GILLES HUDICOURT'S HOME PAGE AND GENEALOGICAL PROJECT FOR HAITI

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For the past 10 months or so, I've been working on my family tree which I have been compiling using a computer and genealogy software. It works great. I started with an old family tree left by one of my aunts deceased in the seventies and completed it with other family trees, provided to me by relatives. To give my research more visibility and in hope of attracting more info, I converted my data to web pages and posted the research on the internet. From that point I started receiving data from total strangers. Needless to say that my family tree no longer consist my family alone but has become a Haitian genealogy tree (about 6000 people so far). Most of the data I received. however, was relevant to people already listed on my tree and I came to realize that most Haitians are somehow linked to each other, if one looks closely or far back enough. Now I have come to the point where gathering data based solely on family's memories and tradition is no longer sufficient or adequate. I was able, through the internet, to find data on my Scottish ancestors, my French ancestors but nothing on anybody in Haiti. I have recently discovered that the Archives Nationales d'Haiti do have archives, tons of archives, tables for researchers to sit at, and a generator that runs which provides electricity during the daily blackouts. A contact which I have in Haiti and who regularly goes to the Archives Nationales d'Haiti to do research, told me that complete records exists from 1804 on to the present day in Port-au-Prince except that the early records of the Northern parts of Haiti are located at the Cap-Haitian office. What they do not have is any kind or order or indexes that researchers can use to easily find needed data. Their archives are however quickly rotting away and time is taking its toll, for they, like most other branches of government in Haiti, do not have the budget required to take proper care of their documents.

What I am proposing is the following:

I would like to purchase a laptop computer and hand it over to a person who would go down, on a full time basis to the Archives Nationales d'Haiti and enter systematically enter all public records (births, deaths, weddings) into a database. These records would be uploaded to myself and all interested parties on a regular basis via e-mail. For my part, I would display all data received on a web page, which I already have.

I am willing to put up a small sum every month in order to purchase the computer and pay the employee. I shouldn't take much to get this going. I have a very reliable person to do this and I also have a reliable contact at the Archives Nationales d'Haiti.

See genealogical data at this site: click here

Of course, if someone can think of way to really save the documents at Archives Nationales, find a way to store them properly, create and maintain indexes, sort them, it would be even better but such an effort would require funds beyond the means of a handfull of interested people, but one never knows, someone out there may have a way....

Gilles Hudicourt
Montreal

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