Travel by Ancestry -- to Reliable Sources for French and Acadian Genealogy Research

The Official Flag of France

The Official Flag of Acadia

To any family researcher who shouts, or has ever shouted, "I JUST FOUND [fill in the blank ancestor]" just when you thought you would NEVER FIND [fill in the blank ancestor] by reading through EVERY PAGE of a civil or parish register, I dedicate the following post:

I had the occasion to recommend a couple of reliable sources on Wikitree, which I cited while adding family profiles to that system.  Happily, the feedback received in response to my recommendations, appeared to be very positive.

As there is no reason why I should not share these same sources with everyone, I am publishing my recommendations along with the links to Wikitree Reliable Sources lists where they have been posted.

The sources I've recommended in this post have original scanned and digitized records, and they add to the numerous scanned and digitized census reports, civil and church registers, and other records inventories made available to us so graciously by the Canadian and Nova Scotia archives, the State of Louisiana, the Diocese of Baton Rouge, and other State organizations. 

I can't tell you how very helpful these sources are in researching and verifying the marriage, births, and deaths of our French and Acadian ancestors and how exciting it is when the name of a beloved ancestor, or two, or three, born hundreds of years ago, "pop out" (and they do have a way of "popping out") while reading through the records, in their original form. 

The birth notice for ancestor Charles Gaschet de Lisle, and one for the marriage of his parents, did "pop out" (finally!) in the Les Archives nationales d'outre-mer after paging through hundreds of records.  I felt elated, like I struck gold, when I found their names, and all of the details of their birth and marriage events as recorded in French, in the pages of antique civil registers.   That "aha" feeling was every bit worth the time it took to read through every page!

Family records appear, as recorded in the original French language, in the civil registers of Saint-Pierre, Martinique as cited below (as an aside, I find I have autosomal DNA matches in My Heritage whose families are also from Saint-Pierre, Martinique -- but to find out how we relate, exactly, is research for another day):

• Recommend: Les Archives nationales d'outre-mer http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/anom/en/index.html and particularly the IREL Digitised Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths. The scope of the database is as follows: "Territories which were at one time or another part of the French colonial empires from the XVIIth Century" may be searched by year and community. See: http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/anom/en/Recherches/IREL.html You may use this system to search for the year of an event (such as a birth, a marriage, death or other civil action), and the territory where the event occurred, and then read through resulting scanned images of records as originally written in the French language (these are not transcribed). My experience was that it was surprisingly easy to search for, locate, read through the scanned image records and verify with high confidence several family genealogies using the search and reading tools provided by this system. I plan to reference it again.
• Léa Haupaix, a manager of the Wikitree France Project Reliable Sources page, wrote in a public response to my recommendation, "Thank you M, they are listed under the "archives départementales" for parish records and they are the very first source we recommend!"  So, good news all around, and use that source with confidence!  Here's where you may find the listing for the "archives départementales" and other sources :  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:France_Project_Reliable_Sources

Moving on to the Acadians.  I have added my mtDNA-proven matrilineal line, and other related ancestors, starting with me (Wikitree profile M. Asselia Rundquist) and tracing all the way back, from mother to mother, to ancestor Anne Marie Mi'kmaq in Wikitree, and have of course, included my ancestors who were exiled to the State of Maryland.  While editing a profile of Angelique David, one of my direct ancestors in my matrilineal line, I referenced the AcadiansWereHere.org website where we have a county map and scanned images of the 1763 census taken in Colonial Maryland.

• Recommend: the Acadians Were Here website (https://acadianswerehere.org) and most specifically a map on the Home Page that shows where Acadian exiles were enumerated in census lists taken in Colonial Maryland in 1763 (which are also on the site).  I happily received the following response from a Wikitree Acadians Project manager after giving the site as a reference:
  
• Gisèle Cormier an Acadian Project leader on Wikitree, replied in a public comment, "Thank you for your edits and for the link to the excellent "Acadians Were Here" website. It has been added to the Acadians Reliable Sources page."  That was great news, and I am very pleased that the site was added to this page!

I invite you to research both of these recommended sources with confidence, enjoy using the reliable sources pages referenced in the post, and have a great time researching ancestry!