Record Atlas
4 eras · 1621–2026 · 214 places

Quebec and French North America

Québec, Montréal, Trois-Rivières, the Acadian shore. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1621–1763 New France BAnQ numérique — Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec · Généalogie Québec / the Drouin Collection · FamilySearch

The most completely recorded population in the early modern Americas. Catholic parish registers were kept in DUPLICATE from the start — one copy to the parish, one to the civil court — so a burned parish is very rarely a lost record. Continuous from 1621.
1763–1867 British North America — the Province of Quebec, then Lower Canada BAnQ numérique — Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec · Généalogie Québec / the Drouin Collection · Library and Archives Canada · FamilySearch

The conquest changes the sovereign and not the registers. The Quebec Act of 1774 left French civil law and the Catholic Church in place, and the parish register goes on being the civil register, in French, in the same duplicate form.
1867–1994 Canada — the Province of Quebec BAnQ numérique — Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec · Généalogie Québec / the Drouin Collection · Library and Archives Canada · FamilySearch

Still the parish register doing civil duty, and still in duplicate. The Drouin microfilms photographed the lot.
1994–2026 Canada — civil registration by the state BAnQ numérique — Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec · Library and Archives Canada

From 1994 the Directeur de l'état civil registers births, marriages and deaths, and the three-and-a-half-century run of parish registers as civil records ends. Records after 1994 are not in the archives.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1621–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

214 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 14 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

1856 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 1796 more.

All record regions · The map