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Episode #71-March 1, 2018

In today’s episode, we look at some lesser known resources with often unique ancestral findings. These include local municipal archives, historical or genealogical societies, and university collections. And best of all, you can access them from home.

We also send out thanks to the first Maple Stars and Stripes supporters, we continue our search for the best translation option, and we end with our calendar of French-Canadian events.

Podcast support

Merci beaucoup to Kelly from Massachusetts, Margie from Washington, and Camille from Ohio for their very generous support of the podcast.

Several have asked how the money would be used? The answer is: It depends on the type of donation.

• One-time donations will go toward fixed-price projects like upgrading the website or upgrading audio equipment.
  Monthly donations (a commitment to $1, $2, or $5 a month) will go towards subscription services like maintaining an app or subscribing to a cloud-based recording program.

Thanks, again, for your support!

Quebec Province’s Local Archives

We will explore the following local resources

• Historical societies
  Genealogical societies
  Municipal archives
  University collections

Search engines

For those of us in the states, we’re used to searching online by going first to Google.com. But for these searches, you’ll also want to try Google.ca.

Paste your French results into Google Translate.

Search terms

Google.com

[town name] quebec online records
[town name] quebec municipal archives
[town name] quebec historical society
[town name] quebec genealogical society

Google.ca

[town name] quebec enregistrements en ligne
[town name] quebec archives municipales
[town name] quebec société historique [or] histoire
[town name] quebec société généalogique

Examples

Association des Familles Thériault d’Amérique of Saint Liguori

A search of historical societies in my great-grandfather’s home town of Saint Liguori brought up a website for the Association des Familles Thériault d’Amérique. After the deportation, many Acadian families ended up in Saint Liguori and the surrounding area. So it made sense that this association would dedicate a memorial to their Thériault ancestors who settled there.

Histoire tab: stories and information of Thériaults
Généalogie tab: family genealogies for several of the Thériaults that inhabited St. Liguori
Nos activités tab: pictures of celebrations and the monuments that were erected in honor of ancestral Thériaults
Références tab: A list of genealogical and historical references

Centre d’Histoire de Saint-Hyacinthe

Virtual Expositions (Expositions virtuelles)

Major Fires of Saint-Hyacinthe (Les incendies majeurs de Saint-Hyacinthe)

Sainte-Hyacinthe suffered three major fires in the nineteenth century, including two exactly two months apart. There were also seven major twentieth-century fires as well which would have definitely affected our ancestors’ lives. You can read details of the fires and view photos.

Women’s portraits (Portraits de femmes)

Hover over each photo to see a description. There are portraits of women from many families, including Fournier, Séguin, Michaud, Girouard, Poulin, and Choquette.

Généalogie tab

Includes family stories, information about the Center’s genealogy collection, and publications for sale

Laval University

Inventaire des lieux de mémoire de la Nouvelle-France (Inventory of Memorable Places of New France)

Includes an alphabetical list of many colonists with biographical information. The arrow at the end of the line takes you to images associated with that person.

McGill University

Includes McGill University yearbooks from 1898-2000.

Archives of Montreal

Montréal fire insurance maps

• Cadastral maps beginning in 1870
  Fire insurance plans beginning in 1879
  Village annexation map
  Hundreds of maps of the Montréal area from Samuel Champlain’s drawing of the village of Oneida in 1615 throughout its history up to 1983
  1927 highway and tourist map of the province of Québec
  Photos from the various regions in Québec province, including a wonderful family portrait of the Adjutor de Montigny family from Saint-Pierre on the Île d’Orléans showing him, his wife Éva Tailleur, and their 12 children taken around 1926

Repository list

Check out Joseph Gagne’s Electronic New France website for leads. Explore the tabs along the top.

Announcements

OCR and Translation software

Mike tried out his new book scanner and thinks it shows great promise. Below is a paragraph from Shawinigan: Cent ans d’histoire by Jacques Lacoursière which he scanned with the book scanner. It is followed by the translated paragraph after he uploaded the scan to onlinedoctranslator.com and received this translated document.

Think about getting together with several people, perhaps a library fundraiser, and purchasing one of these book scanners which can then be shared by all those who donated. Stay tuned for copyright clarification in a future episode.

Maple Stars and Stripes listener Christine wrote in to the Facebook group and suggested another translation tool called DeepL Translator which has had favorable initial reviews. She wrote:

Hello Sandra and MSS listeners! I’ve just finished listening to episode 70. At the end, you mention that you are looking for a translation tool. I can’t recommend any based on experience as I have the chance to work with professional (human) translators, but I wanted to let you know that there is much buzz at the moment about a free tool called DeepL Translator: https://www.deepl.com/translator. According to this review, DeepL performs better than Google translate. I wonder how well it would perform with genealogy texts…

As for OCR tools, I work with ABBYY Fine Reader, and it works really well with French.

Christine

DeepL Translator seems to translate smaller chunks of text more naturally. However, you cannot paste in a URL to get a translated web page. You also can’t upload an entire document for translation as you can in Google Translate. Perhaps in the future.

Here is a passage from Histoire de la paroisse de l’Ange-Gardien, p. 14. First is the passage in original French. Second is Google’s translation followed by DeepL Translator’s translation.

French-Canadian News

The Franco-American Centre

March 7, 9:15 am- a special proclamation recognizing the ongoing importance of French in New Hampshire with New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu; free and open to the public

The French Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan

March 10, 11 AM, at the Mount Clemens Public Library- Rough Sketch of the King’s Domain: Interpreting a Previously Unknown Plan of Detroit, 1790 with Brian Dunnigan

The Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society

March 3- Using the Tools at AncestryDNA with Ed McGuire
March 17- Using Facebook for Genealogy Research with Maureen O’Brien
March 24- Tips for Scaling Brick Walls with a multi-researcher panel

Classes run from 10:30 AM until noon and are held at the Vermont Genealogy Library in Colchester, Vermont.

The French-Canadian Heritage Society of California

March 25, 10 AM to 4 PM at the Southern California Genealogical Society and Family Research Library in Burbank, CA- Spring meeting. See website for details when they become available.

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