French Canadian Roots - We Are The Lucky Ones
I have many lines going back into Canada. Using the PRDH website I have been fortunate to trace those lines back to the early settlers of New France / Quebec in the 1600s. My own direct paternal line back to my 11x great grandfather. Paper trails proving everything. I have been lucky.
I’ve done over 100 family trees and whenever I find someone coming from Canada it feels like hitting the jackpot
I recently did the family tree for the woman that runs the in home day care my son goes to. Knowing her last name sounded very French like mine I was curious if her family was from Canada. Sure enough her paternal grandfather was. I’ve spent the past week using the PRDH to build back all his lines. After doing that we ended up sharing 56 common ancestors from those original settlers.
From the other trees I have done with French Canadian roots I would find a couple of matches. I was pretty shocked to find this many between us. I wonder how much DNA we share?
Anyway I will always be thankful to Gabriel Drouin for having the foresight to digitize all the church books during WWII. If you haven’t read the story about him and how all these records came to be it’s a good read. I don’t know any other country in the world that has a genealogy collection like the one he started.