We begin with an overview of colonial New France and the pioneer ancestors. We review naming customs such as dit names. We demonstrate how to trace U.S. immigrants to their parishes of origin in Quebec. We introduce the wonders of Catholic parish registers and show how to decipher baptism, marriage, and burial records with minimal knowledge of French. We examine censuses and notarial papers and introduce the major websites that offer record images, indexes, and trees containing the stories of your French-Canadian ancestors.
