Welcome to the American Family of Blais genealogical research site.

The work on my family's Blais lineage was originally started by my father's first cousin, the late Emma Blais, daughter of Cyprien Edgar Blais and Marie Sadie Bouchard, over 40 years ago. Emma took her vows as a Catholic nun with the Sisters of Ste. Chretienne, Giffard, Quebec in 1938. Emma was able to trace our Blais lineage back to Pierre Blais and Anne Perrot, as well as finding the many generations of lineage of the Blais women. She presented family members with copies of her family history at Christmas, 1980. Many of these copies were lost over the years, but fortunately, my sister was able to locate her copy, which she graciously gave to me. Without the original work of Emma Blais, my research efforts would probably be stuck at a brick wall with my great grandfather, Cyprien Adolphe Blais, of whom there was no information at all on the Internet until I put it there.

My first web site on the free pages of Roots Web caught the attention of researchers, Chris and George Christian, who had already done their own extensive research on the Blais family and have a book on Blais that can be ordered through the American-French Genealogy Society. They began sending me more data on Blais families from both Canada and the United States, which now includes thousands of Blais families, many of which still need to be entered into the database. Over the course of the last year, not only has the research of the Christian Brothers been an invaluable source of information, but they have also become good friends as well.

It is our hopes that when this web site is finished, it will be the most comprehensive site on the Internet for information pertaining to the Blais family. If you have any information or pictures you would like to contribute to this site, they will be gratefully accepted.

Site Navigation

Navigating the data on this site is easy. We have provided three ways for you to find your ancestors:

1. Surname Page: The Surname Pages consist of four pages that list every surname found in this database. This can be especially helpful as a quick reference to check for alternate spellings of a last name, of which there are many. As a note, I have done away with the "dit" so commonly seen in French names, and multiple surnames are hyphenated (e.g. Dion-Guyon rather than Dion dit Guyon).
   
   
2. Index: The Index consists of 15 fairly large pages of listings, with one listing for each of the more than 19,000 individuals in this database. The only information listed for each individual on the Index is their first name and last name. The Index can be very helpful for quickly locating a person whose surname does not list too many individuals, but if you are looking for someone with a surname of Blais, Morin, Belanger, Letourneau, Mercier, etc., there may be hundreds of listings, and in the case of Blais there are thousands. Most of the time, researchers should find using the search engine much easier and less frustrating in locating a specific individual.
   
   
3. Search Engine: The search engine is the easiest way to search through a large database such as this. The results displayed for your search include some of the data found on each individual page matching your search request. This can make it easier for the researcher to locate the correct person or family.
   
   It is best to search for a full name, i.e. Marie Morin, to narrow down the search results. Putting quotes around the name, i.e. "Marie Morin" will help narrow the search.
   
   If you are looking for a specific Blais individual, it is sometimes more fruitful to search for the name of the spouse, if you know it, as there are more than 3600 Blais individuals in this database and spouses are shown side by side on the page. It also can be helpful to use an unusual first name as a search option rather than a common last name. One example of this would be a first name of Chrysologue or Onesiphore, of which there are only a handful in this database.
   
   If you find that your search results are too broad, go to the bottom of the search results and click "Refine" and then click "Search" again to get more targeted results.