Drouin Collection Available at American Society

by
EB Lapointe

L'Institut Généalogique Drouin (publisher of Dictionnaire national des Canadiens français)—started by Joseph Drouin in 1899, and continued on by his son and grandson—started to collect and microfilm Quebec vital records. His son made almost 2,400 reels of microfilm from 20 million baptism, marriage, and burial records of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

The microfilmed records have been digitized into 3.5 million images, placed on disk drives, and are available at the American-Canadian Genealogical Society. Because of the way the images were scanned, some of the scanned images are easier to read than the original microfilm.

Besides BMD records, there are also Notarial Acts—such as marriage contracts, will, deeds, and other legal documents for the province of Quebec—some non-Catholic records, and BMDs for areas of Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia known to be French-Canadian.

Now, the American-Canadian Genealogical Society (AFGS), located in Manchester, New Hampshire, has purchased the Drouin Collection for $100,000 and is willing to "offer these images to anyone willing to access them."

To access these images, contact the Drouin team, who will do look-ups for a fee for anyone outside the Manchester area.

For further information on the collection, please contact them at (603) 622-1554 or look at their website at <www.acgs.org/research/drouin-team.html>.

27 January, 2007