Civil registration of vital statistics (i.e. birth, marriage, and death records) did not begin in what is now Alberta until about 1870. There were some early missionaries in Alberta (Methodist and Roman Catholic) by the mid-1860s, but there are no records from the 1840s. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Aboriginal people relied upon oral tradition and so they did not keep any written records.

A synopsis of the genealogy holdings is available on our website: http://www.cd.gov.ab.ca/preserving/paa_2002/Accessing_the_Holdings/genealogy.asp