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New England Historic Genealogical Society

Vol. 9, No. 21

May 23, 2007

Edited by Michael J. Leclerc and Valerie Beaudrault

Research Recommendations

YourFolks.com
by Michael J. Leclerc

French-Canadians are very lucky to have a plethora of information available to them for genealogical research. A new website has just become available that promises to be another valuable resource to genealogists. YourFolks.com has partnered with the Eastern Townships Genealogical Society to provide access to a rich body of data from the province of Quebec.

YourFolks.com provides access to abstracted information contained in Catholic marriage records that took place in Quebec. Some of these marriages go well into the twentieth century. In French Catholic churches, marriage records contain the names of the parents of the bride and groom. If one of the parties was a widow or widower, the record contains the name of their previous spouse. Reviewing the record of the first marriage of the individual should reveal the names of the parents. The Your Folks database provides the name of the bride and groom, the names of their parents (or previous spouse), and the date and place of marriage.

In addition to this information, Your Folks goes one step further. They link together family groupings, based on the names of the parents. Below the names of the parents of the bride and groom you will find a list of marriages for children of that couple. This allows you to click through from parents to children, generation after generation.

In the initial release, the records are divided into 22 regions. YourFolks.com is in the process of verifying every entry in the database. Once that process is completed, the regions will be joined into a single unit. For now, the families are only linked within a region. Once the regions are joined, family linkages will cross throughout the province.

This linkage system is similar to the one employed in the Programme de Recherche en Démographie database. The difference is that the PRDH database focuses on pre-1800 records (with some death records for 1800-1850). Your Folks allows you to trace marriage records from the earliest settlement to the twentieth century.

In the future, Your Folks plans to add baptismal and burial information as well. They are also looking for other genealogical organizations who may be interested in partnering with them to make records accessible. They are interested in all types of organizations, not just those with a French-Canadian focus.

The site is a pay-per-view site. The fee is very reasonable, and goes down with the number of page views you purchase. The fees range from $.13/page for a 150-page package ($19.99) to $.04/page for a 5,000-page package ($199.99). Visit https://www.yourfolks.com/ and try out their services today.

NOTICE FROM YOURFOLK.COM

Since that recommendation was written, many regions have been merged, new provinces have been added, new services have been made available and some fees have been changed.