned children but the site is impossible to search and navigation is difficult. Google doesn’t translate if you leave the page you’re on and go to a different page so it’s constant translating every new page.
If you want to read the site in English, upload the free Google Chrome to use as your browser. When you right-click to change to English, the entire website remains in English. (You can continue to use your regular browser for everyday use, but keep Chrome for when you browse websites and online articles in French or another language.)
The best way to look at the website in French is to browse the Découvrir section. Click on the section in the right margin, such as Finances, Éducation, Alimentation. Once in one of those sections, scroll down a bit to Consultez in the light blue box to look at photos and documents.
As for the abandoned children, to my knowledge there is nothing yet on the website. They intend to digitize documents by the end of this year.
abandoned children is a new lead on my brick wall. I will try to remember to look for that early next year. I’ll forward this blog post to my research partners and surely one of us will remember.
When you find out, please let me know.
Meanwhile, let’s hope other religious communities are inspired to find a way to digitize their records, even if they are not a wealth of genealogical info. What they do shed light on is the history and social history of a region. A seminary in Old Montreal has a tremendous amount of historic treasures.