The Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (Quebec Federation of Genealogy Societies) last week announced that its Fichier Origine website has a new look and improved technology.
Fichier Origine is a collection of records about the earliest immigrants from France and elsewhere who settled in New France/Quebec from 1621 to 1865. Most of the records are about French settlers. It is a good website for genealogists who want to learn about their first ancestor who settled in Quebec, including 285 filles du roi and 130 soldiers in the Carignan-Salières Regiment.
This free website includes the names of all individuals, married, single, and religious, whose birth or baptism certificate has been traced to their country of origin.
Using this site is like looking at individual cards/files (fichiers). There are 6,659 fichiers in the collection.
On the new site, it is still possible to search by a settler’s name, and the results are displayed in alphabetical order.
A new Collaborer (Collaborate) feature is also available to users. Using an online form, users can now suggest corrections to an existing record or submit a new record for a settler not yet listed.
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. Écosse for Scotland produced the names of 17 men, including James McGill, founder of McGill University, who came to Quebec prior to 1800.
How to search
While Fichier Origine is in French only, it is somewhat easy to navigate once you understand what four of the 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.
To translate the website into English, you can right-click on a PC or Control-click on a Mac.
Click on Répertoire in the menu across the top of the home page to begin your search.
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. Next, click on Rechercher (Search).
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
Here 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 my husband’s ancestor, Louis Houde, the card says that he was a mason and that 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.)
Date de modification — Date of revision
In its announcement about the new look, the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie said the next step is to produce a guide.
