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Music.

0:06

Gwan, everybody, welcome to the Disafimi History Podcast,

0:10

where we'll be speaking about history and as well family history and how history

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relates in terms of Caribbean people for the present as well as in the past and how in the past,

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what that does and brings forth for what we are going through at present and

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what we can learn from our history, from our family and take that moving forward.

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So I do hope you enjoy the podcast. And if you like it, please ensure to subscribe, like, and review.

0:39

Thank you. In today's episode featuring genealogist Gilles Houdicourt,

0:44

who has been researching his Haitian family history for 30 plus years and is a founding member,

0:51

Association de Généalogie d'Hauty.

0:55

We'll be diving into researching Haitian genealogy. So let's have a listen.

1:01

Okay, so thank you so much, Gilles, for coming on to the podcast to speak about

1:07

the Haitian genealogy group that you have formed.

1:10

So before we start, I'll have you just do a brief introduction and then after

1:14

that, just to talk about how you started this.

1:17

Okay, well, my name is Gilles Ludicourt, Haitian, born and raised.

1:22

I immigrated to Canada in 1990 90 from Haiti.

1:26

I don't look very dark, I know, but both of my parents were born in Haiti, and so was I.

1:32

My grandparents on my mother's side immigrated to Haiti.

1:35

On my father's side, we're a very old Haitian family from before independence, so in the 1700s.

1:44

I had been living in Canada for a few years, and my mom, my father had passed

1:49

away years earlier, and my mom had been visiting every once in a while.

1:55

And on one trip, she told me that she had burnt a bunch of papers that had belonged to my father.

2:02

And I blew a lid when she told me that.

2:07

I didn't know what the papers were, what their importance were,

2:10

but I did not. My father died one year after I arrived in Canada.

2:14

Oh, wow. So I did not know what it is that she was burning, and I didn't like the idea of that.

2:20

So anyway, Anyway, he saw how upset I was.

2:22

And on the subsequent trip, he brought a box that contained all that was left

2:27

from my father's papers. In that box, I found a bunch of interesting things. But what I did find was

2:33

two genealogies, family history.

2:36

One was a natural tree, you know, like they did in the old days.

2:39

It was a big roll of paper rolled up that one of my father's sisters had done

2:44

probably in the 60s or in the 70s, where it was a trunk and,

2:49

you know, all the branches and all the, I was on it,

2:53

little leaves at the tip of a branch.

2:56

And it had been done by my father's sister.

3:01

And it was my father's grandmother's side of the family, strictly.

3:05

So my father's mother, my grandmother, I'm sorry, my father's mother.

3:10

And then my father had on a bunch of pieces of yellow paper like this, done his father's side.

3:18

It wasn't a tree. He had taken a bunch of the notes and written all that he

3:23

knew about his family's origins.

3:26

And so I took those two genealogies, and I looked for software, genealogy software.

3:35

I installed this on my computer, and I entered all the information into a computer

3:41

from both trees. I combined both.

3:44

And since my mother had come for the summer, while my mom was watching her soap

3:50

operas on TV, I had the computer on the desk next to her and I started quizzing

3:56

her. My mother was in her 80s at the time.

3:59

So I asked her a bunch of questions to update all this information.

4:03

And then I started emailing a bunch of people in the family,

4:07

asking questions, you know, to update everything.

4:09

And probably within a few months, I had about 6,000 names.

4:14

But I went much further than just doing my family's history. tree.

4:19

Like, I don't know, let's say I had a sister-in-law or my brother's wife,

4:25

and I actually happened to know who her brothers were.

4:29

So I put them in, you know, and then I knew who her parents were.

4:33

She's not really related to me. She's not directly my family,

4:36

you know, and her brothers are even less so. Anyway, I put a bunch of information like this with the help of my mother.

4:43

And it was sort of the beginning of the email, right? We're talking,

4:47

this is 1997 that I did this.

4:51

And email had been around for a few years. So I emailed every cousin,

4:55

every distant relative, everybody I knew, asking questions, you know,

4:59

date of birth, date of death, date of marriage, where were you born,

5:03

where were your parents born, et cetera. And eventually, I put all this, I managed to...

5:11

There's the genealogy software have this common output called the GEDCOM.

5:19

Yes, yes. It's a way to export the data and any kind of genealogy and a common.

5:26

So that way, if you have a software and I have another one, I can export a GEDCOM,

5:31

which your software will understand and you'll be able to import it.

5:35

Okay. Okay. So it's like a common language that all the genealogy softwares have.

5:40

So I was able to import a GEDCOM and upload it onto a website.

5:45

I had created this website, and I could actually put my family tree online.

5:50

And it was public, and it was free, and a bunch of people could see it.

5:54

And next thing I knew, I was receiving genealogies from all over the world from Haitians.

6:01

You know, like I have a family tree, and they had noticed some of their relatives on my tree.

6:08

You know and just because like great

6:11

ankles wife you know anyway

6:15

so i started inputting all these things and they

6:18

were all somehow connected because when somebody found my tree is generally

6:21

because they found a relative of theirs and they would send me information by

6:25

email i got packages in the mail i received all sorts of information this one

6:32

lady had been collecting obituaries and newspapers for years.

6:36

And she sent me a whole box of obituaries that she had cut out from newspapers.

6:41

They had information, you know? The person who often mentions who the parents

6:46

were, the surviving brothers and sisters, obituaries have all of it.

6:51

So anyway, within a couple of years, there was really a bunch of interest and

6:56

the people who were most in contact with me, I got in touch with them and I

7:01

said, well, let's make something official out of it, you know?

7:04

And this is why we created l'Association de Généalogie d'Haïti and we registered it.

7:11

In 1990, it's going to be 25 years.

7:16

So in 1999, it's going to be 25 years in May. We registered here in Canada, in Quebec, in May 1999.

7:24

And we started recruiting official members.

7:29

And at that point, we hadn't gone to the archives at all. You know,

7:33

this was just from word of mouth. This is all genealogy that, you know, people would just get from their families.

7:39

Often there was mistakes in them, but it was just what people knew about their families.

7:45

And some of the people who joined our group who were from Haiti were accustomed

7:50

to going to the Haitian archives and told us that Haiti had many archives that

7:55

had survived all the different wars and hurricanes and the fires that ravaged Haiti over the years.

8:02

And that those records were there and that we could consult them.

8:06

And so somebody went to see the director of the archives in Haiti, a guy called Mr.

8:13

Beltran, a very, very honest man, serious.

8:17

And we asked him if we could have permanent access to these archives to update them in a database.

8:25

And he agreed. So our members started contributing a little money. We bought a laptop.

8:32

I had a little computer background. I wrote a little database with a software

8:38

called Microsoft Access, which was based on an archives document.

8:44

You know, so it has name, date of birth, date of death, who are the parents,

8:49

husband, wife, and so forth. You know, anything you can find on a record.

8:53

And we hired a lady in Haiti, gave her a monthly salary.

8:58

And every day she went to the National Archives with her laptop,

9:03

sat down, just opened the oldest books she could find in the beginning,

9:07

and she started inputting data.

9:11

So from page one, page two, page three, and whatever she could read, she'd write down.

9:16

And then we uploaded this to our database, which we already had online from the one I had started.

9:24

And eventually, some real programmers joined the group and improved the website.

9:32

And it was improved over the years several times to the point where we have

9:37

the website that we have now. And it has i have to check but i think it has several hundred thousand records now,

9:44

but there were no pictures but at the time digital photography wasn't what it

9:48

is right now and so i sort of regret that that we didn't take pictures of all

9:55

these archives but we actually wrote down what what they contained so we'd have

9:59

even the name of the witnesses this is, you know,

10:02

and so forth. And these, you can look them up.

10:05

And so a bunch of Haitians started finding all this information online on our

10:12

website and use that to create their own family tree.

10:17

Okay. Now, the archives in Haiti and in most other countries,

10:22

the national archives that you could go and freely look up and research normally

10:27

are restricted to 100 years to see your birth certificate normally if I have no reason to do it.

10:36

They'll ask for you and, you know, why you want this.

10:39

For privacy reasons, you know, or for fraud reasons, you know, somebody.

10:43

But normally when the records are over 100 years old, they can become public

10:48

because it assumed the people are deceased and so forth.

10:52

So what we had access to was the archives that were over 100 hundred years old.

10:57

So we started this in 1999. So we had access to up to 1899.

11:03

And so the part between you and a hundred years has to be done.

11:10

By questioning your family, because you're not going to normally be able to

11:14

look that up on some website or at the National Archives.

11:18

So people were able to research, you know, their grandparents,

11:23

their great-grandparents and further up. And in certain cases on my branches, I went up to the 1700s,

11:29

even late 1600s, I haven't.

11:32

That's amazing. That's amazing. And then, I mean, you mentioned so many things

11:35

here, so let's kind of break it down because you started of this group.

11:39

It's been 25 years. It's coming this May that it's been active.

11:43

And I'll link that in the show notes as well.

11:46

Now, if people wanted to join your group, do they have to be in Canada or can

11:51

they be almost in Canada? No, no. Most of our members are not in Canada.

11:54

We founded this in Canada because the little core group that started it,

11:59

including myself, was in the Montreal area.

12:02

But our members, we have like about, we

12:05

probably have about 250 paying members now they're all over

12:08

all over the world most of them are Haitians but we

12:11

have people who joined our group because they have to

12:14

do research for recently I saw

12:17

somebody joined our group because they're looking

12:20

for uh they're like a law firm and they're looking for uh the the inheritor

12:25

or or whatever they're trying to find out you know who's going to inherit so

12:29

they were researching somebody's family for for that they didn't tell me who

12:34

or what but they're they became members and they're using our group for that

12:38

reason. Oh, that's amazing. And as well, you mentioned the fact that you had somebody in the archives actually

12:44

going to the archives every day and documenting.

12:48

Yes. Now we have two employees. We had started with one employee.

12:52

Employee she worked for many years and eventually we

12:55

had her train but she became very good at it like

12:58

she could read one of those 1700s documents

13:01

like it was printed you know she's

13:05

very very good at it eventually she trained

13:08

another one and then you know resigned and then we had another one and now we

13:12

still have two employees however ever since the earthquake in 2010 we no longer

13:18

have have access to the old Haitian archives because the building where those archives was damaged.

13:26

Not the building itself, but

13:28

all the shelvings collapsed and all their filing system and everything.

13:34

And after that, we lost access to that particular, the documents themselves

13:39

were not lost, but we lost access to that building.

13:42

We thought it was going to be temporary because Because the director thought

13:46

he was going to get funding to fix those old archives.

13:50

And that money never came. He never found the funding.

13:53

So ever since 2010, we've actually been using the Mormons' pictures,

13:59

the microfilms of the Mormons, to continue the work.

14:02

So we still have two girls in Haiti, each with a laptop.

14:06

But they're actually going through the pictures done by the Mormons of those

14:11

same archives. and they're entering all that information.

14:15

Every other week or so, I get a Microsoft Access file from them,

14:21

which we upload to our website. So our website keeps growing every month. Yes, the database. That's amazing.

14:27

Completely amazing. And before we get on to with the Mormons,

14:31

I just wanted to further reiterate, because you said with the whole privacy situation.

14:38

That when someone is starting their research, that they need to talk with their

14:42

immediate family to kind of get that information before moving on and how important

14:48

it is before they... That's how you have to start. Yes.

14:51

That's how you have to start, is by questioning everyone around you, the elders especially.

14:57

You have to get as much information from them. And because you don't have online

15:03

access for recent records, normally in Jamaica, if your grandfather was born in 1935, Five.

15:10

It's going to be very hard to see his birth certificate if you cannot,

15:14

you know, show that you're the granddaughter and that, you know,

15:18

you need this record for some specific reason.

15:21

And then there's probably a fee, you know, but you can't just go there and browse

15:25

the records from 1935. They won't let you.

15:27

Most countries will let you browse up to 1924 or 1923.

15:34

Yeah, I know. I know for Jamaica, it's up to 1930 for any births.

15:38

So anything before that, they'll see. Marriages is 1950 that they'll allow you to see.

15:43

And of course, they do allow death records for you to see.

15:47

I think it's up until 1970 before you start to have to pay for anything that's more recent than that.

15:52

But yeah, you're definitely right. It is also a source of income for the National

15:58

Archives because they charge for this for a specific death record or birth record.

16:04

Record and this is how they pay for to upkeep

16:08

their their services so they

16:10

don't want to just give it out for free so but

16:13

they only charge for the recent records not for the old ones exactly now you

16:20

have a story i know that would be you know in the pre-meeting we had that you

16:24

mentioned about the mormons how they were able to access the archives in haiti

16:29

through your group group initiated.

16:32

Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? After we started this Association de Généalogie d'Haïti, and we started this

16:40

work in Haiti, and we had good relations with the director of the National Archives.

16:46

Who allowed graciously our one employee at the time to access the National Archives every day.

16:53

He had given her a desk and And she could leave home at night and leave that

16:57

we had a secure lock to leave the laptop overnight, you know, and so forth.

17:03

We found out that the Mormons go around the world microfilming archives.

17:10

You know why they do that, huh? No. Okay.

17:13

Can I go into that? Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. Okay. Okay.

17:17

The Mormons are Christians, and they have in their religion a particular belief

17:24

that when you die and go to heaven,

17:27

you are not just going to hang around with all the souls of all the living people that ever existed,

17:35

but you're actually going to hang out with your family.

17:40

So your deceased grandmother and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents

17:45

are there in heaven waiting for you to join them.

17:48

And because you're going to be hanging out with them in heaven,

17:53

you have a responsibility to learn who they are.

17:57

So Mormons, as a religious duty, are expected during their living years to study their ancestors.

18:06

Okay? So to make this possible for the Mormons throughout the world,

18:13

they went and obtained permission to microfilm all these records.

18:20

And they did many, many, many, many countries, mostly Christian countries,

18:25

but they did many countries. is, which they have on film. And in the old days, you had to go and look them up,

18:33

you know, picture by picture. And it was very arduous and very difficult. But now they put all this online.

18:39

They digitize everything. And they're putting more and more of these things online.

18:44

And now you can research them by name and by date of birth and by all sorts of information.

18:50

So the Mormons to come back had attempted to go to Haiti Haiti before our association

18:56

was created and were not successful.

18:59

They ran into all sorts of obstacles, probably corruption and paperwork and

19:05

bureaucracy and whatnot. And they had left Haiti without doing any microfilming and they were disappointed.

19:12

And we found out about this. So we found out that they had an office here, which is involved in microfilming documents.

19:21

Documents, and we asked for an appointment, and three of us from the founding

19:26

members of Association Gingé d'Haïti went to see them, and we said,

19:30

look, we have very good relations with the director of the archives in Haiti,

19:34

and we talked to him, and he agrees,

19:37

and we can arrange for you to come back to Haiti and have access to all the

19:42

archives and be able to microfilm film, everything with no paperwork, no obstacles,

19:49

no corruptions, no nothing like that.

19:53

So we put them in contact and they went back to Haiti a second time and they

19:58

were able to reach an agreement with the National Archives in Haiti.

20:01

And for many, many years, they actually what they do is they send all the equipment,

20:06

the cameras, film and so forth, and they train locals on how to microfilm.

20:11

So they send instructors who show them how to do it and then they leave and

20:17

it's the Haitian that they trained who actually do the work.

20:22

There were probably 10 or 12 of them doing this work for many, many years.

20:28

Whenever I went to the archives in Haiti to see our employee,

20:31

I would see them in the next room where there were a dozen of them with their

20:34

cameras and all their equipment.

20:37

And then they'd send the rolls to, I guess, Salt Lake City, Utah.

20:41

And now all this is online. All this is online now.

20:45

So including the archives that we had, many of the archives that we had put

20:51

on our website, which had no picture, it just had all the information from the acts.

20:57

But if you go to the Mormon and you actually, you can able to find the same

21:01

one, you'll be able to see sometimes the actual picture, which is very important

21:06

for many reasons that I'll talk about later. No, absolutely.

21:11

It has a lot of information, but still, it's just another way for documenting.

21:14

Just the fact that your group was a part of that to get the Mormon Church to

21:19

be able to document and to be able to take pictures.

21:21

And now it's available online as well, in addition to your group as well,

21:26

to have a database, a massive database to have all this information.

21:31

Because sometimes it's just not knowing where to go to find things.

21:35

That's the harder part more than anything else. But, yeah, maybe we might want

21:40

to just kind of look at one of the records because I know, you know,

21:44

these records have a lot of information on there.

21:47

And just to kind of see what people, you know, that are researching can be able

21:52

to find and how it will kind of look as well.

21:56

Because that's the other thing is when people kind of don't know what they're

22:00

looking at or what there can be expected, it becomes a challenge, right?

22:05

Where people do not like the unknown, so to speak.

22:09

And what do these things look like and what am I looking at and how can I decipher

22:15

this information to carry me to the next step?

22:17

So I'll let you bring up one of those records and we can kind of have a look at them.

22:23

What I also wanted to mention is that often people who have information about

22:29

your family history are cousins you haven't even met.

22:33

Yes. You know, so your second cousins have the same great grandparents as you do.

22:41

So often, you know, you're going to ask, you're going to think of only asking

22:45

your aunt and uncle and grandparents and brothers and sisters.

22:49

Ancestors then you have your first cousins who are the children

22:52

of your aunts and uncles but if you go down

22:55

to their cousins or their first cousins they have

22:58

the same great grandparents as you do so often you're

23:02

going to find information you know like i didn't

23:04

have the picture of a certain ancestor but one of my second

23:07

cousins did and it's maybe a second cousin you've

23:10

never spoken to or that you don't have any relations with

23:14

but they have this information and it's your direct rec

23:16

ancestor they have information about so it's very

23:19

important to reach out to all these people that you know exist but then you're

23:23

not necessarily in touch with to get the information from them i'll show you

23:27

some of the records that i i put i dumped them a bunch of them in this uh i think okay OK.

23:37

Aujourd'hui, le 7 juillet 1881.

23:40

So July 7th, 1881.

23:44

En 68e de l'indépendance. 68 years since Haitian independence.

23:50

À 6 heures in the afternoon.

23:53

In front of us, Jean-Joseph Mistel Jolie, officer d'état civil.

24:01

What do you call him? The one who is a registrar? Registrar. The registrar?

24:06

Yeah. The registrar. The registrar, yeah. The registrar. L'officier de la civil

24:09

of the commune of Port-au-Prince, section south, sud.

24:16

Came the citoyen Lucien Frédéric, born in this city, 26 years old, majeur.

24:27

Majeur means, you know, 21 or over.

24:30

Oh, okay, over 21, okay. Majeur. There's not a word for this in English?

24:34

It's minor? a minor yeah and if you're not a minor you're a an adult i guess

24:41

i don't know that's the only thing i could think of but yeah works for a private

24:48

public means work for the government. Domicilier légitime du citoyen Derrissé-Mélar. Okay, fils légitime,

24:56

son of the citoyen Derrissé-Mélar and of Rosemère Richier, his wife,

25:06

both adults, okay, majeurs, owners.

25:11

Owners means you own property. Okay. Okay, du propriétaire means owners.

25:16

So, living in this city, and they're acting with the consentement,

25:23

meaning that the parents approve of the wedding. Okay.

25:27

Consentement de père et mère, meaning the parents are there and they approve the wedding on one part.

25:33

And this is going to be the bride. This is a wedding certificate.

25:37

Deux-moiselles Marie-Louise, née en cette ville, 22 years old.

25:43

So, born in this city, 22 years old.

25:46

So also adult, majeur, owner, living in the city, legitimate daughter.

25:53

Fille legitime, legitimate daughter in French means that the parents were married.

25:58

Okay. Fille legitime means that the parents were not married.

26:02

Okay. So Fille legitime de Feu Carl Meuse.

26:06

So they're saying the Feu Carl Meuse. Carl Meuse is her father.

26:10

And Feu means that he's deceased at the moment.

26:14

Okay. So we have all sorts of information now. We know that Carl Meuse was no

26:18

longer living at that date. Carl Meuse and the Silliman Pierre.

26:25

So we have, it's a wedding. It's one of my favorite acts, and this is why I

26:28

started with this, because a wedding will give the name of the husband,

26:35

the wife, and the name of both parents.

26:40

And de Saville, as you know, the 22-year-old major owner of Feu Calmeuse and

26:44

Feu Télismamia, both deceased in the city.

26:50

So now we know that the parents were deceased, the wife's parents at that time

26:54

were deceased, and we know where they were deceased in the city.

26:59

Agissant avec le consentement de ses parents, d'ici présent,

27:03

both ask us to proceed with the celebration of their marriage.

27:10

Projected devant l'autel. Okay, this is about, in those days before you married,

27:16

you had to publish it in the church that they intend to marry.

27:20

So in case anybody opposes, they could.

27:24

So that's what that part is about, that they had published the intention of marrying.

27:29

And the other page is on.

27:33

So when they are published in terms of with marriage, did they have to do that

27:37

for a certain amount of weeks so they know him?

27:40

Sometimes I think it was a few days or a couple of weeks earlier, yeah.

27:44

Because sometimes I found two or three acts like this on the same couple.

27:50

And the first couple are actually the publications that they have to publish.

27:55

And they would print it out and put it in front of the church or in front of

27:58

the mayor's office wherever. And then the last one is actually the actual wedding. Okay. Okay.

28:10

Nobody opposed the wedding. Something about the civil code.

28:24

So this is one of those publications. It's not your actual wedding. Okay.

28:38

And then all the witnesses sign.

28:42

And see here, you can see the signatures of everybody who's mentioned. Wow.

28:50

And see, and you have here, It's my great-great-grandmother. Wow. yeah it's my Modeste is my,

29:03

It's my grandfather's grandmother. Okay. Yes. What's so interesting about the

29:08

record is that everything is handwritten. So you know exactly, and it was very specific because, again,

29:14

it mentions how many years after the independence of Haiti.

29:20

Yes. It always starts with that. Yeah. It always starts with that. See? Here.

29:30

It helps me a

29:34

lot because sometimes the page is ripped or it's blotted

29:37

out or there's like a watermark and you can't really see the date but then you

29:42

you can read how many years is there after independence so you can deduct what

29:46

the year was it's so uh yeah this This is one of my favorite type of records

29:53

that we can find is Wedding. It has a lot of information.

29:57

So it has who married who. It's the name of their parents. It has their age.

30:03

Sometimes it even mentions exactly what date they were born.

30:07

And often if the parents were from another city, it will mention that also.

30:14

So then you know where to go look for a certain record.

30:17

No absolutely very detailed with all

30:20

the information so it's not just kind of like with the

30:24

british records only in the earlier part that

30:27

was written kind of like this but then later on it became a more formal and

30:32

chart and everything else like that but good to know that people were able to

30:36

sign everybody that was mentioned signed you know that record which is you know

30:41

amazing to kind of see that in black and white and here you are showing again a very frail document.

30:47

Yes, sometimes they're like that, you know, so the information is missing.

30:52

You have to be very careful when you're taking a picture. You see here,

30:55

they actually laid it out on a cardboard. And sometimes some of the pages are, okay.

31:01

So this is my, okay.

31:04

He was born, this is like five generations before me.

31:08

This is Sinat Yusuf Dikou, one of my direct ancestors, who had been living with

31:14

a woman with whom he had three children for many years.

31:19

And as he was dying, he decided to marry her.

31:23

In this case, the officer d'état civil actually came to the house and he married

31:31

them and he was on his deathbed and he died the next day.

31:35

And I was able to find this record.

31:38

C'est aujourd'hui 18 mai 1845.

31:44

1845. 45, 42nd year of the independence, 11h du matin, Charles de Vimay,

31:52

du magistrat communal, so he's the officer, le publicain.

31:56

So, son comparu à la demeure du citoyen, Sénatus, that was his first name, Sénatus Indico.

32:05

And it says that he had to come himself to the person's house because he was sick.

32:10

Maladie qui l'empêche, that prevents him from himself going to the officer's office.

32:17

Le citoyen sénateur sudicot, natif du Port-Républicain.

32:22

So sénateur sudicot, born at Port-Républicain, which is Port-au-Prince's old

32:27

name, age 38. So he didn't die very old.

32:32

Propriétaire commerçant, so he's a business person. Domicilien de Netville.

32:38

Fils Naturel, so his parents were not married. So Fils Naturel de la Citoyenne

32:44

Marie-Louise Udicourt. And that's all it says.

32:49

We never forget to find out who the father was.

32:52

So my name is Udicourt. I descend from him, Senatus.

32:58

And I know that his mother was Marie-Louise Udicourt.

33:02

I know who Marie-Louise Udicourt's father was and mother. but his father,

33:07

I never found out who it was and I never probably will.

33:11

And then he marries Elisabeth Azor, native to Port-au-Prince.

33:16

This is the oldest ancestor whose picture I have.

33:21

I'll show it to you in a little while. Elisabeth Azor. We have actually,

33:26

it's a painting. It's not a photography.

33:29

It's a painting that we have in the family of Elisabeth Azor of Port-au-Prince, 37 years old, et cetera.

33:37

So, and then is there a page two?

33:42

The writing is so beautiful on here.

33:46

Yeah. And then the witness's sign.

33:50

And I don't know whose signature is here, but yeah.

33:56

So you've posted everything on FamilySearch? Yes, on FamilySearch I have.

34:02

And this is Elisabeth Azor.

34:06

Amazing. Let me get that.

34:10

And how were you able to obtain this picture? We had this picture in our family.

34:15

It was at my aunt's house for many years.

34:18

And it took me a long time to track it down because my aunt died.

34:23

My aunt, who was in possession of this picture, died in the late 70s.

34:28

Everybody in the family, the elders, knew this picture had existed,

34:32

but we couldn't track it down. And it actually, it's only about in the last

34:39

seven or eight years or so that I was able to refine the picture.

34:43

It was boxed by one of her children and then a great granddaughter had it and

34:48

she finally found it in the boxes. And there he is. This is Elisabeth Azor, born around 1806.

34:56

So she's the wife of Senatius Udigou, who was born in 1806 as well.

35:02

Her, I wasn't able to find anything on her. I have her wedding certificate.

35:07

I have her death certificate, which I was able to find.

35:10

I have the birth certificate of her three children, two of which died when they were young.

35:17

Only one got to become an adult, and who's my great-great-grandfather.

35:23

But her, her parents, where she's from, I was never able to discover.

35:29

It's one of my dead ends. but I have her picture you have a picture that's more

35:34

that's like a thousand I hope like a million dollars to get a picture what I've also done,

35:41

I'll go ahead and mention it while I'm on her is I went to the cemeteries and

35:47

took pictures of tombstones and that's one place that you can also find interesting things,

35:56

and dates for example and.

36:00

Sorry, I clicked on the wrong thing here. Okay. Use a betasaur.

36:07

Unhive file. There it is. Okay.

36:11

What happened here? There it is. So this is my family's tombstone.

36:17

And one of the tombstones on the Ujikul Vault in the Port-au-Prince Cemetery.

36:23

I went there, even though everybody said I would get kidnapped or murdered if

36:27

I went. That was quite a few years ago, but it was already dangerous.

36:30

And there she is elizabeth azor wife of sensi nachi sujiku 1807 1864 and her

36:41

husband is right here sensi nachi sujiku 1806 1845 he died the day after he

36:47

married her wow oh my goodness,

36:50

and these are all the children this is all so he's the one who who built the

36:57

vault And this is his wife, Elisabeth.

37:02

Tilly Smarr is one of the children they had who died when he was 13 years old.

37:07

Actually, he's probably the first one who went in the vault.

37:11

Oh, wow. Because you see, he died in 1943.

37:17

And this is Augustin Jean-Baptiste Joujicourt, who became general at the time

37:22

of his death, who was their child. Who was 1886. So he's my grandfather's father.

37:29

And then I have, I have a picture of him as well. And Rose Flora Modeste,

37:34

you saw her signature earlier. The first act I showed you, there was a signature and it was her who was at

37:40

the wedding as a witness. And she died in 1907, born in 1840. So it was his wife.

37:48

And this is, Ajib Ejiko Fis is their son.

37:52

So there's several generations in this book like five six my father's there.

37:58

So so you see

38:01

the sorts of information are is very diverse

38:05

what we also find often on on the mormons is ship and aircraft manifest sometimes

38:14

you will find somebody who traveled on a ship in 1880 and he,

38:22

Often, if you find that person, you know, you're related to that person,

38:26

you can go see who are they traveling with.

38:29

And often on the manifest, it's going to say, this is the husband.

38:32

This is the wife. These are the children.

38:35

And these are their ages. And this is their profession.

38:38

I found a bunch of manifests. A lot of them come from Ellis Island, New York. Yes. Where they photographed

38:45

and digitized all this information.

38:48

I found quite a lot of information on the manifest.

38:51

Yeah definitely on the manifest especially

38:54

when not only on that first page of the manifest but as

38:57

well the second page because it will give a family member

39:00

that they know from where they're

39:03

coming from and ties in to say oh

39:06

this is who and this you know a cousin or an uncle or whoever it may be but

39:11

again another tying piece for everything and it's wonderful to just to know

39:16

that these These documents actually existed because I'm sure most people would

39:22

think that after the revolution that there would have been very little.

39:26

Now, most of these are going to be in the Haitian archives.

39:30

I know you mentioned before, you know, in our pre-talk in regards to some of

39:36

these being in the archives in France. How much actually got caught up, I guess, in France? This is pre-colonial times.

39:45

Haiti became independent in January 1st, 1804.

39:50

When Haiti, at the time called Saint-Domingue, was a French colony,

39:55

they would make two copies of every act and send one copy to the National Archives in Paris.

40:02

Many of them made it and are still there. And you can also research them on

40:07

a database called online called Anom, A-N-O-M.

40:13

But often those records did not make it.

40:16

Either the ship sank in a storm or often it was intercepted by a British warship.

40:24

So there are some records in Haiti which never made it to France.

40:28

Some records in France still exist, but the one in Haiti was lost in a fire, in a war, or in whatever.

40:37

In rare times, we find the records exist in both copies. I have found some records

40:43

in Paris which also exist in Port-au-Prince.

40:46

No, I definitely agree. It is rare that they'll exist in both,

40:50

even though they should. I i came here i put the this picture

40:56

of the signatures yes signatures when available

41:00

are very important especially when you

41:03

have a common name okay if you're

41:06

looking for modest it's a very rare name

41:09

most likely it's unique

41:12

okay but if you have a more common

41:15

name john smith okay or

41:19

michael lewis or a name

41:22

like this and you can go on a database and then you find a hundred of them and

41:28

a lot of them are born around the same time in the same city some are related

41:34

to you if you know you have michael lewis ancestor but many or most are not.

41:40

This is where little details like signatures, addresses, witnesses become very important.

41:48

When you have a document which you know is related to an ancestor and there's

41:54

a signature, take a picture. Because if you find another record and you don't know if it's the same person,

42:03

you can go and compare the signature.

42:07

Yes. And then that'll confirm or confirm that it's not the same person.

42:13

Often a record will have an address.

42:16

They'll say living at 23 Cooney Street.

42:21

Take note of that. Because when you find another record and you're not sure

42:26

it's the same person, you know, six years earlier or six years later,

42:30

but then it says 23 Cooney Street, you say, aha, this is my great-great-grandmother.

42:37

Another thing to note is the name of the witnesses.

42:42

Because often the witnesses are not relatives. Sometimes they are, but often they're not.

42:47

Or when they are a relative, they don't say how they're a relative.

42:49

It's a different name. You have no idea how they're relative.

42:53

And it's not important when you find one record, but often the presence of that

42:59

witness will allow you to identify another record that you're unsure of have

43:04

because it's the same name and it's the same witness.

43:08

Exactly. So you have to note all, when you have a known document,

43:13

which you know belongs to your family, you have to take note of all these little details.

43:19

And it's all those little details that will make you connect the dots and fill

43:23

in the puzzle and be able to identify all the records that are related to your family.

43:28

Exactly. Because sometimes with those witnesses, they are neighbors or people

43:33

that have some sort of business relationship with that you'll see in other documents

43:37

as well, to know that that's how they're connected.

43:40

And that's how things go during that time. Mm hmm.

43:46

And, oh, you just wanted to bring up this manifest? Oh, just an example of a manifest.

43:51

Well, this one, I didn't learn anything. This is an uncle of mine.

43:54

Let me see if I can find a manifest, which is, oh.

44:00

As well, during, because the islands were so close, like Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica.

44:06

Jamaica, I mean, I too have some French families, family names that I'm sure

44:13

would have come over from Haiti to Jamaica and vice versa.

44:17

Because there was a lot of movement during those times and especially between islands.

44:23

And just to know that I know on one branch they were born in Cuba,

44:28

but they were raised in Jamaica. So, I mean, just to know that there is that

44:33

connectivity between, especially those three islands, of course, with...

44:38

Especially in a time when people took sailboats to go from one place to another,

44:43

you had a tendency of doing business and buying things and with your neighbors.

44:51

Yes. So there were a lot of exchanges between Jamaica and Cuba and Jamaica and

44:58

Haiti or Saint-Domingue, which is called the French colony.

45:02

Sometimes even when there was war between the colonial powers in Europe,

45:08

there were still exchanges going on between the colonies here.

45:12

Then during the Haitian Revolution, a lot of French families and their slaves fled to Jamaica.

45:20

Many fled to Cuba, many fled to Dominican Republic, and Louisiana,

45:27

New Orleans, was practically founded with refugees from Haiti when the Haitian revolutions occurred.

45:34

This is where the Cajun language comes from in New Orleans.

45:38

It's actually Creole from Haiti, and all these French traditions were brought over.

45:45

It was people of all color. French men, white French people came,

45:48

mixed people came, black people came, and also of all conditions.

45:53

Because in Haiti, often people don't know that during the colonial period.

45:59

I'm sure it's the case in Jamaica. I don't know so, but I'm certain it's the case in Jamaica as well.

46:05

Often black people were slave owners.

46:08

It's not the typical, what we think is the typical white person owning black

46:13

people. That was not the case.

46:16

Often, Black people, when they became free, the way to move up in the world

46:22

was have a plantation or have some sort of domain where you had to raise things and you needed labor.

46:28

And how did you get labor back then is you bought slaves.

46:33

Sometimes they bought their own relatives to get them out of slavery,

46:37

but they were just owners of slaves as well.

46:42

And slaves were not necessarily black.

46:46

Often people would have children with their slaves.

46:50

It wasn't necessarily the plantation, the master's children,

46:55

you know, like he could have some guests come over and he'd lend them one of

46:59

the girls from the plantation to share his bed with at night.

47:02

And when this girl had a baby, it wasn't the plantation's owner's baby.

47:08

It was just some guest he had overnight six months earlier or nine months earlier, who was the father.

47:15

And he didn't really care much about that baby or taking care of him.

47:18

And that baby stayed in slavery. So we had mixed-race slaves, even very, very light-colored slaves,

47:26

sometimes which were like one-quarter black and three-quarters white.

47:32

And they were still slaves. So we could have a slave owner, pure black, owning an almost white slave,

47:40

somebody who was like three quarters white and one quarter black.

47:45

So it's not what we typically see in the movies or that we read in the books.

47:50

We had all tones of people in all conditions.

47:54

And so the people who fled the Haitian Revolution, sometimes who went to New

47:59

Orleans, were the white people with their slaves who could be white or mixed breed.

48:07

It was colored people who were free and sometimes also fled with their slaves,

48:13

which could be practically any color except white.

48:16

And we had actually black slaves who fled the revolution because they were slave

48:24

owners and they owned a certain number of slaves and they realized they would lose all of them.

48:29

So they preferred fleeing the revolution and moving to a place like New Orleans

48:33

or Baracoa, Cuba, or indeed Kingston,

48:37

and establish themselves there so they could keep their slaves,

48:42

which was an expensive property, and continue exploiting them. Yes.

48:47

No, for sure. I mean, that is a narrative that isn't very well spoken of,

48:52

and people are kind of surprised. And definitely Definitely when I saw even my records of, you know,

48:58

see, you know, somebody sell their own children to pay their taxes is quite astonishing.

49:03

But those were the times. I mean, that New World Order was in human flesh.

49:08

And that's how they were unfortunately seen.

49:11

So it's just one of those things. But yes, it's just, you know,

49:13

uncovering all of those documents, seeing those things.

49:17

But as I said, as I told you already, I think it's just quite fascinating that

49:22

every year on each record, they indicated as to how many years since the revolution,

49:28

meaning that that was a very important event.

49:31

And it meant something for them to document that on every single record moving forward. But yeah.

49:38

So going to your group in terms of what other, I guess, support that you offer

49:43

to people that are researching their family tree.

49:47

Okay. Our group does not officially really offer any support to help people.

49:54

We provide these two databases. So one is a genealogy database.

49:59

One is a database of just straight records, birth, deaths, marriages,

50:03

divorces, and so forth. So we give them access to these things and they can research.

50:09

And we used to run a forum years ago, but it shut down.

50:15

And now there's a group which is not directly, it's not our group, but I'm a member of it.

50:21

It's a Facebook group, which has several thousand members.

50:25

And I work a lot with them. And on this group, you can actually become a member

50:30

of that Facebook group and ask questions and ask for help.

50:34

Or ask, like, I can read these documents because I'm used to it.

50:39

But sometimes some people run across one of those documents.

50:42

And especially like if it's a second generation Haitian in the States or in Canada.

50:48

Well, in Canada, they often speak French. But like a second generation Haitian

50:52

in the States would likely no longer speak French at all. and then this document's

50:57

in French and then they come and help. They said, okay, I found this document.

51:00

It's my great-great-grandfather, but can you help me read it?

51:03

Okay, so right away, somebody in the group will pitch in and translate the document

51:09

and read them and help them, you know, give them also pointers on where to research,

51:14

how to research, et cetera. So this Facebook group has about 77,500 members.

51:22

Wow. I think right now, yes. Amazing. Amazing. And then, you know,

51:25

just so we can end this discussion, what other final thoughts that you wanted

51:29

to give that we didn't mention already?

51:33

Okay, we found this one. It was my grandmother's.

51:38

Okay, and my grandmother would write all sorts of information on our family Bible.

51:45

Okay, who died, who married who, who was born.

51:51

And we have pages and pages and pages in my grandmother's Bibles with all sorts

51:57

of valuable information. It's one of my cousins who was able to locate this Bible. I don't know who had it.

52:03

But I started this, I had been doing genealogy for 15 years before somebody

52:08

popped up with this Bible. And it provided, probably people don't do that that much anymore,

52:14

but our grandmothers did. Okay, so this is a document, if you're doing genealogy and you have one of your

52:23

cousins who may have a grandmother's Bible like this, it's a goldmine.

52:29

Yes, yes, absolutely. You see?

52:32

So if you wanted to share that so here it is this is a page from my grandmother's bible,

52:39

i have to actually close and open them the pictures

52:43

of a few of the pages so this is this

52:46

is the owner of the bible so she put herself her

52:50

date of birth and place of birth she was

52:53

born march 19th 1876 and somebody

52:56

wrote probably her husband because he

52:59

died after her 6th of august 1939 and

53:04

see and they were married 12th of

53:07

october 1903 by the pastor

53:10

bell guard but they learned my

53:14

my grandmother was grandfather were methodists okay and

53:18

so here's a few pages from the bible see marianne modudicou born in jeremy 14th

53:27

of june 1904 see there's all this this information on the different pages. It's very interesting.

53:36

Very detailed as well. Yes. Marie-Catherine, and this is my father,

53:42

Jean-Charles Pierre Riddikour, born in Port-au-Prince, 23rd of June, 1912.

53:48

So this is another source of information that you can find.

53:53

That's very, very important for family research.

53:58

We just don't think that something like that. But once you're researching,

54:02

it gives another, I guess you can say, kind of flushes people out, so to speak.

54:06

And it gives a different personal touch to things.

54:09

As you can see, they try to keep it as best together as they could by putting tape.

54:13

But I mean it's just one of those things and it's just one

54:16

I mean I do feel you know going on this type of a

54:19

journey it definitely just uncovers and just sees

54:22

so much of what was done to

54:25

ensure that information got passed on to

54:27

the next generation we should also mention that we have to question our elders

54:33

and often our elders are not forthcoming because they always have things to

54:40

hide thinks that they think are not respectable or that there's not,

54:46

you know, everybody had children without being married and often somebody had a child on the side.

54:55

And so people had half-sisters and half-brothers and that has always happened,

55:00

you know, and our parents and grandparents always make us, you know,

55:06

want to believe that they were prim and proper and et cetera.

55:10

And they don't want They don't want us to know all these little dirty little

55:13

secrets, but they know about it, you know, so if they know, why can't we know?

55:18

Exactly, exactly. A lot of things that may have occurred as well, so.

55:23

Especially now with DNA, like I've done DNA tests with two or three different

55:27

companies, you know, and now I didn't have any big surprises myself,

55:33

but I have relatives who had huge surprises,

55:36

you know, and then you come and confront the person and say, hey, you know.

55:40

Look what the DNA shows and, you know, what's the story here? Yeah.

55:46

And it could be, you know, if someone's not ready to even, you know,

55:50

think about information to say it's so different from what the narrative that

55:54

they were told, that can be extremely changing in a very negative way as well.

55:58

So not only potentially positive, but it could be definitely in a very negative

56:03

way because it changes their whole vision of their life or what it was up to

56:10

that point before having that test. But sometimes DNA will reveal a secret from 100 years ago.

56:19

It's not necessarily that your father is not your father or something like that.

56:23

You know, it's just that somebody who should have been your second cousin test negative.

56:30

Yes. Okay. So this is going back to the great grandparents.

56:34

And you go, boom, you know, or somebody who shouldn't have has Spanish ancestry,

56:40

you know, and where's the Spanish ancestry comes from? Yeah.

56:44

And somebody who was supposed to be a good friend.

56:49

Okay. Suddenly is a cousin. Yeah.

56:53

And you look at their tree and your tree and like, no, you're not connected

56:59

on the tree, but you're second cousins, you know, so you have common great grandparents,

57:03

you know, and that helps you do the research.

57:06

So it's not necessarily something that's going to create trauma in your immediate

57:10

family, but it helps a lot. It's a very good tool. It's a good tool.

57:15

It's a good tool. So, but, you know, for some people, as I said,

57:19

can be life altering, right? So.

57:22

Yes. I was like, no, I just wanted to thank you so much for coming on and talking about this.

57:27

And of course, talking about in terms of researching in Haiti and what that

57:31

is entailing and what, you know, as I said, I'll put your group's information

57:36

in the show notes so they can be able to access that.

57:38

And of course, FamilySearch and anything else. And I think you mentioned the

57:42

other one for the French archives as well.

57:47

Anon. Anon, yes. A-N-O-N. Oh, Anon. Okay.

57:53

Okay, perfect. Yeah, I'll put that there so that can be done.

57:55

But no, thank you so much, Gilles. I really do appreciate your time and your expertise to kind of go through those

58:01

documents because, again, for people to see what can be, what they'll actually be able to uncover because

58:08

that's the biggest thing to understand what document am I looking at and how

58:13

do I read it and understand it. So, again, thank you so much.

58:17

Thank you for having me. It was nice talking with you.

58:21

Hoped you enjoyed this episode and if you did please make sure to like follow

58:27

subscribe and write a review for the episode wherever you listen to your podcasts thank you.

58:35

Music.