Petit Canada Project

Le Petit Canada Project

GREETINGS! If you have been contributing to this project over the past 10 years, I would like to say thank you once again. It is because of your efforts that the project has been a success. We have connected so many researchers with their ancestors that it is litterally too numerous to estimate.

I have begun the difficult task of puting together a local history book based on the families of Petite Canada and am asking everyone for help once again. It's not going to be a typical genealogical listing of names, dates and places, it will be written more as a history of where the settlers came from, why they traveled to Illinois, where many of them moved on to, ancedotal stories of actual daily life and other personal experiences that have been documented or handed down thru the years. I will include as many photopraghs, maps, charts, and

newly discovered material as I can to relate the story of Petite Canada as I can.

If you have any such items that you would like to see included in this work, I ask you to please contact me with suggestions, stories, photos or updated family information as soon as possible.

The "Petit Canada Project" is gathering and sharing information about the following "pioneer" families of Petite Canada. This name was given to the franco-american group by the english speaking families that had settled northwest of Bourbonnais, in the western part of the township and in the southern part of Rockville. In the year 1848, there were about 14 families that had settled "Le Petit Canada" These families included Michel, Alexis, Luc, Jean Baptiste and Marcel Dandurand, the Audets, Bergerons, and Brays. Of the English speaking families were the Davis, Rantz, Vanmeter, Uran, Williams and Cooper families. Subsequent to 1848, the following families arrived, increasing the population: The Thibault, Brosseau, Hubert Provost, Paul Prairie, Paquette, Alexis Guay, Louis Deschampe, Francoise Pinault, the Blains, and others who formed a nucleus to the north, east and into the town of Rockville.

View the following families.....