Ancestors of yesterday and today

Welcome to our genealogy website. We would like to invite you to spend a few moments of your time with us and the descendants of our ancestors, Jacques Énaud-dit-Canada and Robert Leclerc.

You are welcome to browse thru our family genealogy database; who knows, you just might find information on some of your own ancestors listed in here !

Naturally, a family genealogy website would not even exist if there weren't any ancestors to talk about ! Some are ambiguous and difficult to trace, therefore, leaving a lot of room for interpretation ! One of our ancestors sure fits that description, so we have dedicated a few web pages to Jacques Énaud-dit-Canada, hoping to shed some light on this rather controversial subject. You will also find an excellent article about the various Hénault ancestors who migrated to Nouvelle-France, and the whereabouts of their descendants today.

If any of you are descendants of Antoine Hippolyte Hénault-Fresnière and Marie Judith Guibault, from Ste-Geneviève de Berthier and Ste-Elisabeth, who later migrated to the St-Valentin and Napierville areas between 1827 and 1828, you are welcome to visit our Ancestors Gallery where you will find photos of some of their descendants.

We have dedicated a whole section to another one of our ancestors, Robert Leclerc, master carpenter, and his wife Marie Jalais, a "King's daughter (fille du Roy)": three generations of Leclercs awarded the coveted rank of "King's Carpenter".

A new section has been added for all the Leclerc, Leclair, Leclère, etc. family descendants researching their Leclerc ancestors, with special resources to help them out. For those of you interested in consulting our Leclerc resources on the web, please visit L'Éclair Généalogique. Should you encounter one of those famous brickwalls, a member of the team in place will gladly help you out.

When doing a family tree, one encounters ancestors of various origins, and none can be ignored as they are part of what makes our family history. Our family tree includes migrants from France, one from Scotland and quite a few Natives. None of them are more ignored by genealogists in general than the North American Natives; obviously, it's a part of our history many would like to forget about or simply chose to ignore. But ignoring them won't make them go away...! Like all of our ancestors, they are there to stay. In the world of genealogy, they are certainly the most evasive and difficult to research, largely  because some Native records have been tampered with, while others have simply disappeared, or were misplaced if you prefer to look at it this way. If you have the patience of Job and the precision of a monk, you will find quite a bit of information going thru the church registries. But what has been removed cannot be replaced. Therefore, when trying to establish a link to prove Native ancestry, it is sometimes necessary to use other means of research besides the usual ones known to all of us. For that purpose, the Quebec Metis Connection is attempting to supply the researcher with additional information not easily accessible to all. The site offers you information about the "Interpreters" of Native languages, and their whereabouts. At present, we are indexing a large quantity of notarial records regarding people known as "voyageurs" and "coureurs des bois" as well as "engageurs". It is surprising to see how much information can be gathered going through these records. Notarial records and others from the Prévôté de Québec, Chronica and Themis offer a great deal of information when primary sources are non-existent or cannot be counted on to supply the correct information.

We hope, in time, to add information about the life and history of our other ancestors, who are most probably some of yours as well.  If you find them in our databases, and would like to share some information of your own, by all means, drop us a line at the e-mail address listed below.  We will be very grateful for the additional information, and will gladly give you credit for it.

Our main goal is to help promote and facilitate the exchange of genealogical and historical information between genealogists and researchers.  Therefore, our family  would like to share with you the results of our many years of research, mainly on our ancestors and their affiliated families: Jacques Énaud-dit-Canada and his wife Marie Leroux, Robert Leclerc and his wife Marie Jalais, and many others as well. You will find all the pertinent information in our database, and we hope that it will be helpful to you in your research.  For obvious reasons, the research notes and sources are not included on line, but are available to those who ask for it.

Your comments and suggestions will be appreciated and taken into consideration.  Please advise us if you wish to add information to our databases, or should you find errors. We will gladly make the necessary corrections and additions.

For those of you researching ancestors from the Lanaudière region, stop by the Lanaudière GenWeb; for the Mauricie region, visit the Mauricie GenWeb. You might find useful information to help your research.  If additional help is needeed, send your inquiries to the coordinators, Suzette and Johan, who will gladly try to help you out.

Revision: 01/09/2008