How to Find and Get Notarial Documents from the Montreal Archives

All transactions and many family events required a document by a Notary. For genealogy research, we are interested in all Marriage Contracts, Wills, Donations to their children for support in their final years, and Inventories of all goods owned by the couple when one of them died. Also of interest are all the land concessions, purchases and sales, land exchanges and sales of inheritance rights (droits de succession). Some may also be interested in the engagement of voyagers, entering religious communities and many other documents.

Please read the LDS Research Guide at www.familysearch.org for Quebec, and then Notarial Records for a detailed explanation of sources of info on the Notaries and their records. It explains how to find the books and obtain the data.

Here is a way to quickly obtain the index info for a family SURNAME, and then order copies of the original documents.

TO OBTAIN THE INDEX INFO: Write a letter as follows.

Note: There may be hundreds of documents indexed. You may want to specify a geographical area such as Montreal or Laprairie.

The Archives will make copies of the output of their database search and print 6 indexes per page and charge you .25 cents a page; so that 120 indexes (20 pages) will cost you $5.00. They will send you an invoice for the amount. You can mail them a check when you receive the info.

The database currently contains all index info up to 1784, and soon to be 1789.

ARCHIVES NATIONALES DU QUEBEC

Centre d’archives de Montreal

535, av. Viger Est

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

H2L 2P3

Please send me copies of the index of Notarial documents from the Parchemin Database for the surname = Your Surname.

John Doe

123 Main Street

Anycity, USA 00045

Email: Jdoe@aol.com

TO OBTAIN THE DOCUMENTS: Write a letter as follows.

From the Index information, enter the Notary’s name in full, the district (MTL) the date of the record and a simple description.

The Archives will make copies of the documents and will charge you .25 cents a page; remember that most documents are 1, 2 or 3 pages long but some Inventories are 14 pages long. They will send you an invoice for the amount. You can mail them a check when you receive the info.

ARCHIVES NATIONALES DU QUEBEC

Centre d’archives de Montreal

535, av. Viger Est, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H2L 2P3

Please send me a copy of the following Notarial Documents from the Montreal District; 17 April 2006

NOTARY DATE DESCRIPTION

Barette dit Courville, Mtl	4 Nov 1735	Vente de terre par Francois Poissant
Barette dit Courville, Mtl	18 Jan 1739	Mariage contract Jean Monet & Agathe Poissant
Souste, A. Mtl	18 Jul 1746	Vente de terre at St Joseph a Claude Poissant
Souste, A. Mtl	30 Jan 1747	Mariage contract de Jean Baptiste Poissant & Charlotte Ganie
Souste, A. Mtl	07 Sep 1749	Vente de terre a St Joseph par Claude Poissant
Souste, A. Mtl	27 Sep 1749	Mariage contract de Claude Poissant & Marie Lemieux
Lalanne, J., Mtl (1752-1767)	8 Apr 1779	Inventaire de Marie Lemieux & Claude Poissant

Merci beaucoup,

John R. Doe, 1595 North Avenue, Anycity, Vermont, USA, 05401-2433, E_mail: jdoe@aol.com

CONTACTS: You may be contacted via email by the following group:

Research Team, Direction du Centre de Montréal, des archives privées, judiciaires et civiles

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

535, avenue Viger est

Montréal (Québec) H2L 2P3

Téléphone: (514) 873-1101 poste 6273

Télécopieur: (514) 873-2980

recherche.cam@banq.qc.ca