More KKK members in New England than the South? Really? Yes, at one time in the early 20th century this was true. And they were attacking Franco-Americans. Why? Dr. Eileen Angelini will tell us this interesting story about a little-known chapter in American history. In Language Tip #39, we’ll discover how to locate the proper […]

After listening to episode #37, you went out and found every census record for every ancestor alive between 1871 and 1921, right? Now it’s time to take the family back another century by exploring the provincial censuses. We’ll also learn French words for religious denominations that you will find in census records and other documents. […]

How we genealogists LOVE census records! Lucky for us, more and more of these wonderful documents are digitized and available online. In this episode, I’ve gathered together, from all corners of the internet, information about online census records from the post-Confederation era. This includes national decennial censuses from 1871 until the most recently released 1921, as […]

Money was not always an easy-to-come-by commodity for the colonists. In this episode, you’ll become familiar with some money terms, and you’ll learn the history of money in New France, including the problems of counterfeiting and inflation and how it affected our ancestors’ lives. At the end of the podcast I’ll give you the link to […]

You’ve probably heard many times, “Parish registers are easy to read. Once you know how to read one type of record, you can read them all. They follow a pattern.” “Oh, no! This record is different!” And that’s true – for the most part. But what happens when you run across that one record that’s […]

Most of us have a voyageur or two in our family tree. What was life like for them? And what was life like for the wife left alone months on end? In an interview with author Marcel Pronovost, he shares with us the discoveries he made about his ancestors, Mathieu Rouillard and Jeanne Guillet. Join […]

In this episode, Susan McNelley, author of Hélène’s World: Hélène Desportes of Seventeenth-Century Québec, rejoins us for a more in-depth look at two themes covered in her book: ‘Survival’ and ‘Relationship with the Natives.’ It’s a fascinating look at social history from that time period in Nouvelle France. Also, did you think all your French-Canadian […]

Oral histories are a window to the past. Two Salem State professors take us on a journey back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the Salem Franco community of the Point. We learn about life in this ‘Little Canada’ and how the Great Fire of 1914 affected the community. In Language Tip #32, […]

Would you like to tap the vast knowledge of French-Canadian research and resources in Québec directly from those who produce the records, but in English? Then the Québec Family History Society from Montréal may be just what you’ve been searching for! Conducting genealogy business in English, publishing an English-language journal, and producing the largest English-language […]

Our Acadian ancestors did not face turmoil only at the time of deportation. Their entire existence was rife with battles, both civil and international. In this episode, Lucie LeBlanc Consentino continues the story of the Acadians before the fateful Grand Dérangement. Do you have ancestors with an IEU in their surname? In Language Tip #30, […]