Maple Stars and Stripes: Your French-Canadian Genealogy Podcast

If you can’t read French, why pick up a French book even if there’s information inside about your ancestor? Right? How frustrating, but what can you do about it? What if I told you there was something you could do, and it wasn’t that hard? Today’s episode looks at French language books available on Ancestry.com. […]

Our ancestors are more than names, dates, and places. They have personal stories. Those stories were influenced by what was going on around them at local, regional, national, and world levels. Ancestry’s book collection includes those with information about Quebec Province. There are books about the history of various regions, information about the organizations our […]

In episode 96, we looked at other less used databases at Ancestry.com. Today we look at a portion of their book collection. Directories and gazetteers are great resources for glimpses of the daily lives of the residents. Where did they shop? Who was the girl next door? Which churches were nearby? Some books tell us […]

When you began researching your French-Canadian ancestry, it probably wasn’t long before someone pointed you to the Drouin collections: either the Blue Drouin, the Red Drouin, or the Little Drouin, the microfilmed or digitized versions, the online Lafrance database, or the many other records found in the Drouin Collection. With your first subscription to Ancestry.com, […]

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” couldn’t be truer than when we see our ancestor’s face for the first time. We can’t help but look for a resemblance to the features looking back at us. Who in the family has those eyes, that nose? But finding ancestral photos is not always easy. […]

Many genealogists go straight to online trees when they encounter a new surname in the family tree. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s part of the initial literature search we should all do. We need to see if someone else has already researched that particular line before we spend hours reinventing the wheel. It’s what […]

Do you have a voyageur in your ancestry? A coureur de bois? How about an engagé? Huh? So what’s the difference? Suzanne Sommerville will help you to distinguish between them as she takes you through the history of the fur trade in New France and into the British Regime. She’ll explain the documentary evidence left […]

As a French-Canadian genealogist, you are probably aware that there were Native slaves, called Panis, in New France. But did you know that there were Black slaves as well? Guest Aly Ndiaye, aka Webster, discusses the lives of these forgotten people. Not only has he studied them, but he also creatively tells their overlooked stories. […]

At one time or another, you’ve probably wondered what it was like living in the times of your ancestors. I know I’ve often thought about traveling back in time and observing how they did daily chores that are so easy for us with modern technology. I still remember my mother doing laundry with an old […]

Thomas LaForest published a 30-volume set of books called Our French-Canadian Ancestors. Many genealogists, especially those who can’t read French, enjoyed reading their ancestors’ stories in English. But after LaForest’s death, these volumes became more difficult to find. That is, until Norm Hebert decided to do something about it. In episode 90, Norm tells us the […]