The Charles Matson Family

I was born a Theroux but when I was 3, my mother had to give me up for adoption due to things beyond her control. I didn't find her again until 45 years later and we had a nice 15 years together until she passed away in October of 2005 at age 86. I have told a good deal of my story in "The long quest for my roots" which you can find in the table of contents below.



Table of Contents

  • Our Theroux Family

  • The long quest for my roots by Charles Matson

  • Antoine Terroux : Travels of a Gascon by Henri Subsol. While working on my genealogy I corresponded with Henri Subsol, a French genealogy researcher. He gave me this article he wrote which was translated by Liz Owen. He also gave me permission to post this article. Antoine's story is important because Antoine Theroux was the first Theroux to come to North America and it is believed that all Theroux families in North America are descended from him.

  • Dictionnaire généalogique des familles Canadiennes by Cyprien Tanguay while not completely accurate was certainly the premier work of French Canadian genealogy in its time. If you want to buy Tanguay for yourself Visit this site.

  • Filles du Roi means "maiden or daughters of the King". The King of France wanted to keep the colony going in the new world and because there was a shortage of women there for the soldiers to marry the King paid for a lot of women to travel to the colony. Over 700 of these women married and made the program a hugh success. Most of us French Canadians can trace our lineage back to one or more of these pioneer women. Some were of the nobility class of France so there may even be ties to the Royalty of Europe.

  • 1666 Montreal Census Page

  • Search Nearly 2 Billion Names Even though ancestry.com is a subscription site it is one of the best sites I have found for US research. Becareful of the family trees that members have submitted as there are a LOT of mistakes in them.

  • GenWeb Richelieu, Québec - This site has over 20,000 individuals related to Antoine Théroux. When I asked about their sources, this is what they told me: "Most of the information that is contained on the GenWeb Richelieu site comes from marriages repertoires that our genealogical society posess in its library (around 1000 of them).

  • PRDH, Université de Montréal - There are over 750,000 certificates of various types, dated from 1621 to 1850. This is a subscription site but the information is fantastic.

  • Fichier Origine - This site contains about 5,000 of the original Québec individuals.

  • American-French Genealogical Society - They have a lot of resources for French Canadian research.

  • Babel Fish Translation - I use this site for translating parish records.

  • LÉVEILLÉE - BÉLANGER - The author, Norm Léveillée is another cousin of mine.

  • Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines - This is another one of Norm's sites.