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Saint-Georges is a city in the province of Quebec, Canada. It is the seat of local government for the Beauce-Sartigan Regional County Municipality, part of the Chaudière-Appalaches administrative region. The population was 31,173 as of the Canada 2011 Census. Québec Route 173 runs through Saint-Georges-Est (a "suburb") and heads south to the border with Maine, USA. The name of the parish and of the city, Saint-Georges, is in homage to George Pozer, the fourth seigneur of Aubert-Gallion, the township in which Saint-Georges was located. In 2002, Saint-Georges amalgamated with the smaller communities of Saint-Georges-Est (pop. 4,110), Aubert-Gallion (pop. 2,444) and Saint-Jean-de-la-Lande (pop. 786).
[edit] HistoryThe history of Saint-Georges goes back to the late seventeenth century, at which point the region was inhabited principally by "Algonquin Indians". The first European presence recorded is that of a Jesuit missionary called Father Gabriel Druillettes who made three visits in 1646, 1650 and, finally, in 1651, but there was no colonial settlement established at this time. By the middle of the next century, however, two colonial "seigneuries" had been established on the present site of Saint-Georges: these were Aubert-de-Lisle and Aubert-Gallion. Records indicate that in 1760 one of these, Aubert-Gallion, passed into the hands of Marie-Anne Josephte de l'Estrigant de St-Martin and of her daughter Charlotte-Marie-Anne-Joseph Aubert de la Chesnaye. The two heiresses sold their inheritance in 1768 to William Grant, an Englishman with ambitions to become a major Canadian landowner. Grant died in 1805 or 1807 (sources differ) and the estate was sold again, this time to the German (at least by birthplace), Johann Georg Pfotzer. The canonical parish of Saint-Georges was created in 1835, and the secular parish/municipality, located in the historical county of Beauce, in 1856. [edit] Research Tips[edit] Maps and Gazetteers
[edit] French names for placesBecause 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. [edit] Local government structureThe 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,
[edit] CensusesCensuses 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.
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