Jean Claude Sa'n Beliveau, Indigenous Genealogy researcher - Indigenous Genealogy researcher

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  Tips for doing your own research

 Good advice, do your own research first, it will cost you less if you later decide to entrust your research to a more experienced person or if you decide to have it authenticated.

 To get started, talk to relatives, identify people in family photographs, and read saved documents, such as legal papers.

 Look for information about a relative’s birth year, occupation, marital status, country of birth, citizenship. 

Church records provideinformation about baptisms, marriages, and burials.

 Provide as much specific information as possible, such as names, dates, case or document numbers,

and legal descriptions of property.

 Use a notebook or computer to write out the family stories and sources of information.

 It is not because your ancestors had French sounding names. English or other that they were not Native. 

Most were forced to choose a "suitable" last name in 1857 when The Gradual Civilization Act was passed. 

A similar law requiring Native Americans to bear an English-speaking name in 1890.

Be careful

Be careful, however, not to take for granted what you find on genealogy forums and blogs, some statements are only copied / pasted from one forum to another. The same information found three times does not make it true.

Just because you found the same information in forums and blogs doesn't mean you have to believe that the information on an archival document is wrong and that the pastor was wrong.

 We should know that at the beginning of the colony priests and missionaries were those who had the legal charge of registering the marriages, baptisms and burials that they kept in their church. They made a handwritten copy which was sent to Quebec. Notaries also had the role of registering marriage contracts, land sales, etc. There were no other types of registrations except pass lists and censuses. To these were added historical accounts.

Names are sometimes changed

One can see on the internet sites which claim that Mius d'Entremont had married Marie Coyoteblanc in 1678. How could she bear the name "Coyotte Blanc" since there was no coyote in Acadia at that time. The habitat of the coyotes was central USA to the central Canadian border. Coyotes migrated to Quebec and the Maritimes only around 1950.

This woman to whom some or some want to give the name of "Coyotte Blanc" has, however, really existed. It is the third son of Pilippe Mius d'Entremont, Philippe Mius dit D'Azit (Mieusse in the census), who married the one whom the missionary had baptized "Marie" in order to be able to marry her according to the rites of the church. Amateur genealogists give him the name Kjipuktuk, the name given to his village now called Halifax. 

Kjipuktuk means "great harbor" or "great harbor / water embankment" in the Mi'kmaw language. 

Why insist on giving it that name?

Section of the 1708 Acadian census page

Philippe Mieusse D'Azit 48 years old and Marie his wife 38 years old

According to rumors on forums and blogs some people with the surname Pelletier

have an Aboriginal ancestor named Antaya.

It's wrong!

The origin of the name Antaya comes from the marriage on April 13, 1661 in Quebec of François Pelletier and Anthaïa, a Montagnaise bearing the baptismal first name Dorothée. The wedding had been celebrated by Father Albanel, missionary priest at the Post of the Domaine du Roi in Tadoussac. New France. Dorothée La Sauvagesse known as Antaya died a few months later without having had any children with François Pelletier. There is therefore no descendant of this couple. Over time, his name became “François Pelletier Antaya” and several Quebec families now bear the family name Antaya.

Francis was given as a nickname the name of his deceased wife named Antaya from whom he had no children. It is the children of Marguerite Morisseau, second wife and François Pelletier who perpetuated the name "Antaya".

Artwork representing your ancestor

A fine example of a false statement on the Internet, it is claimed on some blogs, forums and genealogy site that Choctaw Belle is their ancestor who arrived at "the beginning of the colony". Obviously we give it another name. Yet a simple search using the portrait shows us that the work representing Choctaw Belle was painted in "1850" ... more than "300 years" later !!!

Choctow Belle

  (Imagine this painting in a forest under branches and foliage until the settler builds his 10'x10 'hut with dirt floor, nonexistent windows or with shutters without glass or with panes made of waxed paper or animal skin    L0L

Genealogy on the internet

Several genealogies are public and openly published on the internet.

Example:

   (  https://www.mesaieux.com/fr/famille.asp?NoFiche=4510107#FicheFam   )