Genealogy gem — Quebec Official Gazette — marks 150th anniversary, and here’s how to use it

The Quebec Official Gazette was first published in 1869. Photo: Quebec National Assembly Library.

An often overlooked genealogy gem on the Quebec Archives website is the Quebec Official Gazette — Gazette officielle du Québec. This is the official newspaper of the provincial government where you will find legal notices, such as laws, regulations, insolvencies – bankruptcies — property auctions, marriage separations, and decrees.

Yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of when the Quebec Official Gazette was first published on January 16, 1869.

This bilingual, French-English government publication is available to search online, from 1869 to 1995, on the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) website. Every family historian researching their Quebec ancestors during this period should include it in their genealogy toolbox.

From 1869 to 1977, each issue was published in French and English, with both languages appearing side by side on each page. Since January 1978, however, the Quebec Official Gazette has been published in French only.

Researching in six steps
Looking for ancestors’ names in the Quebec Official Gazette online collection on the  BAnQ website is relatively easy, once you know the few steps required to navigate through a bit of the French terminology.

1. To get started, click on the link, Pour les éditions publiées entre 1869 et 1995, on the BAnQ website, as illustrated.

2. Enter a surname or full name in the Search box in the top right corner. Hit Enter on your keyboard or the magnifying glass next to the Search box.

In the case of James Young as illustrated, the search engine captured every James and every Young in each issue of the Gazette, producing more than 600 results.

To limit the results to only James Young, where the two names appear side by side, click on the Plus Sign next to Recherche de proximité (Proximity search) in the right margin.

When searching for women, enter their maiden name.

After clicking on the Plus Sign next to Recherche de proximité, a box with oui (yes) will appear. Click on the box to select oui.

Now the search engine will only find pages where James and Young are together. This narrows down the results to 60 issues of the Gazette. (See illustration below.)

3. To narrow down the results by date, click on the Plus Sign next to Date in the right margin. There, you can select the years that are relevant to your research. (The image on the right in the illustration below shows what appears when you click on the Plus Sign. For example, the keywords appear seven times in 1871.)

4.  You may notice that the search results tend to show only the French text. Don’t panic.

When you click on the title or thumbnail image, the relevant Gazette page will appear, with your search terms highlighted. The French text is in the left column, and the English is in the right column.

If the notice is not complete, click on the arrow for the next page. This arrow can be found in the rust-coloured bar to the top left of the notice.

5. Sometimes, clicking on the title or thumbnail won’t take you to the exact search terms. Instead, it will highlight every James and every Young, and scrolling through all the pages may be tedious.

To more easily find your exact search terms within a particular issue of the Gazette, search within the issue by clicking on the magnifying glass to the top left of the document, just below the rust-coloured line. Doing so will reveal a Rechercher (Search) box. Here, you can search for the name by clicking on the left and right arrows. (See illustration below.)

You can also enter a different keyword if it will help narrow down the results.

6. You can share the document on Facebook, Twitter or email (Courriel) by clicking on the Partager (Share) icon in the right margin, next to the image of the page of the Gazette.

You can also download the document by selecting the Download icon to the right of the Printer icon, located above the margin where the Partager icon appears. (The Download icon — Télécharger — looks like a piece of paper with a black arrow on it.)

Enticement
To further entice you, the image below is part of an 1880 notice. It goes on to describe the lots of land and where they were located.