FamilySearch adds Quebec Index to Civil Copy of Church Records, 1642-1902

FamilySearch’s new Quebec, Index to Civil Copy of Church Records, 1642-1902 containes 1,300,530 browsable images to help you find ancestors’ baptisms, marriages, and burial records — Catholic and Protestant.

The title of the collection is a bit misleading. The index is for a limited number of counties, not the entire province.

The Catholic index covers Île-de-Montréal, Lapraire, Chambly, and Vaudreuil-Soulanges counties; the Non-Catholic index covers Ile-de-Montréal, Lapraire, Chambly, and Vaudreuil-Soulanges counties, the Judicial District of Beauharnois, and the Judicial District of Bedford; and the Catholic and Non-Catholic index covers the Judicial District of Saint-François.

As for the period covered, 1642-1902, I found a great-aunt’s baptism that took place in 1918, perhaps in the index because she was 23 years old at the time.

Do not feel overwhelmed at the prospect of browsing page after page. The indexes are in alphabetical order and in short order, you can narrow down your search to a couple of pages. The index also allows you to easily peruse the list for variations of the last name you are researching.

I subscribe to Ancestry where I have access to the Drouin Collection of Quebec church records, but I find the FamilySearch index gives me another opportunity to look for an elusive ancestor.

Here’s the link.