Halp?

[donutsweeper]

Anyone have a decent ability to read handwritten French?

I'm trying to do a translation for genealogical purposes of a marriage record from 1824. Between how it was labeled at ancestry.com and my pathetic French skills, I've figured out some- their names (Flavien Duhamel and Seraphine Menard) and the date- August 24th, 1824. But it looks like there is a lot of other information there. I *think* it says Flavien is the son of Oliver Duhamel and that Seraphine is the daughter of Joseph Menard but there a lot of other names mentioned, including what looks like it might be St. Onge which is Flavien's mothers' maiden name and Dupre, which is Seraphine's mother's maiden name. Can anyone get anything else out of this?



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Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Oh that's *excellent* Thank you so much!

The other papers I've stumbled on said Serephine was Mary Louise's daughter and that Flavien was Josephine St Onge's son (which would make sense that his uncle could be Antoine St. Onge then)

There are records (baptism, marriage and burial) that date back hundreds of years in these records, for the really illegible ones I'm going by what others say they translate as, but I'm trying to confirm whatever I can with the ones that are vaguely readable.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Those records are a bitch, aren't they? Especially on the computer screen. I was looking at some from Ancestry.ca last year and the ones in English were hard enough, the ones in French were awful.

But I find genealogy incredibly fun, so I did enjoy mucking about with it.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I *love* doing genealogy. My family's background gets pretty lost once it gets to the US, but I did manage to find some people that no one had known about. My husband's family however... Flavien and Saraphine are his great-great-great grandparents and with the Quebec church records it looks like I'll be able to trace it back QUITE a lot.

It's such a fun puzzle to be putting together!

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my family is Quebecois on my mother's side and I was able to go back to 1678 with one branch, and found the empire loyalists who fled up to Canada during the American Revolution. My dad's side sort of peters out since they're from Barbados, but my mum's side is full of great stuff to follow. And the names are wonderul! Horatio, Zepherin, Philomene, Ziphi, Vitaline, Submit Hulda. Names were so much cooler back in the day.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I am completely in LOVE with these Quebec records. They may be illegible (to me anyway) but they are so amazing- nearly everyone's baptism, marriage and death were recorded. (Although I have to admit I find it funny they stress that the baby was born of a 'legitimate marriage'.) I'm trying not to rely solely on family trees people have put together, but to confirm the data with the church records (at least to the point that I can) and censuses (when available).

Oh, tracing your ancestors back to the loyalists is amazing! I wonder how far I'll be able to trace husband's!

Some of the names are *wonderful*. But there is the annoying trend to have multiple people with the same name. It's frustrating to have to make sure you're dealing with the *correct* person.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

They did a lot of censuses in Quebec, too, which is very helpful. You can even find out who lived next door.

The other problem with names is that they are transcribed differently by every person who does the transcription, so you get one person who's called, say Marie Melanese and you get Mary Melanie, Marie Melanie, Marie Melody, etc. And I also have a whole branch of family with ten children who each went by their middle names and sometimes nicknames of those middle names. And there was a Daniel and Elizabeth who had a son named Daniel who married an Elizabeth, which caused some confusion too.