Newfoundland Mi’kmaq Family History & Genealogy

The internet is a good place to find out a lot about your family history.  Unfortunately, it ain’t as easy as the tv ads for ancestry.ca pretend.  Often, those ads with cheerful people clicking on a little leaf and finding some fascinating bit of information about their great-granddaddy come on as I’m struggling to figure out whether this Peter is son of this Paul or that Paul.  It’s all I can do to not throw a shoe at the television.

There is a lot of information on the big genealogy sites like ancestry.ca and genealogy.com.  And there are a lot of other sites with a lot of information where you don’t have to pay a membership fee.  Some have vital statistics on them – birth and death records, census information etc.  Others are the product of family researchers who have compiled data and present it in chart form.  Below are some sites of the second type related to Newfoundland Mi’kmaq families that I have found useful.

A word of warning:  do not rely totally on any one source as the gospel.  Working from primary records can show enough inconsistencies of fact and, with websites, you have the added possibility of error of transcription.  Dates inadvertently get typed in wrong, names get misspelled.  There’s a lot of room for error.  Plus some information is simply inaccurate or conflicts with other sources.  So with primary documents and the internet, be judicious, check and double-check.

Family History Sites

(see Newfoundland Mi’kmaq Books post for more sources)

*  Acadian Genealogy (by Lucie LeBlanc Consentino – many Nfld. west coast families)

*  L’Acadie Toujours (LeBlanc/White)

*  Bay of Islands Genealogy Society

*  Jasen Benwah’s Genealogy Page (Benoit)

*  Desc. of Michel Boudrot/Boudreau Lt. Gen. (1600s Acadie, marr. Michelle Aucoin)

*  Bras d’Or Families (by John Scott, incl. Jesso, Boutilier, & other fams & regions)

*  Bras d’Or Indian Village Band Association (Maliseet-Micmac Vital Stats, LeJeune gen, Nfld. Mi’kmaq)

*  Canadian Genealogy and History Sites (links for all parts of Canada, my link goes to NL page)

*  Chiasson Family

*  Descendants of Charles Crocker (by Elizabeth Sheppard Hewitt)

*  Descendants of Daniel’s Harbour (Payne, Brooks, Park family info.)

*  Doucet Family

*  Gary’s Index of Family Surnames (Newfoundland West Coast & Acadien families)

*  Mi’kmaq Ancestry of Jerry Gerrior (Gerrior/Girouard family and others)

*  Descendants of William Haynes (Hynes) (page moved/deleted)

*  Herridge-Nurse Family History (Matthews, Garnier, Strickland, etc.)

*  Jesso Family (most Nfld. west coast families)

*  LeBlanc/White (‘Steve’s Genealogy Blog’)

*  LeBlanc & MacLean Families (Trish LeBlanc – Rootsweb, link goes to surname list)

*  LeJeunes of Cape Breton & Nfld. (by Lark Szick) Link updated

*  The Ancestry of Henry LeJeune/Young (by Kirk Butt, see note below on BSGGS for this)

*  Descendants of Jacques LeJeune (Robin K. Young gen. home page)

*  Dr. William Litchman (South Coast families, Lushman etc.  Click a Publications title for content)

* Loder Family Tree (by Don Loder, many families.  Click family tree icon for name indices)

* Desc. of George Lomond (by Sharon Dillon; also Dillon, Knott, Currie)

*  Marche Family (see note below on BSGGS for access to this huge family tree)

*  Mattie Mitchell Webpage (by Fred Powell)

*  The Muise Family (by Doris Muise)

*  The O’Connell Family Tree (most Nfld. west coast families)

*  Payne Families

*  PEI Family Lineages (Acadian names are denoted with flag)

*  Pike Family History & Genealogy Resources (by David Pike)

*  Roy Family, through Marie Aubois (by John R. Nelson)

*  Rumbolt, Hann, Lane & Howarth Genealogy Pages (Northern Peninsula, Bay of Islands)

*  Jacques St-Pierre’s Family Tree (Doucet, Mius/Muise, LeJeune, et al.)

*  Wendy’s Ancestral Tree (Cajun/Acadian families, go to paternal Pitre line)

*  Wheeler Descendants (mainly Twillingate area)

*  Stephen A. White, Genealogist (LeBlanc and other families & Acadien history)

*  Ancestors of Wayne Harvey Young (LeJeune/Young)

For other family trees, genealogical and vital statistics information and sources, go to Bay St. George Genealogical Society.  There is a lot of material in the main site, but for $10 a year membership, you get to go in the ‘Members Only’ section.  There you find many of the invaluable papers on Newfoundland family history written by Allan Stride among other materials.

NL GenWeb and Newfoundland Grand Banks are also great resources for vital statistics data.  A wonderful source for information on Burgeo history and families is the 1925 Diary of Burgeo by Joseph Small.

Some of these sites are easier than others to navigate around.  I’ve linked to home pages whenever possible so that you can see what’s there.  I’ve used all these sites, so know it is possible to get around if there’s more information there.  If there’s so much information that you don’t know how to find who you’re looking for, try searching with ‘control’ and ‘f’ keys on PCs or ‘command’ and ‘f’ on Macs and type the name or place in the little search box.  At least within the ‘page’, that will find them.

These links are valid as of now, March 2011.  They may change or be removed in future.  They’re not my sites so I can only apologize in advance if any problems develop with them.