APR 2

Posted by Jacques Gagné

Quebec’s Church Registers are a happy fact for anyone researching ancestors in that Canadian province.

From the early days of New France in the 17th century, a record was kept in a register for every Catholic birth, marriage and death. Priests kept a religious copy of the register at the parish and filed another state copy with the tribunal serving the relevant territory.

After the British Conquest in 1760, the right to keep registers of civil status was gradually extended – over the next century – to non-Catholics. At present, BAnQ’s Church Register collection contains the digitized records of births, marriages and deaths for Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical, Jewish and Lutheran churches.

Today, these records can be accessed from the Drouin Institute on Ancestry.com, as well as through the BAnQ (the National Library and Archives of Quebec) http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/ecivil/as

and familysearch.org: https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1321742

The BAnQ website is available in French, but the above link will take you directly the Church Registry page. Records can be accessed in three ways: by the place where the act was established (parish, congregation, synagogue, etc); by the judicial district, according to the list established by the Territorial Division Act (L.R.Q., chapter D-11); or by region.

To consult the registers, select one of the headings on the left side of the screen. To display the pages in large format (PDF format, image mode) click on the headings for the desired pages.

What will you find at the BANQ Online Church Registers 1768-1912?

Protestant churches – English – 686 churches

Jewish Synagogues – 20 synagogues

Protestant churches – French – 28 churches

Catholic parishes – French & English – 1,027 churches

Catholic parishes – Italian & others – 15 churches

Catholic missions – French & English – 8 missions

Catholic Religious Communities – 18 convents

Hospitals (French & English) – 12 medical centers

Hospices – (French & English) – 5 institutions

Psychiatric hospitals (Asylums) –3 institutions

BAnQ and Family Search

Civil Registers (Parish Registers)

Catholic & Protestant Churches

Civil Registers (Parish Registers)

1621 to 1916

Births (baptisms), marriages, deaths: http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/ecivil/

 BAnQ Catholic & Protestant Church Registers & Jewish Synagogue Registers: http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/ecivil/

Consult the following PDF document to see a list of all the churches (Catholic and Protestant) and synagogues in the BAnQ online collection.

BAnQ Online Collection of Church and Synagogue Registers