Essays

By Denice St. Germain

February 18, 2016

Introduction

Some time ago, one of my father's cousins started tracing the St. Germain line back to France. I found the fact that I could trace my roots fascinating, but I looked at the tree and said "What about all the women? Where did they come from? What about my grandmother, Alice Proulx or my great grandmother Rosanna Parenteau?" Why do genealogists seem only interested in the ancestors bearing the one family name? Are we any less related to a person if we descend from a daughter instead of a son? Our genes, after all, are from mothers and fathers, and without mothers none of us would be here today. In researching the women married to the St. Germain’s and Proulx, I have accumulated more than 2,000 names. Keeping track of the newest members of this now widespread family is harder than finding the names of people who lived three hundred years ago.

When I did my first research, I started at the Woonsocket American-French Genealogical Society in Rhode Island. Churches in Québec, as well as in France, were required to keep a register of all services performed by their priests: baptism, marriage and funeral services. This means that every marriage since the founding of Québec has been documented, catalogued and cross-referenced. The civilian government eventually took over this task up until 1935 when the project became too costly. The Woonsocket AFGS has copies of what is called the Red Drouin and the Blue Drouin books. The Red Drouin books cover the first few generations to settle in Québec; the Blue Drouins cover from then until about 1930, depending on the parish. They have copies of every parish’s register. They also have microfiche copies of all the church records in Québec. Back in 1998, I went there with paper and pencil, and copied everything, then went home and entered the data on my computer.

By 2006, I haven’t needed to leave the house to do my research, everything is online. You still have to double-check your information because mistakes get copied and passed on; you can never be sure how much documentation a person has before they publish, or if they triple checked for mistakes. I can’t tell you how many people I found who were born before their supposed grandparents were!

Many people are now making trips to France to find records from the 1500’s. There are still some that are preserved, but unless the family is of nobility, you will not get much further back than that, as record keeping was not required by the Catholic Church.

Since a lot of the information in these stories was copied from other's research, I can't vouch for 100% accuracy. I have done my best to research discrepancies, though. Please forgive any spelling mistakes, misplaced accents or such. Bibliography and sources are stated as used or available upon request.

After spending so much time amongst my ancestors, I feel it’s necessary to understand some things about Canadian history and background to fully appreciate our story. I try to work general information in, but I have more detailed information I can get for you.

When reading descendant charts, the first ancestor is generation 1. His children are generation 2, their children are 3, and so on. Other numbers in brackets before a name indicate it has been repeated elsewhere in the tree.