Actually, Catholic records for Pontiac County are also online at BAnQ, free of charge, and for the same time period (roughly 1894-1909, though it varies by church/parish). But the Catholic parish registers for Pontiac Co., Quebec are available online at three other sites that I know of, and for a much broader time period:
- by subscription at ancestry.ca (Quebec, Vital and Church Records [Drouin Collection], 1621-1967);
- free of charge at FamilySearch (Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1900);
- and by subscription at Généalogie Québec (Registres du Fonds Drouin).
So I’m highlighting the Protestant records of Pontiac County here, since it’s my impression that these records are far less readily available in online, digitized format than are the RC parish records.1
BAnQ = Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (National Library and Archives of Quebec). And, because of Quebec’s pre-1994 church-based system of civil registration,2 BAnQ’s collection of digitized parish registers (both Catholic and Protestant) will be found under the heading of Registres de l’état civil (= civil registers).
The records are here. For Pontiac County (District judiciaire de Pontiac [Outaouais]), look for Outaouais in the left menu (under Par région [by region]), then look for District de Pontiac (the other option being District de Hull). The time period is admittedly quite limited (roughly 1894 to 1909, as mentioned above), but this is an ongoing project, apparently, and we can expect to see the coverage broadened in the future. The alphabetical list (right side of page) for Pontiac Co. begins with Bristol Township Presbyterian Church and ends with Thorne Township Methodist Church, and includes a number of Protestant (Anglican [Church of England]; Lutheran; Methodist; Presbyterian; and also the Shawville Holiness Movement Church) Pontiac Co. parishes in between.
A few French terms in translation, to help with navigation:
- Début = [to the] beginning
- suivante = next
- précédente = previous
- Affichage plein écran = full-screen display
- Certainly, there are no Protestant parishes included in FamilySearch’s “Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers” collection, for obvious reasons. And while ancestry.ca’s Drouin collection does include many Protestant parishes in the province of Québec, there appear to be some gaps in its coverage of Pontiac County (for Protestant denominations, I mean, not for RC parishes). And as to Généalogie Quebec, I really don’t know: it is not easy to use its search tools (in fact, I don’t think it’s possible) without subscribing to its service, and I gave up my subscription when FamilySearch added not only “Quebec, Catholic Parish Registers, 1621-1900” but also “Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923” to its online collection (which, in combination with ancestry’s RC Drouin records for both Québec and Ontario, now answers my research needs, and why pay for a subscription that you won’t actually use?). So for all I know, Généalogie Québec has Protestant Pontiac well covered, though with a paid, subscription-only service. ↩
- Brief description of the system, in French, at BAnQ, under En savoir plus (to know more/further information), Présentation; but also see Marlene Simmons for a brief but comprehensive English-language explanation ↩