French-Canadian and Canadian Ancestors: Parish Registers, Censuses and "Dit" Names

French-Canadian families can often be traced to the 1600s through some of the best church records in North America. How to use Quebec's parish registers, Canadian censuses and the tools built for this research.

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Millions of Americans, especially in New England, New York and the Upper Midwest, descend from French Canadians who came south to work in mills, farms and forests from the 1840s to the 1930s. French-Canadian research is a joy: Catholic parish registers in Quebec are nearly complete from the 1600s, women are recorded by their maiden names, and generations of researchers have built powerful tools for tracing families back to the first settlers of New France.

Why French-Canadian records are so good

• Continuous Catholic registers from the founding of New France in the early 1600s
• Duplicate registers: parishes kept two copies, one sent to civil authorities, so a lost register can often be replaced by its duplicate
• Marriage records name both sets of parents, making it possible to step back a generation with every marriage
• Women keep their maiden names in records for life

Key collections and tools

• The Drouin Collection: microfilmed Quebec parish registers (and some from Ontario, New Brunswick and New England) from the 1600s to the 1900s, searchable on Ancestry and Genealogy Quebec.
• The PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique, University of Montreal): a database reconstructing the population of Quebec from parish records, from 1621 into the 1800s. It links baptisms, marriages and burials into families.
• Genealogy Quebec and the BMS2000 project, which index Quebec marriages and other records.
• Published dictionaries of early families, such as those of Tanguay and Jetté, which compile the first generations of New France. Use them as finding aids, and check the original registers.
• FamilySearch, which has Quebec Catholic parish registers free.

Marriage records: the backbone

French-Canadian research usually works marriage by marriage. A marriage record typically gives:

• The bride's and groom's names and parishes
• Both sets of parents, with the mothers' maiden names
• Whether either was widowed, and the previous spouse's name
• Witnesses, often relatives

Find the marriage of your ancestor's parents, then the marriages of each set of grandparents, and so on. Notarial records, especially marriage contracts, can add detail.

"Dit" names

Many French-Canadian families used a second surname, introduced by "dit" ("called"): Pierre Gareau dit Saint-Onge. The dit name might come from a place, a nickname, a military nom de guerre or an ancestor. Over time, branches of a family might use the original surname, the dit name, or both, and in the U.S. a family might settle on either. Search all forms, and look for the dit name in published family dictionaries.

Canadian censuses

Library and Archives Canada offers free access to national censuses from 1851 (with some earlier) through 1931, which was released in 2023. Censuses give names, ages, birthplaces, religion and, in later years, immigration and naturalization details. See our International Research section for the Library and Archives Canada link.

Crossing to the United States

French-Canadian immigrants rarely left a single obvious record of crossing the border. Look for:

• Border crossing records, kept by U.S. officials for arrivals from Canada from about 1895
• U.S. censuses from 1900, which ask the year of immigration
• Records of French-Canadian parishes in New England, which usually record the parish of origin in Quebec at marriages
• Naturalization papers

Names were often translated or anglicized in the U.S.: Leblanc became White, Boulanger became Baker, Roy became King.

Acadian ancestors

Acadians, the French settlers of what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, were deported by the British starting in 1755. Many later settled in Louisiana (as Cajuns), Quebec and France. Acadian research has its own specialized sources and published genealogies, and Acadian families share a lot of DNA due to intermarriage within a small population. See Shared cM Explained.