Marlene's Great Great Grandmother, on her maternal line, Julie Bergeron, has been a brick wall for a year or more. Her 1881 marriage certificate identifies that the 24 year old Julie was born in Quebec, and married Louis Philippe LeBlanc in Douglas, Massachusetts, but her parents names are not recorded. Julie and Philippe LeBlanc appear in the Canadian census records through to 1921 (last available census), and her year (1857/1858) and place of birth (Quebec) are consistent throughout the census records. But I could not positively identify her in any records prior to her marriage, as I did not know her parents' names nor her date of birth.
Various researchers have provided conflicting information, but no evidence, including suggestions that she died in Legal, Alberta in 1945, and that she was raised by an Aunt and Uncle.
This week I learned from the Global Genealogy newsletter that the Provincial Archives of Alberta has recently published historical birth, marriage and death indexes online, so off I went in search of Julie's death entry in the indexes.
The Provincial Archives website does not provide a search box where you can enter a surname and given names and be presented with all matches. The indexes are in a series of pdf files for a range of years / portions of the alphabet, based on surnames.
I scrolled down the list of files, to "L (1945-1949)", clicked on the file name, and within a few seconds the pdf file was open on my computer. My heart sank when I found no entry in 1945, but I skipped down a few pages to get to 1946, and there was Julie's death entry, which identified that she died in St. Albert (district) on 17 May 1946, and that she was born in Quebec (province number 04) on 13 May 1857.
Wow, I finally have a definite date of birth for Julie, so now I should be able to find her baptism record in the Drouin Collection on Ancestry, and identify the names of her parents.
 |
| LEBLANC, Julie - 1946 Death Entry |
I checked similarly for the death of Julie's husband, Philippe LeBlanc, and also found his death entry, which provided his date and place of death - St. Albert (district) on 28 February 1944, and confirmed his known date of birth.
It seems realistic that Philippe and Julie LeBlanc did both die in Legal, Alberta, as Legal is only 40 Km North of St. Albert, so is likely within the St. Albert registration district. I sense a road trip coming up!
 |
| LEBLANC, Philippe - 1944 Death Entry |
A big thank you to the Alberta Provincial Archives for making these indexes available online, and to Global Genealogy for sharing the knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment