Taken from the work of Joseph Drouin, founder of the Drouin Genealogical Institute, this collection captures over 25 million French-Canadian and English historical records from 1621–1967.
The collection includes baptism, marriage and burial records and also a compilation of church records from Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and various New England states. Find records from multiple religious denominations and cultural backgrounds, including British, Irish, Italian and Polish descent.
Search by name, province, parish and time period and uncover more of your family’s story today.
Drouin Collections
French Records Ahead
A majority of the Drouin collection is in the French language. For best results, try searching using both French and English words and location spellings.
Search the fully indexed Drouin Collection
Success Stories
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Rebecca Cardinal's Christmas Gift
Rebecca Cardinal started with a name. Using the Drouin Collection, she was able to trace her family's history back 350 years and create a very special gift for her family.
Rebecca Cardinal, from Glencoe, Ontario had one name and the knowledge that her ancestors were French-Canadian, but she didn’t know much more than that. Using the Drouin Collection, she found that name and discovered that one of her ancestors was a French Cardinal who first immigrated to New France in 1655. Armed with this information, Rebecca presented each of her relatives with a very special Christmas gift: a 350 year history of the family, tracing back the surnames of 16 great-great-grandparents. As she says, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
Francois’Leróux Ait Cardinal's 1803 Birth Record
Francois is Rebecca's great-great-grandfather -
Lori English's Settler Grandparents
Lori English had no idea she descended from one of Quebec’s original settlers. Thanks to the Drouin Collection she’s found likenesses of her ancestors on statues and postage stamps.
Lori English had no idea that she descends from one of Quebec’s original settlers. Louis Hebert and Marie Rollet, her 11th great-grandparents, are considered by many to be the first family of New France, and traveled with Champlain seeking suitable settlement sites. Lori has since discovered that they both have statues in Quebec, and that Louis’s likeness has been issued on a Canadian stamp. She has collected over 500 records from the Drouin Collection.
Louis Herbert—the first family of New France
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The End of a Dead End for Frances LaChance
Frances LaChance found a record of a suit filed by the wife of her great-great-grandfather. Unbeknownst to Frances, this was her ancestor’s third wife and the cause of a dead end for years.
Frances LaChance is a ninth-generation Canadian on her father’s side. The Drouin Collection offered her a chance to discover some stories about the more than 1,200 direct ancestors in her family tree. To date, her oldest Drouin find is the November 1654 marriage record, written in Latin, for her seventh great-grandparents Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps and Marie Lorguiel. Born in France, they both arrived in New France aboard the same ship in 1653. Not having photos beyond her grandparents and one great-grandmother, the Drouin Collection provided the missing link to Frances’ research on her family lines.
1805 marriage record of Frances’ third great-grandfather Basile.
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Kimberly Rose makes “Amazing” Discoveries
Kimberly Rose not only found records about her ancestors, but records created by one of them. Kimberly is glad to have searched the Drouin Collection for records she describes as “amazing.”
Kimberly Rose discovered a Drouin find not many can boast: records created by an ancestor rather than about him. Kimberly’s great-great-grandfather William Sanders emigrated from England to Canada in 1880, where he served as a minister for the Anglican Church. In the Drouin Collection, Kimberly found the church logs he created during his journeys as a minister around the Montreal area. From these she learned that he had performed baptisms and marriages for his own children, grandchildren, and other family members. A picture of William hangs in her home today, and Kimberly describes finding these documents, written in his own hand, amazing.
Document written by William Sanders himself.