Research Directions

George H. Buteau, Senior Researcher

I started my Buteau genealogy research more than 20 years ago with a simple search for grandpa Buteau who a family member had told me was born in Connecticut. One search of the 1880 U.S. census resulted in my  discovering that information. This eventually led me to finding my Canadian ancestors. With the help of the LDS family history libraries and a genealogy library dedicated to French-Canadian ancestry, I soon had populated all the branches of my family tree back to France. I began to research and fill other branches of the Buteau family in North America. 

Bob Buteau and I met more than 15 years ago and soon shared our Buteau genealogy information. It wasn't long before we joined forces in the task of finding out all we could about the Buteau family in North America. Along the way we had a successful reunion of the North American Buteau family in Montmagny, QC in 2001 and started this Buteau Family website.

For a lot of years we concentrated on the descendants of Pierre Buteau (Butaud) who came to Canada from France in the mid-1600s. As the internet became commonplace and many genealogy websites began to appear, we discovered more information that has led us to believe that there may be a common ancestor in France.

This ancestor may have given rise to Butot, Butaud, Buteau and other families around the world with surnames spelled similarly such as Buteux, Bluteau and Bulteau. Many of these surnames have persisted in France and elsewhere as standardization of French surnames took effect following the Napoleonic era.

Research Resources

Buteau Family members worldwide are the primary source of new data that we will need to develop the complete Buteau Family History. Unfortunately, due to lack of response, 85 to 90 % of all emails and letters sent to request family information from family members are never answered. This lack of family member response makes it necessary to use other methods and techniques to continue the recording of our family genealogy.

Over many years, interested genealogists, within and outside of our family have contributed to our knowledge. With consistency, George H. Buteau, our Senior Researcher, has led this group to the present state of historical development. George is a longtime member of the American-French Genealogical Society in Rhode Island. Robert J. Buteau, the webmaster, is a member of the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Massachusetts. Over the years, H. Gerard Buteau, in Alma, Quebec, with his French language Buteau family website, as well as, many others have provided substantial genealogical support for this effort. There have been many others helping from time to time when able.

The most prolific increase in data, that occurs occasionally, is when Buteau Family members submit everything they know about their own families and give us permission to add this information to the master database. 

The Internet is a very significant vehicle for researching the Buteau Family. There are now many search engines allowing worldwide searches of increasing volumes of data online. The increase in the number of amateur genealogists retrieving such information from family websites like ours and adding it to their websites without acknowledging its source is one reason for taking the databases containing Buteau Family history from this website. Privacy of family information is another reason. When we use data that we have retrieved from other internet sources, we always document those sources in our databases. Whenever possible, we make attempts to document such information even further by finding more reliable sources found in such locations as genealogy libraries.  We receive Google and Yahoo Alerts for any "Buteau" activity on a daily basis.  

Governments at all levels are adding archived data via their internet websites. Marriages, births, deaths are being listed by state after state. Military service information  is also being added by some state and federal governments. Much of this information is also available via subscription genealogical websites.

Commercial (for payment) services will provide answers for location of anyone, securing their unlisted phone numbers, tracking their court appearances, indicating real estate transfers, etc.   We are currently using these services and paying for them out of our own pockets or with donations to this website.

The best and most appropriate method of updating Buteau family data would be for Buteau families to request from us each year or so a copy of the data we have about their families in our databases so that they can correct and update this information for us. This is a practice that we hope might happen at some time in the future.