What is a good list for non-religious Quebecois sources?

Question

So, I've made very good progress in building French-Canadian family trees using GQ and PRDH, as well as NosOrigines for  hinting.  However good these sources are, they are limited to church records.

While working on the profile for [[Guérin-1601|Phebée Guérin]], I could not find her burial record. While not usually an issue, I also could not find burial nor marrage records for her three children. This was unusual. I also could not find any census records for the children nor any records for them in FamilySearch.

Her husband, Basile Metivier, remarried three years after the last known record of Phebée and her three children, the baptismal record of their youngest child.

As one of my ancestors drowned leaving no burial record (no body, no burial), I wonder if some terrible accident befell the family, leaving the father as the sole survivor and the mother and children w/o burial records?

Answer 1

I found a notarial record from May 1850 that seems to be Basile settling Phoebe's estate (my French is a bit shaky, and I don't think it lists a date of death). It does list their children as:

Febee, age 19; Marie, age 17; Philomene, age 12; Bazile, age 9; Pierre, age 7; Joseph, age 5.

Comments

indeed, inventory of community property.  Normal when there is a re-marriage, to protect inheritance rights of children.

Youngest child listed, Joseph, is 5.  

The surrogate tutor of the children is named Samuel Lapanne if I am reading this right, farmer of Stukeley Township..  Basile is tutor of his children.

So there exists an earlier act to name tutors, that would not necessarily be before notary but normally before some sort of civil authority, judge..., not certain who at this time.

Answer 2

I've found one census record. 1852 Canada census St. John village Automated Genealogy Basil (44), Louise Chateland  (34), Phébé Métivier (21), Marie (19), Philomène (16), Basil (11), Pierre (9) and Joseph (7). 

Comments

Thank you so much for this. This helped a lot.

Answer 3

Actually, PRDH is not limited to church records, although they rely on those mainly; they stop at 1849.  Your Phébée should have a date of death listed as before October 1848, since her husband remarried then.

Your other avenue is to search through notarial records, in the case of a death there was normally an inventory of property done and possibly tutors named for the children.  Who the notary could have been is the first avenue of research, then searching through their lists of acts.  Needle in a haystack I'm afraid.

Comments

Hi, Danielle.

How does one search through notarial records?

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Tableau des notaires, liste alphabétique, 1637-1899, Archiv-Histo.com PDF this is an alphabetical list of notaries who exercised here from 1637 to 1899.  Since she was living in L'Acadie, the likely places for notarial records to have been stored from this period are Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu judicial palace, or Montréal.  First, you obviously need to determine which notaries are even possible.  Unfortunately, this list is not sortable.  Am going to take a look to see if I can narrow it down some for you.

Added: nope, no luck on this by other means so far.

Answer 4

I use the resources at Library and Archives Canada quite often, particularly for the census. The search tool accepts wildcards, which can be quite useful in census searches.

Comments

Yes. I also use bac-lac quite often in my searches. I missed the entry for 1851 that Vicky pointed me to. Thanks.