Due to the uniqueness of our ethnic history, with all of its tragic events, it remains a wonder that Acadians everywhere can climb their family trees with a great amount of ease and success. Given the events of the Acadian Deportation, the numerous mini-deportations and migrations from region to region, and as well as the lack of clergy to keep records of vital events, it is understandable then why parish registers are either totally missing today, or that there exist within their pages, sometimes large gaps of missing information. Add also to these factors the numerous pages lost to ravaging fires in the earliest churches and rectories of Acadian settlements over the years, as well as the fact that Acadia per se did not have a system of "double sets of records" or many notarial documents (like its Québecois counterpart), and one readily sees the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing the researcher of an Acadian family lineage. But the challenges are not impossible to overcome!

Surprisingly, much still does exist to help one overcome such difficulties -- numerous census records (several of which are extremely well-detailed!); marriage dispensations from consanguinity (blood relationships) or affinity (in-law relationships) in the extant registers (some of these being calculated with meticulous clarity and exactness); further clues to the identities of individuals (hidden within the text of the existing records of vital events... (a deceased parent's "feu[-e]" notation, a sister who acted as a godparent named "aunt of the child"; a brother-in-law who acted at a burial witness and so forth). All these are useful instruments in the hands of a good researcher. Add to these perhaps the existence of a civil record somewhere of an event that was lost in the church registers; a will naming all a person's heirs; a passenger list giving details of a family (or none at all proving their demise)... evidence such as these which all teach the aspiring Acadian genealogist or family historian to proceed cautiously, and "one-step-at-a-time" to gather the bits of information about their family until the portrait is complete. Unfortunately, we do not yet have the resources to compile our lineages in a matter of minutes like our Québecois neighbors. But we are getting there. Our information is being amassed as we write this, and there are still many unknowns needing to be questioned and answered.

• Acadian Genealogical Pioneers - read more>
   
• Stephen White's "Dictionnaire Généalogique" - read more>
   
• Where to go from here - read more>
   
• Resources - read more>