French-Canadian & Métis Research
Documentary research across the full arc of French Canada: the founding mothers and soldiers of New France, the habitant generations of the St. Lawrence parishes, the voyageurs of the North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies, the Indigenous and Métis families of the pays d’en haut, and the westward migration that ended at French Prairie, Oregon. All of it built on primary sources, to the Genealogical Proof Standard.
Featured French-Canadian Work
A sample of recent research from the Storyline Genealogy archive.
The Free Man of the Prairies
Two errors in the public record—neither sourced to a single primary document—corrupted every generation above and below a Columbia River couple. Correcting them took four archive collections, two sacramental registers naming the same father on consecutive days, and an HBC expedition list placing Laurent Quintal on the Snake River in 1824.
View the Case Study →The Abitakijikokwe Discovery
For 200 years she was nameless—listed only as “Sauvagesse” in family records. Through systematic research across five Quebec parishes and a single marriage record preserving her Ojibwe name, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe emerged as one of the best-documented Indigenous women in colonial records.
Read Her Story →The Guilbault Line
A Fille du Roi’s marriage that sparked a family war. A master mason building in stone. A voyageur who married an Ojibwe woman. Seven generations from 17th-century France to 19th-century Quebec—episodes, founding mothers and fathers, and companion research in one place.
Explore the Series →The Research Collections
Eight standing collections — each a gateway into one chapter of the French-Canadian story.
The Pays d’en Haut
The canoe routes that connected Montreal to the interior, and the company ledgers that documented who paddled them. Voyageur case studies, NWC and HBCA research guides, documentary biographies, and the sacred places where fur trade families left their records.
Enter the Collection →At the Lake of Two Mountains
Research and stories from the Oka Mission — Algonquin, Nipissing, Saulteaux, Ottawa, and Tête de Boule — at the confluence where the Ottawa River meets the lake. Name-variant analysis, Indigenous identity research, and the registers where names were preserved or erased, depending on who held the pen.
Enter the Collection →From Oka to Oregon
The same families who built lives at the Lake of Two Mountains crossed a continent on the fur trade routes and ended three thousand miles west at French Prairie, Oregon — buried in the same mission cemetery where they had lived beside each other since Oka. The migration, the archives, and the men who returned and the men who didn’t.
Enter the Collection →Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier
The women who crossed the Atlantic in the 17th century to marry, raise families, and establish the French-Canadian population — documented through baptismal records, marriage contracts, census data, and court documents. Case studies, a six-episode documentary series, and the founding mothers of both family lines.
Enter the Collection →The Carignan-Salières Regiment
Before the King’s Daughters could cross the Atlantic, someone had to make the colony safe. In 1665 Louis XIV sent 1,200 professional soldiers; about 400 stayed to build New France. The regiment’s story — the forts, the Mohawk campaign, the muster roll of 1668 — and the soldier-ancestors who became founders of families.
Enter the Collection →The Soulière Line · Tranchemontagne
A mason who married three times and fathered nineteen children. A voyageur’s widow who lived to ninety-one. A woman divorced and remarried in five days. Eight generations from Brittany and New France to Chicago — a complete documentary biography series with its own founding mothers and fathers.
Enter the Collection →Marie Lorgueil
The complete life of a Fille à Marier — from Bordeaux baptism to Montreal burial. Systematic research assembled more than fifty documents tracing one 17th-century woman’s strategic age deception, her children’s extraordinary survival, and her legal agency in widowhood.
Enter the Collection →The Guilbault Line
Seven generations from La Rochelle to the pays d’en haut and back — founder, mason, habitant, patriarch, voyageur, the wilderness-born, and the last generation. The series that anchors the voyageur research, the Oka Mission work, and the Oregon migration.
Enter the Collection →Have French-Canadian or Métis Ancestors?
This is the research I do for clients — from PRDH and parish registers to the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, from Filles du Roi origins to fur trade careers and Indigenous identity research. Every project is built on primary sources and documented to the Genealogical Proof Standard.
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