The Ramblings of The Little Old Lady Wanderer

I have had some major changes in my life. With the move to Newfoundland, we found that I am currently too far away to be an effective editor for the newsletter. Both the Board of Directors and I have felt this. So, it is with great pleasure that I can honestly say that I fully support the new editor. Right now, I am still unemployed and looking for a job, but I am also working on my family history. That is, I have two full time employments, job search and ancestry search. I will be in Ireland for almost two and a half weeks at the end of April and will dedicate my next column on that.

Some of you may wonder why I am calling this column “The Ramblings of a Wanderer”. This is because Heavenly Father has directed my life in such a way that I have lived in a number of locations throughout my adult life. The list includes Brampton, Ontario, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Lahr, Germany, Victoria, British Columbia, the Region of Niagara, Petawawa, Ontario, and Newfoundland. We will be leaving Newfoundland but not for a few years.

This month, I want to talk about a website that I just learned about on the 13^th of March. This is very interesting for those who have French Canadian ancestry. The address of the website is: http://fichierorigine.com/ and I find it very interesting. This is a website that was designed to give you information about the ancestor who left France to go to New France. You type in your ancestor’s surname and then choose the correct person. I typed in Hebert as I have been informed that he was a direct ancestor of mine (even though I haven’t proved it yet). It gave me a list of people with the surname of Hebert and I chose the one from Paris. It gave me his marital status, birth date, place of origin, parents, first mention in the country (Canada), occupation on arrival, date of marriage, wedding location, his spouse’s name, death and burial, any remarks, identification, the researcher’s name, reference, and the date modified. As you can see, this is a great amount of information. The person who told me about the website was looking up a name for someone else and found the names for three generations in the record. The record for Louis Hebert included the names of his siblings and the spouse and marriage date for one of his sisters.

Fichier Origine is part of a collaboration between the French Federation of Genealogy and the Quebec Federation of Genealogical Societies. “The project objective is to make available free of charge to all researchers, a source of credible information on the origin of the pioneers and pioneers of old Quebec origins to 1865.”  http://fichierorigine.com/communiques. 

Please enjoy using this site if you did not previously know about it. Please thank the powers that be and the people who made it possible for you to be able to research your family.