Genealogists have been conducting research in the Parchemin database for years. It’s a tool that helps all kinds of researchers find notarial records of early Quebec, from the earliest days of France’s colonization of North America in the early 1600s until the end of 1801.
The Parchemin database is an index of more than 559,168 notarial records that were created by 275 notaries.
About a week ago, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) made remote access to the Parchemin database free to all BAnQ cardholders. Before that, you had to visit one of the institutions which subscribes to Parchemin to use it. The pandemic ended all in-person visits for the time being.
Learn more about Parchemin in yesterday’s blog post, One of Quebec genealogists’ favourite databases is now available for free from home… but you must be a resident of the province.
Accessing the Parchemin database
There are several ways on the BAnQ website to find Parchemin, such as entering parchemin in the search box on the home page or clicking on BAnQ Numérique (Digital BAnQ), selecting Ressources, followed by clicking on Généalogie.
Step 1
The quickest way to find Parchemin is to select Catalogue in the right margin on the BAnQ’s home page. (To see BAnQ’s home page in English, click on English in the top-right corner.)
Step 2
On the next screen, Search the catalogue, enter parchemin. Click on the magnifying glass to activate your search.
Step 3
In the results for parchemin, the Parchemin database will likely appear at the top of the results. (See image below.)
In the Parchemin box, click on the Media link — Cliquez ici pour accéder à la base de données (Click here to access the database). The next two screens will be in French until you reach the website, which is bilingual and where Parchemin is located.
Step 4
After clicking for access to the database, enter your eight-digit BAnQ client number and password (Mot de passe) and click on Connexion. If you don’t have a BAnQ card and are a Quebec resident, you may apply here.
Step 5
On the next screen, you will see the usage conditions (Conditions d’utilisation). Read the conditions and/or click on J’accepte (I accept).
Step 6
Once you click on J’accepte, you will be taken to the Parchemin database on the Archiv-Histo website. Click on EN in the top-right corner of the website for English. Then select Research and begin searching the database.
Searching on Parchemin
Begin your research by entering an ancestor’s surname or enter their first and last name in the search box. If desired, enter a date range.
Women are almost always identified by their birth names in Quebec notarial records, and if married, their name is often followed by “wife of.”
Be patient. The search engine must search through more than half-a-million documents, so it can take a few minutes to produce your results.
Tip — Search for terms, countries and towns
You can also search for words or terms, such as voyageur, seigneur, or soldat (soldier).
Are there any references to Irish or the United States? Enter irlandais or etats-unis in the search box to find out.
What about Detroit? Search for detroit.
Did your ancestor come from Perche, France? Enter perche to see if anyone else’s name pops up.
Reading the document excerpts and translating into English
Researchers can easily navigate Parchemin in English. Note, however, that the description of the notarial document will be written in the language of the original document, and it will usually be French.
To read the text on the web pages in English, copy the URL of the page and paste it in Google Translate.
An even easier way to translate the web pages into English is to use Google Chrome as your web browser, which you can download for free. (You can still continue to use your regular browser for visiting other sites.)
With Google Chrome, hover your mouse over the page and right-click to make a drop-down menu appear. Scroll down to Translate to English. Like magic, the page appears in English. (Google Chrome doesn’t translate PDF documents.)
Below are some of the results for Madeleine Boucher.
The document excerpts in Parchemin can also be translated into English, using Google Translate or with the Chrome browser and right-clicking. The translation won’t be perfect, but it will be more than adequate to understand.
If a notarial document excerpt interests you, click on Download to see it.
Deciphering Parchemin documents
Below is an image of a sample excerpt found in Parchemin. It provides the date of the notarial document, notary’s name, how long he was in business, and the location where he worked.
To read the excerpt in English, you need to type the text into Google Translate.
Tip — Boolean operators
Parchemin has useful tips in the FAQ on how to improve your search with booleans. The tips, however, are only available in French.
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- Use the ampersand, &, to search for two terms, such as lapointe & poliquin or lapointe & veuve.
- Use quotation marks when searching for a phrase.
- Use an asterisk as a wildcard to complete a name and find all spellings, such as Arsen*.
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Finding the original notarial document
With the notary’s name and date, you can look for an image of the original document on FamilySearch. In the FamilySearch catalogue (under the Search tab), select Author and enter the notary’s last name. (You’ll need a free account to search.) If the name is there, you’ll be able to look at the microfilmed images by date. Patricia Greber wrote a great blog post, 4 Steps For Finding Quebec Notary Records Online, on how to find the records on FamilySearch.
If you find the notary record, it may look something like this one.
Tip — Missing images
Is the record you want missing on the microfilm? Look at a few images before and after the date you need. The record you need could have been misfiled. The “missing” images can also be found in some cases at the end of the film. Sometimes the people making the microfilm discovered out-of-order documents and put them at the end.
Order from BAnQ
If the notary record is not available on FamilySearch or Ancestry, contact BAnQ to order a digital copy, which is about 40 cents per page. Despite the pandemic, BAnQ’s response time has been good — in English and French.
Bonne chance !
