Catholic Records

Who Baptized/Married/Buried Your RC Ancestors?

A preliminary, partial and incomplete list of the priests who served the various 19th-century Ottawa Valley area Roman Catholic missions and parishes. I will add more names, dates, and parishes as I come across (and/or organize) more information (which info.…

St. Michael’s, Corkery Lookups

I will do free lookups from the parish register for St. Michael’s, Corkery (1837-1968). This register was microfilmed by the Drouin Institute in 1968, and a digitized version is supposedly included in ancestry.ca’s “Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection),…

Missionaries of Pontiac, 1836-1858

Who baptized/married/buried your ancestors? If your RC ancestors settled in the Ottawa Valley area, the early church records can be a bit confusing: because the acts were recorded by a number of different priests covering an often vast territory, the…

Catholic Marriage Dispensations

If you come across a marriage record which notes the granting of a dispensation of consanguinity, you should definitely sit up and take note: you are looking at evidence of a common ancestor (or a pair of common ancestors) shared…

A few forenames in translation (Latin/French/English)

When Bridget O’Hanlon married Thomas McTeague (15 November 1841, Notre Dame de Bons Secours, Montebello, Co. Papineau, Québec), the priest identified her as “Brigitte O’honlon, domiciliée en Grenville, fille majeure de Pierre O’honlon et de Marie Thoõner, domiciliés en Irlande,”…

Three Cahill Children Buried

On the same day. On 3 November 1866, at Ste. Anne, Calumet Island/L’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, Pontiac Co., Québec: James Cahill, who died at the age of 12. Anne Cahill, who died at the age of 14. Celestine Cahill, who died at the…