Subject: [COULOMBE-L] Even More on Drouin, Jette and Tanaguay

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> From: Michel Robert
> Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.french
> Subject: Re: Drouin, Jette and Tanaguay
> Date: Sunday, September 28, 1997 12:39 AM
> 
> Hi Ellen,
> I don't know where you are from. If there is a city nearby, chances are
> that there copies of at least Jette and Tanguay in the municipal libraries.
> Very Briefly:
> Cyprien Tanguay( from 1620 to about 1800 depending on his luck), a
> "chanoine" (something between a regular priest and a bishop) started
> compiling all the marriages and baptism-burial registrations he could find
> in the various bishop's sees in the province of Quebec during the period
> 1865 to 1890. He published his first organized records in 1876, with the
> last one sometime around 1888. The six books of records have been
> republished a few times, with a seventh book, now called book #1, being
> corrections, that some of his followers added later. In the 1950's and
> 1960's a Mr. Leboeuf published three books of additional corrections to
> Tanguay, which are now available as a single book with three series of page
> numbers. Usually but not necessarily sold with the "Tanguay". Roughly,
> Tanguay not having a computer to crosscheck the nearly one million entries
> he was playing with ended up cutting some corners real quick, with the end
> result that there are about 10% to 15% errors of filiations in his books.
> His followers and Leboeuf found and mentioned roughly half of them.
> Conclusions: don't take Tanguay for gospel; corrections are usually right;
> some sources that Tanguay seemed to have had, cannot be found anymore, very
> likely because they were outrightly invented.
> 
> Drouin (from 1603 to recent): a commercial genealogical research firm that
> operated from the turn of the century to around 1970. Went out of business,
> before internet existed. Its index has been sold and published by others.
> The index was in theory based on church records, although some of the
> errors of Tanguay can be found there as well as some unsubstantiated data
> according to some disgruntled clients from what I have heard. Some of the
> Drouin entries I have seen can be misleading for the non discerning expert.
> Conclusions: great leads to follow and to be eventually VERIFIED in church
> records or Jette.
> 
> Jette: prepared a computerized index of all existing records (church or
> legal, military, notary etc etc) in the 1960's and 1970's while at
> Universite de Montreal for demographic research, I guess having to do at
> the beginning with tracing genes for medical purposes. Published a
> dictionary of his computerized records in 1983, covering the period from
> the beginning to 1730. 99% impossible to contradict. Denis Beauregard is
> working with all people on soc.gen.french at clearing up the other 1%,
> which is available for browsing on Denis' web page.
> 
> Hope this help. If you have french-canadian ancestry, Jette is a good
> investment. You can get the reliable post-1730 from index of Church records
> (LDS) which are generally better than other sources, for the post 1730 era.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Meilleures salutations
> Michel Robert
> mrobert@ibm.net  
> 

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