Place:Saint-Elzéar-de-Beauce, Beauce, Québec, Canada

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

Saint-Elzéar was formally created as a parish on 1 July 1845, and on 4 July 1845 it became the ecclesiastical parish of Saint Elzéar de Liniere. On 1 Septemeber 1847 a number of other municipalities joined with Saint Elzéar de Liniere to form the county of Dorchester. The various municipalities of Dorchester were recognized as separate entities on 1 July 1855. Earlier the same year the civil parish of Saint-Elzéar broke away from the ecclesiastical parish. In 1969 the ecclesiastical parish of Saint Elzéar de Linière became the ecclesiastical parish of Saint-Elzéar-de-Beauce. In 1982 the county of Beauce was disbanded and Saint-Elzéar-de-Beauce became part of the regional county municipality of La Nouvelle-Beauce in the administrative region of Chaudière-Appalaches, Québec, Canada. In 1994 Saint-Elzéar-de-Beauce and St. Elzéar merged to form the municipaliy of Saint-Elzéar.

History

Established on the banks of the Beaurivage River, watered by the Nadeau and Savoie rivers, Saint-Elzéar is about 10 km east of Sainte-Marie, near Saint-Bernard. The community was first named Saint-Elzéar-de-Linière, and was formed as an ecclesiastical parish in 1835, when it was detached from the territory of the Seigneurie Sainte-Marie. The first settlers, who arrived mostly around 1845, came from L'Île d'Orléans, Beauport, Château-Richer, and Sainte-Marie. Irish families joined the French-Canadian core. Although the name Saint-Elzéar was retained to identify the post office opened in 1853, which changed to Saint-Elzéar-de-Beauce in 1891, the latter was retained to name the parish municipality created in 1855, but preceded by the municipality of Saint-Elzéar established in 1845 and abolished two years later. Almost 100 years later, in 1954, Beauce was substituted for Linière to mark the connection with the region, so precious in the heart of the Beaucerons. In 1955, part of the territory was detached in order to create the municipality of the village of Saint-Elzéar. However, on 30 November 1994, the two entities were again consolidated. Pig breeding, as well as the dairy and textile industry, are the basis of the economy of this municipality.

Henri-Elzéar or Elzéar-Henri Juchereau Duchesnay (1809-1871), who was born in Beauport and died in Sainte-Marie, was a lawyer, elected legislative councilor (1856-1865) and senator (1867) who married Julie Perrault in 1834. On her death in 1838 he inherited part of the seigniory and was honored with the name of lord of Sainte-Marie [Saint-Elzéar]. In his second marriage (1844), he married the first cousin of his first wife and daughter of Jean-Thomas Taschereau, Elisabeth-Suzanne. As for the original Linière constituent, he evokes the Taschereau family of Lignière, Lignières or Linières, who had long been the owner of the Sainte-Marie seigneury. The village of Saint-Elzéar crowns a hill and offers an exceptional view of the Chaudière Valley and the surrounding Appalachians from the grounds of the church. The church was built by the inhabitants between 1849 and 1854 according to the plans of Thomas Baillairgé. The interior decoration of this historical monument was restored in the 1960s and is the work of Léandre Parent (1855-1860). It has an altarpiece by Ferdinand Villeneuve (1893-1894).

(From (La Nouvelle-Beauce) in the French edition of Wikipedia who quoted it from TOPOS sur le Web, website of the Quebec Commission for Toponomy. Translation assistance from Google Translate.

Research Tips

• Library and Archives Canada Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada (1895) for Beauce. This shows the electoral sub-districts in 1895 which are closely equivalent to the townships and parishes of the time. This map is a PDF. Over the series the compass-north-point on these maps does not consistently point to the top of the page!
• Official Transport Quebec Road Map. From a province-wide map showing the administrative regions you can click to an overview of a region. Responding to the "cliquez" on this map brings up a standard road-map of the area which will blow up to readable magnification. The whole website is in French, but the only words you need are "cliquez" and the name of the administrative region.
• Commission de toponymie Quebec--Quebec's data bank of official Québec place names, commonly known as "TOPOS sur le Web". The website is in French and paragraphs can be translated with Google Translate.

French names for places

Because French is the one official language of Québec, WeRelate employs the French names for places within the province. Many placenames will be similar to their counterparts in English, with the addition of accents and hyphens between the words. The words "Saint" and "Sainte" should be spelled out in full. Placenames should be made up of four parts: the community (or parish, or township, or canton), the historic county, Québec, Canada. You may find placenames red-linked unless you follow these conventions.

Local government structure

The Province of Québec was made up of counties and territories. Counties in Québec were established gradually as the land was settled by Europeans. Each county included communities with some form of local governement (often church-based). Territories referred to the undeveloped sections under the control of the government in charge of the whole province at the time. The communities included townships and/or cantons, depending on the English/French makeup of the county concerned, and also included ecclesiastical parishes with somewhat different boundaries which could overlap with local townships or cantons. Ecclesiastical parish registers have been retained and are available to view (online through Ancestry). Since the 1980s many small townships and parishes are merging into larger "municipalities", often with the same name as one of their components.

Beginning in 1979 the historic counties of Québec were replaced by administrative regions and regional county municipalities (abbreviated as RCM in English and MRC in French). Regional county municipalities are a supra-local type of regional municipality, and act as the local municipality in unorganized territories within their borders. (An unorganized area or unorganized territory is any geographic region in Canada that does not form part of a municipality or Indian reserve. There is a list in Wikipedia.) There are also 18 equivalent territories (TEs) which are not considered to be RCMs. These are mostly large cities with their suburbs, but include 4 very large geographical areas where the population is sparse.

The administrative regions (above the RCMs in the hierarchy) are illustrated on a map in Wikipedia. The regions are used to organize the delivery of provincial government services and there are conferences of elected officers in each region. The regions existed before the change from historic counties to regional county municipalities.

The above description is based on various articles in Wikipedia including one titled Types of municipalities in Quebec

NOTE: WeRelate refers to Québec communities as being within their historic counties because this is the description which will be found in historical documents. FamilySearch and Quebec GenWeb follow the same procedure. However, it is always wise to know the current RCM as well in order to track these documents down in local repositories and also to describe events which have taken place since 1980.

Because the former or historic counties and the modern regional county municipalities can have the same names but may cover a slightly different geographical area, the placenames for Regional County Municipalities or "Territories Equivalent to regional county municipalities" are distinguished by including the abbreviation "RCM" or "TE" following the name.

Historic counties (which were taken out of use in about 1982) were made up of townships or cantons. The two words are equivalent in English and French. Eventually all the Québec cantons in WeRelate will be described as townships. Many townships disappeared before 1980 with the growth of urbanization.

If the word parish is used, this is the local ecclesiastical parish of the Roman Catholic Church. Parish boundaries and township or canton boundaries were not always the same.

The WeRelate standard form for expressing a place in Québec is township/canton/parish, historic county, Québec, Canada,
or local municipality, administrative region, Québec, Canada for places established after the changes of the 1980s.

Censuses

Censuses were taken throughout the 19th century in Quebec (or in Lower Canada or Canada West before 1867). Surprisingly most of them have been archived and have been placed online free of charge by the Government of Canada (both microfilmed images and transcriptions). All can be searched by name or browsed by electoral district. The contents vary. Those of 1825, 1831 and 1841 record only the householders by name, but remaining members of each household were counted by sex and by age range. From 1851 through 1921 each individual was named and described separately. The amount of information increased throughout the century, and in 1901 people were asked for their birthdate and the year of immigration to Canada. Unfortunately, enumerators were required only to record the birthplace province or country (if an immigrant). Specific birthplaces have to be discovered elsewhere.

The links below are to the introductory page for the specific census year. It is wise to read through this page first to see what will be provided on a specific census, and what will be lacking. Links to the records follow from these pages.

• Census of Lower Canada, 1825
• Census of Lower Canada, 1831
• Census of 1842, Canada East
• Census of 1851 (Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) Took place January 1852.
• Census of 1861
• Census of Canada, 1871
• Census of Canada, 1881
• Census of Canada, 1891
• Census of Canada, 1901
• Census of Canada, 1911
• Census of Canada, 1921

Other Sources

• FamilySearch Wiki Information for the province and for indivdiual counties, and places within counties.
• The Drouin Collection: explaining its history and purpose in a FamilySearch Wiki article
• The Drouin Collection provided by Ancestry.com and Ancestry.ca (pay websites).
• Genealogy Quebec in French, the website of the Drouin Institute. (also a pay website) with more databases than are on Ancestry.
• Quebec GenWeb (English version--for the most part)
• The Quebec Familiy History Society is the largest English-language genealogical society in Quebec. Most of their services are members only, but their Bulletin Board has useful tips for everyone. These may change from time to time.
• The CanGenealogy page for Quebec. An overview of available online sources with links written by Canadian genealogist Dave Obee.
• La Mémoire du Québec online. Édition 2017. "Le dictionnaire des noms propres du Québec." In other words, an up-to-date gazetteer of places in Québec organized as a wiki. Each entry is a timeline.
• Eastern Townships of Quebec Connector. A blogpost with links to many websites dealing with Quebec genealogy, particularly for those who don't speak French well. All parts of Quebec are mentioned.
• Google "translate French to English" for those words and phrases you can't quite remember from schooldays.