Back in the 1600s the French headed out to settle Canada, 99% of my ancestry comes from this endeavor on their part. Those original settlements were rough and brought in the "King's Daughters" to help settle the area with those men who had ventured forth into this new territory.
According to various records, about 800 young French women immigrated to "New France" 1663-1673 at the expense of the King, hence, they were known as the "King's Daughters". Many of my ancestors stem from the families created by these women and those men who had braved a new wild and very difficult frontier.
Geneanet began back in 1996 and is the first "French" genealogy website with a combination of free and paid access, the choice is yours. They offer every kind of genealogy record published by researchers, genealogy societies, commercial companies, etc. It is up to the contributor whether they charge for the records provided online.
From their website they list the following to be available for free and for a fee:
- Members are sharing more than 400 million individuals in their online trees
- Hundreds of thousands of free digitized records which includes registers
- Some free indexes and some for pay
- Hundreds of digitized books, post cards, family pictures, a wiki, a blog and a wonderful genealogy community
Once you upload your tree through a "Gedcom", you can have anyone in your tree born within a 100 years blocked out completely or have just their names shared to protect their identity. Once this is complete, you can see if others match any of your family as well as check out their digitized records.
They show a chart on their collection of indexes:
When you hover over an area/number, it tells you the name of the location. They do have registers from surrounding countries, click here to see their list.
They have a number of projects that allows individuals to upload additional record sets to aid all, this is a great way to collaborate. Some of these records are actual scanned records which provide proof of an event in your ancestor's life.
Searching this site will take some time, the cost to become a "Premium" member is $45 a year which is reasonable when you consider all you are able to access and the relatives you can connect to.
This is a great site for anyone with French/Canadian ancestors!
Enjoy this and many other websites already discussed in past blog articles.
Comments Are Always Welcome!
Building Bridges for All Generations!
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